Marcia Aldrich
Train Stop (1)
In the distance, she noticed the warning sign flash in front of the railroad tracks as the guard rails were lowering. On the other side of the crossing, going in the opposite direction, a station wagon approached at the same time. Both cars came to a stop and waited as the freight train lumbered towards them. Often she had to stop for a train on this road on her way to pick her son up from school.
On this last warm day in November, no other vehicles waited behind the two stopped cars. The wind was picking up and rain was moving in. The woman said the last bright day under her breath.
Both drivers got out of their cars and watched the train coming towards them, so laboriously it might have been in slow motion. They looked at each other. She thought she recognized him, but he was out of place, standing on a road in a town named for an Indian chief. He waved. Yes, he did. He wore the white button down shirt and faded jeans she remembered and his hair still curled across his forehead, though it was no longer dark brown. What was he doing here, of all places, after all these years? She waved back. And then, the long train, with its worn out boxcars rumbled through.
She thought about how she'd like to leave her wallet in the glove compartment with her name and credit cards. Hop the train and ride it to wherever it was going, maybe Canada.
When the last car went through and the warning lights dimmed, she was still standing by her car with the motor running, the door ajar, poised at the stop, but the man and the car were gone.
Train Stop (2)
In the distance, she noticed the red warning sign flash in front of the railroad tracks as the guard rails lowered. On the other side of the crossing, going in the opposite direction, a silver Volvo station wagon approached at the same time. They both came to a stop before the train, not a sleek commuter train like the famous Empire Builder that collided with another train on a shallow curve in Indiana, killing thirty-five passengers, but a long rust-colored freight train, carrying who knows what, like the kind she often stopped for on the road she drove to pick up her son at school. The train was still a ways off lumbering towards them.
No vehicles waited behind the two cars stopped on either side on the last warm day in November, a day whose perfection reminded the woman of drops of water beading on a pond. The winds were picking up and rain was moving in to knock the last leaves to the ground, but not yet. The woman said the last bright day under her breath. She could feel an ending in her pulse and expected to see LAST in cloud ink printed across the pillowed blue when she looked up to the sky.
Both drivers got out of their cars and stood by the open door and watched as the train came towards them, parting the fields of the countryside like two thighs.
They looked at each other. She felt a sense of recognition as if she knew the man, but he was out of place, amiss, standing on a road in a town named after an Indian chief in the Midwest. He waved—yes, he did. Now she placed him, recognized the familiar hair that curled across his forehead, though it was no longer dark brown. Streaked with silver it caught the late sunlight. And his wave, she remembered that, too, a small wave, tentative, in keeping with who he was. What was he doing here, of all places, after years of silence? She could have walked out of her life that night when they stumbled along streets in a city where neither of them lived, given up friends, children, religion, marriage, success, salary, the grass and the roses, the house and the baby book. For him she lay awake in a darkened room at an awful hour in that life she did not leave. It all came back—the small useless details looming large after years.
She waved back, or started too, when the long train with its worn out boxcars rumbled through, blocking her sight of him.
She thought: leave your house with its much needed repairs and stacks of unpaid bills, leave your job like a paperweight flattening everything before it, leave your wallet in the glove compartment with your name and credit cards. You don't need them anymore. Hop a train with just the clothes on your back and ride to wherever the train is going, maybe Canada.
The last boxcar went through, the red warning lights dimmed and the guardrails lifted. She was standing by her car with her arm still raised and the motor running, poised at the stop. But the silver Volvo and the man were gone.
Dream
On a road, brightly lit, red warning signs were flashing and white and red guardrails were inching their way down so slowly she thought they'd never stop lowering. She was driving towards the flashes and then she stopped. There was one car on the other side of the railroad tracks and it stopped too. The sun, reflecting off its silver fenders, was blinding. She looked to the left and a train the color of red rust was making its way towards her. It seemed that this train had always been coming towards her. Then the driver of the silver car got out and waved at her. He had to be waving at her because there was no one else nearby. He looked familiar but she couldn't place him. Just as she began to raise her arm in return the train came through blocking her sight of him. The air rising from the tracks was hot and the train's passing went on forever. When it had finally gone through, the car on the other side was gone, the man, too. The road shimmered in its emptiness. When she woke, she felt she knew him, that there was something between them.
