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Christmas 2001

It was starting to look like Santa hadn’t come through for Jeremy. All the presents that had been placed under the tree had

been unwrapped and there was no PlayStation.

Goddamn , he thought.

Jeremy was only seven and shouldn’t have been using words like that, even when it was only in his head and not out loud, but

his older sister, Glynis, who was nine, had brought him up to speed on forbidden vocabulary. Not that he didn’t already know

most of the words. He’d heard kids using them on the school grounds. He could have thought something much worse than goddamn .

He also knew it wasn’t Santa Claus who’d failed him; it was Mom and Dad. Glynis had set him straight on this score, too. “There

is no Santa,” she’d told him while he was sitting in the basement watching an episode of Bob the Builder . “There’s no guy at the North Pole who’s going around on a magic sleigh to every house in the world, in one night, delivering

presents. What kind of baby believes in stuff like that? And while we’re on the subject, the Tooth Fairy and the Easter Bunny

are bullshit, too.”

Glynis not only knew all the swear words, she knew how to use them effectively. And she knew other stuff, mostly from watching

Sex and the City at her friend Sally’s house because they had it on VHS. Sally’s aunt lived in Boston and had HBO and taped the episodes for

Sally’s mom. If Jeremy’s parents knew Glynis was up to speed on the sexual antics of Carrie Bradshaw and her friends, they’d

have a double stroke.

Jeremy knew his sister was less interested in his knowing the truth than she was delighted to shatter his most treasured illusions.

If there was something she relished more than tormenting her little brother, he couldn’t think what it was.

This particular Christmas morning, in a year when it was hard to imagine that anything good could happen, Glynis had done

quite well. New clothes, new shoes, and one of those Bratz dolls, kind of like if Barbie went full Goth. And, sure, Jeremy

got a Lego set based on Harry Potter stuff, and he supposed that was okay, but it sure was no PlayStation.

But then Jeremy’s father said, “Wait right there. There’s one more thing. Didn’t have a chance to wrap it.”

Oh yes! This had to be it. Dad was saving the PlayStation for last. Well played, Father . Just when Jeremy thought it was game over, no pun intended, Dad was coming through.

Jeremy’s father slipped out of the living room, went out the front door without bothering to close it, allowing a wintry wind

to blow into the house. There was the sound of a car trunk slamming shut, and seconds later, Dad was back, nudging the door

shut with his body because his arms were full.

He was carrying a cardboard box large enough that his chin was resting on the top. Printed boldly on the side of the box was

the word tide .

Was this some sort of joke?

Had Dad bought him a year’s supply of detergent? This was no PlayStation box, that was for sure. But Jeremy continued to hold out hope that there might be such a box within the Tide box. Dad was trying to fake him out here.

His father leaned over, set the box on the floor, and let out a long, exhausted breath. “Lotta stuff in there.” He got down

to unfold the cardboard flaps, but then motioned for Jeremy to scoot over and do it himself.

“Go for it,” Dad said.

Jeremy did, feverishly. He pulled back the four cardboard flaps and before he saw what was inside said, “I knew you’d get

it! I knew you’d get me the Play—”

He stopped.

There was no video game system in this box. What would Glynis say right about now if she were him? What the fuck? The box was filled with...

Trains. Stupid, dumb toy trains.

Jeremy looked into his father’s face, unable to disguise his disappointment.

“No, no, you’re gonna love this,” his father said quickly because the kid looked like he was on the verge of tears. “This

is way better than some stupid video game system. Tons more fun, believe me. I had trains when I was a kid, Lionel and American

Flyer, and they’re still making this stuff, and—”

“Trains are lame,” Jeremy said.

The words were a dagger to his father’s heart. “Give it a chance. Look what we’ve got here.”

He pulled out a boxcar and then a caboose and then a heavy black metal steam locomotive. None of the pieces was in its original

packaging, but carefully wrapped in newspaper. One shred of masthead—showing the Burlington Free Pr —offered a hint of where these trains had come from.

“It’s all used stuff , ” Glynis said derisively.

“Where did you get all this?” Jeremy’s mother asked her husband.

As Jeremy continued to bring out more cars and accessories—a tanker car, a flatcar with a helicopter perched on it, a train

station, a water tower—his father said, “You know that new guy at work? Wendell? Wendell Comstock? Met him the other day at

the Tops?”

She tried to remember, and when she did, her face fell. “Is that the poor man who just moved here? Where was he from?”

“Just across the border into Vermont.” He paused, lowered his voice. “Lucknow.”

“Oh God, Lucknow . He sure got out of that town just in time.”

“Yeah, moved away before it happened.”

“His wife was one of the vic—”

“No,” he said, lowering his voice to a whisper so the kids wouldn’t hear. “She got electrocuted a week or two before. But

he grew up around here. Got a sister in Fenelon. Decided to sell the house, move back. Hell of a thing, what happened back

there.”

