Lunch-Box Dream by Tony Abbott Page A

did he. The grilled cheese settled in his stomach like lead, and he felt it would sooner send him into the bathroom than into orbit. Gazing around before he set his head down, he realized he hated the room. It was too much like their room the night before in which he woke to hear his mother whispering on the phone. The cot’s soft mattress smelled dully of someone else, a man, he thought, who smoked; but why would a grown man sleep on a cot? But this was the South. So who knew?
    Finally, the room’s heat fell over him, and he closed his eyes, trying to imagine the coming airplane ride but not getting far because he didn’t know at all what it would be like.
    When he woke, hours had passed, and he found he had a headache and no dreams to remember. His grandmother was sitting up in bed, praying with her eyes closed, while Ricky studied a large book of photographs by a crack of window light. Bobby looked out at the pool beyond. There were one or two people, a girl, a family, maybe, moving in the sunshine. It was afternoon and hotter than before. He turned over, rested his head on the mattress, breathed in shallowly, and slept again.
    Later, he stepped out onto the little sidewalk between the room and the parking lot. It was nearly nine o’clock. The nighttime air was warm and scented with flowers and chlorine. His mother was still sleeping like she had the day she learned Grandpa had died. After the strange afternoon everything had slowed to a near stop, gone quiet, almost to sleep itself. They were far enough off the highway so that the air was hushed. Bobby felt that no one would ever find them there, if anyone was even looking for them. The mud hills twinkled with house lights far above the roof of the motel office.
    He heard the sound of a faraway train whistle.
    It came to him then what his mother had told him, that when there was a change of trains in Washington, Grandma had asked her to find out if Grandpa’s coffin was being moved to the right train to continue its journey to Ohio. Had his father been there, too? It was Washington, where he was studying. But he wasn’t part of this story, so perhaps not. His mother told Bobby she had been nervous, afraid, and dizzy. But after several wrong ones, she found the right counter and, clutching the stamped yellow tickets, asked a man at a window.
    Bobby imagined a ruffle of papers behind the window, and a slow nodding: “Yes, ma’am. Your father’s been transferred to track seven, leaving for Youngstown in twenty-eight minutes. I just made the call. He’s safe.”
    Those strange words. “He’s safe.”
    And his mother wobbling back to where Grandma stood alone in the waiting room, no more now than a stick of herself.
    â€œHe’s safe,” she repeated.
    And Grandma’s face, worn down to nothing. “Good.”
    He thought of uniformed men rolling the casket down the platform. Maybe they laughed. Certainly there was no way to disguise what they were doing among the holiday travelers. Was there a holiday? Maybe not. In any case, what they were pushing down the platform was undoubtedly a casket and it  was going on a train and everyone saw it. Did Grandpa need a ticket like seat passengers? Maybe they didn’t call it that, but it was still a ticket. He needed to reserve a place on the train. No. Two trains.
    Across the parking lot, the chrome frames of vending machines sparkled under the bulb in the ceiling of the walkway. One was a bright red and white box the size of a refrigerator. There was movement at that machine. The girl he had seen earlier by the pool was bending over at the machine. Then she was up and turning around and facing him, holding something in her hand.
    Candy? A soda?
    Her hair hung to her shoulders. It was light brown.
    â€œHuh…”
    Bobby turned. Ricky had said that. He was standing on the sidewalk just behind him, the room door closed. How did he get there so quietly? He