Asides
In the distance, she noticed the red warning sign flash in front of the railroad tracks as the guardrails lowered. (Amazing how many times a train came through just as she was traveling this road as if the train gods liked to frustrate her forward motion.) On the other side of the crossing, going in the opposite direction, a station wagon approached at the same time. (She wasn't sure, but she thought this was the first time in a very long while that she had encountered any car on this road.) They both came to a stop before the approaching train, not a sleek commuter train, but a freight train. (She knew commuter trains rode these tracks to Chicago, but she had never seen one passing through. No Empire Builder with its crack-up on a shallow curve for her. It was always a slow freight train with its inhuman cargo that blocked her passage).
No vehicles waited behind the two cars stopped on either side (they might have been the last people in the world, come to a stop), on the last warm day in November, a day whose perfection reminded the woman of drops of water beading on a pond (like the heart shaped pool shimmering with rain near dawn in the backyard of the guest house where she once stayed long ago). The winds were picking up and rain was moving in to knock the last leaves to the ground, but not yet. (There's that moment just before everything changes, a crescendo, a peak like holding one's breath before you exhale and release all the air in your lungs.) The woman said the last bright day under her breath (as if there was someone there with her who might understand what she felt). She could feel an ending in her pulse and expected to see LAST in cloud ink printed across the pillowed blue when she looked up to the sky (a sky that felt more like a ceiling, so close she could almost touch it.)
Both drivers got out of their cars and stood by the open door and watched as the train came towards them, parting the fields of the countryside like two thighs. (When the train had passed through, would the fields sew up again, and return to normal or would the world come to an end?)
They looked at each other. She felt a sense of recognition as if she knew the man, but he was out of place, standing on a road in a town named after an Indian chief in the Midwest. (She knew him all right. Her body knew him before her brain. The old response, the quickening whether she wanted it or not. He didn't belong in the middle of the country, in the middle of the day, in the middle of the road, in the middle of her life.) He waved. She recognized his cowboy boots and faded jeans, the curling hair across the forehead. (He was so much older, so changed, and not in a good way, changed in a diminished way, but still she recognized him, felt him, dimmed but still there—the way a ruin holds the trace of what it once was.) And his wave, she remembered that, too, a small wave, tentative, in keeping with who he was. (But she hadn't known that when they first met. She didn't know then what she knows now, that he was the sort of man who would wave weakly from the back seat of a taxi on his way to the airport.) What was he doing here, of all places, after so much silence? (What brought on this rare visitation when it was too late? His timing had always been terrible.)
She waved back, or started to, when the long train with its worn out boxcars rumbled through, blocking her sight of him. (Her waving back was automatic, what she'd do if anyone waved at her. It wasn't in her nature to not respond, whether she liked it or not. She stuck her arm straight up to the sky, more a salute then a wave.)
The red warning lights dimmed and the guardrails lifted. She was standing by her car with her arm still raised and the motor running, poised at the stop. But the car and the man, they were gone (as if they had never been there at all).
Doubles
In the distance, fairly far away, she noticed and saw the warning sign flash and flicker in front of and right before the railroad tracks as the guardrails were lowering and coming down. On the other side of the crossing and across from her, going in the opposite direction and facing her, a station wagon approached and crept forward at the same time and simultaneously. Both cars, the two of them, came to a stop and a halt and waited and watched as the freight train lumbered and grinded towards them and in their direction. Often and frequently she had to stop and put on the brakes for a train on this road, called Deadstream Road, on her way to pick up and fetch her son and offspring from school.
On this last and final warm and balmy day in November, no other, not a single vehicle or automobile waited and paused behind and in the rear of the two as in deux stopped and stationary cars. The wind and the air current was picking up and increasing and the rain and precipitation was moving in and about to fall. The woman and occupant of the car said and uttered the last bright day under her breath and in a mumble no one but her could hear.
