When I hear the train at night, I always think about that girl in my town who woke up one morning, drove to the tracks and stepped in front of the oncoming train.
And I think about the train operator whose life as he knew it ended the second he realized the train would kill her and there was nothing he could do.
Then I think about living close to the railroad crossing and when the train stopped on the tracks the whole house would shake.
And the shaking house reminds me of living on the county line just down from the quarry and how the house would shimmy when they blasted rock, all my mother’s little trinkets, rattling on the windowsills in the kitchen.
And when I think about the County line I think about when my dad worked Daviess county and we lived in the house I don’t remember but where I liked to eat peanuts and pretend to be the hulk and almost got run over by a truck.
And then I think about growing up. And I remember in the 7th grade when I told my cousin I didn’t want to play anymore.
I am too old to play, I said.
And then finally I think about my mother and how she is gone and how she has been gone for 22 years and how tired I feel, having stuck around without her for so long. And how angry and selfish and terrible I still feel towards her for dying. And how sometimes the desire to be held in her arms one more time feels like all the little trinkets rattling in my chest.
And then I think about that girl in my town again. The one who woke up one morning and drove to the tracks and stepped in front of the oncoming train.
