Free Book Excerpts

Combining adventure, poignancy, and humor, The Skeleton Train tells the story of Jason Audley, an alienated but resourceful young man who undertakes a quest to find a mysterious missing girl.

Excerpt

Chapter 1

“Pass the peas,” Lydia says, but I ignore her.

“Pass the peas to your sister,” my dad says.

“I’m not touching them,” I say.

“I thought you liked peas,” my dad says.

“Things change,” I say.

“You know, that’s enough of that. This is between your mother and me.”

My mother watches us both while she eats.

“Fine,” Lydia says. She leans over the table and snatches the peas.

“They’re going to build on the empty lot,” my father says.

That was Davey’s house, across the street and one house down. It blocked everyone’s view of the valley. That lot was steep, fell right into the woods. For those of us without a view, this was a place to stare into real blank space, not into someone else’s yard or window.

Elysian Fields. Paradise for good Romans. A squatty tower greeted visitors to our neighborhood. It said so right on the tower, in letters of wrought iron. The place began as a bunch of shoebox houses crowded between corn fields. It looked like a Roman army camp. Very precise. No curves. The Elysian Fields grew, and they ran out of farm fields and expanded into stray patches of woods, muddy ponds, and the Purley Creek valley.

It’s all Roman street names. The main road into Elysian Fields is Elysian Street. Very imaginative. Emperor streets connect to it, okay ones, like Augustus and Claudius. And crazy ones, like Caligula and Nero. Then are names of Roman places, like Ostia and Carthage. By the time they got to our area, someone was getting tired. We lived on Via Street, which means Street Street.

Our side of the Via Street is a row of split-levels. They are all the same. The west side of the street, with its woods, has houses for richer people. Most have four bedrooms; many have walk-out basements. One has bricks on the front. The east-siders and the west-siders didn’t talk much.

“That’s not a buildable lot,” my dad said. “Too steep.”

But Davey’s father, Marlin, is a builder, stores and offices and such. And one day in mid-summer, a huge pile of creosote timbers appeared, crushing the weeds and sending a tarry smell up and down the street. Over the next couple months, workers constructed a layer cake of terraces, filled them with dirt and rocks, and started building a house.

“These columns are real fiberglass,” said one dad. It was part of the daily inspection. This happened when all new houses went in. It had been a while, though, and Davey’s house was a real draw.

“This place must be 2500 square feet, it it’s an inch,” said another, “and look at this driveway. I didn’t know you could get green cement.”

Davey moved in later that winter, just after a soggy four-inch snowfall. Davey stood at the end of his driveway. I stood at the end of mine. I walked slowly up the sidewalk on my side of the street, made a snowball, and lobbed it at him. Davey watched it, caught it with one hand, and whipped it back, hitting me between the eyes. I wiped the snow off my face, shook it out of my jacket.

“Jesus Christ,” I said. I could see there was no point in escalating.

He shrugged, then smiled. “Do you like baseball?”

“No,” I said, “I’m a basketball man.”

“What grade are you in?”

“Seventh,” I said.

“Seventh,” he said then “See ya.”

“Yeah,” I said.

He joined our school the next week, Shifford A. Tarman Middle School. He joined 7A. I was in 7C. It was no secret what this meant. The smart kids were in 7A, the kids everyone ignored were in 7B. The artsy misfits, the aspiring criminals, the imbeciles, and everyone who wasn’t white – that was 7C. I felt there had been some mistake. I tried to explain that to my homeroom teacher, Mrs. Myx. I delivered an impassioned appeal and she banned me from art for the rest of the school year. I sat in the hallway reading a book while my classmates painted, glued, and stapled each other. So it didn’t matter to me. I liked reading.

Our science teacher was prepared for 7C. “See this jar?” he asked, holding up a one-quart canning jar. “See this fish?” With his other hand he displayed a dead, six-inch catfish. He placed the fish in the jar and screwed the lid on tightly. “If there’s noise, if there’s backtalk, if there’s any kind of trouble, the lid comes off.” He held up the jar for our inspection. “We’ll get aerobic decay first and then anaerobic. When I loosen this lid, after this little fellow turns to gray goo, the smell will be worse than you can imagine. Very penetrating. Eye-watering. I’m used to it. But you…” He paused, then continued, “Remember, it’s not me who opens this jar. It’s you. Cross the line in this class and retribution will be swift, extreme, and automatic. Any questions?”

Davey and I spent some time together during that year, but Davey’s mild interest in me wore thin when he discovered my social status. I’m not sure why it was so low. On the plus side, I was normal height, normal weight, and dressed inoffensively. On the minus side, I was shy, my parents were getting divorced, and I played the piccolo. I wasn’t the lowest, a pariah, untouchable. That came later.

Davey, on the other hand, had no minuses. He was tall, had curly blond hair, blue eyes, and extraordinarily white teeth. He smiled easily. And he was a natural athlete. He was great at math. And, though not particularly talkative, said the right things at the right times.

That spring was eventful. Here’s why. First, my mother went back to college during the divorce. In June, she moved in with her poetry teacher Anna Bella Wolcott. Second, Lydia, three years older than me, got her driver’s license. On her first trip by herself, she opened the garage door, started the car, and backed over our dog. It had been a dachshund named Milly. I’m not sure who I missed more, Mom or Milly. Third, my dad lost his job, found a new, better one, and then lost that one, too. Fourth, I got acne.

