Train Tracks

John Newton rearranged himself on the railroad tracks.

He was lying there for some reason or other.

It was uncomfortable; a thick morning fog had drifted in from the sea.

He felt very stiff. And damp. Chilled to the bone.

How long had he been there? Several hours? What was going on? His head

was like a blank piece of paper. He couldn’t think of anything. Numb with cold, he shook himself.

Slowly, he sat up. A bottle of whisky, one-third full, lay at his feet. He reached over, opened the bottle, and took a large swallow. It burnt going down his throat—like liquid smoke. Brrrr! That was good.

Faint outlines of what had happened slowly came into focus inside his head. Now he remembered. He was trying to kill himself. Yes! That was it! He was trying to commit suicide. He should have been run over by a train by now: a dreadful way to end things, but sometimes there is no way out.

John had lived out west as a child. The shudder and the whistle of a train in the middle of the night represented something so romantic and terribly lonesome. An internet blog had said that a meeting with the iron horse was the quickest, the easiest way to go. A final bump in the middle of the night and the engineer would hardly notice. And, John thought, all his problems would be solved. In an instant.

John had spent the previous evening walking a long way down the tracks. Stopping for gulps of whisky at steady intervals and looking up at the stars, he was trying to think of something profound. Nothing poetic or religious came to mind. He was just depressed about the allegations. He couldn’t think much of anything else.

The whisky made him drowsy. At some point, sitting down on the tracks, he promptly fell asleep. He didn’t expect to wake up. Surely, that would be the end of everything …

But here he was, still alive. He looked at his watch with some frustration: it was past four in the morning. That didn’t make any sense. A midnight express passed through the town each evening without stopping. Shouldn’t he be dead?

He touched his limbs. They were warm and physical. Something moved in the dust beside him. A bird? A rat? It disappeared in the darkness somewhere. No, he was definitely alive. He could see the dark tree trunks with their skeleton-like branches lining the railroad tracks. What was going on?

John took another long bracing pull on the bottle. Suddenly, it came to him. How could he have forgotten? They had eliminated the Sunday service. Something the conservatives in government had been threatening for a long time.

The change to the schedule had been implemented as part of a large program of government cutbacks. John was a liberal. He was always complaining about cuts to public services, it seemed. So the conservatives had done away with the midnight Sunday service and foiled his suicide attempt. Damn! As if they wanted to make him suffer even more under their lunacy. The strange turn of events almost seemed like a conspiracy.

The sky was turning pale with the slow arrival of morning. John’s back was killing him. It was most uncomfortable there on the gravel and metal tracks. He was stiff and sore. He felt like an old man. For the moment, the mood for self-destruction had gone out of him, evaporating like a bad dream. He would have to come back another time, he thought, as he wearily stood up. He couldn’t wait there forever.

John stretched awkwardly, tidied his coat in a professional manner, and took several more draughts from the bitter bottle. Trudging off in the direction of home, he followed the railroad tracks back into town as the sun peeped over the horizon. His whole life was a mess. He was a loser. Even failing at suicide.

In the glow of the early sunrise, the grey concrete shapes at the edges of the town turned into magical shades of pink and lavender. John couldn’t help but notice. But the roseate hues quickly faded. The sun was still low in the sky, but it gave off more of a glare, foreshadowing the heat of the coming day.

John passed through dilapidated streets. He had finished the whisky. Cutting through a back alley, he threw the bottle into an open dumpster, hearing it shatter against the sides of the metal container. The sharp sound of the bottle breaking depressed him somehow. A sense of despair welled up inside him again. He mulled over his previous plan. The allegations were not going away—he knew it in his heart.

John was a doctor. He had been accused of sexual assault. There had been acrimonious emails for the last couple of years. They kept arriving, ever more frequently. The victim was threatening to go public with the most salacious details. He was terrified. He had paid money, trying to get rid of the problem.

How could anyone accuse him of such a thing? He had been a feminist, an angry opponent of white male patriarchy, rejoicing in the MeToo era, signing petitions, marching in demonstrations. His political credentials were impeccable. When a colleague had been charged with sexual harassment, John had forced him out of his clinic, losing a friend but doing what he had to do. And now he was faced with this.

He hardly remembered his accuser; she said the most disgusting things. A burning sense of shame filled him: a burning sense of shame for something he didn’t do! Everyone would assume the worst. That is the way people are: always ready to jump to conclusions. If the news went public, who could know what would happen? He cringed at the thought.

It wasn’t fair, he said to himself. But he had to admit, it all looked less than perfect. His second marriage had ended in divorce. His ex-wife had insisted that he was an “unfit father”, and he had lost custody of both of his children. All this mess had been followed by a number of casual flings, but they were all consensual. Who could think anything different!

