the last book I ever read (Train Dreams: A Novella by Denis Johnson, excerpt seven)

from Train Dreams: A Novella by Denis Johnson:

Over on Second Street, the Methodist congregation was singing. The town of Bonners made no other sound. Grainier still went to services some rare times, when a trip to town coincided. People spoke nicely to him there, people recognized him from the days when he’d attended almost regularly with Gladys, but he generally regretted going. He very often wept in church. Living up the Moyea with plenty of small chores to distract him, he forgot he was a sad man. When the hymns began, he remembered.

the last book I ever read (Train Dreams: A Novella by Denis Johnson, excerpt six)

from Train Dreams: A Novella by Denis Johnson:

“God needs the hermit in the woods as much as He needs the man in the pulpit. Did you ever think about that?”

“I don’t believe I am a hermit,” Grainier replied, but when the day was over, he went off asking himself, Am I a hermit? Is this what a hermit is?

the last book I ever read (Train Dreams: A Novella by Denis Johnson, excerpt five)

from Train Dreams: A Novella by Denis Johnson:

“Terrence Naples has took a run at Mrs. Widow,” he told Grainier, standing at attention in his starched pants and speaking strangely so as not to disturb the plaster dabs on his facial wounds, “but I told old Terrence it’s going to be my chance now with the lady, or I’ll knock him around the country on the twenty-four-hour plan. That’s right, I had to threaten him. But it’s no idle boast. I’ll thrub him till his bags bust. I’m too horrible for the young ones, and she’s the only go—unless I’d like a Kootenai gal, or I migrate down to Spokane, or go crawling over to Wallace.” Wallace, Idaho, was famous for its brothels and for its whores, and occasional one of whom could be had for keeping house with on her retirement. “And I knew old Claire first, before Terrence ever did,” he said. “Yes, in my teens I had a short, miserable spell of religion and taught the Sunday-school class tots before services, and she was one of them tots. I think so, anyway. I seem to remember, anyway.”

the last book I ever read (Train Dreams: A Novella by Denis Johnson, excerpt four)

from Train Dreams: A Novella by Denis Johnson:

Grainier had seen people dead, but he’d never seen anybody die. He didn’t know what to say or do. He felt he should leave, and he felt he shouldn’t leave.

the last book I ever read (Train Dreams: A Novella by Denis Johnson, excerpt three)

from Train Dreams: A Novella by Denis Johnson:

He lived through the summer off dried morel mushrooms and fresh trout cooked up together in butter he bought at the store in Meadow Creek. After a while a dog came along, a little red-haired female. The dog stayed with him, and he stopped talking to himself because he was ashamed to have the animal catch him at it. He bought a canvas tarp and some rope in Meadow Creek, and later he bought a nanny goat and walked her back to his camp, the dog wary and following this newcomer at a distance. He picketed the nanny near his lean-to.

the last book I ever read (Train Dreams: A Novella by Denis Johnson, excerpt two)

from Train Dreams: A Novella by Denis Johnson:

Grainier thought he must be very nearly the only creature in this sterile region. But standing in his old homesite, talking out loud, he heard himself answered by wolves on the peaks in the distance, these answered in turn by others, until the whole valley was singing. There were birds about, too, not foraging, maybe, but lighting to rest briefly as they headed across the burn.

the last book I ever read (Train Dreams: A Novella by Denis Johnson, excerpt one)

from Train Dreams: A Novella by Denis Johnson:

He climbed to their cabin site and saw no hint, no sign at all of his former life, only a patch of dark ground surrounded by the black spikes of spruce. The cabin was cinders, burned so completely that its ashes were mixed in with a common layer all about and then been tamped down by the snows and washed and dissolved by the thaw.