A Single Truth

The only thing worse than spending Christmas Eve in a rundown café by the railway station, was the uncomfortable silence that had settled between the remaining three occupants inside. That, and the constant yapping of the elderly matron content on murmuring to herself as she wiped down the counter like she had been doing for the past half an hour.

Of course, there were certainly worse places to be. At least, according to the young woman currently nursing the bitter black brew that this place called coffee. It had long since stopped warming her hands against the chill of the evening air, the swirling depths becoming but a mirror to reflect her own troubling thoughts.

A horn blared outside, somehow louder at this hour than it had when she’d first sat down with her bags packed and ready to leave.

The prissy lady seated at the counter made quick work of gathering her things and didn’t so much as spare the others a second glance as she rushed outside. The slam of the door rattled the glass slightly and through the dirty film-like texture, the front of the train was barely visible.

Then, there was silence once more. A dreadful, awful, silence that-

“Is this seat taken?”

Somehow, without making a sound, the lonesome stranger that had made up the trio of customers dining here this evening, was standing next to her table. She’d noticed him of course, when the daylight simmered down and the evening shadows blanketed the station in comforting twilight hues.

The stranger was much older than her. By a few decades at least if the greying of his beard was anything to go by. At first glance, you would almost think he was homeless, were it not for his posture. The man carried himself like someone unable to move his spine.

Feeling slightly perturbed by his sudden appearance, the woman cast a furtive look around the room, noticing all the empty tables and vacant seats. Her questioning hues flit back to his only momentarily, a small frown in place.

Despite the man’s gruff exterior and lack of this thing commonly known as a smile, there was something about his presence that wasn’t all that unnerving. An almost quiet sort of calm.

It was for that reason alone, that she bowed her head in acquiescence and stared down into her lonely mug once more as his duffle bag dropped down next to him as he took up a chair.

She relished the silence, wondering if she ought to chance her luck and take a sip of the blackened brew before her when-

“I’ve never liked this station.”

“I’m… sorry?” the words tumbled out, her bright blue hues snapping up to the stranger again. A faint smile pulled at the corner of his mouth, not quite reaching his eyes though.

“This station,” he repeated, gesturing to the world that lay beyond the fogged up, dirty windows. “I’ve never really liked it. Not even when they kept it clean.”

It was hard to imagine a time when the dark and grungy boarding platform was in a more respectable state than this. However, the nostalgic glint in the stranger’s eyes told her that maybe, once upon a time, this place also had hopes and dreams tied to it and she offered him a polite hum in response.

“Going home for the holidays?” he asked after a beat.

That question made her tense up slightly.

“I am,” she answered wryly, and finally brought the cup to her lips. It was hard not to wince as the cold liquid went down. “What about you, Mr…?”

“Lawrence,” he supplied, stretching out his hand in greeting. Humbled by this, she was quick to reciprocate. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Sarah.”

Her hand froze in his despite the reassuring squeeze he gave her upon releasing it from his grasp.

“How did you-”

“Your student tag,” the man now known as Mr Lawrence nodded towards her left, where her backpack rested.

The bright blue college lanyard with the card that had her name and face stamped across its expanse peaked out from where she’d abruptly shoved it back in once the search for her wallet had concluded. Understanding the situation, she carefully tucked the card back inside and out of view.

“But to answer your question,” Mr Lawrence said, reaching into his pocket and producing a pack of cigarettes and a lighter. “No. I ain’t going home, kid.”

Sarah’s eyes went wide as her gaze flitted between the man currently lighting his choice of poison and the matron who was still fixated on cleaning that one specific spot on the counter.

A silent conversation of sorts played out just then, in which Sarah, brows raised incredulously gestured towards the matron as if some unspoken rule had just been broken. Mr Lawrence, to her utter mortification, had the audacity to shrug indifferently.

They were the last two customers in any case. It wasn’t like the struggling old maid was going to throw them out now.

“If not home,” Sarah said eventually, having gathered her wits once more, “Where are you heading, if I might ask?”

“You’re far too polite,” the older man said on an exhale, directing the smoke away from her. “...I’m headin’ to a funeral.”

She had not quite expected that answer.

“I’m so sorry to hear that,” Sarah replied, bowing her head slightly in respect. “My condolences.”

A wry smile etched its way onto the elder man’s placid features. Almost as if he were reminiscing about something she had yet to be privy to.

“You don’t smoke, do you, kid?” he questioned abruptly, flicking the object of his inquiry off to the side. Sarah eyed the ashes rather disdainfully as they settled on the linoleum tile below.

“I don’t, no.”

A knowing hum echoed across from her as his gaze dropped down to her hands.

“But you sure drink questionable things, huh?”

