Trisomy
"Derrick doesn’t think twice."
AFTER MONTHS ON the tracks together, Derrick waved at me for the first time tonight. He’d been jogging and jogging, not a care in the world, but then had just stopped cold ten feet away and thrust his arm into the sky. He waved his hand back and forth slow, real slow, as if he’d been talking himself through each step but then hit this one and found that he liked it. The feeling, the motion. He’s been on my heels ever since, smiling, staring, hopping over tracks, smiling, staring. God, that kid can stare.
“Quit bothering Gary!” Jack shouts to Derrick. He yells as if he’d convinced himself a while ago that inside voices don’t work with his son, mostly with authority but also with traces of venom.
Derrick stands still. He looks at Jack, opens his mouth, tucks his tongue behind his lower lip. Looks like a tiny pink ball he isn’t sure how to bounce yet. I expect him to say something. Because I’ve heard him talk. He talks just fine. But he stands there, much closer to scared than he is to angry.
“You’re not bothering me, Derrick,” I say. I want it to be consoling. Have no idea if I’m doing it right, if there is a right way. I wave at Jack. “No bother at all,” I yell.
Jack starts walking towards the front of the train. “We have to get moving,” he says.
Derrick tightens the stocking cap over his ears, then takes a few cautious steps toward me. Then a few the other way, unsure of where he’s supposed to go. I point at the back of the train and tell him that’s where I’ll be.
“You should probably go with your dad,” I say.
Derrick doesn’t think twice. Sprints to catch Jack but falls down. Rolls this way and that before pushing himself to his feet and dusting the snow from his jacket. I assume it happens often, the falling. He’s come here with scabs on his chin and palms. Bouts with gravel, with asphalt, with sticks and brush. No way Jack does that to him. He gets pissed, sure, and he might shout, but never would he hurt his son, not like that. If there is one thing I’m certain of, it’s that.
Tonight is the usual, from Grand Rapids to Detroit and back. We’ll drop off or pick up freight—top of the line scrap and chemicals whose value keeps plummeting—at stations between. It once was a four or five man job in lake effect conditions like this, before GLX cut all routes to two. Before Tim and Joaquin started playing grab-ass with uppers and McGillcuddy’s. Before the two of them derailed. Before they booted me to the back of the train. Before picket signs were aimed at my chest. Before GLX started listening to the green talk, before the protestors, before the activists, before the seas of button-ups and slacks.
They got their way. The transition to everything electric has been inching along for over a year now. Neither Jack or I know what will become of us when the conversion is through. No idea if the union will find us worth fighting for, two single men with pensions, with years of knowledge rocketing toward being obsolete, with experience that would require retooling. Or if there will be a union at all. I know Jack has been looking for other jobs. I have too. Mechanic, plumber, maintenance man, none that whet the appetite. But, instead of churning ourselves into the deep, Jack and I have been trying to make the run as enjoyable as we can. A last hurrah, if that’s what it comes down to.
We’ve even started to bring our own walkie talkies on board. Jack just showed up with them one day, batteries and all. A no-no, from GLX’s viewpoint. All communication onboard is supposed to take place through their radio system. For safety reasons, reps have touted before, without defining whom they’re keeping safe by doing so. The answer is GLX, of course. Dialogue through their system means eavesdropping. It means analysis. It means evidence.
The first few times we used the walkie talkies, Jack would talk mostly about Derrick. He’d tiptoe his mind toward Wanda. But that changed. Started talking sports, and fishing, and cars we can’t afford, things he and I talk about to this day. Two things have deterred us from that pattern: Molly, the night dispatcher, who Jack likes to pick on over the train’s radio, and truckers. For a spell, we’d highjack their frequencies. Eavesdrop. Harass them a bit, offer some spice to the night. A conversation we picked up last week was with a female driver who felt she’d been dealt a bad hand.
“Jerry left this morning.” She sighed. “Again. Just took the TV, his antlers, his shirts, and that was it. Out the fuckin’ door.” She sniffled and I’d bet a hefty amount she intended for the other driver to hear it.
I was content just listening. She did have a story. And she did have a voice, just like Molly’s: soothing, even in tragedy. One that belongs in a choir.
But Jack hopped on. “You think you got it rough?” he said. There was a pause afterward that made me keep picturing that question finding its way through his teeth. Then Jack gave her an earful.
