Short Story | New Beginnings

Going Back to the Start

Edison McKinley waited anxiously at the Pittsburgh Terminal waiting for the New York City-bound train back to his home

Edison McKinley waited anxiously at the Pittsburgh Terminal waiting for the New York City-bound USA RAIL train on December 27, 1999. He had spent ten years in Pittsburgh trying to make a name for himself in the financial firm of MCCarrol and Breverman, and like so many of his dreams in the prior fifteen years, it had all come to a crashing demise. There had been so many setbacks and disappointments in the past ten years, from illnesses to accidents to financial crises, that he had begun to believe that he had been cursed and that there was some karmic debt he had yet to repay that hung over him like a cloud. Some of his coworkers at the financial firm had even begun to call him the ‘most unlucky man in the world.’

He stood at the platform edge holding two small suitcases in each of his hands, the remainder of his belongings, a few changes of clothes, three books that meant something to him and a laptop, that he deemed important enough to keep, after his eviction from his apartment, and after his layoff at the firm along with five others as a cost-cutting measure, or so his supervisors had told him, or as he knew in his gut, that he was just unsuited for the job. he just didn’t have the killer instinct that he needed to succeed at his position.

He resolved that he was going home, back to Bayside Queens, to beg his father and mother to take him in until he could find another position. He hadn’t mustered the courage to tell his parents what had happened to him, how everything seemed to have gone wrong, and he just did not want to be blamed anymore for things he believed he did not cause, and he did not deserve.

He had once tried to write an essay, laying it out on paper, everything that had happened, like a Readers Digest version of the Book of Job, but after finishing nearly twenty pages, he took one look at it, then ripped it up, taking out his frustrations on the papers he had struggled to fill with his erratic cursive script, though he kept the torn pieces of paper and for some odd reason could not bring himself to throw them away.

What he didn’t know standing on the platform and contemplating his life was that this train above all others had its own special destiny, and whatever cosmic patterns were embedded in the universe also involved him. Like chess pieces being consciously moved by combatants on a board, he was following the paths laid out by a power greater than his own, and like so many competitions this outcome could end in two very different ways.

He stood on the platform with nearly a hundred other passengers, many of whom also seemed restless. As he looked around nervously at many of their faces, both men and women, several small children and several soldiers in uniforms, some of their faces seemed eerily familiar to him. He reminded himself of how similar people can be, the limited patterns that nature uses to create the diversity that surrounds us every day. This was not the first time that he had experienced such a feeling of deja vu, and he had always fought the impulse to find meaning in such patterns. The only feelings that interested him at this moment, were to find the courage not to surrender to his insecurities.

The train was late in arriving. The first announcement of a delay came at fifteen minutes before the arrival time of two o’clock. The voice advised them of another twenty-minute delay. The second came at the arrival time, announcing simply, “The train to New York has been delayed by 30 minutes.” He, like all the other passengers, stood nervously, wondering if something had gone wrong with the train. He suspected it was some mechanical problem. After the thirty minutes turned to forty and then to fifty, he began to contemplate, if this was sort of omen of things to come. But he quietened his thoughts and reminded himself of the realities of the situation, and how necessary it was to get on this train and return to Bayside to face whatever awaited him there.

At three thirty-five, the train finally pulled into the station, and everyone was relieved. When the doors opened with a puff of air, it was as if the train had been holding its breath like many of the passengers had from nervousness. He entered the sixth car from the front and found a seat on the left side of the train, seat number 111. He took little notice of it. He placed the two small suitcases in a rack above him. Then three others joined him, two adults and a little girl of about eight years old. The little girl sat next to him and her parents sat facing him. He tried not to interact with them, avoiding even eye contact. The little girl’s mother handed her a children’s book, titled THE TREE MOUSE, which she opened on her lap. Edison took a cursory glance at the book, with its pictures of squirrels and trees and then turned his head the other way.

“Are you sure we didn’t forget anything?” The father asked his wife.

“No,” she responded. “I wrote everything down and I crossed it off the list.”

“Mommy, could you read to me?” the little girl asked. “Some of the words are too hard for me.”

“I don’t want us to disturb the other people,” her mother responded. “I’ll read it to you after we arrive in New York.”

Then the young girl turned to Edison and asked him, “Could you read it for me?”

Her mother looked very annoyed by the question.

But Edison, to her parents’ surprise, answered, “Of course.” He would do anything to take his mind away from his circumstances.

The little girl handed the book to Edison. He opened it on his lap and began to read it aloud.

“Once there was an oak tree in a small forest of pines,” Edison began to read. “It was the last of the majestic Oaks, standing nearly 150 feet high, almost reaching the tops of some of the tallest pine trees. At its base, it measured nearly 9 feet across and in its trunk was a large hollowed out hole, where a small bear could have crawled inside to hibernate if it had a mind to do so. On this tree with its broad and outstretched branches like great arms reaching into the sky, lived a family of squirrels, 50 generations of squirrels, or so the story had been told, ever since such stories had been passed on from father to sons, from mother to daughters, just like all the other stories of the forest. Many times young squirrel Achilles’ father had set him aside to tell him such stories, as he had told the rest of Achilles’ brothers and sisters. But Achilles was not interested in such stories. Achilles was also not interested in any of the other tasks that kept the others occupied. All he thought about was climbing ever higher up the tree's great branches looking skyward and watching the birds circle in their magic dances above his head.”

He showed them the picture of the oak tree with the birds flying above it. He continued to read.

“ ‘You are going to fall down and kill yourself,’ young Sophocles shouted at Achilles as he stretched his legs to crawl onto a quivering branch which swayed back and forth under his weight. ‘Come down from there. We have chores to do.’

‘Come up, Sophocles, come up here with me. It is such fun. You can see almost to the edge of the river from here,’ Achilles shouted back to him.”

“But Sophocles knew that chores awaited them both and there were always branches to find, and acorns to gather and food to prepare and there were the younger squirrels to take care of.”

“ ‘Father is not going to be happy with you,’ Sophocles finally shouted back to him. But he knew that he could not persuade Achilles to come down from the tree to do his chores. When he reached almost to the tip of the branch, Achilles hung on with all the strength he could find within himself. He stared out at the vast green lake of trees, waving in the wind before his eyes and he felt the greatest joy there any squirrel could feel for having had the opportunity to see what his small squirrel eyes were seeing, and he knew he had to bring others up to the same tip of the branches to see what he was seeing.”

As he read these words, Edison could see himself in this squirrel. He also noticed that the young girl had fallen asleep.

“Thank you,” her mother told him. “It means the world to her.” Her mother took the book from him and put it into her bag.

“Sometimes I wish I could be a squirrel,” he told her. “Their lives seem so much less complicated.”

He noticed her father had also fallen asleep.

“If she wakes up, I’ll gladly read more of it,” he told her mother. For the first time in weeks, he felt calmer.