“This is coffee,” Sarah argued, her fingers tightening possessively around the cold mug.

“Sweetheart,” Mr Lawrence shook his head, pinching the cigarette between his fingers, “That crap stopped being coffee round about the same time this stopped being a choice.”

Now who could really have anything good to say in response to that?

Sarah was but a girl. And silence often seemed to be the best course of action when one didn’t know the answer. Unfortunately, there were a great deal of those lately. Answers. And questions that she couldn’t quite match them to. Like a grand game of multiple choice, but someone had mixed up all of the categories.

“There’s that look again.”

Mr Lawrence seemed a bit more attentive now when she met his gaze. Gone was that far off look he always seemed to have. She rather missed it now that he pinned her with those hauntingly muted eyes.

“What look, sir?”

“The kind you get when you’re all lost up here,” he said, slowly tapping his temple with his index finger.

She flushed a little at having been caught out, but didn’t deny it. After all, from what she'd already seen thus far, Mr Lawrence was quite a perceptive man.

“It’s a bit chaotic sometimes,” she admitted, casting a glance off to the side. “But it feels like the only form of peace I know.”

“I get that,” he said, nodding at her explanation. “Like growing up in a bad neighbourhood. It’s a warzone, but it’s-”

“-home.”

There it was. The reason for her prolonged stay in this dingy café. Why she’d missed so many chances to board a train leading to her home town and opted instead to remain seated there, asking for refills of coffee she would never drink.

“Yeah,” he agreed, flicking some more ash onto the ground. “I’m guessing home is part of the problem though, huh?”

Sarah knew it was unwise to talk to strangers, but there was something about Mr Lawrence that gave voice to the problems that seemed all tangled up inside her head. A nonsensical mess, finally strung together to form a picture.

“It’s not just home,” she sighed wearily.

“Ah, so it’s the people then?”

“No, not the people either.” Sarah felt her lower lip tremble slightly, forcing her gaze down onto the table as her eyes became glassy. “It’s… me.”

Sarah was always a gifted child. Determined to a fault. Learning things purely to excel beyond her peers. And she continued to do so until well into her teen years.

The story was easy to tell when it felt like it wasn’t coming from her. The words followed as vermin did the pied piper; strung along by a tune without knowing where it would truly lead. Not until the end.

“It was easy being the smartest one in class. Easy being the one my parents were proud of,” she said softly as her brows slowly stitched themselves together. “But then, the science - the math problems - they became harder to solve...”

“Well, math and science, that stuff just gets harder over the years” Mr Lawrence grumbled, half chewing on his cigarette as he spoke. “Although, I never understood any of that crap in my day either though, so who am I to talk?”

That managed to get a soft chuckle out of her, although it didn’t last very long. It never did these days.

“But that's just the thing though…” she sighed wistfully. “The problems didn’t get harder. I just… wasn’t as smart as I once was. I was regressing.”

Her gaze drifted over to her bag, where sure enough, the failed assignments and mediocre report card remained hidden.

“I just… don’t know how to face them back home,” Sarah finally breathed, sniffing tearfully after confessing her strife. In the silence that followed, she might even have thought he left if it weren’t for the quiet pitter patter of ash falling and landing. Then finally:

“Life tends to throw harder things your way when you grow up, kid,” Mr Lawrence’s rasped. “When I was about your age, my old man sent me to get enlisted. Said it would help me ‘man up.’”

Sarah sent him a barely there smile as puffed out his chest in a mock attempt at humour.

“It took me a long time to realise that what he really meant was that he wanted me to learn how to figure out these kinds of problems on my own.”

“Why do people do that though?” Sarah sniffed as a passing train rattled the windows of the café. “Why are their expectations always so high?”

“Are you sure it’s their expectations?”

That made Sarah stop short. Because in the shadowy light of the passing train, a stillness washed over her at the realisation of what Mr Lawrence had just said. One that made her listen.

“You see, kid, parents - they tell their kids to always dream big, cause if we tell ‘em to dream small, those little tykes might just grow up with a whole bunch of regrets,” he said, resting his elbows on the counter and leaning forward. “And the last thing any parent wants is for their kid to look up at ‘em with regret.”

Mr Lawrence seemed to know a thing or two about that, it seemed.

“You dream too big though,” his gaze softened just a touch as he noticed the fragile state of the girl before him. “You end up sittin’ right where you are now.”

The first droplets of moisture slipped past Sarah’s lids, trailing down her cheek in betrayal. She reached up to wipe them away, but didn’t rush. He’d already seen it. And she’d already felt them.

“What about the ‘big dream’ though?,” she sniffed, blinking away the unshed tears that had yet to make their descent. “I can’t just…”

Words seemed to fail her. But as it turned out, she didn’t need them.