I don’t think the woman listened long before switching channels. But Jack just kept going. He vented. And I was glad he did. Something about life and death, love and loss, needs and wants, all blurred together. It made me think of the things we bottle up, the pressure it causes, the weight we teach ourselves to manage through routine. Made me question my own life for a bit, the gates I tend to keep shut.
There’s a knock at the door. I look out the window and see Derrick. Spit hangs from his lower lip. The cold has painted his cheeks scarlet. I open the door and he says something I register as, “I asked Dad if I could ride with you and he said I could so I came back here.”
“Come on in,” I say, not out of pity, or some sense of obligation. I like Derrick. Watching him decipher his surroundings is like nothing else I’ve experienced. More than a candy shop. More than an amusement park. Absolute wonder. “Tight quarters back here but we’ll manage.”
My walkie talkie chirps.
“Gary,” Jack says. After I acknowledge, he says, “Derrick said he wanted to ride with you for a change. That okay?”
I watch Derrick find the lever for the horn. He wiggles it a bit. The horn goes off. Derrick didn’t expect the sound. He covers his ears.
I bring the lever back. “We’ll have some fun back here.”
“Please don’t let him do that,” Jack says.
We start moving. Derrick jolts toward the door, his train legs much weaker than mine. I’m hesitant to touch him, though. “Take a seat,” I say, and point to the chair near the control panel. Which he sits in soon enough, hands searching for something to hold.
Jack told me once how bad Derrick’s temper tantrums can be, told me there doesn’t even need to be a traceable cause to them. They just happen. Said they got worse when he turned four, the first time he tried to run away. Said the sounds Derrick made that day reminded him of a piglet being carried by its back legs. Those sounds can shake a man. A week or so afterward, Jack drew up miniature stop signs for each door in their house as a visual cue to Derrick that he couldn’t leave.
I’ve never drawn a thing in my life, let alone keep it somewhere back here. He doesn’t seem too interested in running away at the moment, though. Now that we’re zipping along, he isn’t interested in me. Or the controls. He stays seated, looks out the window, studies the blur we leave behind.
Jack and Wanda had no idea Derrick was going to be born with Down syndrome. I guess doctors could’ve caught it beforehand, in the ultrasound, or in some blood test, or whatever. Could’ve placed in Jack’s hands the study material he would days after Derrick was born tape on the wall of the engine we share. The one that says, “Nondisjunction results in an embryo with three copies of chromosome twenty-one instead of the usual two. The extra chromosome is replicated in every cell of the body, which is called Trisomy twenty-one.”
But they didn’t catch it. According to Jack, the doctor told them after he’d inspected Derrick, pushed his eyelids up, opened his palms. According to Jack, he and Wanda had sat there quietly, but only for a few seconds before kissing Derrick and hugging one another. According to Jack, no kind of syndrome was going to get in the way of love.
Jack does have it rough as a single father though. Being an engineer doesn’t mix well. Neither do the nightshifts. But he’s tried to make it work. Takes Derrick to movies on his days off, sometimes to church. Tried putting him in school once, I guess. As it was told, there was some scuffle over a game of checkers that resulted in Derrick shrieking like a banshee. Didn’t hit the other kid, didn’t throw the checkerboard. Just shrieked something fierce. So the teachers, either not wanting to take care of it, or just not knowing how, called Jack to pick him up.
“They have special classes for kids like him,” Jack told me months back, after a run. He was too exhausted to huff and puff, to show any kind of frustration. “But I don’t want that.” What followed wasn’t what I’d call an explanation. To be honest, I don’t know what I’d call it. Jack just argued with himself aloud. Pros and cons, slanting the weight of things until any sort of solution was so far buried that he’d forgotten entirely what the argument was about.
“He’s been on my goddamn sleep schedule since then. Did I tell you that?” He even forced a chuckle. “I didn’t, did I? My mom feeds him, reads to him, tucks him in when she sees his eyes shut. But he isn’t asleep. No, no way, not for a second. All night he waits for me to come home and it’s only when I’m there that he curls up on the couch and passes out.” Jack sighed. “Gets up before I do too.”
“We start moving. Derrick jolts toward the door, his train legs much weaker than mine. I’m hesitant to touch him, though. ‘Take a seat,’ I say, and point to the chair near the control panel. Which he sits in soon enough, hands searching for something to hold.”
