Leavin’ on the night train.
The Last Train to Slipsville
Flash Fiction
By Charles McKelvy
George settled in the aisle seat and couldn’t help but notice that the young man in the window seat was watching the ballgame on his device.
“Mind if I look over your shoulder?” George said. “I’m a big Sox fan, and—“
“I’m a big Cubs fan, and they’re tied at one a piece, and—here, let me put it on the drop-down so we can both watch and cheer for the Cubs.”
“You mean the Sox.”
“Right.”
“I’m Phil by the way.”
“And I’m George by the way. Seems we both have the same last name.”
“What?”
“You know: by the way. Get it?”
“Now I do. Good one. Well, Mr. Cubs, enjoy watching my the Sox shellac your team.”
“In your dreams.”
The train rolled into motion, and, in no time flat, Phil and George were speeding through the inky Michigan darkness.
The Cubs scored.
The Sox failed to answer.
“Sorry, George,” Phil said.
“Yeah, well, they’ll come back. You just watch.”
“Hey, why don’t we watch in the club car over some cold beers? You can’t ride the train and watch baseball without some cold beers.”
George thought about it for a second or two and said: “No, you go, Phil. I’ll—“
“What?!? You don’t drink beer? Are you un-American?”
“No, it’s just—well, I’m taking the day off is all. Giving my liver a break.”
“What your liver really needs right now is a cold beer while you watch my Cubs trash your Sox. We’ve got a designated driver—Amtrak. Come on, George, live a little.”
George thought about it for a second or two and said: “All right, Phil. Why not?”
“Why not, indeed.”
And with that George followed Phil to the club car and ordered a bottle of one of the craft beers they had available, and, despite years of being told that it is the locomotive, not the caboose, that kills you, George drank that first beer, decided it tasted just fine after all those years, and ordered and second and then a third and then a fourth.
George, in fact, was just draining that fourth beer when the train slowed for his stop.
“Isn’t this where you get off?” George’s new best friend Phil asked.
“Yeah, but I’m having too much fun. I’ll ride all the way to Chicago and take the train back tomorrow. I’m retired, so it’s not like I have to punch the clock anymore.”
“But where will you stay? What about your wife? I thought you said she was going to meet you at the station.”
“I’ll deal with her later,” George said. “Right now it’s time to put a serious wager on this game. The loser buys a round for everybody in the club car.”
That sounded just swell to everybody in the club car, and the game rolled on as the train stopped in George’s hometown.
His faithful wife Judy was waiting on the platform, and when George failed to appear and the train resumed its journey to Chicago, Judy trained her eyes on the club car and spotted her once-sober husband having the time of his life with his new best friend. Judy had told George years ago that she would leave him if George picked up another drink, and now that she could clearly see that he had chosen the bottle over her, Judy was out of there.
Once and for all.
But what George even faintly aware of that?
On one level, maybe.
But on the only level that mattered to him at that moment, he was having the time of his life with his new best friend, Phil and his old best friend, John Barleycorn.
###
(Harbert, Michigan) No crowds, no 150-mile traffic jams, no fender benders, no running out of water, no hassles, and, alas—no totality on Monday, August 21, 2017 during what was being hyped as The Great American Eclipse (as if we invented the eclipse, right?). We simply stayed home on Dune Road with the shadow box Natalie made from an empty five-pound box for blueberries and went out during the dimming of the day to watch the moon cover some 85 percent of the sun, using, of course, Natalie’s shadow box. Also known as a camera obscura, the homemade device enabled us to watch an image of the eclipse that appeared on a piece of white paper inside the box. Natalie, clever girl that she is, had cut out a pin hole for the sun and a viewing hole for us, and then we turned our backs on the eclipse and looked into the shadow box, its wonders to behold. Oh, and our friends and neighbors Jeanne and Mike appeared at the height of our partiality, and let us look through their NASA-approved eclipse glasses. They then headed down to the beach for a better look. But we had shopping to do, so we stayed with Natalie’s shadow box for the remainder of the partiality. I tell ya, we know how to party here in Harbert. And when it was over, we were able to head on up Dune Road with absolutely no traffic jams.