John was walking through a run-down, decaying part of the town with old-world street names: Paris, Belfast, London, Donegal. But, today, the picturesque names seemed drab and dirty. As he wound his way past the deserted early-morning tenements and abandoned store-fronts, he started thinking about suicide all over again. He was thinking that, maybe, death would just be a peaceful oblivion. Like a big, deep sleep. That didn’t sound so bad. A quick fade into nothingness. It might be better to finish everything quickly before more bad things could happen.

John saw a car coming towards him. It was moving too quickly, he thought, a bit recklessly. A sudden impulse seized him. He wasn’t thinking clearly. As the speeding car approached, he jumped out in front of it.

John had the distinct impression that the driver, who was wearing thick glasses, looked straight at him before turning the steering wheel violently to avoid the collision.

The car slammed into the concrete wall of an adjacent building, missing John by inches. There was a loud noise and exploding glass everywhere. The vehicle was on its side and spilling gasoline.

John rushed over and pried open the door. Crumpled in a corner was a man dressed in black with a Roman collar. An elderly priest. He was frothing at the mouth; blood was pouring from a wound at the side of his face; he was glassy-eyed and breathing heavily. The gasoline smell was getting stronger. John had to move him.

“You are going to be all right,” he said. “I’m a medical doctor.” He looked in the stranger’s eyes: “You take it easy. I’m a medical doctor. You’re in good hands.”

He carried the victim as carefully as he could across the roadway; the car erupted in a red flash, followed by intense heat, dark billowing smoke, and the smell of burnt plastic.

The old man looked out into space and briefly smiled. He mumbled something indecipherable. He had misshapen teeth the colour of tea. It was as if he was fumbling around inside his mind, looking for something. “Yes, that’s it,” he said as if he had found a lost object. The priest made a tenuous sign of the cross, gave a very tired breath, and died.

Two days later, John was sitting in a police station talking to the officer in charge. The policewoman addressed John as “Doctor”, making a deferential little nod in his direction.

“The priest was on his way to a hospital,” she was saying. “He was going to give the last rites to someone. It’s a Catholic thing. We found the paraphernalia in his car. The diocese confirmed it.”

John was mildly interested. It was as if the officer liked explaining things.

“He was a hospital chaplain?”

“Why, yes. In a palliative care unit. It seems that he was on his way to visit a dying patient …”

It was hard to decipher the officer’s attitude. She was very professional. Was she scoffing at an outdated religious practice or genuinely trying to understand what had happened?

But it didn’t matter. John had come to the police headquarters to make some kind of confession. He was going to tell them straight out that the accident was all his fault. The car had swerved because he had unthinkingly stepped out into the roadway. He had seen the driver look directly at him alarmed, before turning the steering wheel and crashing the car into the concrete wall. If he hadn’t been there, there would have been no accident. No one would have died.

John wondered if his impulsive behaviour might amount to some sort of crime in the eyes of the law. Manslaughter? Something even worse? The events of that morning had turned out all wrong. In trying to take his own life, he had killed someone else. He was ready to face up to the consequences.

The officer breezily waved away John’s concerns. “Listen, Doctor, he couldn’t properly see what was ahead of him. He had to drive with thick prescription glasses. His licence was coming up for old-age renewal. He shouldn’t have been driving. We are too lax about these things. Besides, you pulled him out of the vehicle and tried to save him.”

It was an unsatisfying absolution. John felt he had to take responsibility somehow. He carefully avoided saying anything about suicide but insisted, even more forcibly than before, that he had carelessly stepped out onto the road without thinking.

Still, the officer was having none of it. “Look, Doctor,” she said, lowering her voice as if she was letting John into an unwholesome secret. “Are you Roman Catholic?”

John fumbled a bit; he wasn’t sure what to say: “Well, I was raised Catholic. But that was a long time ago …”

“Well, I don’t mean any disrespect, Doctor; I know the driver was a Catholic priest but he had a previous charge for driving under the influence. And they found a bottle in the burnt-out car. Don’t torture yourself about what you are not responsible for.”

John continued protesting but to no avail. The police officer leaned in close in a leering way. “You know,” she said, almost whispering, “there have been allegations …”

John flinched: “What do you mean?”

“The diocese will have to deal with it. Two altar boys have accused him of sexual misconduct. A long time ago. Stop lamenting, Doctor; he was no saint.”

John stammered: “Has it been proven in a court of law? One has to be careful about allegations, you know.”

The officer was unimpressed. “Times have changed,” she said firmly. “We take these things seriously now. We are just beginning the investigations. But, you know, priests with altar boys.” She tossed her head derisively. “We will sort it out eventually.”

The next morning John met with his lawyer, who told him that his accuser had finally gone to the police. There was no way out. An investigation into the sexual details of his private life was imminent. The results might be embarrassing, but he might win his case. Or he might not.

John stood up abruptly. “I am sorry, we will have to discuss this later. I have to attend a funeral.” And he hurried out the door.

Louis Groarke is Professor of Philosophy at St Francis Xavier University in Antigonish, Nova Scotia. His poetry has appeared in Quadrant, most recently in the December issue.