Moodily I stared out the train window. The day before Christmas Eve. On the platform of the Boston station, couples reunited, kissing and hugging. Mothers cried and clung to fresh boys in uniform as they headed off to basic training. The war had changed things; the place was somber and not decorated much for Christmas this year. The mood was grim and filled with dread, instead of Christmas cheer and joy. Sure. People tried; they tried to look happy and hopeful for the sake of the kids that hung around their knees, not understanding. They carried presents. But their eyes told the truth: they all knew some of these boys wouldn't be coming back from Germany or wherever they were headed, and they all hoped it would be someone else. Not them, not theirs.
Just turned 18, I might've been going with them. Some of my classmates had already come up in the draft. The government would let them graduate, but that was only five months away. Everyone prayed the war would be over by then.
Out the train window I watched a lot of my classmates from Brighton Academy get off the train and go in a big, laughing group to meet their parents. They shrugged off their mothers' hugs and then disappeared. Most of us lived in Boston. The dorms shut down over Christmas holiday, except for a skeleton staff and a few scholarship students who were too poor to travel home.
I should've been getting off the train with everyone else. This was my stop.
I hate Christmas.
*********
My first class compartment was empty except for a fat old man who kept smoking. His cigars - how did he get cigars during this war? - put off an odor that made me first dizzy, then nauseous. Coughing and wheezing, I gasped air as I went to the club car. My lungs ached and rattled as I coughed.
The club car was crowded and smoky, noisy with soldiers laughing too loud in their forced high spirits, but I managed to find a seat in the corner by the window. Outside, the sky was looking more and more threatening. It was probably going to snow again. Old snow crusted the landscape chugging by out the window as the train moved out of Boston. I leaned my forehead on the cool window. The train wheels thudded on the track in a soothing rhythm that soon had my eyes drooping.
"Anybody sitting here?"
There was music in the voice. I didn't have to look up to know who it was but I raised my eyes. Russell Stuivers. Star quarterback of Brighton Academy. Glorious, Apollo in the flesh. Wide shoulders and narrow, graceful hips. Dark hair, blue eyes, a rugged but boyish face, and a smile that sent a sudden, undeniable shiver down my spine, finally lodging somewhere in my groin. He had that affect on me. Perhaps he did on everyone. He was an athlete and therefore a denizen of another world from the one I lived in. From afar I watched him and his ilk with half envy and half lust. To both be them and to be had by them. To be taught, to be possessed.
"Uh, uh." I stumbled and stammered a second before I managed to motion him to sit down. We were in an English class together last year and he at least recognized me as a familiar face. I remembered his smooth voice as he read Shakespeare, stumbling a bit over the unfamiliar words. I remembered how his reading gave me chills. I remembered how his voice intruded, a few nights, in my dreams.
"Everybody else got off the train in Boston, where are you going on to, Gerald?" Russell grinned as he glided into the seat next to me. My breath caught. He knows me!
"Uh," I stuttered again before coming up with a coherent answer. "My grandmother's in Chicago."
"Hey, that sounds nice," he said sincerely. It wasn't nice at all, actually, but all I did was listen enraptured as he went on. "I'm getting off in Gary. I haven't been home since summer. I couldn't afford the ticket over Thanksgiving but I've been saving my money. I can't wait for some of my mom's cooking!" Russell grinned at me. "What about you, excited to see your family?"
"I didn't know you even knew my name," I suddenly blurted without thinking. As soon as the words left my mouth I felt stupid. What a pathetic thing to say.
"Sure I do," Russell said with his dazzling smile. "The smartest guy in school, how could I not know you?"
"Not the smartest," I mumbled, my face turning red as I sank into the seat. At this moment nobody would've taken me for anything near smart. But I just couldn't believe he'd sat down next to me and was talking to me like we were great friends. We'd never exchanged a word before; but for someone like him, so easy and social, any familiar face would do for such a long trip I supposed.
"Smart enough. I'm starved!" Suddenly he reached in his pocket and drew out a paper-wrapped bundle. It was a sandwich from the dining hall. He worked there, actually. Russell was on a football scholarship. A charity student. But the funny thing was, in our school where only the richest got in, nobody even cared that he was poor. Even while he was clearing tables in the dining hall he was laughing and joking with his group of friends, like he was sitting there with them and not cleaning up their dirty dishes. He didn't shrink into the background and fade to invisible like the other scholarship boys. He saw no shame in it, so no one else did either. The other boys competed to be Russell's friend. It wasn't just his athletic ability; I saw now it was the open warmth of his personality, expansive enough even to include a skinny, glasses-wearing, sickly thing like me.
"Let's go to the dining car." Suddenly I stood up.
"I can't... I'll just eat this. That's why I brought it." He grinned and I understood.
"You need something hot. Come on, I'll buy yours. Please."
"I can't let you do that." The smile dimmed and I felt like the sun had gone behind the clouds, darkening my world. I'd do anything to get its warmth back.
"I want to," I insisted. I smiled. "After all if not for you we'd be dead last in the division again."
After a moment of consideration the grin was back full force. Football was something he understood; and I imagined that more than once, the rich alums had taken him out to nice restaurants to discuss the team and its plans. The players were treated like movie stars. I didn't know a thing about football and didn't really care, until this minute, because I could tell that Russell liked having an appreciative audience for his stories and knowledge of the game. He let me buy him dinner without any more fuss.
