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Show the depot each night for work, that his train will fail to follow its course, will refuse to remain on the rails, will take flight into the open fields. What people don't realize when they see a mighty locomotive is just how fragile the engine is, a front end made mostly of tin. On impact, the engine collapses as do the bodies inside. More than once he had already had to "go to the floor" when a collision looked imminent. He dreads telling her about this one. Hours into his work, weary from the hauling and pulling, he spots a leather glove that has fallen near the engine, a man's glove, the kind firemen wear to protect their hands from the hot metal and rough edges. When he bends down to retrieve it, he finds the glove filled with a hand. What does he do, I wonder? Maybe he looks harder for the body of its owner, thinking of the man's wife who would want her lover to be whole, would want to have the hands that held her. Maybe he places the hand on the overturned engine and walks away, unable to own the possible futures, wanting only the knowledge bound in legal books. Knowing my father, he was seemingly unflustered by the severed body part and never once allowed himself to consider the powers of grace. The severed hand was placed in a compartment neighboring the pig. My father wooed my mother with lies, or at least that is the story he likes to tell. Their first date was a "coke date," a short meeting where they could decide whether their attraction was mutual enough to merit a dinner. Apparently it was. After that date, we never spent a night apart, he likes to say. Her grades plummeted, his rose, and he learned just the exact amount of strength needed to toss her over his head in the dance hall. 30 |