“You’ve got acne,” says Dr. Wendt. He wears a red vest with his white shirt and bow tie. He looks jolly enough, but his eyes give him away.

“There is a medical treatment for this,” Dr. Wendt says. “But it’s dangerous stuff. Causes suicides. Besides, maybe I’m old-fashioned, but I see this acne condition a bit differently. You see, acne is the result of lifestyle choices.” He grabs my chin and moves my head this way and that. “You need to stop shoveling chocolate and French fries into you.”

“I don’t like chocolate. I hardly ever eat French fries,” I lie.

“Don’t lie to me, son. Your face tells the story. You have to exercise some self control. And touching yourself. Masturbation. Acne has been linked to masturbation.”

My mother is sitting in the room with me. I look at my feet.

“Self control, my boy. I can’t do it for you. Your mother can’t do it for you. You have to do it all yourself. Am I making myself clear?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Now how are things going otherwise? You are going into 8th grade?” He pauses. I nod. “What section?” he asks.

“8C,” my mother says quietly.

Dr. Wendt frowns. “Not smart like your sister, eh? Well, you had better learn to do the best you can with what God gave you. Mind, body, and soul.”

“You heard Dr. Wendt,” says my mother, searching her purse for her keys. “Where are my car keys? I told you to remember where I put them.”

“I don’t remember,” I say.

“Yes, you do. You remember everything.”

“Coat pocket.”

“You heard Dr. Wendt,” she repeats. “It’s up to you, Jason.”

I nod, then say, “What about the medicine? Can I get a second opinion?”

“I think we can get along fine without a suicide,” my mother says.

I knew it was my fault. Davey’s mother had told me the same thing, early in the spring when we were still hanging out. I resolved to do better. For weeks, I ate no butter, no ice cream, no candy, no french fries, no snack food, nothing that had ever encountered a whiff of grease. To be safe I avoided all red meat and most starches. I lost 11 pounds and my acne became pathological, covering me with inflamed, festering lumps. Whenever self abuse entered my mind, I thought of my Great Grandma Penance, moldering in her grave.

When I went back to school in fall, students stared. A few asked “What happened to you?” I didn’t have a good answer, I just shrugged and tried to keep my head down, which, of course, invited closer scrutiny. Younger kids, particularly 6th graders, who are generally in humanity’s cruelest stage, taunted me as I walked home from school. I could have pounded them. I knew how.

My mother was adopted, to add a girl to a family of four boys. Four mannish boys. Most started shaving at 10. They all were wrestlers. Two were state champs. When other mothers got mad, they screamed at you or ran crying from the room. My mother put me in a chokehold and threw me to kitchen floor.

“That’s enough backtalk,” she’d say through gritted teeth. When I was eight, I got in a fight with a kid at school. I won, due to my knowledge of chokeholds. He had three older brothers who chased me for blocks after school, until they cornered me in my own front yard. I screamed for help. My mother came out the front door, took in the situation and said, “All right, that’s enough of that. One at a time!”

My mother’s brothers were broad-shouldered, beer-gutted, and oddly bow legged. They had a complex geometry, while my mother was simple and linear. Tall, wiry, pale—she had small ears, a high hairline, and a surprised look that gave no warnings and no information. Backed by her army of brothers, she was used to getting her way, particularly with men, who had to learn to interpret vague nods and vacant glances. My father never learned this. That’s why they divorced, I imagine. That, and the fact that they had nothing in common.

“We need to have a chat,” my father said to my sister and me. “As you know, your mother has decided to move out. Sometimes adults may seem to act in ways that you may find puzzling or inexplicable. Unexpected. You may feel blind-sided, hurt, betrayed, humiliated. Maybe guilty. These feelings are natural when your mother does something so completely bizarre.” He smiled weakly. “Throughout human history, we see a parade of costly decisions promulgated on flawed, frail imitations of reasoning.” In college, my father had been a double major in English and history until he switched to accounting and flunked out. “So try to keep this disaster in our own lives in perspective. Many, many have suffered, and now you join their ranks.”

“What are you babbling about?” asked Lydia. At this time, Lydia was between junior and senior year in high school. She shared my mother’s linear frame and my father’s frizzy Welsh hair. She looked like a white Angela Davis. She excelled in sarcasm and advanced placement classes. I think she despised my father and me.

“Your wife is leaving you, father,” Lydia said, “because it is the natural consequence of her growth as a person, as a female person.”

“So we are like innocent civilians killed by bombs?” I asked.

“That’s enough,” said my father. He rubbed his stubbly chin vigorously. “We have to pull together here.”

“You two can,” said Lydia. “I’m moving in with Mom.”

“I don’t think that’s a good environment-” my father began to say.

“Look,” Lydia said, “I’m out of here in a year. I’m seventeen. I’m an adult. I can certainly choose where I live. And Mom invited me.”

“When?” I asked.

“Yesterday,” she said. “Don’t tell me you didn’t receive an invitation?”

“You’re super, super skinny,” I said to Lydia. I knew she hated that.

“At least I’m not a gorilla like Dad,” she said. She knew she could get to me by insulting our father. I was immune to her direct insults. In truth, I rarely understood them.

“We’ll see about this moving business,” my father said.

Two days later, Lydia moved out.

Read more about The Skeleton Train and Craig Hansen HERE.

Copyright 2010 Craig Hansen. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the author.