Both of the two drivers singly and together got out and exited their cars and watched and peered at the train and locomotive coming and aimed at them, so laboriously and with such difficulty, it might have been and one could imagine it was in slow motion and hardly making forward momentum. They looked at each other and turned in each other's direction. She thought and considered that she recognized and knew him, but he was out of place and not where he belonged, standing and upright on a road and a street in a town, Okemos, named and memorialized for an Indian chief named and known by Johnny Okemos. He waved and moved his hand back and forth in the air. Yes, he did, it was an affirmed and unquestioned fact that he moved his hand in the air. He wore and was dressed in the white button down shirt and faded and color bleached jeans she remembered and recalled and his hair still and always curled and bristled across his forehead and in a sideways fashion, though it was no longer and had ceased to be brown. What was he doing here and what was his purpose and intention in appearing and materializing on the other side of the railroad crossing, of all places, why here and not somewhere else, after all these years? She waved back and lifted her arm. And then, as it would happen, the long string of a train, with its worn out and beat up box cars and caravan rumbled and clanged through and passed by.
She thought and it occurred to her how she'd like and fervently wished to leave and get rid of her wallet in the glove compartment, that container where she housed other official documents with her name, what people called her and never what she called herself, and credit cards and plastic money, yes, to hop and lift herself up onto the train and ride and straddle it to wherever, any place really, it was going, maybe Canada, that large blob of land mass up north.
When the last and final car went through and passed by and the warning lights dimmed and were no longer blazing, she was still and unmoving, standing and upright by her car with the motor and engine running and purring, the door ajar and open, poised and parked at the stop and end point, but the car and the man were gone and had vanished.
Negative
It was neither nearby nor across the ocean, but a distance far away. It was neither a car accident nor a plane crash, but a train crossing with its warning sign flashing and its guardrails lowering. Nothing trivial, nothing insignificant, even though it was an everyday occurrence. Not on the same side of the crossing, but on the opposite side, not going in the same direction, but going in a different direction, not necessarily at odds, a station wagon with a man did not back away, but approached, not sooner, and not later, but at the same time as she approached. Not one, but both cars did not crash through the rails but stopped, not for a horse or a donkey, but for a train. They did not lose faith, they did not impatiently tear back from where they came, but waited, waiting was something they both did, not as the train hurled by, but as it lumbered towards them so slowly they thought their eyes must be deceiving them.
Not on the first warm day of November, but on the last warm day of November, not on a busy day of driving, but on a day when there were no other cars on the road, not when the wind was dead and the thought of rain was impossible. The woman didn't say why is the train so slow and she didn't say why come now, why come now, she said the last bright day.
Not one, but both drivers weren't content to sit in their cars watching the train come; both got out, not one at a time, but together. They did not look the other way or back where they came from; they looked straight ahead at each other. He didn't jump up and down, he didn't run towards her, a balloon did not take flight from his pocket, he didn't do anything out of keeping with who he was, who he had always been. He stood and waved. She didn't pretend she didn't recognize that wave. She didn't lie to herself and say she had never seen that wave before. She didn't refuse him. She had never done that, never could do that. She waved back.
When the last car went through and the warning lights dimmed, she was not running in the fields, she was not riding on top of the car to Canada, she was not lying on the ground listening to the train's vibrations as it disappeared; she was standing by her car and the motor had not been turned off and the door had not been closed, and she was not balanced at the stop. And the man and his car were not poised on the other side; his arm was not still waving. The space where he had been was empty.
It was not the man who broke first, it was the woman.
Red
In the half-light, she noticed the red warning sign flash in front of the railroad tracks as the striped red and white guardrails were lowering. On the other side of the crossing, going in the opposite direction, under the shade of tree tops arching across the road, a silver Volvo station wagon approached at the same time. Both cars came to a stop and waited as the rust-sided freight train lumbered towards them.
No vehicles waited behind the two cars stopped on the last warm day in November, a day whose perfection reminded the woman of opaque drops of water beading on a slate surfaced pond. The winds were picking up and black thunder clouds the size of clenched fists were moving in to knock the last crisped yellow leaves to the ground to scatter, but not yet. The woman said the last bright day under her breath. She expected to see LAST in violet ink printed across the pillowed blue when she looked up at the sky.
