The Wind Chime had gravel clenched in both his fists when they found him, as if having his head run over by a freight train eighty cars long hurt like the Devil… as if the kid might’ve braced himself. He’d always be The Wind Chime to the trooper, though most other people around town called him The Wafer.

“There’s the Book,” the trooper’s father used to say if there was no ready answer, “and that crap between your ears.” He’d say it as if he didn’t know the family Bible was stuffed under the sofa where the springs had gone bad.

“He’d place coins on the tracks for the trains to flatten,” the trooper said to the cruiser’s rear-view-mirror. “He’d string his wafers and wear them around his neck like a bunch of wind chimes. Maybe his necklace got caught somewhere on the tracks, a spike-head maybe.”

He needed to tell his wife all about the boy, the bloody oatmeal he’d stepped on when he arrived on the scene.

***

She came to the door a mess, barely a flicker in her eyes. And yet he knew instantly he’d chosen her above the Holy Book. He shut the door quickly, desperate to cut his breath short on the warm split between her breasts.

He wanted to tell her about the smells, the thick rail grease, the milkweed and rhubarb, and how those smells were ruined forever. He wanted to tell her how he forced himself to walk the line, count the steps, and calculate the length of smear on the tracks as if he’d known it would be for the last time.

“This one,” he said finally, “will last forever,”—even though the bed springs sounded like the chug-chug of an old steam engine, her exhalations… a steam whistle.