Normally, Mr. Wallace would tell me I apologized too much, but this time he accepted it. And we lay there, quietly, as the train chugged on, mechanical and uncaring.
The night crept in quickly, as if throwing a blanket over the day to hide it from memory. I scrunched in the corner with my knees to my chest. “Why would they do this?” I asked.
“They’re afraid,” Mr. Wallace said. “That if we rise, we’ll do to them what they do to us.”
White folks thought us competition. So, any time we did well, they’d take it as a threat.
“You got family in Harlem,” Mr. Wallace said, half asleep. He was upright with his eyes closed, and in the sparing moonlight, the train rocked his skinny body back and forth.
The train hit a bump, and he fell over, blood from his head smearing the newspapers. But he got back up again and sat up, wincing, as his eyes closed. This was not a small graze. A piece of the bullet had embedded itself into the side of his head.
“Sir?” I started ripping open packages to find something thatcould save him, but all this cart had was mail. “Mr. Wallace? Please don’t—”Please don’t die.
I didn’t want to be the last person he would ever see.
“Your uncle migrated that way—Beet, Lorraine, Daisy, and them,” he said, opening his eyes again, looking woozy and out of it.
“Oh...” I balled up some paper and held it against his head.
I hadn’t seen my extended family in years, not since they moved.
Mr. Wallace fell over again and didn’t get back up. He fell asleep in the fetal position. I took his hand in mine—a hand that carried years of experience in the calluses.
How could I be so stupid as to complain about working with Mr. Wallace, who made his way through life with integrity and persistence? He ran a shoe shop that made people feel good and sharp about themselves. And he ran it with pride! Now here he was, and all the man had for years of struggle was a whiny brat to die beside.
Somewhere along the way, he stopped breathing. I knew it because the car started to feel lonelier.
I slid back the train door as we coasted over a lake—a stretch of trees, night and stars above us. I hung my legs out and let them swing and waited, as if God would rapture me next, as if that were the only possible turn things could take.
But nothing happened. So I tucked back inside, curled up on the newspapers, and fell asleep.
3.
We once had horses, but we sold them for a car. Before those days of machinery, Daisy and I would take the horses to the woods to ride.
When I was too young to steer, I rode on Grandpa’s horse, facing the back of his suede leather shirt. I had no control—my one job was to take in the surroundings, the trees that rose around in the shapes of fingers and veins, the stars that sugared the night.
Then I turned six, and it was my turn to steer the horse myself. Grandpa tried to hoist me up in first position, but my boot nicked her side. She reared up, causing Grandpa and I to fall backward, and the giant horse scraped its hooves against the air in front of the sun.
I looked up at the animal, heart nearly stopping at the size of it from this angle.
Grandpa said,Get on up, and pulled me to my feet alongside him.
Grandma got off her horse and came to me, pulling me into her cloak. She rocked me, soothed my wincing, but only for a moment, once she realized there was no real pain.
Get back on, she said, so I got back on.
Her voice echoed in my ear as I opened my eyes, to the sun slipping through the train door cars. It was morning and Mr. Wallace was gone, eyes closed and at peace.
We crossed into a different town, and the train passed a sign that said,Nigger don’t let the sun go down on you.
Wonderful.Terror coursed through my temples.Where were we going now? Would this nightmare ever end?
The engine stopped at a little barn surrounded by trees, and I got us off. I pulled my mentor down along with the money bags we’d brought with us. As the train left me behind, I dug a grave with my hands and laid him in it as best I could.
I hummed a song to bring life to the moment—one I’d learned from Grandma.“Soon I will be done with the troubles of the world, troubles of the world, troubles of the world...”
Once it was done, I sat in the grass for a bit beside the mound of dirt, my skin covered in sweat and body half dead, but still awake.
