Why My Father Hates Trains
©2001 Bill Brauer

Did you ever think about why people like some things, and can't stand others? Freddy Furniss, for instance, the fat kid down the block, he eats almost everything, but just mention butterscotch ice cream to him, and he'll stick out his tongue and gag like he'd swallowed a toad. Or Maria Bianucci, with her neat braids and pink glasses, who just loves school-except for art class, where she hunkers in the back of the room doing math problems.
Or Mr. Kimple. He lives next door. He doesn't care what girls do-he even invites them in for hot chocolate and cookies-but if one of us boys puts as much as a toe on his precious front lawn, he comes tearing out the door waving a frying pan, shouting "Avec! Avec! Avec!" and threatening to call the police.
Well, if you've thought about why people are that way-both grown-ups and kids-you might like to hear about the only two things in the world that my Dad really hates: cats, and railroad trains.
I know why he hates cats. Back when we used to have a cat-I was still in Miss Leonhauser's first grade-Dad was sunbathing in the yard one Sunday when Truffles, our big gray Tom who liked to pretend that anything round and catchable was a mouse, attacked his big toe. I watched Truffles, tail twitching and belly brushing the ground, as he stalked the toe. Dad must have made a slight movement in his sleep; or maybe Truffles just figured it was time. Either way, it was in sudden silence that Truffles struck. Claws and teeth met their mark in perfect harmony. If the toe had been a mouse or a sparrow, it would have given up the ghost on the spot.
I never saw my Dad move so fast. He shot up like one of those curled paper party blowers, grabbed poor startled Truffles around the middle and in the same motion heaved him with both arms over the fence and into Mr. Kimple's yard. The whole thing happened so fast, Truffles never even made a sound. And nobody in our neighborhood ever saw him again.
Since then, when we visit people who have a cat, we keep it out of Dad's way. We don't know what he might do to it-and nobody wants to find out.
I'm not sure why he can't stand trains, but I think I know. Mom says he's afraid of them because he was on one in London when it was bombed during the war. But Dad says that isn't true, and I believe him because he's not afraid of going into the empty house by the park at night or of Mr. Brewster, my principal, and anybody who isn't scared of them isn't scared of anything. I think he doesn't like trains because of what happened last year at the summerhouse.

It really began, as I only found out later, when we picked up Gramps and Gramsee at the station. They were going to stay with us for a while, and I was so excited about going along to greet them that I left my pal Phillipe at La Grange doing chores. I wish you could meet Gramps and Gramsee. Gramps has a moustache and always dresses proper. He was a colonel in the army and he's always giving orders, but you don't have to mind; he really doesn't expect anyone to listen to him. He just likes giving the orders. Gramsee always knows just what kind of candy I want, and she sneaks it to me when Mom isn't looking. She taught me my first card game, Gramsee did-two-handed pinocle-when I was barely old enough to count.
We were staying at the summer house in France where my Dad's company sent him. It's a gray, stone two-story house in the countryside near Besançon. Phillipe lives with his Mom-we call her "Madame"-and his brother Jacques in "La Grange," the big house across the sunflower field from ours. Madame owns the whole place, they call it La Couvre: her house, our house and the little cottage next to it, the apple and cherry and peach tress, the fields with corn and sorghum and sunflowers. Dad's company rented our house from her. Phillipe is two months older than me-seventh grade now, but we were third or fourth grade then-and Jacques is about five years older, he was just apprenticed to a carpenter that year.
The summer I'm telling you about was the third or fourth one we'd spent at La Couvre. I think we went five years in all. I was already taking French, and being around Phillipe summers I could get along pretty well by then-although sometimes he and Madame talked so fast to each other that I couldn't follow all of it. For his part, Phillipe had been "learning" English for a few years, and he knew lots of words and could understand some if I spoke slowly. He knew plenty of grammar rules-more than me, by a long shot-and spoke with a tidy British accent. But he still thought in French. He would carefully take the French words one by one and turn them into his dictionary definition of the English. He liked to try to guess at riddles from the joke book I brought from home. When he didn't know the answer, which was most of the time, he'd look me in the eye and, pronouncing each word like a work of art, proclaim: "I ... give ... my ... tongue ... to ... the ... cat!" It didn't matter I told him we don't say it that way in English; he had looked those words up, and he stuck to them. When he mentioned that his brother Pierre, who'd gotten married that spring, was still away on his "moon ... of ... honey," I just nodded and smiled.

