D-Train
Michael Rogner
Such a sweet boy. Dig this: he’s in school, at the lockers with his buddies. Big, toothy laughs about last period, something from their reading assignment. One of those fragments that sound dirty but isn’t. So it’s funny. They’re testing the phrase in different voices, different accents, riffing for the perfect fit. In normal times this would become a bit they’d wear out for weeks, running it underground until the new next thing. One buddy points. Daniel, Danny, our Danny boy, turns and sees his grandmother. Holy shit. It’s his ribbon day. Runner-up at the science fair. Gamgam here for the ceremony, only now she looks like a ghost ship adrift in the passage, tilting between icebergs and gazing at walls as if she’s one step away from exact star chart she’ll need to guide her back to open water, surrounded by so many kids in uniform, surrounded by the reckless eddies of youth. Danny, the D-Train, there with his bros, immediately runs and sweeps grandma in his arms. She’s so glad to see him. He’s so glad to see her. They walk, hand in hand, to the auditorium. Introduces her to his friends. This is my grandmother. This is grandma Ruth. Such a sweet kid.
Skinny as a whip, our Danny, our D-Dog, the Danosaur. Still a concave chest at fifteen. Pants that are supposed to fit tight hang like the khakis in dad’s old photographs from the 90s. But he’s handsome. Nice face, and those eyes. Were he to survive he’d develop what might be called piercing eyes, or soulful. Danny’s an animal guy. A dog guy. Went fishing with pops once, caught a rainbow trout which swallowed the hook and died in his hands.
MICHAEL ROGNER
That was the end of that. Probably would have become a vet, assuming he could pull his grades up where they belonged. Maybe one of those small-town vets who all the pet owners have not-sosecret crushes on. He’s got those eyes.
But this is the end for Danny. That evening, after the celebration dinner, after grandma heads home and Danny helps his mom with the dishes, and Danny’s dad—the neighbor, the goddamn neighbor, the goddamn neighbor is doing it again. Goddamnit. And then Danny’s dad is in the driveway. It’s a shared drive, half theirs, half the neighbor’s. There’s yelling, a shove, and Danny’s mom has police on the phone. Danny runs outside, because that’s the kind of kid he is. He knows his face, his sweet face that always makes dad descend into love and pet names will calm the situation, will remind everyone where they are, will, as they say, diffuse the dad. But at this point, the fuse is lit. There will be no diffusing, no dampening. The neighbor is drunk, not that it matters. There’s a beer can in the driveway, suds are flowing toward the gutter, catching on prickly lettuce germinating in the cracks, and another neighbor—Mr. Cushman from across the way, dear Mr. Cushman, thank you sir, thank you—is crossing the road. Is on Danny’s side. The side of de-escalation. The side of friendly neighborhoods and picking up after your dogs and waving to the group of ladies in yoga pants who walk together and tell funny stories on their way to the park.
Goddamn neighbor is on the other side. The side of peeking from behind crooked shades. The side of fuck you looking at. And now he’s got—he’s got a handgun. Danny’s never seen one so close. H&K, not that Danny knows this. But that’s what it is. A Heckler and Koch VP40, made in Germany, 820 grams unloaded. This one weighs 914 grams. It’s bigger than he thought. It’s smaller than he thought. Scored to make it look more dangerous, more masculine. It’s in goddamn neighbor’s hand and flame leaps out the barrel. That’s all she wrote for Danny boy.
When goddamn neighbor pulls the trigger, the recoil is just right, which is one reason it’s his favorite gun, that and the savage profile, and the texture of the grip, and the sightline. The recoil reaches up his forearm and disperses slightly at the shoulder before echoing down and into his heart, which at that exact moment is receiving a signal from his sinoatrial node telling it to activate, to contract, pumping the recoil higher first, into goddamn neighbor’s head, where it then slowly descends into the rest of his body shutting in its passing unnecessary functions the same way morphine would, leaving him numb to everything but the gun, the cold contact at his fingertip.
