Train Rides
2
“So what do you do for peace? You can’t fight the war for peace. I was thinking to myself… I was at my cottage on Lake Neil... Now, we don’t keep furniture there. It’s very Zen. The only thing we use for a bed is a pallet, to return to simplicity. And as I sat meditating I thought, No… not fighting the war for peace, but fighting the PEACE for peace.”
“Yes,” Laurel said, earnestly, putting her hands together, and when her aunt looked at her, Laurel smirked and said, “Don’t fight it. Join it.”
“And then I thought even more… not fighting the peace for peace. No, well what is the opposite of fighting. Peaceing!”
“You gotta be kidding me,” Claire muttered.
Again, the woman beside her cleared her throat and Claire said, “Honey, you really gotta knock that shit off.”
“So, I will be peacing the peace for peace!” Secily declared quietly as her audience applauded her once more, and then Secily took a strip of paper from her cleavage and declared:
“And here is a paean I’ve composed about that peace:
i
on my bed
now know what matters i will get up and take
a shit
and this shit will expel all war
all the guns, the bombs the nails that put together engines of patriarchy
because i am no longer fighting here, my only duty is to be shitting
all of this mess that’s missing and i
am peaceing the peace for peace putting the piece together with denise
and putting my face in her cinnamon scented box
and at last— flox?
“Flox?” said Dena.
Claire shrugged. “It rhymes with box.”
Secily concluded: “I will be peaceing the peace for peace!”
For a long while, the women clapped their hands, and then Secily said, “And now, my good friend, who has become your good friend… She needs no other name, We simply call her: Hilary!”
“Hilary we love you!” the woman behind Dena shrieked, and this time she turned around and said, “Alright, really, you need to knock that shit off!”
“You called it a wound, you made it a tomb and you want to shove the government up there
well, stare!
stare at my flower
and call it the bowl of life it is the bowl of love
i am not ashamed
i will not be reined in all of this beauty you see all of this breadbasketry is my pussy!
and you walked all over my pussy and you tried to silence my pussy, put
burkahs over my pussy and hoodies over my pussy and misspelled my pussy and circumcised it and circumscribed it
but hear this, oh phallocentric genius sitting in the meanness of your tiny, tiny tiny cockedness
the witch oil of my besom, the Mary Daly ding dalla allaying of my Asherah Anat bulalala rafallala end of all male dominated word structures is the beginning of me
come on, all you scared men
come on all you women made small by saint paul beating you down
i want to take you to a place that smells like salt
that smells like chicken
that smells like tuna
that smells like the sea
that’s right
that’s right
you’re going to my pussy!
don’t dress it up in pretty rags don’t be afraid to say
say it with me ah…
pussy
love your pussy smell your pussy touch your pussy
wax your car with your pussy!
and i beat on that drum
i beat on it with the cut off dried out cocks of white male
republicans and old hebroo profits
i beat on it with the dried out dicks of western philosophy
i beat on it with the stiff pricks of the fathers of Christianity
and we all sing one song: the song of pussy!
i climb on my electric broom and with all the Lilith paula cole infested magic of tra-la-la-starhawk fantastic
i fly
i am flying on my cunt and beneath me is the runt of right wing foolishness and that, you see,
is the power in my pussy!”
“And now…” Hilary concluded… “Layla Houghton.”
As the clapping went up around her, Dena pinched Layla's shoulder and said, “You’re no Hilary. But try.”
FENN WAS CHAIN SMOKING, and his sister was watching him when the phone rang.
“Do you want me to get that?” said Adele. “Um… No.”
“That’s right,” Adele encouraged. “Let it ring.”
“No,” Fenn said, getting up, “What I meant is I’ll get it.”
“Oh, Fenn, it could only be more bad news.”
As Fenn picked up the phone he said, “You didn’t fuck up your child, how could I fuck up mine?
“Hello?”
“Fenn, it’s me. And what’s this about Dylan being fucked up?”
“We’ll talk. But… what, Tom?”
“I’m looking for Bryant. He was supposed to meet me about a thousand years ago, and he’s not here.”
“Well, he’s not here either, so…”
Adele had gotten up and she picked up the phone in the living room to listen in.
“Fenn,” Tom was saying, “I’m worried about him. Come with me so we can check on Bryant.”
“Listen,” Adele began, and Fenn blinked, turning around and seeing his older sister in the living room. “Fenn has been wiping everybody’s ass for fifty years, and you just need to calm the fuck down, Tom. You need to check on this shit yourself.”
There was silence and then Fenn said, “Get over here. Adele and I will go with you.”
LOVE IS THE MUCH LESS violent lightning
it is the only way i know to get from here
to there, from me to you
a love as small as a button can be the size of Oklahoma and i don’t know,
and agreeing not to know is the key to entering mystery
i met a young man all in black
lighting candles in a church and he said he wanted to be a mystic
but unless you open your heart you will have missed it
that all of life is the handprint of love and all of love is
the fingertip of God your love is my door
When Layla had finished, there was quiet, and then there was a different type of clapping, as if no one had been able to figure out what to do, or where the agenda was.
“It’s like they have to figure out a new place to clap from,” Laurel whispered.
“I’ve got another,” Layla said, her voice more quiet than usual. “Since the first one was short, I’ve got one more.”
She grinned.
“And it’s called ‘One More.’”
one more wish one more night one more love
one more kiss
if i had one more chance, but—no—this is it
cherish this is all there is ness
love the is-ness of things
here in this light room, i love you all of your long white body,
for what it is
and i love us for who we are and not who we are not
drop all the wishing for pretense and come to me
as we are.