I can’t remember if I responded or not. I don’t think so. Probably just stood there with the same feelings I still have, stuck on that image of Derrick at school, wishing Wanda was still around to have a say, knowing that there is a whole lot of love in wanting to protect your child. A whole lot of love in not wanting him to come home crying every day, or needing to be picked up, singled out. But, goddamn, does it squash a lot of opportunities for the kid.
That’s when I proposed Jack bring Derrick with us on the route. My reasoning wasn’t strong. Just pity I mistook for empathy, for Jack, for Derrick, imagining the poor kid awake in bed, twirling his thumbs, eager to greet his dad at the door. Detained by those stop signs.
At least get him out of the house, I thought, as he and I waited for Jack to come around with school. Let him see a sliver of the world.
Took some convincing on my end, considering that it’s illegal for us to have him on board. Derrick would be unwanted freight for a transitioning company. Derrick would be a liability that is not to be seen or heard.
But he’s been with us every shift in the seven weeks since.
Derrick looks through the window. At what, I’m not sure, and I don’t think it matters. I’m just surprised at how quiet he has been. I know he sometimes rides the entire route in tears. Says the light up front makes him sad. Even after Jack turns it off, he cries. Because Derrick hasn’t told us why that is just yet, we chalk it up to the fact that not every moment is happy for him. Because it’s the truth. Another truth: not every moment is happy for anyone. Derrick has just been given the gift of having fewer ways to filter his emotions. If he’s happy, he’ll giggle. If he’s confused, his face will coil like wire until it becomes a question mark. If he’s angry, he’ll shriek. He doesn’t suppress. He doesn’t hide.
Makes me wonder what I’d be like if I couldn’t conceal my feelings, if I’d have a wife and kids with a house in the suburbs instead of a lonely one bedroom kitty corner to that Mexican market on Leonard. Maybe I’d have a son that Derrick could play with. We could take them to Garfield Park and they could swing on the swingset, or struggle with monkeybars, or just run together for hours.
“How’s everything back there?” Jack says to me over the walkie talkie.
Derrick turns to me as he hears Jack’s voice. He smiles.
“Everything’s good,” I say.
Derrick reaches for the walkie talkie.
“I think someone wants to talk to you,” I say, then hand the walkie talkie to Derrick.
He just looks at it, brings the speaker to his ear like it’s a phone.
“No, no, no,” I say. I tell him to bring the device to his mouth. “Then you push this button down. After you hear the beep, you start talking, but you gotta keep that button held down.”
Derrick nods and presses the button, then talks. “Hi Dad!” Derrick says. He keeps the button held.
“Now let go,” I say.
He nods and lets go of the button, grinning as if to say, “I should have known that.”
“Are you being a good boy back there?” Jack asks.
Derrick hits the button once but lets go too soon and says, “I’m being really good, Dad,” before I remind him he has to hold it down. He repeats himself.
“Well, you just keep being a good boy, okay?”
“I will, Dad,” he says, like any kid would say it. He has the process down now.
“Okay, now give the walkie talkie back to Gary.”
Derrick nods again, then hands the walkie talkie to me.
“Smart little guy, Jack,” I tell him. I want it to be a hint that maybe Derrick can handle more, that maybe it’d be best to try school one more time, that he’d quickly learn how to be around other children. But I’m no expert. Maybe being able to work a walkie talkie proves nothing.
“I’ll see you soon.” It’s all he says.
A former coworker of ours once called Derrick a murderer while on lunch. I’d only known Jack for a couple months at the time so I didn’t take much offense. Because it wasn’t entirely untrue. Wanda died three days after Derrick was born because of what Jack called amniotic fluid embolism. Sometimes I wonder if Jack finds comfort in big words like that, if the way they roll off his tongue calms him. I wonder because, in the years I’ve known him, he has gone on with the story, bit by bit. Said her uterus had torn during labor. Said amniotic fluid had seeped back into her bloodstream. Said that it isn’t good. Hard to detect. Hard to fix.
It wasn’t until three years or so after Wanda died that Jack and I grew closer, our conversations evolving from GLX talk to talk about life, our upbringings, our teams. He started inviting me to his house. Not often, maybe once a month to drink a beer and watch whatever sport was in season. He still hadn’t come out of it yet. The house was messy. Dishes heaped in the sink, on the counter, clothes trailing down the hallway and into Jack’s bedroom. He kept a box of diapers on the coffee table, beside medical magazines and children’s books. None of it distracted me as much as the entertainment center though.
