Waiting On The Train

The weeds are pumped with blood, unmitigated residence in these parts allowing them to grow wildly through the cracks in the wood and the seedy underbelly of stones. The meek ones stick to the tracks, but the most brazen reach up to the train. They’ve caught the cow catcher; they’ve wrapped accordion-style in between its metal prongs. Up in the sky slumped trees shroud the locomotive in vines. I suspect their awkward embrace is unwanted–the tendrils are delaying its arrival at the end of the world.

I watch my step as I get closer–the weeds are just nature’s expendable fodder, but the copperheads no doubt nestled in the shrubbery are its seasoned soldiers. And I’m not trying to incite their wrath.

Shink. Shink.

The window’s been broken. Something wild’s in the cab. I grip my shovel tighter as I slink around the cylinder.

Shink. Shink.

It’s clawing at the metal. Hell, it might even be in the engine. Sweat runs down my bro–

Crack!

It’s stopped. It heard the stick trampled under my foot. I’m getting careless, I need to relax, it’s gotta be small, it won’t get the jump on me…

Shink. Shink.

Wait. Is it… stoking the engine?

I jump out into the open.

Its skull is bathed in dirt and coal dust, cracks forming in the bone. Inside its body a tree is growing, sapping the marrow from the ribcage as it coughs up black lungs. It doesn’t take notice of my appearance, the brim of its tattered cap dangling limply over his eye sockets. It just keeps shoveling, scraping at the floor for scraps of fuel and blowing them into the burner.

I stare at it in disbelief as it slowly, agonizingly slowly tilts its skull to meet my gaze.

“Hello.” He’s unearthing his voice, digging it from the depths of his hollow throat. It’s deep in there, so it comes out guttural and scratchy at once.

I lower the shovel I had viscerally jammed against his neck.

“It looks I’ve run out of coal. I’d sworn I had more than plenty, but… it’s all gone.”

“...How long’ve you been here?”

“Hmm… not sure. But I’m late. They’re gonna be after m’head down south.”

I look at him for a second, then let out a deep sigh. I’m not high enough on the payroll for this.

“Look, sir. You’re gonna have to get out of the train. We’re clearing this out tomorrow.”

“I can’t. I told ya, any later ‘n I’m a dead man.”

“About that…”

The fear’s palpable in his invisible face.

“...Nevermind.”

“If you can head down to Agricola and let ‘um know the situation, I’ll be outta here quick. It ain’t far, jus’ follow the tracks.”

I’m not paid enough to deal with ghosts. But I’m also not paid enough to not slack on company time.

So I go back to my car and begin the journey to Agricola.

***

It ends up being maybe a twenty-minute drive–better than I’d expected.

Usually when you’re out in the middle of nowhere, not much changes for minutes, even hours as you drive; nowhere is nowhere until you’re somewhere again. But as I trail the tracks, the stalks of grass and weeds and growing buds I'd grown familiar with are at once forcefully ripped from the scalp of the earth, asphyxiated by the jarring transition into dry, desert-like soil devoid of nutrients. As I pull in I realize there’s nothing to romanticize now, no picture to paint of nature reclaiming its territory in the absence of people. No one is reclaiming anything: out here both sides lost everything.

Agricola

Pop 39

Stale dreams and rotten witch hazel churn in my lungs and nose as I come into town.

Through the window I see a woman. She’s on her knees praying to Jesus, or someone, anyone who’ll fix her daughter: she’s come down with something dreadful, and her skin’s thinning out by the second. The local medicine man’s come in and is helping her calm down. The doctor from far up north already left after telling her there’s nothing he or she or anyone can do–not without taking her money, an act just short of robbing her at gunpoint. Medicine man knows her daughter’s a goner, too, but he’s not here on promise of payment. He’s just trying to console a friend.

Then I see the town panhandler. You’d think after a while he’d realize the well’s dried up in Agricola, or that his dusty hat gets lighter each day, and he’d hitch a ride on the train and skip town. But most people get the feeling he’s too preoccupied waiting for a different kind of train. He’s getting to that age, after all, where his ultimate destination is in full view and he can’t ignore it any more. He’s a smart guy, and real friendly, so it’s a real shame he is where he’s at. It’s no one’s fault–not his, either. The world dealt him a bum hand and he had to fold.

I walk past him into the saloon, nearly tripping over a man passed out in the doorway.

There’s an out-of-towner with his boots up on the counter. He’s got his gun in his hands, trying to smack the flies with it as vocal smoke clouds his judgment. His finger slips; a shot goes off; no one looks back. The bartender tells him to knock it off; cowboy looks at him like he’s crazy, then begrudgingly puts his gun away as he scowls. If it were booze he were indulging in and not a cigarette, it might’ve been a different story.

The table of 8’s passing cards between hands. The guy who’s got all the chips looks the same as the guy who’s been had. Either there’s nothing at stake, or there’s so little that it won’t make a difference for anyone playing. I take the bottle in the middle of the table because the bartender wouldn’t pay me mind when I asked for my own. The winner reaches for it without looking, wrapping his hand around the glass and lightly tugging at it like a toddler clinging to a toy. I let him have it, feeling more than unsettled.

I step outside. There’s a vulture with its back lit by the sun flying—in choppy motions, left wing more inactive than the right—above me. She perches on the roof hanging over medicine man’s head.

“What’re you doing out here?” She croaks.

“Uh, I’m here on account of the fireman. His train’s broken down up north.”

“Really.”

“...Yeah.”

“Did you tell the sheriff?”

“Not yet. Truth be told I’m just here to kill tim–”

“Well, you better be quick. Watch out.” She points behind me with her wing.

