The Way the Wheels Stoppt Rollin'

This here story is mos'ly 'bout my brother Axel. He was a coupla years oldern'n me, an' he liked to remin' me of that quite a lot. But, I did love 'im a lot. I surely did. I used to call 'im 'THE Axel', cuz there was always some kinda wheels goin' aroun' in his head. But, somehow, after he went an' killt Jackson fer making' our aunt June bug so crazy she hung herself, he didn't seem the same no more. Like his wheels was gettin' outa balance, or somethin'. He took to keepin' to hisself a lot. An' one day he jus' up an' hopped a north bound freighter, an' flat disappeared.

I don't know 'xactly what it was about growin' up in Shrewsbury that made for one kinda calamity or another. When the Axel rolled outa town, granny, she took to mos'ly readin' the bible on the front porch an' mumblin' to herself. An' gran'daddy, well, he jus kept a goin' about his work, but he didn't seem to have much to say about anything any more. It was like it didn't matter whether the sun was shinin' or not, Shrewsbury seemed stuck in some kinda a dark cloud.

Me an' my cousins, we took to holdin' burial services in the back yard. We musta buried ever' dead thing we come across. One day we buried a cat gran'daddy shot on account it broke into the hen house an' made off with a chicken. We buried a mouse, a butterfly, an' even an ol' earth worm what drowned in a rain puddle. (Firs' time it occurred to me that worms ain't got no idea how to swim.) An' we was quite ceremonial about all this payin' of respeck to the dearly departed.
"Lord, we call upon thee now to take this here little earthworm here into yer heavenly hands, struck down in life so young on account of no fault of his own. An, we pray lord you will have mercy on his soul. Amen." We would then take to singin' a coupla respeckful hymns. "Thar's pow'r in the blood, pow'r in the blood...."

Jus' when it looked like the sun might shine again, we got us a pichur card from Axel. It was right purty, but, Axel's writin' didn't make much sense. Fer one thing, it didn't even look like his hand. Fer another, it said: "Is this here the way it always is here in Baltimore?" Gran'daddy though, he just kept a starin' an' a starin' at that card, turnin' it one way, then th' other. Then he said to me, "Get yer bag together boy, we gotta get a move on it." I askt' him where we was goin', an' he jus' said, "Baltimore".

It was a long damn train ride, I can tell ye that. Seem like we stopped ever' town between here an' there. You could smell them wheels smokin' on th' rails as we rolled inta one town after another. I never saw so many strange faces in my life hoppin' on an' off that train. Where the hell is ever'body goin' was what I kept athinkin' all through the night. I was excited when we got to Baltimore, I could almos' smell we was close to finding Axel.

It wasn't anything like I thought it might be seein' Axel again. First of all, it took forever to find him. And secon' of all he was dead. I'm as rough an' tumble as they come, I reckon, but it was purty damn hard to look at my brother, The Axel, laying naked in the morgue. An' it weren't jus' he was naked, but his skinny body was all streaked with black lines what looked like train tracks all over his arms. An' his legs, too. The official man that let us see him said he had a cardiacal arrest, or somethin' like that cuz of something he called 'junk'.

Ever'thing else is kinda a haze. We headed home with Axel in a box back there in some cargo car, an' the ride home was longer than the ride there. We gave Axel an honoarble funeral.

"Lord, we call upon thee now to take this Axel here into yer heavenly hands, struck down in life so young on account of no fault of his own. An, we pray lord you will have mercy on his soul. Amen."

I miss Axel. An' some folks say he had it comin'. But, I reckon I don't see it that way. He jus' did what he had to do, an' found it hard to live with. But, like I said b'fore, I'da killt Jackson too, he jus' thought of it afore I did. Have mercy on his soul, Lord. An', me too.