He gave his head a sorrowful shake. “Anyway, he brought this box in, and I thought he was selling it, but he was giving it

away to the first person what wanted it, he had no need for it, said the movers packed it without him realizing. And I said,

hey, I know just the boy who’d love this.” At this point, he gave Jeremy a big smile. “Give it a chance, won’t you, sport?”

He reached into the box, pulled out several sections of track, then a heavy black boxy item about half the size of a loaf

of bread.

“This here’s the transformer, brand-new,” he said. “Wendell didn’t have the original one that came with the set, so I picked

this one up at a hobby shop in Binghamton.” He grinned. “Train won’t run without it.”

He set down the transformer and brought out from the box a shiny red boxcar with the santa fe logo printed on the side. He held out the car, about a foot long, to his son. “Just ’cause it says santa on the side doesn’t mean it has anything to do with Santa Claus. Santa Fe is a very important railway in the history of America. And check this out. The doors open and close and the couplers work and it looks like the real thing.”

With limited enthusiasm, Jeremy allowed his father to place it in his outstretched hands for a closer examination.

And something happened.

Jeremy felt a... what, exactly? A shock? No, couldn’t be a shock. The transformer wasn’t even plugged in. But there was

something... like a tingle. He could feel it running all the way up his arms, if only for a millisecond.

He brought the toy boxcar close to his face, studying it. Ran his fingers along the sides, feeling the raised bumps meant

to replicate rivets. Opened and closed the side doors, spun the thick metal wheels with his finger.

“Pretty neat, huh?” said his father.

Jeremy, feeling his earlier indifference shifting into something approaching enthusiasm, said, “Can we make it go?”

“Let’s make a circle of track around the bottom of the tree.”

Each track piece had a third rail that ran down the middle. “That carries the electric power and the outer rails are the ground,”

his father said. “Keeps it from short-circuiting. But don’t worry, it can’t shock you.”

Once the track sections had been made into a continuous loop, Jeremy pulled out more items from the Tide box and started to

carefully place them onto the track, making sure the wheels’ flanges were set within the rail edges. All that remained to

make the train operational was the engine.

Jeremy picked up the weighty locomotive and the attached tender with pennsylvania emblazoned on the side.

“The tender’s where they kept all the coal that they had to keep feeding into the engine to keep it going,” his father said. “You don’t see anything like that these days.”

Inside the locomotive cab, sitting at the controls, was a tiny engineer, dressed in overalls and a striped cap, his head no

larger than a pea. Jeremy leaned in for a closer look.

“Pretty realistic, huh?” his father said.

“He winked at me,” Jeremy said, and his father laughed. He turned the engine around, grasping it with both hands, and looked

straight into the headlight mounted on the front.

“The light’ll come on when we get it on the track and turn the throttle,” his father said, which struck Jeremy as an odd thing

to say, given that he could already see a faint glimmer in the bulb.

Glynis, stroking the hair on her Bratz doll, bored and annoyed that this dumbass train set was getting so much attention,

asked, “Are we gonna have breakfast or what?”

As Jeremy set the locomotive onto the track, there was that tingle again. It was hard to describe, but it felt a little like

that old gag gift his friend Ricky had tried on him. A joy buzzer he’d found in his own father’s box of mementos. You slipped

it into your palm and when you shook hands with someone they got a zap. But this was like a tenth of that. Subtle, pleasing

almost.

Jeremy’s father ran two wires from the underside of the track to the two terminals on the transformer, screwed down the threaded

connectors to ensure good electrical conduction, then plugged it into the wall. There was a handle on the top of it, which

he explained was the throttle.

“Crank ’er up!”

Jeremy turned the throttle, and as if by magic the locomotive made an electrical humming sound, the headlight illuminated, and as he moved the handle farther to the right, the wheels began to turn. Feathery wisps of smoke puffed out of the steam engine’s smokestack. And what a glorious sound it made.

Chuff. Chuff. Chuff.

Jeremy gave the throttle another turn. The wheels spun more furiously.

Chuffchuffchuffchuffchuffchuff

Jeremy’s father pressed a red button on the transformer to activate a whistle on the engine. “There’s so much more stuff you

can get. Buildings and trees and little people. One boxcar has a trapdoor on the top and a giraffe sticks its head out and

then drops it back just in time, and...”

Jeremy wasn’t listening.

He lay down on his side, ear to the floor, the train’s vibrations reverberating through the tracks and into the hardwood,

buzzing their way into his skull. Every few seconds the train raced past, the engine chuffing furiously, the various cars

in tow, the red caboose trailing, the glorious chorus of metal spinning on metal, the smell of ozone in the air.