Both drivers got out of their cars and stood by the driver's door and watched as the clay colored train with splotches of red came towards them, parting the fields of pale wheat like two flesh colored thighs.
He waved. He raised his arm clothed in the familiar white broad cloth. She knew him then, but his hair, once a dark brown, bristled with silver. What was he doing standing on the black macadam road? She waved back, her red sleeve limp, but then, the long train covered with graffiti and numbers in black and red paint, rumbled through.
When the last fiery carriage went through and the red warning lights dimmed, she was still standing by her blue car with the motor running, the door ajar, but the silver helmeted man and his silver Volvo were gone. The blacktop held their shimmer.
Inquisitive
Why was she traveling on Deadstream Road in the late afternoon on the last warm day of November when the winds were picking up and the rain was sweeping in to knock the last leaves to the ground?
Why did the woman think this day, this moment was perfection, the moment just before the weather and the season changed?
And why did this moment, this peak moment, remind the woman of drops of water beading on a pond? Why didn't it remind her of a sailboat cruising the calm seas before the waves grew choppy? Or a child asleep at her mother's breast?
Why were there no other cars on the road but these two? Where were all the other people?
Why did the man in the silver Volvo going in the opposite direction arrive at the railroad crossing at the exact time she arrived? And why did a train pass through at that time as well? What god was coordinating these arrivals and to what end?
Why did they both get out of their cars and watch the train approach them? Did something compel them to stand by their cars? What kind of a passage was this?
Why was the train a freight train rather than a commuter train and why was it going so slowly? Was there something wrong with the train? What was it carrying and did its burden make it so slow?
Why did the woman say the last bright day under her breath so no one could hear? She could've spoken more loudly, so why didn't she?
Why did he wave at her? What did his wave mean? Was he in trouble?
Did she know him? Did he know her? If so, from where?
And why was he suddenly there, if he hadn't been there before?
If she knew him, why did it take so long for her to recognize him?
What was between them, if anything?
What did her waving back mean? Was her wave completed or was it incomplete?
Why did seeing him make her want to abandon her life, her name, her identity, and hop the train to Canada?
Why did he leave as the train was passing through? Did he back up his car and turn around? Did he change his mind or had he accomplished what he intended? What did he intend? Why didn't he stay and speak to her?
Why didn't he try to run into her at the grocery store if he was trying to orchestrate an accidental meeting? Why at a train stop? Or was it really an accident and he thought better of staying?
What did the woman do after the train went through and she found he was gone? Did she shake her head and wonder if she had dreamed the whole thing? Did she get into her car and continue her drive to pick up her son at school? Did she abandon her car and walk into the fields? Did she set herself on fire or drown, and are those opposites or versions of the same thing? It is said one can drown in wheat. What do you think she did?
An Entrance
Of course he'd appear at a train crossing in the late afternoon at the end of November in the middle of an untraveled country road in the middle of a state in the Midwest. He wouldn't pull into the driveway of her house, parking his car in the little cutout for guests, and ring the doorbell. While waiting for her to appear, he wouldn't peek around her house to the back to see the river she had spoken of or the downward slope of the banks. How everything slid downwards in her yard, she had said, the dirt washing into the river with the leaves. And the river's current, she didn't know whether she liked it or hated it, so constant and unfettered, marked by force, a steady onward movement. He wouldn't be so bold as to enter her world or open himself to her pull of gravity.
Of course, he wouldn't try to run into her at the grocery store, his cart colliding with hers before the stalls of upright asparagus and the heads of cabbage. He wouldn't accost her among the milk jugs or find her in the checkout line stacking her boxes of cereal in neat rows. A mundane place with bad lighting and grimy linoleum would not suit his sense of romance and surprise. After all, how can one make an entrance at a grocery store?