Anyway, this summer I'm telling you about was different from all the rest: Gramps and Gramsee were coming to visit. They're Dad's mother and father, and we call her Gramsee because that's the best I could say for "Grandma" when I was little. I started it, and everybody caught on. It's the best name for her anyhow, really. That twinkle always in her eye and her cool hands and cheerful spirit, "Grandma" sounds way too serious for that.
So as I was saying, Mom and Dad and me-but not Phillipe- drove to the train station to pick up Gramps and Gramsee. I went with Mom out onto the platform while Dad waited in the car, and we saw the big train pull up a few minutes early. Mom had got a porter so we went onto the train to help them off. There was a big hubbub when we sighted each other, and we all said "Hi!" and "Welcome!" and they said, "My, how he's grown," and "Where's Derrick?" and the porter took all three suitcases-two big and one little-while Gramsee carried a cardboard carton with handles on top, her coat draped over it.
"Here, now, step lively," said Gramps, and "Sir, put the smaller luggage on too," and "I'll take that, Emily!" but the porter didn't speak English and kept right on walking, and Gramsee held fast to the carton. I saw her whisper something to Mom and I tried to listen, but, "Here," she said, pressing a licorice drop into my hand secretly, "Go tell your father to open the trunk, we're here!" So I ran ahead to tell Dad.
There was more hubbub when we got to the car, and kissing, and Gramps held the front door open and directed "Emily, you sit here, now!" but Gramsee ignored him and got in back with the carton on the floor between her feet. Mom told me to sit in front where she usually sits, and she gave Dad a funny smile, saying she wanted to sit in back with Gramps and Gramsee. Everybody talked all the way home, except me. I listened some, and looked out the windshield to see what it would be like to drive. Dad and Gramps talked mostly to each other, and Mom talked to Gramsee.
Well, we got back to the house and showed them the cottage, and everybody got settled in and Phillipe and I went off to the swimming hole.
Now I don't know whether it was on the wings of those big black-and-yellow French butterflies, or of the magpies we saw everywhere or the cuckoos we heard all day and night without ever seeing them, but Gramps and Gramsee's visit just flew by. We-that's Phillipe and I, we were never farther from each other than a cow from its waterhole-would have breakfast just after Dad left for work in Madam's big kitchen with the stone floor and wooden benches. There would be fresh-made pastries and juice and hot milk with a little coffee in it if she was in a good mood, served with lots of smiles at me and instructions to Phillipe about how to act with "Les hôtes"-us, she meant. Madame is mostly always at La Grange, except when she goes to market. She puts up tomatoes and peaches and cherries, bakes the best tartes aux pommes, sews clothes for herself and the boys, and is always cleaning or fixing something.

We'd go out into the fields to kick Phillipe's old soccer ball around-trees and bushes were goals and defensemen-or maybe to hunt for newts in the river or to follow François, the bearded hired hand, in his blue coveralls and tractor as he trimmed or planted or harvested. But what we liked best of all was the river. It's called the Saône, and where it crosses La Couvre it's slow, muddy, warm, with plenty of catfish and newts and a pool deep enough to jump into under a granite boulder high enough to jump off.
I don't think we missed an afternoon in the river all summer. We'd jump in, sometimes without even stopping to take off our clothes, and kick and splash and get out and jump in again. The feel of the water and the mud and the leaves; well, if there is a heaven, I bet that's what it's like. Floating on my back, I could see across the stands of fruit trees and the fields to the thick black forests-Pierre says they're full of wild boar-in the shadow of the murky mountains behind. Gramps would come down most days to watch us and nap some, and from time to time he'd shout, "Now you boys come out soon, hear!" and "Quit all that splashing about now, and swim proper!" On our way back to the house Gramsee would intercept us on the road to pat our heads and slip a matched pair of miniature chocolate bars into our hands. Nobody could see us, but she did it like a secret anyway. We always had to finish eating them and give her the wrappers before we got back. We'd walk her and Gramps back to the cottage, then go home to change for dinner. I really didn't notice, until I thought about it later, that they never asked us in.