I turn around and have the wind knocked out of me in a flash.

Cowboy rushes out of the saloon first, screaming like a madman as he crashes into me. The rat race follows behind him, running around with their arms flailing and banging their heads into walls as queens and kings and jokers are thrown everywhere. The saloon spits out the drunkard, slams its doors closed, throws the wine off its shelves and barricades its windows. Panhandler knows he’s already been done in, so he’s laughing as he looks to the ground. The diseased one’s turned deceased, and her mother’s wails pierce the mania and hold it still for just a second until the needle bends and it descends into hell and slips out of control once again. Medicine man shakes his head.

Then the houses crumble to ash and their guts get tossed by the orange devil’s dusty fingers as rails are divorced from planks. They’re dancing and sobbing and collapsing in the street and I try to stop them but my hands stay folded against my will.

Panhandler looks me in the eyes before he bites it. He’s still smiling, because it’s only gotten funnier to him.

And that’s all of the undoing.

“Well, I’m sure it wasn’t that dramatic,” the vulture admits. “I don’t much care how it happened, though. At the end of the day I’m just the one that came in and cleaned up the mess.”

I turn back around to her.

“And I’ve done a good job, too,” she continues. “There’s nothing living and nothing that’s ever lived left in Agricola.”

“Nothing?”

“Not except for me and you. But you’ll leave soon. And if you don’t I’ll wait ‘til you die and peck your brains from your skull. And then it’ll be me again, all alone.”

“You like being alone?”

“Sure.”

“Ditto.”

I start to head back to my car. But as I turn around my nose catches something.

“Smell that?” I ask her.

“No.”

“Course you don’t. You’ve been dragging your beak in death your whole life, it’s practically all it’s good for smelling.”

She follows me back through the tracks as I chase the scent. It’s not sweet, or alluring really—maybe a little lemony. But it’s clear. It’s not like the hazy alcohol stench that seeps through the saloon’s teeth or the humidity lethargically wrapping around my head and filling my nose with a vague, indiscernible pressure. It’s perfectly coherent.

I take a left on a dirt path stemming from the railroad that runs between the sheriff’s office and the church. It subtly shivers left and right until it smacks into a quiet house, thin but two stories tall.

The color’s dripping from her hair out of a leaky faucet, the remaining vestiges of red softened by gray solvent, but it’s still full and runs like a river down her back and shoulders under protection of a sunhat. She doesn’t hear my footsteps: she’s busy watering the yellow flowers growing at the front of the house.

TWEEET! 

The train’s come into town, easing to a halt while announcing its arrival. He’s carrying the weight of the world by his eyebags, his face sullen and his figure hunched over as the door swings open and he stumbles out. He breathes in through his nose and lifts himself up.

She turns around as the whistle blows. They smile as they see each other, the sandbags dropping to let them both lift off the ground. He falls into her hug as they melt into the sand and the house is swallowed into the ground and the train rots into nothing. But the flowers are still there, somehow alive.

“How about that,” Vulture says. “Looks like I was wrong. There is something worthwhile left in this dump.”

I’ve already started walking away. She follows me back to my car, and as I get in she looks at me longingly with what I assume to be the vulture equivalent of puppy-eyes.

“…Oh, buzz off, I’m not just gonna keel over and die for you. Stupid bird.” 

And I’m gone.

***

He’s still shoveling coal when I come back. He lights up as he hears me approach.

“You saw ‘um, yeah? The daylilies?”

“...Mhm.”

“I could see ‘um in your eyes,” he says. “Mama always took care of ‘um. Sometimes it seemed like she kept on jus’ so she could keep ‘um alive. ‘N when I’d stop by home they’d be the first thing I’d smell.”

The sun’s starting to set, so I need to wrap this up.

“I’m sorry, but I don’t think anyone’s coming for you.”

He’s confused for a moment, then he remembers what he told me earlier.

“Heh, I’m sorry too. I led you on. I know I’m dead ‘n gone.”

“What?”

“I didn’t need coal. I jus’ needed someone to go check on ‘um. The daylilies, I mean. I tried m’self, but seems I’m bound to this train. When I try to leave m’brain gets all fuzzy ‘n I wake up shovelin’ the same as ever, in a trance. Again, I’m real sorry, I–uh, didn’t wanna waste your time–”

“Look, don’t worry about it, it’s already done,” I tell him, attempting to mask my annoyance. “For what it’s worth, the flowers were nice.”

He still looks concerned, so I change the subject.

“So, what happened to Agricola?”

“Nothing, and that’s the problem. There was no big bang or what have ya’. Sometimes things jus’ crumble. It never was the same after the lil’ girl Bonnie fell ill. ‘N then later on people really lost hope 'n either left or died once the railroad was decommissioned ‘n investors lost interest in us. I lost my job as a result and left town, too. But Mama couldn’t let herself leave. So eventually she was all alone down there, watering the daylilies. I like to think it was her protest against the world. Those daylilies take to heat fairly well, ‘n Mama always found beauty in stuff like that. Jus’ her and her flowers in the middle of hell.”

He straightens his cap. “I felt bad leavin’ ‘er there. But I had to live my own life, ‘n I knew there was nothin’ else left for me in that town. But once‘n a while, when I’d get feelin’ homesick, I’d find my way back to that same smell.”

Then he gets up from the cab and lands on the ground.

“I think it’s time for me to get goin’,” he says. “I’ve caused you enough trouble as is. Thanks, stranger.”

He starts walking down the tracks. As he goes his stride becomes wider and his steps become slower, until at last he turns to mist and disappears.

The next day they came and hauled the train away.