His appearance at the train crossing was not an impromptu affair. He had to plan it. He had to know the route she took to pick up her son and the schedule of trains. He had to come a long way to get to where she was. His timing was cruel. He waited to come long after she had stopped thinking of him, had stopped hoping he might come. She had vanquished him in her thoughts, had bid a sad goodbye to him. It was cruel to appear uncalled and unbidden once again after her effort of years to let him go. Or had she let him go—does anyone ever vanquish the unrequited or does hope build a nest deep in some underwater cave we're unaware of until something disturbs the burial? He had become a secret in the absolute sense of the word, not a secret she shared with a select few, but a secret she shared with no one. She didn't even allow herself full access to the truth. Every once in a while something disturbed the memory, a smell or image made the memory dislodge and rise to the surface from the bottom of her consciousness where it had become buried, never as a complete memory or scene, always in fragments. A shard of memory had the power to derail her from whatever she was doing—sleeping, driving a car. She had submerged the whole under so many layers of sediment in an underwater cave that when pieces reemerged she wasn't sure what they were attached to, or how to reassemble them.
Of course, he chose a train crossing, with each of them blockaded on opposite sides of the tracks. Warning signs flashing, guardrails lowering—manifestations of all the cautions they had heeded, the dangers they had resisted. They had not left their spouses and families, had not dropped a bomb on their lives. They had been good citizens and had practiced resignation. His people were originally from the Midwest, he had said, from the flat expanses and the fields of corn and wheat and alfalfa with trains running through their small struggling towns. He knew the look of the fields gone fallow, the days of the last leaves on trees arching and doming over country roads, the smell of a lake somewhere in the distance, usually not too far from anywhere. He had grown up in a place like this, knew names like Deadstream Road, knew the loneliness of roads rarely traveled, the ruins of railroad tracks no one maintained, the rotting stink of wood, how kids with nothing much to do threw rocks along the tracks and broke bottles and left the pieces glinting in the sun, he knew all the debris and heaps of nothings no one wants along the tracks cutting through the fields and woods and blood.
He knew how nothing much happens year after year in small towns and small country roads where lives are stalled and routines and marriages go on forever, always the same until one day a car appears at a train crossing, coming out of a mist, around a bend, one late November afternoon when rain is promised. A silver Volvo all lit up and aglow, and a man, a seeming stranger but not a stranger, gets out and stands until a train rumbles through as if there never was an emergency in this town to get to, never a birth to witness or a baby to catch or a kiss that had to be had.
Of course he was gone then, when the train passed, leaving a gust of hot air upon her face.
Backwards
But the silver Volvo and the man were gone. Disappeared. Vanished into thin air. The black macadam was blooming with their absence and still holding the shape of their presence under the arc of sky. She was standing by her car with her arm still raised, in salute and praise be, the red sleeve of her blouse limp, and the motor running. The last boxcar had made its ramshackle funereal passage through, the red warning lights had dimmed and the guardrails lifted.
She had thought to leave her house with its much needed repairs and stacks of unpaid bills, leave, too, her job like a paperweight flattening everything before it, leave her wallet in the glove compartment with her name, the name she never liked, but bore like a penance. She didn't need them anymore where she was going. Hop a train with just the clothes on her back and ride to wherever it was going, maybe Canada.
When the long train with its worn out boxcars had rumbled through, it blocked her sight of him. She had waved back, or started to. In welcome or involuntary recognition, she didn't know which. She rarely knew what she felt until the moment had passed.
The small useless details loomed large after all these years. For him she had lain awake in a darkened room at an awful hour in the life she had not left. Once she would have walked out of her life, given up friends, children, religion, marriage, success, salary, the grass and the roses, the house and the baby book.
What was he doing here, of all places, after these long years of perfect silence? As in not a word. She remembered his wave, a small wave, tentative, in keeping with who he was. And his hair, it was no longer brown; the streaks of silver caught the late sunlight. She knew him even if he was out of place, amiss, standing on a road in a town named after an Indian chief in the Midwest. They looked at each other. Mid-point.
The fields of the countryside were parted like two thighs when the train came towards them. Both drivers had gotten out of their cars and stood by their doors at the ready.
