As a boy I lived in a small north Louisiana village. There were only five stores, two service stations and one cafe. A railroad track ran through town, and all of my life I lived with three freight trains shaking the earth as they blasted through town, including one at around midnight. I would sometimes get up enough courage to stand as close as I could to this huge metal creature crashing through the silent midnight. My Southern Belle is a short recollection of how I felt.
My Southern Belle
The billowing cloud pumped out of the great steel engines and rolled into the night sky above the plunging mile of freight cars. A full moon glowed ivory and gray on the swelling rolls of sable clouds boiling toward the stars. The rhythmic cacophony of roaring engines, moaning whistle, squeaks, clanks, pops and shrieking metal swelled as the Southern Belle approached and rushed by me. The music of her jangling, swinging orchestra filled the sleeping midnight.
Standing on the side of the track as close as I could get, I was engulfed in the pungent smoke and drumming engines that jarred the air and the earth beneath my feet. I strove to be at one with this exploding wildness.
Her three dark engines shoved aside the darkness with a blazing beam that washed the track for a quarter of a mile ahead in scalding shades of pure white. Filled by her vibrations as she passed, I closed my eyes and let her heat caress my eyelids. I tried not to think. I wanted to take it all in and be her, the smoke, the smells and the all-drowning roar, to hold her as long as I could.
I knew that all things must pass and I wanted to keep this part forever. I held my breath as her clamor continued to swell and storm past me.
She passed within ten feet of me at fifty miles an hour, her engines laboring up the long incline of Dixie Hill. Dreamily, I looked at the string of great metal cars stretching as far as I could see in both directions.
Pure motion, thrusting purposely forward, she drove through the time and space of my universe.
She entered me and lifted me out of myself, transfiguring me in a sublime consummation. It was simultaneous pleasure and loss. I was being left behind. I sucked in my breath and tasted the charred wind as the cars rushed through the dissipating dark shreds of coal smoke.
The high wooden cattle cars, filled with dark, hulking forms, smelled of rich manure. I caught the cool aroma of lime and cement and fertilizer as the box cars swept by. The great greasy, oil car tank cylinders left the sharp sting of sulphur in my nostrils.
An empty box car approached, and there against the darkness was the pale face of a rider sitting with his back to the sliding door. The wind pushed his hair back, and a cigarette hung from his lips. He gave me a slow salute and a nod, and instantly was gone.
I gasped and tried to recall him in detail, but his image was too fleeting, too tenuous, but the flash of that ghostly face is with me to this day.
A wild desire struck me. I wanted to ride the windy car. I hungered to pour myself through the spaces of nights from a boxcar door and ride that shambling riot of sound and fury forever.
The red lantern swinging on the rear of the caboose winked out in the distance as it dropped over the hill. I was suddenly in a vacuum--all was empty and desolate as if a lover who had been my whole existence had walked away. An infinite sadness descended on me and I felt much older than my sixteen years.
Stepping between the tracks, I strained to hear the faint rumble in the distance. I quickened with joy when her keening whistle came clearly on a little zephyr, telling some remote crossroads she was thundering through.
Then there was nothing.
I pressed my ear to a rail, still hot from the kiss of hundreds of steel wheels. I could hear the clicking as her huge mass crashed through the silences far up the track.
Her perfume still lingered.
Part of me spun into the night after her. I stood alone in the moonlight, at the intersection of two forevers. In the direction of the moon, the twin silver rails became one in the distance. Toward the hill, they disappeared into the darkness.
At that moment I swore to ride those silver bars through the days and nights and over the hills to whatever was waiting.
Kicking rocks, I slowly trudged up the hill to the house, still on that hurtling steel missile, at once in the engine, caboose and in the pale face against the open boxcar door.
The desolation of loneliness swept over me as I stood on the porch and looked at the silent track in the distance, hoping for another midnight tryst on some other night. I thought of the mysteries and islands of life that waited along that track, and how I wanted to know them all.
That jangling, joyous chorus still echoes in my mind. I am buffeted by her hot breath, exult in her rhythm, and soar in the joy of her tumultuous song. I long to see her again--to be with her again. I keep her in me and part of me stays with her. I still ride with her on the rails of my dreams.
Now, I know whose pale face flashed from the boxcar door, the image that etched its mark on my memory that night.
It was mine.
Felt like I was right there with you, LD!
Posted by: Hans Eisenman | June 05, 2006 at 01:09 PM