The bullet, manufactured in Lewiston, Idaho, by a machinist with his own sweet son, enters dad’s shoulder travelling 440 meters per second, skips off the acromion at the terminal end of his right clavicle. It exits at a nine-degree superior angle, fortyeight-degree lateral, splashing blood as far as the mailbox, and later there will be a four-inch yellow cone stenciled with number seventeen sitting beside the splatter, but for now the bullet enters Danny’s throat, just below his chin, plowing his vocal cords— those are gone, those don’t matter anymore—destroys the spinal cord at C3, and exits Danny’s neck in its return to the atmosphere, 2.3 centimeters below his temporal bone. As Danny’s spine explodes in a mist of calcified shrapnel, the bullet continues its trajectory, missing two maples dad planted eleven years ago when they bought the house, silver maples to complement the heritage sycamore next door, and the bullet, now compressed and ravaged in a way no civilian would think to be a bullet, ricochets off a sycamore limb and enters the ground somewhere in the vicinity of the other neighbor’s city-water shutoff valve. It won’t be found.
Danny’s world, we can assume, is a void, and we can’t prove this but it feels right, it feels logical, that nothing we’d label Danny knows his father takes three more bullets, all in the chest, two of D-TRAIN
MICHAEL ROGNER 81
which are fatal, or that when dad’s body collapses his right hand bounces off the driveway and comes to rest on Danny’s forehead, looking to all the world like a father checking a son for fever, or that goddamn neighbor turns and points the gun at Mr. Cushman who is crouched and running, but for no reason whatsoever chooses in the moment not to fire, and then goes back inside, where likely—we don’t know this—likely he shoots his girlfriend in the face, and at this point, who knows if he even remembers his girlfriend’s mother, who lives in the spare bedroom and stays in bed all day not knowing where she is, not knowing things in a different but equally oppressive way as Danny, that she was evicted from a nursing home because her Social Security income was too high ($1,587 per month), and so has a bed here, which his girlfriend must clean at least once a day, more likely two or three times, because something is always happening, some accident, and she’ll lay there, even if goddamn neighbor doesn’t shoot her, until a policeman finds her and initiates the paperwork to make her a ward of the State.
The Special Weapons and Tactics team responds, and the neighborhood is locked down, and prompted by a prearranged schedule at 0200 hours the Tactical Operations Commander signals his team to penetrate the front and rear entrances simultaneously, and who knows what they find. Who can say? Maybe their body cams are activated, and maybe they aren’t. Maybe put truth to words in the after-action report, but here we are, Danny’s down, and the resolution will ride forward upon the mount of its own momentum.
Before the Governor is even awake, before the hair and makeup team arrive, before the coffee is percolated to the exact specification of his desire, brewed from fresh ground beans farmed at the headwaters of the Rio Lempa on a Salvadoran ranch co-owned by him and select extended family, his PR team is in motion. They’ve been here before. It’s just messaging. Control the narrative. Send
the proven signals. Goddamn neighbor, etcetera, etcetera. Prep the calls the Governor will need to make to the right buddies, the right bros, to assuage any fears that something might change. Legislation will vanish. Calls to action will go unanswered. We’ve been here before people, we just need to ride it out. I got this.
* * *
As Danny escorts his grandmother, hand in hand, he sees her, at her locker, and he feels blessed to have his grandmother to clutch, because there’s Grace, talking to two of her friends, and she’s ten feet away, now six, and his heart thumps in his ears. Her eyes lift and she sees Danny, and he swears the corners of her mouth turn up a fraction like a flower stirring beneath a gibbous moon. And what does Danny do? He smiles two full rows of teeth, of course he does, our Danny is an open book, and he squeezes grandma’s hand, who doesn’t know why she’s getting this unasked for extra juice, but enjoys it all the same.
After they pass Grace and her friends, Danny glances over his shoulder, and there’s Grace again, looking right at him. Grace, what a girl. Obviously parents don’t have favorites, but if her parents did, Grace is the one. That’s the kind of girl she is. Does she make trouble? Yes, she’s fifteen, but her parents giggle at night, in bed together, about their vast quantities of luck, how their three daughters turned out so good. So nice! So much easier than they were at the same age. Maybe a late curfew here, or a mailed-in test effort there, but nothing like the stories other parents tell.
