Train

    Bertrand was running late for the train again.  He pushed back his hair instinctively when the wind blew it forward and onto his brow.  His hair blew forward immediately after he removed his hand.  The inexcusable resultant confusion caused Bertrand to stumble, tuck-and-rolling and then springing straight up, nearly reverberating like a tuning fork.  The train’s wake sucked him forward and he flopped straight onto his face, his instincts incomprehensibly sending his hands into his pockets. 

    Blood gushed from his nose.

    Izzy watched the stock character pratfall on the platform and admonished herself for chuckling silently.  The man really did appear hurt.  The young boy behind her refused to kick the back of her chair or creep his head around the side of her chair.  Izzy turned her attention to the passing scenery outside of her window, changing from the cloistered thicket of towers and other icons of urban density to the increasing green of undeveloped land.  The boy persisted in his refusal to behave like a trope.

    It was beginning to irk her.

    Bertrand continued chasing the train.  He held a handkerchief – which was slowly changing from white to red – to his face.  He artfully dodged low-hanging tree branches and rocks and downed branches as he scurried through the thickening greenery.  “If only I hadn’t worn loafers today,” he thought to himself.  Annoyed, he decided to run along the tracks instead, though he had to alter his gait to comply with the spacing of the ties. 

    “Oh, Goebbels fuck a horse,” Bertrand shouted.  A buck stood on the tracks, staring directly at him, motionless.  Not entirely prepared for the obstruction, Bertrand leaped awkwardly.  Though he cleared the deer, the tongue of his right loafer caught on the buck’s antlers and he lost a shoe.  He continued limping at high speed, receiving splinters in his exposed foot from the ties.

    He was beginning to lose his cool.

    Izzy considered giving the boy a raspberry in hopes of coaxing comforting behavior from him.  But she thought better when she recalled her last attempt at a raspberry.  She had split her lip and couldn’t taste sweetness for six months.  It was an injury she was unwilling to risk again, even if the boy was being intolerably unobtrusive.

    Bertrand dove, head first, through the boy’s window, broken glass flying in three directions.  When she was pelted in the base of the skull with the beaded safety glass, Izzy smiled.  The boy was acting up.  The world was not off-kilter. 

    Bertrand hopped towards the food car, holding his splinter-riddled foot in the air.  The handkerchief now hung out of his breast pocket, completely red and crusty now.  The boy stood calmly.  He sidled out of his seat and headed towards the bathroom.

    A voice came over the address system through horrendous static.  “Next stp, Lglnsk Prkw fricrwk.”

    The train stopped and no one got off.  After three minutes, the address system came on again, clearer this time.  “Get the fuck out!”