Summer nights Harold and I would walk the rails—walk the rails blinking the smog out of our eyes, watch the silver droplets of light leak from the metal and gyrate beneath our feet, footsteps and silent. Hot, dark, but not completely dark, never completely dark. Always the same light
"Keeps burning, that lamp, there; wonder'f it's broke," would say, Harold would say and look. Smoke colored light, smog colored gray light traced wrinkles in Harold's face.
"We goin' to Marianne's, Harold? We goin' there, ain't we?"
Harold's hands were gray and turned black—picked up a stone off the track threw it at a metal sign, missed. The metal sign had a big dark "1" on it, which glowed like sun leaking through train smoke.
"What you reckon that mean? Eh?"
"Never been on a train, Harold. Never been on one."
"I'll tell you. Means that's how many miles you've got to go to get where you're goin'. Chicago'll just be a mile away, now, Dan. Bet we could—"
"You ever been on a train?"
Looked at me in the dark. Behind us there was a click, blink, and the lamppost dipped dark, gurgled out. Almost black now almost black enough to see the lights in the distance, like light rising gray in the morning. Night made Harold's face look pallid.
"Ain't nowhere else to go. I'm starving, Dan."
Paused, and thought; air thick, here. I could taste the dust, and I could almost taste the shadows on the rails—maybe if I bent, bet I could—
"You ever thought about—you know—life? Where you're goin'?" Harold said for some reason gestured toward the tracks, the soot the grime on it why?
"Ain't goin' anywhere, Harold. Goin' to Marianne's, 's where we goin'."
Harold spat invisible, dry on the tracks. "Life spat on us, didn't it. Dan. Like that. Just—" Spat, dark. Felt his eyes, ghost eyes in the black. "Ever thought about gettin' married, Dan?"
Feet were dragging dirt in the silence, pawing the silence. "Marianne's pretty, I reckon."
Laughed. "Sure you don't just like her cooking?"
"I like that too, Harold."
Harold bit his lip in a thoughtful smirk I watched the night drip down from the lurid lampposts stood like soldiers down the tracks. "S'pose she's pretty," said Harold.
"You ever thought about it, Harold? 'Bout marrying?"
"Aw, sure. Years and years ago. She's moved away now. Name was Anita."
Now the silence again. Few years back, Pa used to tell me, this place was just a big yellow plain 'fore the railroad cut through it, the sentinel lampposts. Hard to imagine it without the tracks, now—summer every night we walked the grass the tracks reached on infinitely, overtaken by moonless darkness. No moon tonight.
"Hey, Dan. You ever given Marianne a present? Eh?"
"Ain't given her anything."
"Ladies like presents. Makes them feel like we care for 'em, I reckon. Gave my Anita a present just about every day," said Harold.
"Who? Anita?" Harold paused to again drop a wad of saliva upon the tracks. I couldn't see but I heard the popping sound. "Naw. She never really had a likin' for that kind of work. Parents were of that 'ristocratic sort. Had cooks, all that. Anita was a gentlewoman, 'f I ever seen one—don't know how she ever survived that decline into poverty, how 'er pride—" He sank into silence looked at the sky but why there was no moon, no stars behind the clouds.
"What happened, 'tween you and her? Where did she go?"
Harold walked quiet listened to our footsteps roll out behind. I didn't want to take my eyes off him, but I thought that maybe I could look back 'cross my shoulder, maybe could see that sign that said we had one mile left. "Moved out west. She moved out west." Spoke quick. "But, we had a good time. I loved her."
"What kind of presents did you give her?"
He was looking back at the ground smiled the grass the dirt, now. "Bows, flowers, mostly. Not much, usually—things I made, or found in the street or beside the tracks. I gave her a stone, once."
Harold nodded. "A pretty little thing. Was the las' present I gave to her 'fore she left." Then his face went dark his mouth went dark in the warm smog. Our feet went along like nighttime hushes I spoke, tentative.
"Do you think she'll ever come back?"
Harold looked thoughtful for a moment, twitched his lips into a smiled warily. "Yeah, Dan. Yeah, I reckon she'll be coming back, any day now."
"Can I meet her, when she comes?"
Smiled again. "'Course you can, buddy. Of course you can."
An old wooden structure was leaning into view through the turbid dark a dilapidated house of some kind single story, no one. Windows black like withered eyes, weary of looking—ceiling, tattered dipping as if cloth as if held aloft only by the tenuous wooden walls on either side.
"I never noticed that before, Harold," I said gestured to the corpse of the house, stiff and mummified by isolation.
"That's because we usually walk on the other side of the tracks. Don't know why I happened to start on this side, this time. Odd." For some reason we'd stopped, gazing at the house. Dark was rolling faster than us in the sky. Flecks of light were breathing, stirring on the horizon, behind and beside the deserted edifice. Were they the city the sun—? "Would you like to go inside it?" asked Harold suddenly.
I was taken aback by the inquiry. "Why? I don't wanna be late to Marianne's."
"She won't care. She's the lenient sort of gal. 'Sides, you never know what you'll find in places like these."
Even as he spoke, we were walking again. The house reared up in silence in a numb night miasma we were before it, now. A vague curiosity was tingling its way up my throat, up my mind, now, now that it was before us in all its mystery.
"Go on in," said Harold. "Go on. I'll wait outside."
"You don't want to come?"
"I've—explored it pretty well already. It wasn't like this, last time I came. Not the roof. The roof used to be tall, tall and proud."
I stood hesitant anxiety shifting my feet in the night lake of grass. I scanned the house again, its sagging frame cracked decrepit as if a coffin, buried ancient in dark.
"Don't worry, not haunted. Go on, Dan."
I inhaled the gray night and my fingers found the knob, turned the knob creaked, the door. Swung open into a thick tenebrosity. The roof dipped down caressed my hair the walls, moaning like sound-leaking stairwells under their load. Dark, dry like dying grass. Some silvery light, perhaps from city from Chicago couldn't be too far now, was fluttering in through the open windows. I shut the door behind me.
The floor was of dirt, of summer dry soil no grass. There seemed to be a mound amassed in the center of the room slight, but perceptible. Why would someone build a house around a hill.
In the graying light I could distinguish little in the room but perhaps there was simply little to distinguish. Little to distinguish I noticed a shape dripping from the ceiling directly to my left I felt it, a rope. Felt stiff, old. I let my fingers slip from its surface turned toward the mound heart drumming, for some reason. The only sound in the room.
I strode toward the mound slow, cautious didn't want to trip. There was a small object laid at its zenith. I bent and picked it up scrutinized it on my knees. It was a stone, a gray, a smooth and fit right inside the cradle of my palm a pretty little thing, a pretty little thing. There were words, too scrawled in white across its surface scrawled in white I held it up to the window-light morning was coming. I held it up and could just barely make out the words.
To a true gentlewoman
who died here, amidst her mortal tears.
May she find happiness in Eternity.
I blinked read it again, again. I carefully set it down message turned toward the ceiling stepped off the mound. In doing so I happened to glance out the window, and Harold was there, backed turned and walking down the tracks.
Points: 1220
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