"Track Conditions"
Eireann Corrigan
After you decide again that every fortune
unfurled from a cookie means me and I decide
that every song on the jukebox means you,
I travel from college to see you in your first
new apartment. Save thirty dollars taking the train
first from the city to Trenton, then from Trenton
to Philadelphia. Four hours to shuttle eighty miles.
And somewhere on the way out of Jersey,
that first train trembles and slides into a long,
screaming skid. Lights falter off and the bags
On the overhead racks hit the floor. The man
across from me surrenders his handkerchief
to the woman behind him with the nosebleed
and the mother in front of me unbuckles her baby
from his stroller to take him in her arms and
Mr. Handkerchief says That's not safe--
Leave the kid in the carriage. And she says Who
do you think you are? And we sit bickering in dark
panic until the man who collected our tickets
picks his way through the aisle. He has a flashlight
and calls us folks. He says Folks, please keep calm.
And I notice he calls the person we hit
an unfortunate soul. He says An unfortunate soul
stepped out on to the tracks and our brakeman
did not have enough warning to stop. For some
reason, I want to turn to that woman
with the nosebleed and say If the paramedics
had given up, then the boy I'm going to visit would count
as an unfortunate soul. But then the fluorescent lights
choke on and that ticket collector speaks again,
says Folks, a member of our crew is understandably
distraught. We'll just wait a few minutes for relief
to arrive from the next station. And I wonder
if the shaken brakeman will lower himself
into a passenger seat and ride, staring out the window.
Or maybe the jeep that delivers his replacement
will ferry him home. He'll sit with his head
across his wife's lap and bunch her skirt in his fists,
the way you have mine those nights you've said prayers
before unbuttoning my dress. Who do you think
I am? By the time we arrive in Trenton,
I've missed my connection, am already an hour and
a half late and when that train to Philadelphia staggers
to a stop, I already know the news the conductor will crackle
over the intercom, just like when the girl who told me
you'd pulled the trigger, when that same girl telephoned again
one year later, I knew she'd say something I didn't want
to know. Tonight, I sit on the second train as quietly as I sat
at Ben's funeral, worried that someone might recognize me
as the one common thread. Ben took me out the night
you held a gun to your head and fired. I knew he loved me
because he'd drive me to the hospital and sit in his car
while I sat by your bed. It takes more than an hour
for the police to arrive and clear the tracks ahead of our train.
It's a Friday night in May, warm enough to wait on the platform
without a jacket and two men in two states have stepped into
the brightening lights as decisively as you'd step off
a highrise. What are the statistical chances of all this?
This time the whole stoic crew stays on and the electricity
didn't even flicker. How can one death cause less of anything?
At first, when that girl called, all I could be was grateful
that she wasn't calling with news of you. Who could
forgive me for that? My father carried me out of my dorm
and that night, I dialed your telephone number at college
and said Daniel shot himself in the head. And you said
What? And I said Ben drove his car into a tree. And
when I told you it meant that there was something I
must have done to both of you, you asked Who do you think
you are? Right now i am dizzy -- I want to close my eyes
against you and bite the collar of your shirt. By the time
I arrive at the station, you've given up waiting on those benches.
I describe you at the window and the man there remembers
you perfectly. He tells me you had him call my name over
and over the loud speaker. He says He was so disappointed--
he thinks you changed your mind. It's almost midnight.
I can't tell you why the whole trip took seven hours
or you'll end up on your knees, weeping into me for
your own good fortune, for those men and their dismal
lack of miracles. So when the taxi finally delivers me
to your drive, you are angry but less angry
than you'll be later on in out lives, worried but less
worried then you have been before. Now I remember
how you held my face in your hands that night -- like
it was a face you had had stapled a sketch of on every
telephone pole across the city. And now, when we kneel, each
at our separate beds, we thank and pray for other things.
Who do we think we are? In my mind, the brakeman walks away
from the train into that darkened tunnel, his head
bent down, his cap in his hands.
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cheerful
sleepy