Well, I can tell you that for me, there could hardly have been a more fun summer-but I'm supposed to be telling you about why Dad hates trains, so I'll just say that it really flew by and, quick as a trout grabs a mayfly, became only a memory.

And then Mom was calling me to come in if I wanted to see Gramps and Gramsee off at the station, and to ask Phillipe if he wanted to come too. His eyes brightened when I asked him. "Je vais demander a maman," he said excitedly, and hurried off to La Grange to find her.
Mom made me put on shoes and a clean shirt and we all hurried to get ready in time. We were delayed a few extra minutes waiting in the car while Madame recited a whole bunch of things Phillipe was and wasn't to do. Finally we drove off, with Phillipe and me in the front seat and Mom, Gramps, and Gramsee, in the back. Just like on the way in, the luggage was in the trunk, except for the carton, which Gramsee held between her feet. We got to the station with just a few minutes to spare, and since there weren't any porters to be had, Phillipe and I helped Dad carry the suitcases onto the train. It was almost full, and it took some looking to find two free seats in the compact six-person compartments.
Mom finally found a place. There was only one lady in the compartment, she had a nose like a beak and an awful purple blouse on, and said she was saving three other seats, but the two seats near the window were free. She was eating pickled herring, the kind with sour cream, which she fished out of a jar with a small plastic fork, and wore glasses down on her nose, held behind her neck by a silver chain. When she heard us speaking English, she looked at us sideways through suspicious half-closed eyes. She reminded me of a seagull.
We all crowded into the compartment to say good-bye: me, Phillipe, Mom, Dad, Granpa and Gramsee, while Dad put the luggage up on the racks.
Then it happened.
Dad had already piled the small suitcase on top of the two big ones, and he took hold of one end of the carton to put it up top. Gramsee grabbed the other end to stop him, and they held it between them like a heavy old treasure chest.
"This'll go up there OK, Ma," said Dad, pulling the carton toward him.
"No, leave this here, Derrick," said Gramsee quickly, tugging back.
"What for, Ma? It'll just be in the way. There's room on top."
"No, leave it here. I want it here!"
"Don't be silly! I can handle it!" Dad's face got a little red.
"Now, Derrick, don't let's spoil a good vac-"
"Ma, I'm just gonna put this up - "
They both pulled on the carton at the same time, and the handle came apart and Gramsee's cat Numser, hair standing on end as if she had seen the Devil, climbed straight up Dad's right side in two hops and perched on his head, hissing, claws dug in to keep from falling.
"Holy shit!" Dad shouted-he didn't mind swearing, I guess, since the French didn't understand it anyway-"Holy shit, ma, get this thing off me!"
"Keep cool, now!" Gramps ordered. "Numser, you get down from there this minute!" Gramsee leaned over to grab Numser, looking at Dad and Gramps like they were criminals, but chirping sweetly "Here, Numsie, here kitty-kitty."And she almost had him, too.
But just as she reached out to collect him, the train lunged forward, launching the top suitcase down from the luggage rack onto Gramsee, who fell into Dad like a bag of coal. Dad in turn, unprepared for this new assault, grabbed at her and carried her with him backwards so that the seagull lady-who a moment before had stopped eating and was observing the proceedings sideways, curiously-found them both suddenly deposited in her lap. Sour cream and sliced onion flew through the air and landed on everything.
"Goddammit!" said Dad.
"Now, now, Derrick," Gramsee tried to calm him.
"Mon Dieu, monsieur, ma belle chemise, ma belle chemise, oh mon Dieu!" squawked the seagull lady.
In all the commotion the frightened cat had tightened its hold on Dad's head the only way it knew how, and the poor guy was now screaming even more frantically than before, "Holy shit, ma, holy shit!" The suitcase had hit me on the knee after it bounced off Gramsee. It didn't hurt too bad, but it had knocked me down, and I tried to thread my way through what seemed like a forest of wildly kicking legs to get my hands on Numser. "Oh, mon Dieu, ma chemise, oh mon Dieu!" shrieked the seagull lady.
