The engineers would park trains on the crossings and eat at a near-by diner, itself made from a former Pullman car. They would stay for hours, which left the neighborhood cut off from the rest of the city.
One day, with the crossings blocked, a house caught fire. The fire trucks waited for the engineers to exit the diner, climb aboard the engines, starts the engines, then tug the remaining railcars past the flashing lights and lowered arms. By the time the tracks were clear, the house was a charred skeleton down to the concrete slab.
No one knew the family, who had not been home. They arrived home later that evening. By then, the police left. A neighbor told them what happened. The family drove away and no one ever saw them again.
That was a Friday, so the next morning the boys were up early to meet at the fire site.
Danny was first and already found a few bottles of liquor in a blackened cabinet in a corner of the house that hadn’t fully burned. As the rest of the boys pedaled to the curb, Danny lifted a bottle in each hand. Benjie began to whoop but Jimmie told him to be quiet. They didn’t want to attract attention.
“Parent’s bedroom,” Danny said. “Probably stashed the hooch away from the kids.”
“Jewelry,” Jimmie said. “That’s what we want to find. Jewelry.”
Jimmie began kicking up black dust along what had been the bedroom walls.
“Look for some sort of small box,” Jimmie said. “Something a lady would put her rings and necklaces and things like that in.”
Danny had already gone into the backyard and opened one of the bottles. Rickie and Benjie began throwing bits of wood from the frame at each other.
“Look,” Benjie said, “the springs from the couch.”
A row of deformed springs sat inside of a box of ash. Benjie began jumping on the springs and pretending that he was bounding into the air.
Rickie went to the kitchen with its melted refrigerator and scorched oven.
“A body,” Rickie said.
He toed at what might have been a shoulder.
The other boys circled around.
“It was a dog,” Benjie said. “I know they had a dog.”
“Too small for a dog,” Danny said.
“Some dogs are small,” Benjie said.
“Look at the skull,” Jimmie said. “Has to be a cat.”
He squatted down in front of the scorched body and poked at it with a finger.
“It’s curled up,” Jimmie said. “Definitely a cat. Probably died from smoke.”
He stood and brushed his hands against his pants.
“I ain’t interested in no dead animal,” Danny said.
“Makes me sad,” Benjie said.
“Everything makes you sad,” Rickie said.
“I don’t like when things die,” Benjie said.
“Get used to it,” Jimmie said. He looked past the backyard to the tracks. “There’s a lot of death in life.”
“Let’s go drink this liquor,” Danny said. He lifted the bottles up again but with less celebration.
Jimmie and Danny started through the backyard to an opening in the weeds that led to a trail along the tracks.
Benjie sat down cross-legged in the cinders and began to pretend to pet the cat.
“You can’t make it come back to life,” Rickie said.
“If you really believe, in your heart, you can make anything happen,” Benjie. “My pastor said that.”
Rickie watched Benjie stroke the dead animal then Rickie turned his back on his friend.
Jimmie, Danny, and Rickie sat on the ballast rocks along the nearest set of tracks. They passed one of the bottles between each other with a solemnity of a funerary ritual. Benjie walked out of the darkness of the weeds. He cradled the remains of the cat in his arms. He had the face of an angel, peaceful, almost pretty.
“Jesus,” Jimmie said.
“It’s dead,” Danny said.
“Let go of it,” Rickie said. “You gotta accept some things.”
“He’s alive,” Benjie said. “I believed and now it’s true.”
With the tenderness of a mother with a newborn, Benjie looked down at the carcass and rocked it back and forth.
Richard Stimac has published flash fiction in BarBar, Flash Fiction Magazine, New Feathers, Paperbark, Prometheus Dreaming, Proud to Be (SEMO Press), On the Run, Scribble, Talon Review, The Typescript, and The Wild Word.