trains can sometimes be ghosts

“Danny!” Ellis yelled out into the empty, clear but starless night. Not called, he yelled. He was panicked and afraid. “Danny!” he yelled again while he hurried almost clumsily in his filthy and scraped brown leather dress shoes . Loafers. The ones with the tassels. Counting as he walked straight forward from the front of the locomotive. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten. “Danny, do you know what erosion is? E-R-O-S-I-O-N?” he asked the air as he plunged the shovel next to the track into the dead desert earth. The dirt gets packed hard and cold. And it stays like that when the wind doesn’t blow. Because it doesn’t. “Well, it ain’t what you think it is.” Then he added knitting his eyebrows and voice shaking, “It’s of the mind.”  Finally the soil turned into mud and water pooled around his shovel.  

But Danny was somewhere else, remembering.

It’s almost like he called, or summoned the train to stop at the water-station. He didn’t, of course. But the timing… it seemed like it. The new trains were faster and much larger. They didn’t howl either. They were silent except for a deep rumbling growl that seemed to be coming from inside your chest and not the engine itself. It didn’t need to warn about its approaching because no one would be there and if they were they weren’t really. The trains were dark too. Almost like you wouldn’t know it was there unless you heard the growling.

Ellis swung himself onto the front of the engine, where the face might have been for those trains for kids. Steam was coming from inside the face which was different than the old trains. He said, “You gotta feel the steam on your face!” Ellis smiled and inhaled closing his eyes and holding on tightly with both arms on either side. Steam poured out from inside the iron grill. Hooking his shoes around the handrail. But of course he didn’t do this. He would have been severely burned. Danny guessed so. He turned to Danny, his face was drenched with steam and tears. But Danny didn’t know about the tears.

~ by nightvisions on October 27, 2008.