It was almost a shrine to Wanda. A doily with her name sewn in turquoise. Dangling jewelry. A photo here, a photo there. One of her in a bikini and big sunglasses, all tanned up. Another where she was pregnant, a Woodland Mall Santa Claus crouched and whispering to her belly. Just photo after photo. Different dresses, different earrings, always something different. There was one I especially liked, a grainy one. Could’ve been before a high school dance. Jack had shaggy hair then, just stood toward the back of some dark dining room. And there was Wanda, hands on her hips, head tilted in confusion, amusement, something about Jack worth smiling at. Her dress wasn’t anything special, wasn’t too revealing, cut below the neck and showing her collarbone. But that smile. Those teeth. That olive oil skin framed by the crimson on her thin lips. Reminded me of someone I thought I loved once. Until I met Derrick, that’s where my eyes would go, that picture.
We pull into the Lansing yard. Weather’s worse here. Can’t see the stars, can’t see the treetops. Even the lampposts are wrapped in gray, yellow bulbs blotted orange by the wind’s attempts to swirl snow into wool. On the ground, grimacing men walk along each side of the cars, bodies angled, a series of parka hoods spearing the wind. They take our car off first to allow for presorting, so the connector from Detroit to Cleveland won’t have to have all its freight taken off and arranged again. Derrick doesn’t know what to make of being uncoupled. He has never been this close to these men. Maybe he’s sniped glances at them before but I doubt it. Jack probably maneuvers with one hand while keeping Derrick low with the other, crouched as if he were at war and taking cover behind a mound of sod.
If the men outside were to see him, I don’t know what would happen. They could keep it between us, ask about him over the radio instead of reporting it directly to their superior, having someone punished. Or, they could go gung-ho. Jolt the message up the chain. Rat. I don’t need to ask Jack over the walkie talkie to know that neither of us want to find out which route they’d choose. So I position myself as a shield of Derrick and move as the men do, from the east window to the west.
“You’re all right, Derrick,” I say.
I want to put my hand on his shoulder to calm him down but I know I shouldn’t turn around, shouldn’t expose our liability. And, again, I don’t know if touching him is the right thing to do in this moment. Maybe Derrick would panic, dig his half-bitten fingernails into my hands and wrists, figure out the door and fly like a hawk into the night. We stay like this. For a while we do, quiet and shuffling.
When the added freight is ready, Jack backs up into our car until it latches. This time is no different than others: the noise is short-lived, but sharp, deafening. Our car glides back a ways. But once the train’s groaning fades, I hear Derrick crying behind me. Low, controlled sobs. I turn around and crouch, tell Derrick to do the same. He squints his eyes and opens his mouth wide. No sound comes out. We’re yanked forward. Derrick’s back slings against the door. And he shouts. The shout soon becomes a moan. Something deeper, something from his gut, until his throat clutches it, until the moan becomes a shriek.
“Shh, shh, shhhh,” I say with my finger to my mouth. My eyes are reeling, from Derrick to the window, from the window to Derrick. Derrick-window-Derrick-window. “It’s all right, it’s all right.” It isn’t. We aren’t. We are confined. We cannot hear. We can barely see.
I hesitantly cradle his back and guide him to my seat. He’s shaking and still crying, but quieter now, moans drowned by the engine. Tears slide to his lips.
“You’re a big boy, Derrick. You’re doing great. It’ll be over soon. It will.” I want to wipe the tears for him and apologize, but for what?
The walkie talkie chirps. “Everything okay back there?” Jack asks.
I look at Derrick. He wipes his eyes. He bites his nails. Nerves, that’s why they’re jagged. “Can I talk to you outside for a minute?”
“Yeah, sure.”
I tell Derrick I’ll be right back. He tugs at my jacket sleeve as I open the door. I turn around, force a smile. I touch his shoulder, repeat what I just said.
“I promise.”
My shadow is lost in the murk of the night. Blown snow clings to my beard, then melts. Most of the grimacing men have made it back to their stations, the scent of the cigarettes I know them to be smoking lost somewhere in the wind. The nearby stretch of highway is empty at this hour. I see Jack up ahead, his faded red jacket first, then his boots, striding unintentionally to the engine’s rhythm. He meets me near halfway.
