six sentences

1935

He lay still, keeping his breathing even, listening to his parents on the other side of the bed curtain. The train moved south, carrying his family home; his parents, himself ill from scarlet fever and his older brother, who lay not in the lower bunk as usual, but, in a casket in the freight car. He heard them as they mourned, asking each other why God had not listened to their prayers …choosing instead to grant the miracle of recovery to the wrong boy. He lay still, keeping his breathing even, understanding what his life was now; he was six years old, an only child, and he would never feel their love again.