Jeremy was mesmerized. He could lie here like this for hours, imagining himself in the cab of that locomotive, shoveling coal

from the tender into the firebox, elbow on the window ledge, head poked out to view the track ahead, a red kerchief tied around

his neck blowing in the wind, the world flying past.

It felt... magical. As though he and the engine had somehow become one and the same, fused together. He remembered that

book his mother read to him when he was two or three, about that little engine that could. Jeremy was that engine now, and

he could do anything.

“Have fun,” his father said, and went to the kitchen with Jeremy’s mom.

Jeremy tentatively touched his finger to the track, pulling it away a millisecond before the train swept past on its latest loop. He felt a small charge, that tingle again. He knew that wasn’t supposed to happen, but he definitely felt something . Maybe this train was different. Special, even—

“Oops,” said Glynis, kicking over the red boxcar and sending the entire train off the tracks.

Jeremy was so transfixed that the derailment hit him as though he’d been awakened from a dream. He looked first at the fallen

train, then slowly turned his head to look up at his sister.

She said, “You got a used secondhand gift. Somebody’s old junk. My Bratz doll is new . I’m gonna eat your Cinnabon.” She set her doll on the living room couch and disappeared into the kitchen.

Jeremy pondered his sister’s history of villainy as he looked at the devastation she had wrought, this scale train wreck.

Telling him the truth about Santa and the Easter Bunny. The time she put rabbit turds in his ice cream. Stuffed a dead toad

into the toe of his runners. Told everyone at school he’d wet the bed. That time she stole three dollars from their mother’s

purse and, when it looked as though she might be found out, slipped the bills under Jeremy’s pillow. Their mother found them

when she was changing the sheets. Jeremy’s protestations of innocence were to no avail.

Glynis was a very, very bad sister.

She was his tormentor. He was her victim. It had always been this way. He’d considered retaliation before, but anything he

attempted would bring serious blowback from his parents. He couldn’t just hit her or pull her hair or put a snake in her underwear

drawer. He wished he were more creative, that he could find a way to teach her a lesson without anyone tracing it back to

him.

Then he rolled over and eyed the Bratz doll Glynis had left sitting on the couch, staring into the room with its dead eyes. And there, on the floor, were discarded strands of green ribbon that had secured some of the now-unwrapped presents.

An idea was forming.

One day, his father had shared some old tapes of cartoons he’d loved as a kid. One was about a dumb Royal Canadian Mounted

Policeman named Dudley Do-Right who was forever saving a girlfriend when she got tied to the railroad tracks by the nasty

Snidely Whiplash.

Jeremy took the Bratz doll from the couch. Placed it across the track and secured it with the green ribbon. Then he put the

locomotive and cars back onto the track.

See how Glynis liked it when her new toy got run over by his used train.

He cranked the throttle so hard the engine’s wheels spun as they sought purchase on the track. Only half a loop to go to make

contact. There was no Dudley Do-Right coming to rescue Glynis’s Christmas present.

For a second there, as Jeremy looked into the face of the doll, he thought he saw the face of his sister.

That was not possible, of course. He blinked, and the doll went back to being a doll.

Chuffchuffchuffchuffchuffchuffchuff

Jeremy hit the whistle button.

Woo-woo!

Rounding the turn. Almost there. The moment of impact a millisecond away.

Chuffchuffchuffchuffchuffchuffchuff

And then, whomp .

What wonderful chaos. The doll was catapulted across the room, the flimsy ribbon cut by the loco’s wheels before the engine bounced off the track and landed on its side, taking the attached cars with it. It was, Jeremy thought, an epic derailment as good as any he had ever seen in a movie.

And then, from the kitchen, the sound of something shattering.

Followed by a bone-chilling scream.

Jeremy sprang to his feet and went to the kitchen doorway to investigate.

His mother, father, and sister were crowded around the sink, Glynis in the middle, holding her hand over some dishes that

had been left there to soak.

On the floor by their feet, the shattered remains of a glass.

Blood was dripping furiously from Glynis’s hand.

“My God!” Jeremy’s mother shrieked. “Call an ambulance!”

Jeremy’s father said there was no time for that, he would wrap the detached finger in a cloth with ice cubes around it and

drive Glynis to the hospital and maybe they could reattach it and how in the hell did this happen anyway and then Jeremy’s

parents were yelling at each other while Glynis continued to wail.

Jeremy went back into the living room.

He found the Bratz doll. The right hand was missing, as if neatly cut off with a pair of shears. After a brief search, he

found the hand between two of the metal ties that supported the train. He tucked the tiny hand deep into the pocket of his

jeans.

Once the locomotive and cars were back on the track, Jeremy set the throttle to a nice, steady speed, got on the floor again,

propped up on his elbows, head resting in his hands, and watched the train go around and around and around and around.

Chuffchuffchuffchuffchuffchuff