“What’s up?” he asks. His hood is up. I can only see his chin and lips. No need to find his eyes. “You leave him alone in there?”
“He’s fine, Jack.” Far from it. Isn’t a matter of whether he should or should not live in isolation, in fear, with apology. He just can’t. Those are three piss-poor options.
Jack takes his hood off. His eyes are narrow, his cheeks smudged pink. “What’s up then?”
“I want to know what you’re going to do with him.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that he doesn’t belong here, Jack.” I try real hard to maintain eye contact but lose the battle and let them wander to a lone semi merging onto the highway. “He’s just a kid. He needs to be around other kids.” I want to tell him how Derrick reacted to these men. I want to tell him about the nerves, the fingernails, things he already knows but continues to ignore.
Jack starts walking to the front of the train. His voice becomes distant. “You know, I should’ve known this would happen.” He turns around, points at me. “What, an hour or two with him alone and you think you can criticize my parenting? Him being here was your idea in the first place.” Jack spits on the ground. “Fuck you, Gary.”
It isn’t the first time someone has said that to me. It is the first time Jack has, though, and it hurts. A snakebite, twisting its way beneath my skin. But this is bigger than me and him. Bigger than his words. I follow him for ten feet or so.
“Let’s talk about it at breakfast, in front of him,” I yell. “Ask him what he wants to do.”
But Jack ignores me. Walks off, hood up, back into what he has made bleak.
The day I did meet Derrick, he was crying a couple rooms over while Jack and I watched a Tigers game. I’d never been around a kid with Down syndrome before. Didn’t know how to respond when Jack brought him out to the living room. Didn’t know how to stare back. It isn’t just Derrick though, it isn’t just Down syndrome; I’ve never known how to act with children, not even my nieces and nephews. What to say, how to play with them. I want to interact. I do. But I just feel like I’d hurt them somehow. That I’d disappoint. Too tall, too boring, too damaged. Check, check and check.
Jack didn’t tell Derrick to be quiet or anything. Cradled him, shushed him, waited for the episode to pass. He didn’t drink anymore that day, not even a sip, just let his beer can sweat dark rings into the end table. After what he’d been through I was surprised, and impressed, that Jack hadn’t turned to alcohol. I was proud of him. The place was dirty, sure, but empty bottles of vodka weren’t strewn about, no whiskey, not even wine. Turning to such a vice, to such relief, would’ve been easy. But he hadn’t turned to anything. Maybe those big words, that stack of knowledge, but that was all. Heaped the remaining weight on his shoulders, and it showed. He’d become thinner, a little paler than when I’d first met him, edgier than he once was.
I remember the game went to a commercial and Jack looked around the room awkwardly, trying to find conversation in the ceiling. “You hear from Evelyn yet?” he finally asked.
I remember this because he was the first to ask. I remember this because I wasn’t ready to talk about her. Just hearing her name made my throat swell. “I haven’t,” I said. But I had. She’d called me the night before. Talked quietly, like someone else was in the room. Said I’d like Pittsburgh.
“What does she want to do out there again?”
Though I didn’t say it, I’d convinced myself then that the obvious answer was men. Lots of men. And bars. And men. Truth was that she’d log fifty-plus hours per week at the only firm that would hire a girl from the mitten, find a banker that would cut that in half, marry him and have three kids. Truth was I’d bought a .357 without knowing what I’d use it for.
“Don’t really wanna talk about it, Jack,” I said. I was relieved when shortly after the game came back from commercial.
The top of the inning went by in silence, save for the commentator’s banter. I’d glance at Derrick as each batter maxed the count and find him staring at me. That kid really can stare. Made me very uncomfortable back then, very nervous, like he was trying to find something in my face. A key, a clue, a weakness, I don’t know. Tried to play peek-a-boo with him. Covered my face with my hands, moved them to the side, widened my eyes. He didn’t like it one bit. Hid his face in Jack’s chest. I apologized.
“No need to apologize,” Jack said. “You’re figuring one another out is all.”
Then Derrick hopped off of Jack’s lap and ran into his room. He came back out dragging a plastic train track across the carpet, the train still on it but wavering to beat hell.
Jack sighed. “Not now, Derrick.”
“Truth was that she’d log fifty-plus hours per week at the only firm that would hire a girl from the mitten, find a banker that would cut that in half, marry him and have three kids. Truth was I’d bought a .357 without knowing what I’d use it for.”
