Abandoned House by the Railroad by Elizabeth Sowden

We were all standing around that afternoon outside Ben’s garage, sweating our balls off. Ben had a green Bonneville up on the lift, and it was dripping oil. A stray Rottweiler wandered in, sniffing, and after we fed him some Cheetos, he flopped down on the pavement near our feet and panted, his tongue lolling out like a horny cartoon character’s. Cars rumbled by on the avenue, and we took turns making comments about the ones we liked and cracking jokes about the ones we didn’t. We debated what to do that night: pizza and pinball, or swiping a six-pack of beer from one of our dads’ rumpus rooms.

That’s when the old man appeared. Humped and red-faced, his pants looked too big, and his felt hat swallowed his head. He walked with a shuffling gait and had a slight tremor in his hands. He said: My house is near here. Can you help me get to my house?

At first, we thought he’d escaped from somewhere, a home with a capital H. The sort of place with water-stained ceiling tiles and nurses who were always looking for new jobs. But when he described the house, we knew it instantly. Tall, with a tower, a French roof, and white, though it appeared bluish in the right light. It had a shadowy porch, elongated windows, and looked out on a set of train tracks.

Yeah, we said. We know that house.

We’d gone near it a dozen times but always chickened out before going in. Looking up at it from below, the dark windows in the tower looked like they could explode with bats at any moment. Plus, one of us decided that the ghosts would all attack the first one of us to go in, and after that, none of us wanted to be first.

It’s near here, I know, he said. But he had no idea how to get there from here and needed our help.

Ben lowered the Bonneville and stood on the garage apron, wiping the grease off his hands with a rag. He said he had an old Chevy we could take, the kind with a chrome bumper and cone-shaped running lights. He tossed us the keys, and we climbed in. Somebody said Ben probably just wanted to be rid of us for a while, and the rest of us shut him up—not in front of the old man, we said with our narrowed eyes.

As we drove, the old man talked about the house, about how he could see for miles from the tower. He’d spend hours up there, he said, baking in the summer heat, looking down at the tiny village below and imagining that all of the tiny houses and figures were his toys that he moved with his mind.

The three of us sat in front while he bumped along in the back. We all traded glances when he said that thing about the toys.

He went on: Before the train tracks, there was an orchard. Pear trees that produced tiny, sour yellow fruits that the hired girls would turn into the sweetest pastry tarts you ever tasted. But then, men came and clear-cut the orchard, and more men came and laid the track. Soon, the trains started, and they rattled the old house so badly that the old man’s mother demanded to move.

We all started to hate Ben a little. He knew exactly what he was doing, didn’t he, when he put us in the car with this yapping old coot?

What’s that? He asked. I don’t know that store. When did they build that?

Before we could answer, he said, That was a dancehall. It burned down when some fella got mad that the woman he was after was promised to someone else, and he poured kerosene all around it. Nobody died, and he was lucky too, because they’d have hanged him for sure. The sheriff arrested him one town over, waiting to catch a train.

We drove in silence. Arson? A botched murder attempt? This was getting good.

This doesn’t look right, he said. This can’t be the way.

It is the way, we said.

We traded glances again. How could he know what used to be one minute, and be totally oblivious the next?

My sister was the first to move, he said. She got married, and her new husband bought a house in the city, a brownstone, they called it. Dad didn’t want to move, saying the trains didn’t bother him. But mom insisted. More trains went by every day, and she hated the way they made her shake.

We rolled past a house with its roof open, and charred beams poked out at the sky. The smell of smoke was heavy and humid from the firehoses, probably still smoldering inside.

Look at that, the old man said. Isn’t that terrible?

Aw, who cares? One of us asked. It’s an ugly house anyway.

No, he said. That was someone’s home. No one should ever lose their home.

We passed a church, a cafe, a library with a flag waving out front, and a barber shop with a half-rusted Coke machine tucked up against its side wall. In a field beyond the town, an old refrigerator sank sideways into the mud, its door wide open. It was wrong to dump fridges that way, because little kids could get trapped in them and die. We all remembered someone who died that way years ago, but didn’t mention it to the old man.

The brownstone we had was beautiful, he said. But smaller than the house. Narrow. It butted up against the other ones that looked just like it. They gave me a room at the back of the house because it had a window. The hired girl had a room with no windows at all. We only took the one girl with us to the city. Dad sacked the other.