As they clapped Layla nodded, and she stepped around the stage and stepped down. They touched her like Jesus, like they were waiting for a miracle, and one of the women leaned out of the crowd and kissed her on the cheek.
Dena touched her elbow as she rejoined them.
“You’ve got it,” Dena said. “I don’t know when you got it, but you got it.”
Claire chuckled and said, “I think she always had it.”
When they pulled up to the house, Adele said, “Do you realize that in the time you took coming to get us, you could have gone to Bryant’s house yourself? I mean, the both of you live in this same bougie neighborhood.”
“You think I’m a fool, don’t you?” Tom said.
Opening up the storm door, Adele admitted, “I always have.”
Like Tom and Lee, Bryant lived in a low modern bungalow surrounded by evergreen shrubbery with a flagstone path leading up to the front door. Fenn reflected that even though Adele had called this end of town bougie, both of them lived in houses larger than this one. He thumped on the heavy door and when Bryant did not answer, he thumped again.
“Oh, what the hell!” Adele muttered and just kicked it in.
“Hell hath no furry,” Fenn marveled, as Tom went on ahead, through the foyer and toward the living room. “Damn,” Fenn muttered. “This shit really is bougie—”
But just then, Tom screamed and Fenn caught his sister’s hand and then the two of them ran into the living room.
“Shit!” Adele was even quicker than Fenn to reach the chair, propping it under Bryant, and then Fenn and Tom were up untying him. Bryant looked dead, and then he began coughing, his face turning red.
“He’s heavy as fuck,” Adele commented, and she and Fenn wrestled him into the chair.
Bryant kept coughing, clutching at his throat.
“Fenn,” he said. He blinked at Tom. Tom’s mouth was open, and he looked young and terrified.
Bryant opened his mouth to say more, but instead he could only cough.
Suddenly, Fenn swung out and hit him in the back of the head.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?”
Bryant stared at him.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?” Fenn repeated. Shaking his head, Bryant, his neck rope burned, only rasped, “It’s too hard.”
“I spent years picking up after you, after you who—for reasons unknown—thought that fucking my husband was an okay thing to do. Don’t worry, I’m over it, but it’s too hard for you?” Fenn said.
“I find out—and you should learn this Tom—that my eighteen year old son is apparently having sex with half the men in Lawrence County, and even though I can raise everyone else’s child, I can’t raise my own. I am driven to the edge, fifty years old and more, but not one bit smarter than I was only… a little more arthritic. And you say it’s too hard for you? So you do what? Hang yourself from a fucking curtain and leave us to find you.”
Tom had turned green, and his mouth was still open. Bryant’s was as well, and suddenly Fenn leapt on him, and started beating him while, dumbly, Bryant covered his head.
Adele pulled her brother away. “This has got to stop, baby,” she told him.
Fenn sighed, “You’re right.
“Tom, give me your keys.”
Tom looked at Fenn.
“Give ‘em up,” Adele commanded.
Reluctantly, looking very worried, Tom handed his keys to Fenn and Fenn walked out of the room, but not before he shoved Bryant one last time.
A moment later they heard the door slam shut.
“No one was supposed to know,” Bryant said, rubbing his shoulder. “It seems whatever I do causes trouble.”
“Yes,” Adele agreed, mercilessly. “It does.”
Adele remained silent while, in Bryant Babcock’s kitchen, Paul Anderson explained everything.
“It was about a year ago. I tried to take Dylan aside and talked to him, but he was angry. I think he was terrified that I would tell you, or tell Fenn.”
Paul was being politic, for really he didn’t think Tom was in Dylan’s head at all at the time. “He kept shouting that he was old enough and he knew what he was doing and I told him I didn’t agree. But…” Paul shrugged. “It’s like I said, I didn’t think telling anyone would do any good. I thought that if I just looked after him he wouldn’t get into too much trouble.”
“Too much trouble!” Tom stood up and came the closest to yelling he ever got.
Adele put her hand on Tom’s wrist and then said, “I’m going to make a phone call, and then we can get the hell off death watch, cause this is getting old.”
Adele took her phone out of her purse to retreat to the foyer for privacy, and as she left, heard Paul whisper, “So Bryant really tried to kill himself?”
“Don’t change the subject,” Tom said. “I can’t believe you thought it was the right thing to keep this from us, Paul!”
“Hello,” Adele was saying to the phone. “He’s your friend. You need to get down here. You and your boyfriend. No. No, I’m not fucking lying. Get down here, now. He’s halfway sedated in his bedroom now, and I’m going upstairs to make sure he didn’t take a whole bottle of pills, and then I’ve got to go. I have a husband. And a runaway brother. Now… just get here.”
As Adele was hanging up, her phone rang again and she said, “Dylan?”
“Aunt Adele! I’ve been trying to get a hold of everyone. I’ve got great news!”
“Dylan, honey,” Adele said, “you need to tone it down a notch.”
Dylan picked up on something in Adele’s voice and said, “What’s wrong?”
“A lot is wrong, and you need to get home. No. You need to get to Bryant Babcock’s house.”
“Why?”
“That’s a long story.”
Adele leaned against the wall of the darkened foyer.
“Look, Nephew, I don’t want to blindside you. You need to know that Fenn went off, and we don’t know where he is, and your father is right here, and he’s upset because he knows about some of your…” Adele searched for the right phrase, “escapades.”
“What?” Dylan began, and then, “Oh no!”
“Dylan, just come here. I’ll be here. Alright?”
“Alright, Aunt Adele,” Dylan’s voice was heavy, and she could tell he was frightened.