After the ceremony Danny gets his chance. He walks his grandmother to her car, helps her through the scented spearmint cloud and into the driver’s seat, watches her drive away, and while returning to the school entrance, here comes Grace. Alone. Now’s the time.
MICHAEL ROGNER
At night, she’s all he’s been thinking about. She’s only been at school this one year. Somehow they didn’t have any classes together. But he saw her around, knew her friends, had talked with her at the bowling alley and at the creek where the neighborhood crew gathered to swim. He knew the guy she was dating, or had been dating. The seas parted and delivered to him this opportunity. He’s got it straight, what he’ll say. He’s ready. And wow, she’s here, that was quick. A smile. Congratulations. And she’s past.
Now Danny. Do it, Danny. Don’t let her keep walking.
But he doesn’t come through. Grace keeps going to where a parent will be waiting at the curb. Danny’s back in school, back with his buddies. He’s not sure what’s happening—Grace was right there, looking into his eyes, and all he had to do to was say something, say anything. It feels half-hearted, but he joins in. He makes the jokes. He pins his 2nd place ribbon to the back of his shirt, a yellow tail. His buddies chase him, like it’s flag football. The adults, always adulting, yelling not to run. But some are laughing too, because it’s Danny, D-Stone, the Dandy. Tomorrow, that’s when he’ll do it. He’ll be brave tomorrow. At his celebration, four o’clock in the afternoon, parents home early and grandma with the cake. They toast to Danny. Mom picked up a spread of tacos from his favorite place—La Cocina Economica—and he’s a growing boy, eats like a wrestler, and he puts down six carnitas supreme and still has room to split dad’s burrito. And a slice of cake. Chocolate, with chocolate frosting. The best.
The doorbell rings—one of his buds—but they aren’t supposed to come until six. Oh well, the more the merrier mom will say. No need to even ask, but he will. Can he stay for dinner? Is there enough food? Absolutely, it’s a party! It’s your day. He opens the door and there she is. Grace. Not one of his buddies. Her mom in a white hatchback at the curb, pretending to
fiddle with the radio. At some point Grace got out of her school uniform, while Danny still wears his. She’s in jeans and a yellow tank top, with an A’s baseball cap snugged low over her eyes. Didn’t say it earlier, she says, but she wanted to congratulate him. Danny, his shirttail out and wrinkled, steps onto the little porch and closes the door behind him. At the creek, there’s a rock which juts from a small stone ridge. It must be twenty feet above the swimming hole, and the boys who rule the roost don’t let most kids up there. It’s their spot. Sometimes they smoke cigarettes, they share a stolen beer, and the girls go up, they’re always allowed. But sometimes they aren’t there. Those guys. That crowd. And Danny and his bros get to go. That first time he stood on the edge until his skinny legs began vibrating. And he didn’t do it, didn’t jump.
You just have to go, his friends told him. Not making fun. Just helping. You just have to walk to the edge and jump without thinking.
I’d like to hang out with you, he says. Danny says this, or thinks he says it, something along those lines, his voice breaking, the first couple words too quiet but he says this to Grace, who smiles so big she’s practically laughing. Maybe we could get ice cream, he says. Or whatever. Whatever you like to do, I’d like to do that too.
It’s complicated she says, but still that smile. She’s in the process of breaking up. But it will be over soon. And then she’d love to hang out, the moment her current thing is finished. They could go to the park. Or maybe Schubert’s, like he suggested. And she says some more things, but honestly, Danny can’t remember. She said yes. He shoves both hands in his pockets to keep from fist pumping.
He walks her to the sidewalk. She steps over where his body will lie in a couple hours as if she’s skipping over a puddle. And he thanks her for coming by. Really, she says, your project should have won. It was way better than the others.
MICHAEL ROGNER
She buckles in to the passenger seat, and Danny waves to them both. Thanks for coming by he calls as they drive off, and they both wave and Grace is sitting in the car with her head tilted back in the seat and she has a little smile, which he can see. She’s happy. They’re driving away and Grace is happy. What a day.