Short Stories

Below are a list of Short Stories. Please choose from one of the following stories to read it.

An Elephant Named Olympus
Miss Blue
A Girl Called Tree

An Elephant Named Olympus

The hands showed four straight up on the oaken Register when the train pulled away. There was little reason for the train to stop at all except that it had done so for more years than even George W. Thompson could remember --- No. 407, 4:00 p.m. Daily -- Sittings in Dining Car begin at 6:00 P.M. Only trains hauling freight-only would came through now. They will only slow and the brakemen and the switchmen, riding between the cars and hanging on hand-worn metal rungs, will sometimes waive. But no special train, like the circus train, will ever come through again.

He fixed his eyes on the last car as it rounded the curve heading north and toward Augusta. For thirty-seven years the old man announced throughout the station that it will then go on through Georgia, the north Georgia mountains, across both the Carolinas, into Virginia, Washington, and on into Baltimore. He announced it today even though there was only the one in the waiting room to hear him at all.

The once familiar roar of the engine lessened as its growing distance started to muffle the syncopated music of its rolling steel wheels. They crushed out a dozen drummers’ rolls against the hard metal tracks as the steel rods parroted each other up their heavy and barren iron road. The Station Master looked up the rusting tracks with the polished iron showing only on the very top and then not as bright as before. The sides of the rails showed their rust and their coating of long accumulated red Georgia dirt. The rails hid there in the overgrowth along with wooden cross ties laid even before the old man started work all those years before, back when he and the four o’clock were both young and new. He watched it knowing it was going to be one of the last times for the Carolina Express and for it to make its time captured noise.

The gray haired man looked over at the solitary figure of his grandson walking through the stained wood with hand polished brass handles of the back door of the station. He watched as the boy walked on the weathered concrete walk where all those others had stood, walked, ran, said hello, or too often goodbye to someone who would never see either them or the station again. He paid the boy five dollars once a week out of his own pocket to sweep out the two inside rooms and pick up any trash blown up against the red cindered brick framing and coloring the outside of the station. It always looks good to have everything tidy, he would say when asked why -- clean, and picked up with the Waiting Room floor swept and made presentable for whoever walked in as if a judge to compare with other stations along the line. Out-dated magazines were stacked high and in some kind of order on the table beside the long wooden pews--those flat troughs that had held travelers going north, servicemen returning to some hidden piney-woods base, or to a waiting ship docked in Norfolk or maybe Newport News. That, or serving as a hard-surfaced place to rest, or a table for suitcases or trunks to maybe be transferred to a train running on into New York or maybe New England in the fall. Sometimes even a makeshift bed for a sailor or a restless five-year-old.

He straightens the room himself and early each morning to help him pass the time while coffee is brewing in back, and while hours and days are becoming shorter as each season and each train passes by. He let the boy straighten and clean as well and as he always did to help him and his mama. But they, like the disappearing trains, had to leave for good, or so she told him. He knew that. There is the job she says she has to take down in Jacksonville, and she seems to know best. But just because the 10:30 and the 4:00 aren’t going to stop anymore doesn’t mean the station doesn’t need to look presentable. It was respectable enough for both Harry Truman and General Eisenhower when they stopped in, and it will stay that way despite what those young, snotty-nosed boys in Richmond seem to think.

“It won’t be long now, boy. Come the end of the month and we’ll kiss the old girl goodbye for good.”

“Yeah, Grandpa.”

“No one has gotten on the 10:30 all summer now. I have it written down inside on a daily somewhere, but it’s been a long time. Then the 4:00 o’clock hadn’t been much better.” The boy turned from staring around the edge of the station and at the stone-frosted parking lot to see the old man standing and searching the distance and peering over the heavy framed glasses that always slipped down on his nose. The Station Master wore his blue railroad shirt and his striped coffee-stained tie like he did every day. He stood looking out and staring up the tracks leading north, then over toward the browning scrub oaks on the other side of the tracks.

“Grandpa, ever since me and Mama moved here, you’ve been talking about there being fewer and fewer trains. I guess they still have trains in Jacksonville . . . You can catch a train and come and see us there, can’t you? I mean, go over to Savannah or Waycross or someplace and catch one when they quit coming through here . . . Anyway, Grandpa, I’ve got to go when Mama gets here. Everything is all done inside.”

