Trial

FLEMINGTON I've lived in this town my whole life and I can tell you . . . nothing ever happens. Each week, the farmers bring their chickens and eggs to market and the grain trucks dump and load up at Miller's Feed Store on North Main. The streets are wide and clean, the shop-keepers are friendly, and all the children walk to school. At Christmas, Santa comes to the bank and gives out candy-stuffed stockings, and on Halloween there's a big parade at the courthouse with cider and donuts and prizes for the Prettiest, Funniest, and Scariest. With all this, you'd think I'd be happy as a clam here in Flemington, and why that's not so, I may never really know but I do know that whenever I read National Geographic or Time or look through one of my uncle's travel books the ones with pictures of glaciers and deserts, palm-treed islands and busy cities I'm always wishing myself into them. "You're restless, Katie Leigh, just like your father was" is Mother's explanation, but since he left us so long ago I guess that's another thing I'll never really know. THE PHOTOGRAPH From the photograph, we don't look a lot alike: his hair dark brown (mine is black), his eyes hazel gray (mine are dusky green), his nose long and thin, (mine small and wide, a few scattered freckles along each side), but then . . . there's that full lower lip (I have that) and his dimpled chin ( I have that too) and the way his head tilts just a little to the left, like he's about to ask a question or trying to get a different perspective (Mother says I do this all the time). I guess I believe he's a part of me, though I wish I had more than a five-by-seven photo to prove it. AT THE RAILYARD Sometimes I watch the train men turn engine, watch the box cars unhitch and recouple, watch the forklifts load the flatbeds and the fireman shovel coal. Sometimes I try to remember my father. Sometimes, when there's nothing else to do, I stay all day until the last train leaves, and all I can see is a thin line of steam, way off in the distance. SULLEN At the tracks, I usually find Mike, his back against the big wooden box where the station master keeps his rain cape and his tools. We don't talk much. But once in a while, we talk a lot. Mike told me his mother died when he was five and his father has been drinking too much ever since. On sunny days, I bring a book and read it while he whittles oak sticks into animals with his pocket knife, or with his hands, shapes faces from and pieces of clay. When I bring leftovers from the kitchen he tries to refuse, but when I start chewing, he does too. He borrows my books, and I know he's smart because he asks me all these questions about the characters that I never thought about before, and I have to go home and think on them before I can answer. Mike is not like the other boys I know . . . he's not stuck-up or loud-mouthed or silly. At school, he's real quiet. He sits in the back row so no one will notice if he falls asleep from staying up late waiting for his father. The teachers all say he's "sullen," but if you tell him a good joke, he laughs the kind of laugh that makes you join in, makeBryant, Jennifer is the author of 'Trial', published 2004 under ISBN 9780375827525 and ISBN 0375827528.