We drove past the town’s edge, onto a cracked, weedy stretch of highway that was mostly obsolete since the Interstate went in.

The old man kept yapping: We had to give up the brownstone after the crash of ‘29, Dad said. We had to move to Queens! Imagine.

We’d never been to the city, so we couldn’t.

This can’t be the way, he said.

We ignored him, and he just went on flapping his ancient gums.

Dad got an apartment on 31st Street, right by the elevated train. Those went by every ten minutes and rattled every china cup in the cabinet. Dad said to Mom: You didn’t like the trains at the old house. How do you like this?! Dad swore we’d have been better off if we’d stayed at the old house.

But if you couldn’t afford the brownstone, how could you have afforded the house? We asked.

No answer.

This isn’t the way, he said, and the pitch of his voice got higher and thinner. No, this can’t be the way.

Yes, it is, we said. See those train tracks there?

They’re different ones, he said.

They’re not, we said.

No, these are different tracks. They lead somewhere else?

They’re not, and even if they were, how could you tell? Train tracks all look the same.

These have weeds growing out of them.

Of course they do. They’re old, like you, we snickered.

Finally, we pulled up to the house and parked in the long shadow that it cast. The old man’s arms and legs trembled as he clung to the open car door. The windows in the tower glowered down at us, and the three red chimneys that stretched from the sloping roof looked about ready to crumble.

This is not my house, he said.

It’s the only one like this around here, we said.

No, he said, my house — it doesn’t look like this.

You said a tower, a porch, and a French roof. No other house around has those things.

His face was red and beaded with sweat, a heartbeat away from heat stroke.

What does it look like then, if it’s so different?

When he didn’t answer, we got back in the car and turned back toward town.

You can’t leave me here, he shouted after us, but through the rearview, we could see him ambling up toward the porch.

***

Back in town, the sun left an orange stripe on the horizon, and we took the car back to Ben’s garage. Ben had gone home for the day, so we wandered down to the pizza place, where we poured pepperoni grease into empty cups and drank it, to the squealing disgust of the girls at the next table. We washed the pizza down with Mountain Dew, and belched as we took turns at pinball, the buttons slippery from the fat on our fingers.

A cop car pulled up, its cherries flashing through the storefront window, bathing everything in red. We paid it no mind until two cops in crisp blue uniforms stepped inside and said, You boys need to come with us.

We sat in the back of the cruiser, stiff and silent, as it drove down roads that seemed unfamiliar in the growing darkness. Messages crackled over the radio, but we couldn’t understand them.

The cops led us into a squat, brick station, and then into a small room, where we sat alone for twenty minutes. Finally, a man in plain clothes except for his shoulder holster came in and sat across from us.

Do you know why you’re here? He asked.

We shook our heads.

You abandoned an old man at the house by the railroad, he said.

He asked us to take him there, we said. We just did what he asked.

Now, see, he said, running his hand over his balding scalp, the old man is what we call a vulnerable adult. And so, technically, what you did is called kidnapping.

Kidnapping! As if we’d tied a gunny sack around his head and shoved him into the trunk!

He asked us to take him there! We were doing him a favor.

By leaving him at a house where he nearly fell through the floorboards?

We didn’t know he’d go in, we said.

And you didn’t know he was bonkers either? The cop asked.

We didn’t! We didn’t even know him!

Do you also not know that dogs bite if you yank on their ears?

We traded glances. A fluorescent light above us hummed. Laughter floated in from somewhere down the hall; cops at shift change, cracking jokes.

What do you mean? We asked.

He rolled his eyes. Quit playing dumb, he said. You knew damn well the old man didn’t have all his marbles. You should’ve called 911 instead of stuffing him into that car and leaving him out in the middle of nowhere. Trains still run on that track, you know. He could’ve been killed.

So, he’s ok?

He’s in the hospital for observation. They’ll release him back to his nursing home tomorrow.

What about Ben? He gave us the car.

Ben should’ve called 911. But the thing is, it’s not a crime to lend someone a car. And Ben didn’t leave the poor old guy.

But we’re juveniles.

Lucky you, he said. You’ll probably get lighter sentences.

He left us the room, and we sat alone, saying nothing. Suddenly, a tower full of bats didn’t seem so scary.