“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.

“Ganesha is widely revered as the Remover of Obstacles and more generally as Lord of Beginnings and Lord of Obstacles patron of arts and sciences, and the deva of intellect and wisdom. He is honoured at the start of rituals and ceremonies and invoked as Patron of Letters during writing sessions. Several texts relate mythological anecdotes associated with his birth and exploits and explain his distinct iconography.”

“Because Shiva considered Ganesha too alluring, he gave him the head of an elephant and a protruding belly.”

traveling by rail through a decrepit landscape littered with half-finished abandoned concrete-skeleton buildings. mudflats. broken sewer lines. blowing  newspapers with black, bold headlines that warned the readers to evacuate. how could she be so attached to this place? i promised myself i would never come back here. old cranes looked like decayed ancient creatures caught in animation when the blast came. the foggy sun does not move but stays always just above the horizon. still the shadows moved. almost dark all the time.

they were crawling everywhere but were very quiet except every once in awhile one of them would wimper softly, puzzled by movement. brown bodies uncovered they gazed at the ground anatomically unable to speak. we found a grocery store at a crossroads of broken asphalt and overturned semis. carrying two on my hips we wandered the aisles stepping over empty cracker boxes and tins of powered drinks. there isn’t anything here to eat. every once in awhile we hear the shouts and crashes of malevolent teenage boys. lawlessly pushing over steel beams and kicking rocks across mud and ash puddles. the surface shining with oil. making fires out of the “have you seen me?” fliers. they laughed and pointed at them as we passed. they might be a threat later. i pulled her head closer to my neck and she grasped onto my shirt sleeve with her tiny brown fingers. the others sat around me naked playing with pieces of cardboard and lost screws. they were unaware of the oddity of their extra apendage. babies of Ganesha. their trunks swung back and forth smelling and grasping.