The tracks stretched into the distance, the future. His future, if he was man enough to take it. His mouth twisted at the use of one of his uncle’s favorite sayings.

Are you man enough, boy? You stand there with that sullen mouth and your fists ready and you think you can take me. You’re not man enough, and I’ll prove it. Come here.

He’d been thirteen for that one, and had spent a week out of school waiting for the bruises to fade enough that some nosy teacher wouldn’t get suspicious.

You fixing to be an ignorant fool, boy? Cause that’s what you’ll be if you miss any more school. I don’t want another letter or phone call from that school, understand? Now come here and take your punishment like a man.

His ‘punishment’ took place in the barn, and by the time his uncle’s arm was tired, there were countless bleeding stripes on the boy’s back and he’d fallen to his knees in the soft hay. He didn’t cry, though, or make a sound, although the old bridle cutting through his flesh was the worst pain he’d ever endured, and he spent two weeks in bed afterward. If the school called, his uncle never said.

There were other punishments, other admonishments to ‘be a man’, but there was also Lisle.

He met her in his uncle’s auto shop, of all places. He was fixing a tire that turned out to be hers, and when he saw her, it was like his vision narrowed and all he could see was her.

She was older by a few years, older in other ways, too. She taught him many things, the most important being that he was actually worth something, that he wasn’t just a piece of trash.

“You have to get away,” she urged him, lightly tracing the scars on his back with her small fingers. “I’m afraid that one day he will kill you.”


“I can’t leave you,” he said, and kissed her.

He couldn’t leave her, but she could leave him. One day she was just gone, no note, not warning, nothing. At first he thought he would die, the pain worse than anything his uncle had ever doled out. Then he was angry and was sure he hated her, and finally he was just sad. And lost.

He finally realized Lisle was right: he had to leave. A freight train passed by every night, and he meant to be on it.