“You know what’s dangerous about big dreams?” the rhetoric gave way to one of those wry smiles she’d come to know from him. “They’re like clouds; always getting lost in the sky somewhere.”

At this, Mr Lawrence puffed out a comically large plume of smoke, watching it rise up into the air and dissipate as if to prove his point somehow.

“But the sky isn’t where the work gets done, kiddo. It’s right here,” he tapped the table. “You think the train conductor worries about who built the tracks?”

Sarah shook her head lightly.

“That’s right. Cause the big decisions were made a long time ago,” he breathed out again. “All he has to worry about is whether to steer right or left. It’s all about the decisions. That’s what counts.”

For once, it felt like there were no wrong questions to ask. No scowling teachers with disappointed pouts or sarcastic remarks from her peer. It was the freedom of being able to ask without the fear of judgement that led her to voice that which had remained unspoken for so long.

“But… what if people want me to steer somewhere that’s not on a track?” she piped up. “What if they expect me to do something incredible and I’m just… ordinary…?”

Something flashed behind Mr Lawrence’s eyes. Something Sarah wouldn’t be able to place for many years to come. Not until she was much, much older and had gained the wisdom that one could only accrue with age.

“I think that you give people too much power over your life,” he said on the breath of an exhale. “It’s easy for me to say now, but the fact is: It’s not about big dreams or small dreams. It’s not even about the people in your life. It’s about that little girl deep down you never allowed yourself to be.”

Sarah was about to argue when Mr Lawrence leveled her with a harder, much more honest stare.

“Kid, for the longest time…you’ve been so focussed on what other people think,” he said with a shake of his head, his face full of soft lines and harsh truths. “You’ve tied your worth into what you can achieve and now that you can’t, you’re lost. And if you ask me-”

A loud horn blared in the distance, signalling the arrival of the next train. The faint sound of its destination being called barely registered to Sarah as she was hanging onto this man’s every word.

This man had probably fought in countless wars, lived in places she didn’t know about and spent months overseas serving his country. But he chose to help a little girl find the answer to a question she didn’t know how to ask.

For the first time since Mr Lawrence sat down, the corners of his weary, sombre eyes crinkled. And he smiled.

“I think your folks at home just want their little girl back.”

A choked sound slipped past her lips as Sarah reached up to wipe away the now free falling tears from her face. But they weren’t because of some deep rooted sadness. It was relief, a smile of her own forming as she nodded back at him.

The last call sounded for the train, and she watched Mr Lawrence snuff out his cigarette, looking for more put together than he did when he first stopped by her table. There was a lightness to him now; a sense of accomplishment that made the duffle seem weightless as he slung it over his shoulder and rose from the chair.

“This was my last stop, kid,” he said when she stood to greet him. “You gonna be alright?”

She nodded, smiling brightly now before crossing the threshold between them and wrapping her arms around the older man.

“Thank you,” she whispered, feeling like those two words would never be enough, but saying them all the same. She felt Mr Lawrence wrap his free arm around her shoulders and drop his chin on her head lightly, returning the embrace.

“You’ve got one life, kid. Don’t be afraid of living it.”

Those were the last words he spoke to her before Sarah watched Mr Lawrence leave. Bidding one last farewell at the door, she was certain he looked every bit like the man his father would have been proud of.

She sat back down after that, her head spinning slightly from the conversation she’d just had, but with a renewed sense of clarity. One that had preoccupied her so, she’d jolted at the sound of the train’s horn when it left the station and ended up knocking the offending brew of cold coffee all over the table.

Unable to spot the matron, she quickly grabbed one of the newspapers from the stand and went about wiping up what she could of the mess. It was indeed a sticky situation and required multiple sheets, but in her efforts, one flyaway poster caught her attention. A poster, with a very familiar face.

In Memory of:

Sergeant Thomas Lawrence

It was a eulogy.

Dated a few days back. And underneath the smiling photograph of the man in uniform who’d just spent the last hour in her company, was one line. A phrase he used to quote.

“I am working toward the theory that a single truth is enough to right a life.”

- Clementine von Radics

Sarah sat there for the longest time afterwards, doing absolutely nothing other than staring at the odd flyer. Reading and rereading the life story of the man she knew as Mr Lawrence.

Perhaps it had been some strange Christmas Eve miracle? Or maybe she’d finally fallen victim to the questionable beverage in front of her? Whatever it was - whoever it was - didn’t really matter, she supposed. Because now, she felt proud to take over as the conductor of her own life. She could see the tracks clearly now and felt content to follow them as she saw fit.

She had found peace.

And so, when the next train docked and called out the name of her destination, she didn’t hesitate to grab her bag, and board it home.