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

without talking, drinking glasses of milk or Kool-Aid, until he’d be told to return to bed. With great reluctance, he would leave her and go up and lie hardly breathing, wanting to hear when she came back inside. He didn’t talk of these times, not because they were in themselves particularly private, but because everything is private to a child.

So he knew (without really knowing), long before either of his parents, of Della’s insomnia. Naturally, he didn’t think to himself, Grandma has insomnia; in fact, he probably didn’t think anything at all; he just came to take it for granted that whenever he might come downstairs at night she would be sitting in the living room and he would wonder what she was doing in there by herself.

“Why doesn’t Grandma ever turn the lights on?” he asked his parents one night.

John’s face turned ashen. “What do you mean?” he demanded, and July was afraid to answer, and guilt swept over him for saying something he shouldn’t have. He stammered, but didn’t have toanswer because his father went outside, closing the door with a slam. Quickly, Sarah came over and sat beside him on the floor with his truck, and in her silent-fighter voice talked to him, and explained quite clearly and exactly how oldness, old age—that time at the end of a person’s long, happy life—that time just before they became dead—made them act in ways different from people who were not at the end of their lives—and that the whole thing, most importantly, the complete overall picture, was good and rejoiceful.

So from this he learned two things: first, everything that he noticed about his grandmother, everything hard to understand, was good; and second, don’t talk about her.

That first night when he was introduced to Wilson, he didn’t know what to say. He’d come downstairs and was sitting in the living room, waiting for red taillights. Della had come in from the porch, whispering and talking as though she were not alone. Noticing him, she had come over and said that Wilson was tired and couldn’t stay up much longer. July’s imagination ran wild, but still he could find nothing to fasten it to. For a moment he was frightened, because he didn’t know how to act with this dead person in the room. But he learned that the presence of Wilson was no threat to him; in fact, he was much like July’s own imaginary persons: he was not expected to talk, or have a mind worthy of attention, but sometimes it could be assumed that he had opinions; yet mostly he was just there. The difference between Wilson and July’s imaginary friends was not to be completely overlooked, though, he felt. Imaginary friends had no true substance, even when they were having opinions. They simply weren’t there. Anyone would admit that. But Wilson, on the other hand, was of the natural order, and so couldn’t be said to be without substance. There were the living, and there were the dead, who might be gone, but who were nevertheless existent.

Della closed the door to her room so that Wilson could sleep.

“Where will you sleep?” he asked his grandmother.

“I can sleep here on the couch,” she answered. “But, mercy me, with the house so full of people, we better make sure we’ve got a place, or all the beds will be taken up.”

“We could always sleep on the floor, Grandma,” he said, wishing they would have to. It reminded him of stories of people fighting for their lives.

“We may have to,” said Della.

“Let’s do.”

“Not until we have to.”

The next time he had come down, there was no mention of Wilson—only the ever present reference to him in we did this, we thought that was funny, we were never so frightened.

But there was also a sadness, a deep, impenetrable sadness which filled her that night—a loneliness that his own companionship could not relieve or even dent. He felt helpless, worthless and of no good at all. Della talked strangely of people and things that would blend into each other. “My whole life,” she said, “has been three Sharon Centers: the Sharon Center when we lived at the store, the Sharon Center when we lived in the country and the Sharon Center here. All three of them.”

Once, standing out by the bird feeder, looking at the little town, she had said, “This town is me.” July had heard her. Whenever he could, he went with her about the house and yard. Some days her visitors would fill the house to its seams—people who to July looked like ancient, withered figures of wood, smelling of age and inching along imperceptibly, talking, talking, talking. He would never forget that. This town is me. Sometimes an old gent would come over, held together by the cracks in his face and his unflinching interest in the past, and three days later there’d be his funeral to go to. (July didn’t go to funerals, because his father said it wouldn’t be good for him and would even drive him home after church, if the funeral was afterward, and return without him—just so he would miss it.) “It’s not good to know much about death,” he heard him say to his mother, “before it makes sense.”

“I agree, John,” she said. “I agree. Take him home.”

“Good God, it doesn’t make sense, Sarah. It never makes sense. I can remember when Dad and Mom—”

“Yes it does, don’t think about it now. You’re tired.”

That was all July heard then.

The front door gave the slightest bang, and July sat up in bed. Nearly a full moon outside, the ground silver with frost. He got up and went quickly downstairs. The door to his grandmother’s room stood wide open, the bed empty and flat. He went through the porch and looked outside. Della was crossing the road. He ran barefoot after her, careful not to let her hear him. The cold was not noticeable in his excitement.

Della walked across the