Mom, who had fortunately not been physically damaged, recognized that the cabin was already riddled with too much fauna, and that help might be needed; she ran out to find it. As she left, Gramps-who had also managed to keep his feet-apparently noticed the steel beams of the station begin to pass slowly by the window. This was his moment, he must have thought, to take charge. Reaching over the pile of tangled limbs still squirming in the seagull lady's seat, he yanked open the window. "Now see here, stop this train this instant!" he barked. "There are people here who don't want to go to Paris!" Then, seemingly trying to make contact with the commanding officer of this outfit, he sprung into the empty corridor, bellowing, "Stop! Stop this train immediately, I say!"
What happened next, I only know from what I can understand of Phillipe's description-it all went so fast. Dad, Gramsee, Numser and I were still trying to sort ourselves out. Phillipe had been standing near the window, a bit lost but anxious to help, when he caught Gramps' eye. Now all French children, as you may know, are taught to respect and obey their elders. Phillipe was no exception; he had never really learned about Gramps and orders.
"Stop!" Gramps shouted above the confusion.
"Stop?" Phillipe understood the word.
"Yes, stop!" Thundered Gramps, louder than before, pointing to the emergency brake. "Stop! You...pull...stop!"
"Stop?"
"Yes! Now! Pull! Stop! You!"
Phillipe pulled.
The five of us, Dad, Gramsee, the seagull lady, Numser and I, were hurled like so many lumps of dough against the other side of the compartment, just as Mom arrived with the conductor. Phillipe wound up down the end of the companionway. Gramps had been squashed into a corner, and was ordering a suitcase to "unhand" him. Numser, untimely ripped from his perch by the jolt, lay cowering under a seat. The train had stopped.
"Holy shit, ma!" Dad whispered.
"Oh, ma jolie, jolie chemise," sobbed the herring lady.
For a moment, all was quiet. Then, from down the hallway, the conductor began sputtering like a pressure cooker about to explode."You idiots! This is all your fault! You will pay for this, by God!" is roughly what I could understand of his offerings. But he was, of course, greeted largely by blank stares from us, so he turned on Phillipe, saying something about going to prison with a lot of "cretin" in it, which didn't seem to bother Phillipe until he made reference to Phillipe's maman. At this, Phillipe puffed himself up like an adder and began waving his arms and shouting back that Madame would bake his ugly head into, I think it was, a turnip stew.
While this was going on, I became aware that on the other side of me a voice which might have been that of a dying crow had been repeating as a mantra, "Ma chemise, monsieur, ma chemise, quelqu'un va payer, vous allez payer, monsieur, vous allez payer!" Before long, the crowd that by now had gathered in the corridor and wanted-with good reason, I thought-the train to get moving, began shouting and waving; the conductor and Phillipe and the herring lady shouted and waved back, and everybody got very red in the face and I couldn't understand much of what anyone was saying. But eventually they all simmered down, and in the end nobody did anything or paid anything to anybody. Phillipe told me later that it was an example of what his mother calls, "le sport nationale francais."

Well, somehow we finally got off the train and waved good-bye to Gramps and Gramsee and Numser, and they wrote later and said they had a lovely trip back to Paris. (And Mom told me-out of Dad's hearing-that Numser was going to pull through okay, although he didn't eat for a week after they got home.) On the way back to the summerhouse, Phillipe and I sat with folded hands in the back seat and it was completely silent, nobody said a word the whole trip, but we looked at each other so that a couple of times we almost broke out giggling.
Blood trickled slowly down the back of Dad's neck. He smelled fishy, and one shirt sleeve flapped in the breeze where it had been torn. I knew he was going to be okay, but still I felt bad for him. After all, everybody else was on vacation; he was the only one who had to go to work tomorrow. Later, I learned that Gramsee had brought Numser along because she just couldn't bear to leave her in a kennel. That was the reason they had stopped over in Paris first. But of course, she didn't want Dad to find out.
When we got back, Phillipe and I didn't waste any time changing our clothes and rushing down to the river. We splashed water at each other and laughed and stood on our hands in the soft warm mud. When we came out and lay side-by-side in the grass drying, Phillipe turned to me with an odd, thoughtful look and intoned gravely, "When... I... see... this-... in ... though... that... I... only... have... ten... years-... I... think... I... am... more... clever... than... these... large... persons."
So that's why I think my Father hates trains. Now that you know the whole story, what do you think?