She felt ending in her pulse and expected to see LAST in cloud ink printed across the pillowed blue when she looked up to the sky. She said the last bright day under her breath. The winds were picking up and rain was moving in to knock the last leaves to the ground, but not yet. On the last warm day of November, with no vehicles behind the two cars stopped, the day's perfection reminded her of drops of water beading on a pond.
The train was still a long ways off, not a commuter train like the Empire Builder that collided with another train on a shallow curve in Indiana, but a long rust-colored freight train like the kind she often stopped for on the road she drove to pick up her son at school. Two cars came to a stop on opposite sides of the crossing. The guardrails were lowering, and the red warning sign was flashing.
Train
She was driving on that road that looks north up through the wetlands and milkweed and under the trees that arch and dome and touch, dappling the light, the light she knows by heart as she approaches the railroad crossing where the train flows towards her, straight on from the middle distance, grasses and weeds parted on either side, coming slowly, but coming without pause, darkening and reddening, swelling in its rust and ruin, growing more distinct as it comes closer, then speeding up in a final rush, a whoosh of hot air on her face as it passes, its sound vibrating up from her knees, down her stiff arms to her hands, vibrating and rattling her until it becomes part of her own unrolling rumble.
Elegy
Let's say it begins at four o'clock, a nice round number, on the last warm day in November in a splash of last things, when the winds are picking up and rain is moving in to knock the remaining leaves to the ground. But before the leaves have fallen, she arrives at a train crossing where the warning sign is flashing and the guardrails are lowering. She arrives at a perfect sense of things, as if she has come to the end of desire, a moment whose perfection reminds her of drops of water beading on a pond, some brilliance before the lights go out. She says the last bright day under her breath and feels an ending in her pulse. LAST might as well be printed in cloud ink across the pillowed blue. It is difficult even to choose an adjective for this sense of an ending, the body pulses with it. She's finally ready to let him go, to accept their paths will never cross, she will never hear his voice nor will he hear hers, they will never touch. Driving the road she has driven hundreds of times to pick up her son, she thinks, quick before I die, describe exactly what happens. Describe the red warning sign flashing in front of the railroad tracks, describe the silver Volvo going in the opposite direction on a road almost no one travels. She can't remember the last time she encountered another car going in the opposite direction. Describe how both cars stop before the crossing, how the drivers get out of their cars to watch the train come towards them, parting the fields like two thighs.
Describe the train that passes through the countryside, on the outskirts of cities, parting fields of wheat and corn grown fallow in November, parting, too, the grass in fields on each side of the tracks, parting the endless grass, parting the man and the woman on either side of the crossing, stopped on the road that repeats itself every day, parting the past and the future. Describe the thunder clouds darkening the skies and the leaves, yellow and crisped, about to fall, and back to the train, describe the graffiti wreaths of color of the earth-bound carriage, how the air rises hot and holy as it passes.
The Road
She was always driving on this road called Deadstream Road, where tree tops dome and arch in a dark canopy of thought, going towards a clearing of light and the lake that she can't see, but knows stretches in a scythe-like curve. To slow drivers down the county put in speed bumps, only in some grand gesture of the absurd, they put in too many and too closely spaced together. The road had been turned into one long speed bump and drivers avoided it altogether. Countless times she was tempted to turn around, but stayed the course and more often than not was stopped at the mid-point by a freight train passing through. She liked being stopped, pausing. Where was she going, after all? To pick up her son for the thousandth time, to drive to work. She liked how the warning sign flashed in front of the railroad tracks as the guardrails were lowering, liked this sense that she was being kept from proceeding across the tracks and the consequences that might follow.
On the last warm day in November she was on the road to pick up her son after his soccer practice and as usual she met no one on her path. She might have been the only woman in the world, her sense of aloneness was that complete. Nothing interrupted her absorption in the day, a day whose perfection reminded her of drops of water beading on a pond. She could feel change coming—the winds were picking up and rain was moving in. Together they would knock the last remaining leaves, yellow and dark green, from the trees. But not yet. She thought about the moment before change happened and the moment after, the rise towards and the falling after, which did she like the best? Neither were avoidable, still she preferred the peak, the crescendo, like holding her breath before the air gushes out of the lungs. The last bright day she said, with a sharp exhale. She felt ending pulse in the trees, in the fields on either side of the road, in the warning sign and the guardrails, under her arms and in the train lumbering towards her. Looking up to the sky, it felt low as a ceiling she could touch with the word LAST printed across the pillowed blue.