“People not traveling any more like they once did, boy -- leisurely travel I’m saying. Going someplace for the sake of going and taking the time to get there.” He made only a few steps, and then turned again to the empty tracks. He spoke first louder, then softer as to not disturb. “Taking the time to make something of your journey with a Dining Car, I mean. With a Pullman sleeper with porters pulling down the sheets and blanket and fluffing the pillow for you like you were somebody. Your own private room, I’m saying. And with day coaches to see the world like anybody ought to see it. No, people just don’t take the time any more.” George Thompson unclipped his tie and undid the top button on his uniform shirt. His clip-on tie hung unfurled in front and was held in place only by his belly and an old twenty-year pen he used as a tie tack. It stuck through a place on his tie that looked like it had been scratched over and over again by a cat. He wore his walking boots today, the ones he wore for tracking through the woods when he ever took time off and away from the station. “People not even shipping things like they were. People not caring like they once did. Those days are gone now, boy. Gone and will never be again.”

“I’ve got to go when she gets here, Grandpa. I’ve got Little League practice at 5:00 o’clock. Three more practices ‘til we go. Do you think they will have Little League in Jacksonville?”

“You sure are in a hurry,” he answered. He looked at him as if some outward sign on him told why he took his eye off the tracks at all. “Always in a hurry. Passenger trains won’t stop, even freight cars are becoming fewer and fewer. And other things, more important things like the circus train. Well, you can kiss all of those days and those trains goodbye. I’ve told you about the circus train, about Olympus, haven’t I.”

“Yeah, grandpa,” he answered as if he had answered that same question a million times before. “Mama says she’s been waiting ‘til now to move, but we will be there by the time school starts up again.”

“Always worrying about moving or baseball practice or whatever. That elephant Olympus didn’t worry none.” He kicked a few pieces of misplaced stone off into the other tiny rocks mingled in with the dead grass and weeds surrounding the tracks as if, all somehow meshed together -- as if they were one. “Olympus never worried about school or practice or anything. No, he would come in here with the circus train and he would have a whole car of his own -- just like he himself was president. Maybe president of the Circus, he was. Yeah, unload him first, they always would. Sometimes there wasn’t anything for him to do but just to stand there like he was a supervisor or something. The biggest elephant I ever heard of, much less seen, standing right over there by those old scrub oaks. ‘The man’ they would call him. Looka there, look at ‘the man’ watching what’s going on. Watch ‘the man’ when he pulls up the tent. Everybody knew him, everybody called him by name--respected him. And I mean real respect now . . . Like I said . . . Big? Listen, he was the biggest elephant in the world. There is no need to argue about that today. No, he would be put right in front of the other elephants -- those that he led around trunk to tail, tail to trunk. Olympus didn’t have to latch onto anything, though. He would be out in front of everything: cages with tigers, cages with monkeys, seals, whatever they had that year. Makes no never-mind . . . He would prance, he would. And elephants can prance; don’t get me wrong about that. He would kinda sway back and forth from side to side like he thought he was something, really something. When they got out to the fairgrounds, and had to raise the tent . . . why, everyone would do what they had to do, then they would hook the end of a rope on Olympus and he would pull the whole thing up by himself. That’s what people really came to see. People standing around--those with the circus and those who came just to watch the parade of the animals and the putting up of the big top, they called it. They would clap and call his name like he had done some magical feat or something. He had, don’t get me wrong about that. But that was just like a toy to Olympus. Yeah, you could appreciate old Olympus. Everyone knew that and waited for him every year . . . And everyone knew his name, too. Olympus they would call out. Not Olympus the Magnificent or anything like the ringmaster would call him once the show started that night. No, just Olympus. Like his name alone-made people stand a little taller.”

George Thompson put his arm around the boy’s shoulder and they started away from the tracks and back toward the waiting room door. “When I was your age, I was always thinking about playing a little ball, running a race, fishing down in Cove’s Creek, or whatever. And the circus. I was always thinking about the circus back then. Yeah, I was always thinking about that.”

“Mama says that this will be the best move of all -- to Jacksonville I mean. Says it will be really nice and what we always wanted. Says it won’t be long until I can get a paying job after school. I plan to do that, you know. Or as soon as I can.”

“Listen at you. You and your planning about what you’re going to do and when. You and your mama are the planningest two people I have ever heard. Planning ahead, looking forward to -- you got your whole world laid out front of you, don’t you? . . . Only don’t work so long that your work ain’t there anymore. No, don’t do that. Listen, Olympus never got in any hurry. That’s one thing I can say about him, he never got in any hurry, what so ever. He never did any planning or worrying about if the circus needed him. No, he stopped and enjoyed life as he went. That way, if the circus didn’t need him, he didn’t have to worry. He just knew it when it happened and went on and did what he had to do. Elephants are like that. There was never any question in his mind about that at all. Oh, he enjoyed people and enjoyed being looked at. He was good and he knew he was good. But he also knew when it was time. Yeah, that was ‘the man’. That was Olympus.”

