Freight by Scott Bethay

Sean Benham CC



Freight
 
Johnny:

I remember you always seemed so tall. 

You and your mother toured the South with a captured Nazi fighter plane, selling war bonds at carnivals. You worked the rigged midway games but always told folks how to beat them. 

And there was the freight train at Verona, where you used to hop the boxcars. One day you convinced all your classmates to play hooky and hop the train to Memphis with you, but they chickened out. The truant officer caught up with you at the depot somewhere around New Albany. 

So, next you lied about your age to join the Navy and cruised beneath the polar icecaps in a submarine. Next the Air Force, and after that a traveling salesman. 

Through it all you pursued my grandmother, Stella, relentlessly. After you scared off all her suitors, you camped out in front of her dorm and convinced her to leave college and marry you. There were four kids: June (my mother), Frank, Gus, and Mimi.  Living out of motels and old cars. Laundry in sinks. Family in tow. Money an afterthought. 

You called beer “Milwaukee Tea” and drank too much of it. When Frank was still a child, you took him and all the neighborhood boys to a Cardinals game in St. Louis—but you forgot to tell their parents. Then there was the time Stella had to threaten divorce to prevent you from joining the mob trying to stop James Meredith from enrolling at Ole Miss. 

Later, you drove a giant Chevy station wagon called the Yellow Submarine and taught us grandkids to fish and play poker.

When Stella was dying of cancer, you said to her: “Don’t go! If you do, I’ll be right behind you!”  Without missing a beat, she looked you in the eye and said “I’m sure you will, Johnny. You can’t let me have a moment’s peace.”

She got about seven good years in heaven until you succumbed to a combination of grief, chronic pain, and opiate addiction. At your funeral
Frank said, “Dad was a great playmate, but not much of a father.”
 
The Great Escape:

We were living with Johnny and Stella then, after Mimi had married Dwight and moved out. I was four or five and mad because I wasn’t allowed to spend the night with them. I decided to run away to Memphis: where Johnny had failed before, I would make good my escape. 

There was a crossing near our house where the train would slow down enough that I could climb up in a boxcar. I would take Tramp- an Airedale mix that Johnny had rescued from the pound- with me. He was my protector and companion, like Ben the Bear was to Grizzly Adams on my favorite TV show. 

We made our way to the tracks, but the train never came. I started to wander, Tramp still at my heel.

We passed by the old man in the wheelchair who always sat in his yard and waved as folks drove by. Rumor was that he had been a POW during World War II, his condition the result of abuse suffered at the hands of his captors. They had cut out his tongue. He smiled and waved as usual.

A member of the neighborhood search party soon caught up to us, and my mother demanded that I explain myself. I calmly told her that Tramp was aware of my plan and had been with me the whole time. 
 
Aunt Mimi:

You were sixteen when I was born. I remember when I was a little kid you would take me to the local diner, and I would dance the funky chicken atop the tables. When I was a bit older you made us purple cows, and we watched the Midnight Special with Wolfman Jack. 

You had a Siamese cat named Bogus, a gift from your friend Lee who had a stutter. I thought he was cool so I copied him, and he would get onto me: “S-s-Scott you better s-s-top that s-s-stuttering, boy!”

I saw y’all shooting dope but knew even then not to tell. I also knew not to talk about the time Dwight was strangling you, and you smashed that jar of VapoRub upside his head just to get him off you. It turns out he was a Son of the Confederacy and a card-carrying knight of the invisible empire. 

You always kept a man but deserved better. 

And you were prone to a certain mania not unlike Johnny. One Halloween you were Tina Turner. Then it wasn’t even Halloween, and you were Calliope from Days of Our Lives. There were overdoses and the time you shot yourself with what you thought was a .357 magnum. It happened to be loaded with .38s. Otherwise, it would have made a hole the size of a basketball in your side. I sat with you after the surgery and chaperoned you on your trip to the state hospital once you had recovered. Such was often the case— you considered me a kindred spirit even when you thought everyone was against you.

I was grown and living in Little Rock when I got the news:  

You had jumped in front of that freight train right in the same spot where I had waited as a child.  

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Scott Bethay is a clinical psychologist from Mississippi.  He enjoys writing, music, the outdoors, and spending time with his wife and young son.  He is a recovering alcoholic with about 33 years sober. 


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