#876 Train- Alice Munro
Wow, seems like ages when we last read an Alice Munro Story.
She is always a joy to come back to, one of the legends of the short story
genre. It helps keep in perspective the few hundred other others read for this
blog. This story settles in to Munro’s slow fluidity right away.
Jackson is a man coming home from the war (WWII?) and
finding himself a little lost. Instead of returning to his life, he jumps off
the train, literally, and decides to start new. When he comes across a lonely
woman living in near squalor next to a Mennonite community, he decides to stick
around. For many years they live as non-intimate life partners, co-habbitating
for mutual benefit.
“He had emerged as just one of those loners who may have got
themselves in too deep some way or another but have not been guilty of breaking
any laws.”
It was the perfect situation. He could live a bare-bones
life, un-stressful and unashamed and never have to come into contact with his
past mistakes and hurt. He didn’t expect to become old their, but life moves
on.
“It made him realize how he must have aged and changed over
the years, and how the person who had jumped off the train, that skinny
nerve-racked soldier, would not be recognizable in the man he was now.”
When the woman became ill, he brought her to a hospital and
left to, once again, run from responsibility and attachment. This is not a “new
start” story, it’s about escapism and denial.
