the last train

(I made this short story as a practice for my writing skills. The task was to make a story on which the main character is a father and on a first person viewpoint. Please feel free to put comments. :D)

                I lit up another cigarette and watched as the end of the stick burned red ashes. I inhaled a puff of smoke with exhaling. This, I know, did not help me feel calmer. I sat here on a rusted bench with my wife on the city’s train station for almost three hours. Two trains have already come and gone. The next train will be the last. The place was full of other people sweating because of the heat of the noonday sun. Everybody hardly talked. I guess they, too, were waiting for the last train bringing the news that would either make us or break us.

                Last night, my niece told me that today the soldiers who fought on the war will go home riding the last train for the day. The war had happened so suddenly that one night someone called over the phone. My son, Fred, took the call and learned that it was his battalion leader. He left the next morning. My wife had nothing to do but hugged him and wished him luck. I, despite the urge, have not even had the chance to tell him I was proud of him or even say “good luck”.

                I was awakened from my wandering thoughts by an approaching low rumbling sound. The train came toward the station and stopped with a screeching sound. Everyone stood up eagerly. Soldiers on their khaki military attires, some with bandages and splints, started to disembark the train. My wife and I watched patiently for our son to appear and come running to us. A tall man with a bandage on his left arm, the last passenger of the train, went out the train and slowly walked towards us, probably because he noticed that our worried eyes are fixed at him.

                “Good day, Sir. I am Lieut. Stradford. Are you Mr. Pryster?”, he asked.

              I nodded. He handed me a small white envelope…a letter from the US Air Force. I took it with trembling hands. I looked at him eye to eye, searching for an answer to a question I could not bear to ask. He just looked back at me with sorry eyes.

                I opened the letter. Every word hit my heart like the bullets that killed my son. I stared blankly at the empty train in front of me while my wife embraced me, sobbing.

 

                If life is a journey, we are all like riding trains of experiences and opportunities. We ride, go around the town, meet people and see places. But there is only one train, may be unexpectedly our last, that will bring us to our true home.