ERNIE AND ERNESTINA: Searching

Book Two, Chapter 182: Something’s Gone Missing

This morning I awaken from a dream about a yard sale.

The sale’s taking place in a cabin in the north woods. A train is going round and round on the floor, and Joshua’s operating it. It’s a Rock Island Line, like the one Ernie gave Joshua for Christmas when Joshua was seven. I want to buy the train for Joshua, but it’s not for sale. “I’m a collector,” the cabin owner says. Before the sale ends, this man, wearing a felt hat like Ernie’s, recites Robert Frost’s poem The Road Not Taken. Joshua begins to clap, but the man’s not quite finished. Now it’s a woman reciting the poem as she rolls back and forth on a bed. Two friends surround her, encouraging her.

An interpretation of this dream?

Joshua doesn’t know — I haven’t told him yet — that his Rock Island Line train was stolen from our storage bin either shortly before or shortly after Ernie died. A few years ago, when a staff person saw it in storage, he offered Ernie and me a hundred dollars for it. When we checked with Joshua, he said: “The train’s not for sale. I’ll never part with it.”

Now it’s gone missing. I don’t have the heart to tell Joshua. Maybe he won’t come looking for it.