Rock Island Line by David Rhodes (most life changing books txt) 📗

so July couldn’t see it and dashed off into the bathroom, clicking the door shut behind her without locking it.

As soon as July heard the water turned on in the other room he realized what a spot he was in. He looked at the bed, which had a red cover and was only barely big enough to be called double, and wondered how it’d happened. There was nothing else in the room except one chair that looked as if it had neverbeen sat on, and there was barely room for it to fit between the bed and the window. He was tired, his defenses were down and he had a strange sense that something was going to happen. His desire was beginning to rise. He took Butch out of the box and Butch immediately ran under the bed and wouldn’t be coaxed out. The shower was turned off and the shower curtain pulled open and he sat down on the bed. Fears of personal inadequacy were his last hold on the thinking world. He heard the sink faucet turned on and off, and on and off, then an indefinite period of absolute silence and muffled clothes sounds and the door swung open. Mal stepped out onto the carpet, her skin glowing from the heat of the shower, her hair wet and hanging over her shoulders, her nightgown holding her in like a cloud, and smiled self-consciously. From then until about an hour later, as he lay looking out the opened window listening to two o’clock being rung out of some cast-iron bell, Mal’s steady, deep breathing beside him, July never had a coherent thought. As the ability began to return to him he was simultaneously filled with dread and joy: dread because he might in some way be held accountable for having such weak ideals, and joy in feeling that he’d finally penetrated his own terrible isolation. Mal turned over, half woke and, speaking heavily through her throat, said, “Come to sleep,” closed her eyes and lapsed back away from him.

Naturally, there was no way he could do that. With the excited warmth he felt inside him, the memory of Mal Rourke saying “I love you” and the ever recurring realization that tomorrow he’d be in Iowa made sleeping impossible.

They made love once again in the morning and got Butch out from underneath the bed.

They boarded the Rock Island Line, heading west, and Mal said: “You worry too much. You shouldn’t worry so much.”

“Worrying keeps me safe,” he said. “I wouldn’t do it if it didn’t help any.”

But his excitement was just beginning. It was late morning when they crossed the Mississippi River and he felt that if thewindows were open he’d surely jump out into it and let its thick, muddy water carry him downstream. The Rock Island Line went on through Dubuque and into the flat plains beyond the rolling riverland, into Iowa. Farmers were in the fields picking yellow corn, inching along with dogs following beside the giant back wheels, and his soul seemed to be ripping from his body, trying to get out the window and into the air and dirt, let the dying leaves on the trees dry it up and the sweet sounds of the earth carry it on forever. Memories came flooding over him so fast that he couldn’t take time to tell them to Mal. He wanted to eat a watermelon, roast pumpkin seeds in the oven, lie in a white-clover field, have a pet crow, swing on a rope swing, go fishing along the English River and get his line snarled up in the bank weeds and yellowbirds, buy penny candy in a one-room store, fry up a mess of catfish, split rails out of oak and ash, listen to bullfrogs and spring peepers, lie out under the night sky and let Orion swirl above him, his sword slitting the membrane of reality, bleeding it into the surrealism of Iowa.

They stepped off the train in Iowa City and put their luggage in a quarter locker. Butch finally had his freedom and drank a half-carton of cold milk that July poured into a plastic dish he found in a wastebasket. Mal clung to his arm and spoke in a worried voice, looking around at their destination. “What are we going to do here, July? How are we going to live?”

“Don’t worry about that,” he said. “Just wait. Everything will work out.” Then he added an aside to himself: “I’m finally here,” and half expected one of the few people they saw at the station to come running over and say Aren’t you July Montgomery from Sharon? My God, you’ve been gone a long time. Tell us, where’ve you been? What’ve you been doing? But he knew it wouldn’t happen. It was more likely no one’d remember him at all. Which would be OK, he reasoned.

They put Butch in a locker with another dish of milk and an apology, walked to Wardway Plaza and caught a ride down to the blacktop. Then they walked nearly a mile until they were given another ride in a blue van heading for the cheese factory.

“I always come this way,” the man explained. “If there’s one thing I can’t stand, it’s traffic. Where you kids heading?”

“Sharon Center,” said July. “Do you live around here?”

“About six or seven miles that way,” and he gestured off to the east.

“You a farmer?”

“Heavens, no. Do I look like one!” He laughed. “No, my family and I just live on an acreage. I work in Iowa City at P and G.”

“I used to live in Sharon Center,” announced July.

“Oh, you did. Hmmm. I take it you don’t live there any more.”

“Maybe yes and maybe no. Hard to say. Well, it depends on the house. By rights I think the house that used to belong to my father now belongs to me. Doesn’t that seem right to you?”

“Oh, no you don’t,” the man sang out cheerfully. “ You’re not about to get me