hand juddered, just for second but enough to spill a little down his wrist. ‘Not funny,’ he stated, passing the cup over.
Down in the valley the locomotive was poised, straddling the rail tracks that followed the natural contours of the land, rising and falling as it dictated. Steel reflected the dusk as a monument to the pair’s labour, as did the four combine cars that accompanied it.
‘What a sight … Beautiful isn’t she? I always said she was, even the day when I first laid eyes on her as a youngster. Do you remember when I dragged you through that scrapheap to find her?’ the old man reminisced, fighting off sentimentality.
‘Of course I do. It was the biggest piece of crap I had ever seen. I thought you had gone senile for a moment. It was a shambolic ore hauler that even time hadn’t had the decency to kick to pieces. That’s a red flag right there. Look at her now though. She’s all manner of pretty.’ He laughed at the absurdity, a collective of bittersweet memories soon curtailed as reality rudely reintroduced itself.
‘I expected you to ignore me when I told you that you would be helping. Go back to hustling folks on the street maybe in an attempt to make your way. I’ve never been so glad to be wrong. I have no shame in saying it, but these last few years with you have been the best ones of my life.’ He paused to blink back the wetness that coated his eyes. ‘It made me feel hopeful again that life weren’t as cruel as those sands that threaten to swallow us.’
‘It’s been good for me too,’ Franco said, drastically swigging away to sedate himself. His heart was breaking, being here, talking like this. It was an agonizing pain, making him desperate to roll back the clock to a time when they were working on the train carefree.
Before the old coot was slipping away.
The sun hung heavy, finally letting itself take to the horizon and bleed its best into the cotton-white clouds, transforming them into hues of pinks and blues. The infinite sands blanketed the land before them, basins interrupted by numerous protruding mountain ranges that stretched out in all directions.
Tranquillity reigned. Not a bird took to the sky, not a viper protruded from its nest. For the longest time either of them could recall, there was nothing to distract them from this one, wonderful moment.
They each took a sip, neither appreciating the spirit’s flavour but instead marvelling at the landscape.
‘From up here you would never guess how hard everything is,’ Pappy reflected.
Franco said not a word but instead drank deeper this time.
‘Your father said that to me once. Or something like that – may or may not have been the exact words but that’s the gist at least. He had a penchant for absurdities at your age, poetic ones mostly about how the world was weaved together.’
There was a pause before Pappy continued. ‘Do you miss him?’
‘He was a fool who abandoned his son. What do you think?’ Franco snapped.
The mood soured, though this was expected given the topic of conversation. It was something they never spoke of and given the circumstances Pappy felt compelled to change that. If they weren’t to discuss it now, then when?
‘You’re speaking out of anger. He’d have forgiven you for that.’
‘I don’t care what he would have done. He’s not here. So what he may or may not have decided to do at this point of time is irrelevant.’ Franco huffed.
‘It was never that simple, not for him. It wasn’t an easy choice to make. He watched your mother struggle with the pregnancy – terribly ill she was, and what with us all having no money coming in … well, your father decided to do the right thing.’
‘The right thing would be to stay put. To look after his family. Not to be gallivanting in places that no sensible people would go!’ Franco realized that his voice was rising. This was a wound forever raw and prodding at it, especially now of all times, did little to diminish that. He focused on his grip around his cup, tightly wrapping his fingers around it with such force that he expected it to collapse in on itself. ‘What kind of man doesn’t stay?’
‘Sure, you say that now. I imagine I would be all fire like yourself in your position. The thing is, you’re young and unburdened, boy. Being a father changes a man’s prerogatives. With you on the way, there would be another mouth to feed and your father had no choice but to go off to the mines. Nobody else was hiring, you see? We owed money to people just to keep fed, people who you wouldn’t want to owe a kind remark let alone currency. They rattled your poor mother something fierce with threats. Your old man would fall through the door at times all beaten and blue. That’s no way of living. I know you don’t want to talk about it. You’ve never wanted to talk about it. That’s your personal business and I get that. But you don’t have to talk right now. You just have to listen.’
Pappy didn’t cry. Crying wasn’t in his nature. He had lived through times when crying wasn’t done, when emotion was a stranger to the working man, and all that mattered was words and actions.
But with that said, for a moment he could have mistaken his own son staring back at him instead of the slumped, depressed figure of his grandson. The youngster had inherited plenty from the man he never knew, from the shaggy hair to his fiery temperament, traits that were making this conversation exceedingly more difficult than intended. Franco had grown from a difficult tearaway to a sterling individual, forthright and strong. Pappy was proud and despite never saying it, secretly hoped that his actions communicated his feelings appropriately. No, Pappy was not one to cry.
But if he did, it would have been then.
‘Have you actually seen the mines, boy?’ His voice struggled. ‘Not heard of them, or been told stories, but actually seen them with your two own? It’s like walking into the abyss. First you take to a tin can that winches you deeper and deeper down to a place we were never supposed to go. The air down there is wrong. Daylight ain’t nothing more than a memory and you’re strolling through the guts of the land, graciously chipping away its innards. No wonder there’s so many accidents. No wonder they pay so much. Cave-ins, suffocation, all that mess. Only someone broken by desperation would willingly endure such danger.’
Franco’s teeth were bared, his shoulders rocking as he tried to control every shudder of sadness that set upon him.
Pappy nodded cordially, imparting what he knew in the hope that maybe it would bring him some closure.
‘Some people don’t remember bad news. When it hits, everything seems to blur. You could tell them a million things and by the end of it they couldn’t recall a one. I’m not one of those lucky people as fortune inflicted me with something of a sharper mind, but I wish that wasn’t the case. I was looking after your mother as she carried you. You were large in her belly. She used to sing to you as you were in there and tell you handsome stories of your father. The letters he sent back were read over and over to you, normally in this poky kitchen we had.
‘As soon as the letters stopped, we assumed there was a problem with the post. Things were getting difficult out that way, train hijackings and all. The papers even warned of such things. Your mother, bless her, she was saying that it wasn’t normal, that something had to be wrong. Worked herself into a right state she did.’
Pappy drank deeply, attempting to banish the fog that years of negligence had accumulated. He cleared his throat, or did so as well he could, with noisy splutters.