“If the circus train won’t come, you won’t get to see Olympus again, will you?” the boy asked

“I wouldn’t get to see him if it did, you know that. They retired ole Olympus five or six years ago now. Your Mama saw him a lot of times when she was a little girl and I remember you seeing him that one time. You just stood and starred. But no, no one will ever see him again.” They turned and walked through the doors from the tracks, across the swept-out waiting room, then out the front doors to the empty parking lot and where his daughter was to pick up the boy. The Register rang another hour but it, itself, as they both looked at it and George Thompson checked the time on the watch he kept in his pocket and tied to his pants with a chain.

“So where is Olympus now?” the boy asked. “You probably told me, but I forgot.”

“Sold him to some road side amusement park, they did. But he didn’t stay there long. You must have heard that story.”

“I guess I’ve heard a couple of times, but I forget.”

“The story I know as true is that it was up in north Georgia somewhere. They took him up to a siding and some amusement park people came and got him. Then, when they got him to wherever they were taking him, he raised his trunk and hollered out like calling out to God or God himself knows what. He raised himself up like he was a bucking horse, they say. Olympus showed them -- showed them that if they didn’t need him, he would just as soon go on off on his own. He was probably right, him getting up in years and all. But he showed them. He left them and they lost him. Old Olympus trampled off with his trunk swaying back and forth and his old worn tusk pointed straight ahead. Last I heard, no one has seen him or caught him--not to this very day.”

“You don’t lose an elephant, Grandpa. Maybe a cat or a dog, but nobody loses an elephant.” The boy turned his head and all but laughed.

“That’s what I always thought. Or at least, that’s what common sense would tell anybody. The last I heard, he had taken off up into the mountains, and no one has seen him since . . .Went up to die is what he did. That’s what I know -- know that for a fact. But when he did it -- when he had to quit and end it all -- he did it under his own terms and when and where he wanted to.”

The old man’s daughter pulled up and stopped right in front for him to open the door for the boy.

“You ready to go?” she said, then, “Hello, Daddy.”

“Yeah,” the boy answered as he got in. “Grandpa is telling me about Olympus again. About him escaping to the mountains somewhere. Let’s go.”

“Still talking about that elephant, huh, Daddy? Him escaping to the mountains to be all by himself and die. Listen at you . . . even after all these years. Don’t you think they found it and just haven’t said anything? I mean, it would be on the nightly news and everything, wouldn’t it? Surely people would know if an elephant was on the loose, even up in the north Georgia mountains.”

‘They never found him because he didn’t want them to find him,” the old man said. “That’s what I know. Olympus knew his days were up. Cats, elephants, they all know about those things . . .When their time is up, I mean. Nobody has ever found any bones, I grant you that. But someday somebody will. Old Olympus knew. He knew when his time was over and it was time to die, when the circus didn’t need him anymore. He did the only honorable thing left to do and did it with pride.”

“You’re so full of rumors and stories, Daddy. Sometimes, well, I don’t know . . . Elephants going off somewhere to die.”

“Yeah, well, you gone, the boy gone, Olympus off without telling a soul -- off somewhere to die in dignity like he did.”

She looked at the boy as they smiled at each other so the old man couldn’t see. “We will hear about it someday. He’s in somebody’s circus or carnival somewhere is what I think. Besides, there’s no elephant, or trace of an elephant, up in any north Georgia mountains.”

“That’s not necessarily what I’m saying. What I’m saying is that after his time was up, Olympus went off and died like a man -- a real man.”

“Let’s go, Mama,” said the boy. “Bye, Grandpa.”

The old man patted the top of the car then stepped back as it pulled away from the curb. He watched the window on the car go up to close in the conditioned air and away from any more talk about the elephant. His eyes stayed on the car until it made its way through the parking lot then out onto the road leading to the highway and back to town. He turned and looked at the station then back at the empty parking lot behind him. There were no cars in the parking lot and no train on the track behind the station, just open area and a motion-missing silence.

He walked back inside the station and picked up a travel bag already packed and filled with personal belongings. The bag had the railroad’s name on it in gold letters and a tag with the name George W. Thompson written on it in ink. He reached into his pocket and pulled out the long silver chain he always carried with the keys clipped on the end. He walked out the back, locked the door and walked onto the platform leading below and to the iron tracks. He stood on the platform before jumping with his bag and onto the tracks themselves.

Without looking back, he turned and fixed his eyes on the long tracks out in front of him. He started up the tracks leading away from the station, his head high, and his step high and sure. He walked the track leading out from town, through Georgia, the north Georgia mountains, across both the Carolinas, intoVirginia, Washington, and on into Baltimore.

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