It took her a while to notice that another car, on the other side of the crossing, had stopped as well. Both of them on Deadstream Road, a road seldom traveled, rarely traveled, going in opposite directions, stopped for the train. The train wasn't a sleek affair with a shining silver exterior sliding through the Midwest on its way to Chicago; no passengers rested their heads against the windows in contemplation of what—travel, distance, love? This was a long slow train made of a hundred banged up and rusted boxcars whose sides were covered in graffiti, carrying who knew what—freight, supplies, goods, things people needed but didn't want to talk about.
She got out of her car and then the other driver did as well, a man. They both stood by the sides of their cars looking at one another and then turning to watch the train come towards them. She knew him or her body recognized something about him before her brain could place him. He was not part of the landscape she knew so well, not part of the road. He was waving at her—his wave like a pump handle, going up and down. That wave—she knew that wave, somewhat mechanical and tentative, like him. Not a wave she could count on she discovered, that wave in the back seat of a taxi as he sped away to the airport in a different city at a different time. He was jittery, not slow and steady like her. Or maybe over time she had become slow and steady. Once she was impulsive—yes, as a young woman she was impulsive and did things that changed her.
She started to wave back, to raise her arm, almost in a salute, but she didn't get far because the train came through and blocked her sight of him. The air rising from the tracks and train passing was hot. A hot gust of air rising to her face. The train's passing seemed to go on forever. Why had he appeared now when everything was too late? His timing had always been awful, rushing ahead and then snaking away.
When the train had finally gone through, the car on the other side was gone, the man, too. True to pattern.
The guardrails lifted signaling the way was clear. The road repeats itself every day.
Afar a Train
Why here and not some other place, why on this Deadstream Road no one, but no one, travels, fit for the deer and the limousine. Why now at four o'clock on the last warm day of November after all these years? She waved back, of course she did, friendly to a fault. She lifted her arm from her side, like an oar and held it straight up to the sky, a rough hewn sky it was too, with the thunder clouds rolling in and writing over the pillowed blue. It had been perfection, the sky, and not just the sky, but the half-light and the empty road and the leaves yellowed and crisped still on the trees arching over the road. The whole thing was perfection, that was what she thought driving towards the warning sign flashing, everything at its peak and stilled for the moment, on the verge of ruin, ruin to come, inevitable, of course, nothing lasts, still into this scene he comes, driving his sleek silver Volvo from the opposite direction. Always he came from the opposite direction and stopped. That's what defined him. This time they both stopped, together, in unison, in harmony, on the opposite sides of the railroad tracks, parted from each other by the guardrails and the flashing signs. Something has always parted them, making it impossible. Out they got, and stood by their cars, looking—how they looked—her mouth moving, forming words, his not. She knew him, straightaway, though she pretended to herself she didn't, holding off the truth for a bit, needing a moment to own it. And then, as it would happen, the long train with its ghastly noise, passed between them. And she thought how she'd like and fervently wished to leave, to depart, to rise up into the air and get rid of everything she had with her, her wallet and credit cards in the glove compartment, all documents with her name, what people called her and what she weakly called herself. She wanted to be lifted up onto the train to lie on her back on the top of one of the cars with her head flung back and ride it to wherever it was going, she didn't care where. She didn't want to be standing upright when the last train went through, didn't want to see the warning lights stop blinking, the guardrails lowered, she didn't want the motor of her car to still be running, the door still ajar, her car poised and stopped at the end point, she wanted
Review; A Woman With Her Arm in The Air
"Afar a Train" is a story begun as an imitation of Raymond Queneau's 1947 Exercises in Style, which takes one brief story and works 99 stylistic variations on that story. The idea for Exercises came to Queneau when he was listening to Bach's The Art of Fugue. He was quoted as saying that what struck him was though the work was based on a slight theme, its variations "proliferated almost to infinity." He thought the experiment was worth attempting in literature.
