Getting Home
The low song of the train wheels
thundering softly on the tracks
was lulling me to sleep.
Thirteen hours before,
I departed Deer Park
and rode their mirror image
in the other direction,
descending abruptly near the river
into the underwater throat
and, last and finally,
the very belly of the beast
so long ago named Manhattan.
A weary day of cabs and meetings
with supplicating would-be saviors,
beating the prefab bushes
of endless vendor booths
sprung like rectangular shrubs
into the harsh convention light,
trying to flush a mink among rats.
A final dinner at Ruth's Chris
and then a dash for the 8:55.
Four-fifths home and groggy,
I hear the announcement.
Attention passengers: There has been a pedestrian accident at the Deer Park station. This train will terminate at Farmingdale. The railroad will be ordering buses to take passengers to all points further east. I repeat, this train will terminate at Farmingdale. Farmingdale lies next on the wrecked route.
Punching HOME on the cell phone,
I call Mrs. B to say
a late day is turning later.
The passenger behind
recounts his two-hour wait
the last time buses were summoned.
I imagine the pitiable pedestrian,
flung a football field length
by a speeding locomotive.
I want to be out of this fucking suit.
The train groans to a halt,
the announcement is repeated.
I disembark with the city-chewed souls,
resigned commuter angst in every face.
A pushing match erupts in the rain
for two lonely cabs that wait,
unsuspecting, in the lot.
Four of us can be taken the five miles
to Deer Park for ten dollars each.
A bargain at 10 PM on a very wet night.
Three of us fill the back seat,
another climbs in front.
I wonder if this driver
will write of us later like another I know,
and then he starts to speak.
Clearly, no.
The man next to me explains
he's talked to the firehouse
near the station past Deer Park.
An aspiring passenger fell
from the rainsoaked platform
and was covered by the train.
He's trapped, alive,
under one of the cars.
Two cranes are rolling in
from the station beyond
on the westbound tracks I rode this morning
to lift the car off his body.
"Jesus!" says the fellow in front,
and then our group grows quiet.
I try not to empathize
as the cab moves slowly through the rain.
A silent five minutes after,
we approach the station
where an orchard of red cherries
are slashing up the night.
Fifty yards away, the train
sits dumbly on its bludgeoned victim.
A police chopper, its blades inert,
rests absurdly on the empty road ahead.
The wet army of disaster-ready personnel
waits near the platform, eerily quiet,
for the coming of the cranes.
Flares guard the parking lot entrance,
a macintoshed cop waves us curbside.
I pay the driver his ransom
and walk across the asphalt plain,
its slickness glowing somber red.
I start up the car, and follow
the slow snake of curious traffic
being guided from the lot
by waving cones of orange light.
The rain grows harder as I head home.
I switch from the distant Yankees game
that possessed my local news station
to the CD that was spinning
so many hours before,
recalling a happier night in Ontario.
Where are you tonight?
I think that I'll make it through all right,
but I'd love to have you just one more time beside me.
Posted by Anna Belle
at 10:27 PM EDT
Updated: Friday, 28 November 2003 9:13 PM EST