Derrick dragged the set over to me, placed it at my feet like a gift. Even tugged at my bootlace. When neither Jack or I got on the floor with him, Derrick guided the train around the circle, not saying a word.
“Derrick, what does the train say?” I asked him. Had thought about it for a while before asking, considered a bunch of other questions and tones before settling on that one. Baby talk, small talk. Dumb things.
But Derrick smiled at me, opened his mouth as wide as he could and let out a long-winded howl that, though it sounded more like some wailing coyote, I took to be the horn of the train.
Jack laughed. The laugh faded into a smile, one I thought should last longer than just that afternoon. Not then, but later, when I hit red light after red light on my drive home, I remember hoping it marked some kind of change. In him, in me, in Derrick. A groove found. A gap bridged. A corner turned. I’m happy I was there for that. I am. I think of that moment often.
“You guys are about fifteen minutes out of Detroit, right?” Molly says over the radio, her voice lower than normal. I picture her swiveling in her chair, black hair haloed by the headset, Big Mac wrapper balled on her desk.
“Aww, what’s the matter, Molly?” Jack asks. “Boyfriend leave ya?”
Jack talks to her like this sometimes, tries to be playful. He isn’t good at it. Sounds forced. But I want to cheer him on with Molly. To say he deserves it may be shallow but I like to think he deserves her, that they could make something work. Maybe not marriage and picket fences, but something.
Molly comes back with her usual vinegar. “I don’t have a boyfriend, thank you very much.” That voice, even doused in sarcasm, just sings. Hints at youth, says her soul is not yet rusted.
“Yeah, yeah, yeah, we’re close,” Jack tells her.
The radio is silent for a few seconds, until Molly, her voice low again, asks, “Is someone else on board with you tonight?”
Which rattles me. I look at Derrick, who stares at the door behind me.
“I got a call in from Lansing saying someone saw an additional passenger in the window.”
I sigh, then say into my radio, “We do have an additional passenger tonight, Molly. Derrick’s on board. Derrick’s with us.” It’s time. And Jack sure as hell wasn’t going to.
I turn my radio down so I can’t hear either one of them, then grab the walkie talkie. “I’m silenced, Jack.” It’s the first thing I’ve said to him since Lansing. But I want to let Jack and Molly talk without Derrick or me listening. I don’t care what they talk about. Him, me, them, the consequences, the weather, doesn’t matter, as long as they talk. All I want to do is watch the boy.
Because Lake Erie has yet to pull winter’s veil over Detroit, Derrick has rediscovered his amazement with this end of the train. He watches the tracks fade behind us, endless, indistinguishable from the next rung if it weren’t for the side streets, their glow, their bicycle racks and bent signs. And if I was able to help in this amazement, I’m happy with that. I’m happy imagining that Jack and Molly are hitting it off, that they’re setting up a date where he opens the door for her at a fancy restaurant and then takes her for a walk around the city. They could hold hands, they could hug, they could move forward from there, see where it takes the three of them. Because there is room. In all of their lives, there is.
Skyscrapers come into view. The Marriott. Cadillac Tower tucked somewhere in there. Others I’ve never known the names of. The flashing red bulbs of railroad crossing signs begin to pulse onto the hoods of stopped sedans.
“Go ahead,” Jack says over the walkie talkie. And I can hear it in his voice: he stifled a laugh to say so.
I’ve been thinking about this for a while. “Come here,” I say to Derrick.
He’s hesitant, but eventually takes the two steps to the control panel.
“Give me your hand.”
When he gives me his hand I can feel that trench on his palm the doctor felt, the trench Jack said most born with Down syndrome have. There is no message in this trench, no sermon. In fact, I don’t know how it makes me feel, and I probably won’t for some time. But I am not sorry for him. I am not sad for him. Or angry. Not at all.
I place Derrick’s hand on the horn’s lever and make sure his fingers wrap all the way around. “Push it forward,” I say.
He does. The horn blares. He smiles. I smile. He bounces my hand up and down.
“Get ready,” I say. “We’ll do it again in just a second.”
I tell myself to howl when he does.
Author Commentary for “Trisomy”
Peek behind the scenes with author Garrett Francis.
Strays Like Us
“Trisomy” is a short story from Strays Like Us, a collection of ten standalone stories exploring life as a kid growing up in America.
An earlier version of “Trisomy” was published in Midwestern Gothic.