The author set herself the modest task of creating ten variations; start small and see what happens. What began as a lark, soon turned serious. The author found that she couldn't write an anecdote and call it a story, as Queneau had. She couldn't contain the material as neatly as he did either. The story took on a life of its own. In contrast, she discovered that even the barest of stories had shadings and angles that begged to be explored and broken open. So she did. In the end, she thinks her work is better understood as an exercise in repetitive structure and simplicity than an exercise in the elements of style.
The story is set in Okemos, Michigan, named after a famous Indian chief, in an area that was once fields and farms, but has been transformed into a nondescript version of suburbia. One remnant of the past that still exists is the railroad tracks that cut through and along the back roads where freight trains continue to travel through and stop traffic. The woman can hear the trains from where she lives; their comings and goings, their movements, form a kind of musical backdrop, a soundtrack to her life. The author sets her story at one such railroad crossing on a back road, infrequently traveled because larger thoroughfares offer faster and more direct routes. Due to the installed speed bumps, traffic has slowed to below 15 miles per hour. The wet land of the terrain has hindered development.
The characters are nameless. The main character, a woman, is middle-aged and a mother. She is on her way to pick up her son at school, something she does regularly. She is traveling on the road that she usually travels on when she is stopped by the warning signs signaling that a train is coming through. This is a routinely experienced occurrence and something the woman could avoid, if she wanted, by taking other routes available to her. But she doesn't, she chooses this road over and over. In the midst of this mundane task, a task she performs without thinking, she slows and comes to a stop as the guardrails lower. This is the setting of the story and it's rather significant, symbolic, perhaps, of her history with cautions and her mixed feelings about heeding them. Her path is blocked by warnings and cautions in preparation for a train coming through. The trains in this part of the country are usually freight trains and they're very long and slow and old. The woman would know that if she was stopped, she could expect a long wait. Instead of being agitated by the delay, she gets out of her car to stand and watch the train approach. There's no one behind her and so her actions seem private to her, a matter of no one else's business. But this time another car on the opposite side is also stopped and this man gets out of his car as well.
It is late November and the timing of this event plays a large role in creating the mood and tone of the story. The weather is about to change and the woman feels this—autumn is coming to a close despite its blue skies and warm air. The landscape and weather that the woman enjoys is going to come to an abrupt end.
The story takes place on this precipice and at an end stop.
The positioning of the two main characters is worth noting: they occupy the opposite sides of the train tracks, guardrails are lowered on both sides, warning them against going forward. The tracks and the train coming towards them separate them. And they do heed the warnings and keep to their opposite sides. At first it merely appears odd that both drivers should get out of their cars, stand on the road, and turn to watch the train. But then, when they look at each other, it seems there is something between them, that they know each other. The man waves to her in a way that doesn't seem appropriate or plausible for a stranger to do, and she seems to respond to him, offering a reply when she raises her arm. Perhaps they could be neighbors or co-workers and the woman doesn't recognize him at first because she's so accustomed to seeing him in a particular setting, but I don't think that's the case. It seems more likely that he isn't someone she regularly sees, a casual acquaintance, but someone significant to her in some way, perhaps someone from out of the past who unexpectedly appears on this road, as if she conjured him out of her own desires and dreams. One feels he is someone she thinks of often, perhaps especially when she is driving by herself on familiar roads when she can lose herself in her own wanderings. In the car she is set free; it's a private space hurling her into her own longing and desire and despair. Is he real, flesh and blood real, on the other side of the tracks or does she want to see him so much that wanting has made him real, at least for the moment? Thoughts so passionate to be tangible. There's something ghostly about his presence and his disappearance, a ritual she enacts over and over. She meets him; he disappears. One doesn't know what she'll do when the train passes through and she sees he's gone. The moment of encounter is over. One suspects she'll get in her car eventually and continue on the road because that's what people do, that's what she's done. Most people go on. But I don't know. I'm not sure that's what she'll do.
I was surprised to find that I had raised my arm up in the air as I was reading and hadn't lowered it.