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Authors: Denis Johnson
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them for dessert: a young man with a fat face, a mustache, and clear blue eyes. He wore a hunter’s red cap.
She put the gift before her husband.
“How wonderful!” Sands said. “And I’ve got something for you, Grace.”
Hidden behind the couch he had a fair-sized package wrapped in alabaster gift paper with shiny red stripes on it and a green bow tied by a professional. He set it before her and they both opened these gifts with a thunderstorm of paper and appropriate small cries of thanks. Grace’s was an espresso coffeepot. Mr. Sands got an engine for an electric train.
Now English was afraid he’d overlooked some custom of exchange. “I’m sorry I didn’t bring any presents for you guys. In Kansas we don’t give presents for New Year’s, not that I know of.”
“It’s not a Massachusetts custom, either. But it happens to be our forty-second anniversary.”
“Our son,” Grace said, pointing at the picture sitting across the table from English.
“We give thanks to God,” Sands said, “by giving gifts to each other.”
English couldn’t believe his ears.
“We can’t give anything to God,” Grace explained, “so we give gifts to each other.”
“That’s—really great,” he told them both, not sure to what the hell he himself was referring.
“Bud got a personal friendship with Bishop Andrew.” It seemed she was talking to the photograph. “The Bishop!”
“We’re not going to help you with the dishes,” Sands let her know. “I’m going to show Lenny my trains.”
Grace said, “He gonna show you the trains.”
“Oh, good. Good,” English said.
“We’ll be back down in a minute.”
“Oh,” Grace said, “good.”
Sands didn’t give him a tour of the upstairs, which English didn’t want to see anyway. Instead, he took English directly to a tiny room filled with his electric train set and switched on a hooded lamp hanging, somewhat like an oppressive sun, over a landscape set on plywood and held up by sawhorses, with a little margin of space to walk around it in. The room smelled like wood.
As Sands put his new engine on the track and sent it whirling around the circuit, a figure eight with an S in the middle of each circle, English got the notion that WPRD was really just an extension of his employer’s zeal for such contraptions. Sands didn’t treat his train set like a toy. He was calm and scientific, making sure everything worked, track switches and so forth, before he hooked a few other cars to the engine.
“I’ve had this setup for twenty-five years,” Sands said.
Now Sands let him turn the dial up and down on the transformer, making the train go fast and slow.
“We’ve been in this house, I guess, oh, seven years,” Sands estimated for him.
Rather than feeling the mild interest or mild boredom he usually experienced when faced with other people’s stupid passions, English felt his heart rising in his throat. Now that they were alone, he wanted to ask Sands what he thought they were doing, spying on innocent citizens.
The only light in the room shone down on the train. The train hissed and clicked over the track past minuscule barnyards and brief main streets—church, post office, general store—bounded at either end by nothing. It went over a bridge where it was summer and through a blue-and-white mountain where it was winter. English found that if he kept his vision narrowed to clock nothing but this journey alongside little cows and tiny sheep and miniature frozen townspeople and farmers, it was almost as much fun as a ride on an actual train. The disappointing part was coming around again to find the figures always in the middle of the same drama, over and over. On the other hand, he saw how that might sometimes be a comfort to a person’s mind.
Sands took over the controls and showed him how to back the train into a siding and under a water tank without any water in it. Then Sands put some water from a dropper into the engine’s smokestack,
She put the gift before her husband.
“How wonderful!” Sands said. “And I’ve got something for you, Grace.”
Hidden behind the couch he had a fair-sized package wrapped in alabaster gift paper with shiny red stripes on it and a green bow tied by a professional. He set it before her and they both opened these gifts with a thunderstorm of paper and appropriate small cries of thanks. Grace’s was an espresso coffeepot. Mr. Sands got an engine for an electric train.
Now English was afraid he’d overlooked some custom of exchange. “I’m sorry I didn’t bring any presents for you guys. In Kansas we don’t give presents for New Year’s, not that I know of.”
“It’s not a Massachusetts custom, either. But it happens to be our forty-second anniversary.”
“Our son,” Grace said, pointing at the picture sitting across the table from English.
“We give thanks to God,” Sands said, “by giving gifts to each other.”
English couldn’t believe his ears.
“We can’t give anything to God,” Grace explained, “so we give gifts to each other.”
“That’s—really great,” he told them both, not sure to what the hell he himself was referring.
“Bud got a personal friendship with Bishop Andrew.” It seemed she was talking to the photograph. “The Bishop!”
“We’re not going to help you with the dishes,” Sands let her know. “I’m going to show Lenny my trains.”
Grace said, “He gonna show you the trains.”
“Oh, good. Good,” English said.
“We’ll be back down in a minute.”
“Oh,” Grace said, “good.”
Sands didn’t give him a tour of the upstairs, which English didn’t want to see anyway. Instead, he took English directly to a tiny room filled with his electric train set and switched on a hooded lamp hanging, somewhat like an oppressive sun, over a landscape set on plywood and held up by sawhorses, with a little margin of space to walk around it in. The room smelled like wood.
As Sands put his new engine on the track and sent it whirling around the circuit, a figure eight with an S in the middle of each circle, English got the notion that WPRD was really just an extension of his employer’s zeal for such contraptions. Sands didn’t treat his train set like a toy. He was calm and scientific, making sure everything worked, track switches and so forth, before he hooked a few other cars to the engine.
“I’ve had this setup for twenty-five years,” Sands said.
Now Sands let him turn the dial up and down on the transformer, making the train go fast and slow.
“We’ve been in this house, I guess, oh, seven years,” Sands estimated for him.
Rather than feeling the mild interest or mild boredom he usually experienced when faced with other people’s stupid passions, English felt his heart rising in his throat. Now that they were alone, he wanted to ask Sands what he thought they were doing, spying on innocent citizens.
The only light in the room shone down on the train. The train hissed and clicked over the track past minuscule barnyards and brief main streets—church, post office, general store—bounded at either end by nothing. It went over a bridge where it was summer and through a blue-and-white mountain where it was winter. English found that if he kept his vision narrowed to clock nothing but this journey alongside little cows and tiny sheep and miniature frozen townspeople and farmers, it was almost as much fun as a ride on an actual train. The disappointing part was coming around again to find the figures always in the middle of the same drama, over and over. On the other hand, he saw how that might sometimes be a comfort to a person’s mind.
Sands took over the controls and showed him how to back the train into a siding and under a water tank without any water in it. Then Sands put some water from a dropper into the engine’s smokestack,
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