That Which Is Left Behind

Anymore, it pretty much came and went. Mostly went. Just as well. Desire in anybody over sixty was best kept quiet. There were other things to make a body happy. Still, it was nice when it did drop in, even now. Across the track a woodpecker pounded its bill into a tree trunk. Insertion—penetration: without it, oblivion. Termination of species. Might not be a bad thing. Why prolong the agony?

The town looked smaller, seedier. The café and equipment rental, where his mom and dad once worked, were derelict. All that sweating and striving, for what, cracked sidewalks and shuttered shops? Goddamn malls. The house was strange in new paint and a large truck in the drive. Some nice little family, maybe, just starting out. Did they have a boy?

He got out of the car and walked to the track. Crooked, rusty, weed-grown. The depot was still there but its windows and doors were plywooded over and the plank platform and semaphore signal gone. Ghost railroad. He stood in his old spot under the overhang and gazed once more into the east. Same sentinel trees, dark and mysterious. Hi, guys. To the west, the same low hills and the sense of infinite distance. A lawn mower rasped, a pickup truck rattled over the crossing. Would an old schoolmate spot him? Probably long gone, if they had any sense. Maybe the sheriff would cruise up and ask his business. Some dumb kid with a flag on his sleeve and nothing upstairs.

Ping went the track. A train! His heart jumped, he squinted for a headlight. Nothing. Of course, the line had been abandoned for years, it was the ancient steel contracting in the cooling air. Like aging flesh. He walked slowly to the protruding bay that once housed the telegraph office and sat down. The cicadas began their evensong, scattered lights winked on across the field. Why the hell hadn’t he brought her here? Now, she was gone and he was left. As he had always feared. But then, there was no fair way. He snuggled against the warm wood clapboarding and closed his eyes. Soon enough, he would know what to do.

Summer was great but he liked fall best. The golden afternoons after school, when he could be outside and breathe the air singed yellow by wood smoke and burning leaves, still T-shirt weather but a hint of crispness in the lowering light. Ghost breath, his dad called it. You could feel the earth tilt into another season, the dark time, pumpkins, turkey, presents. He sat his Schwinn Tiger taking in the familiar scene, trees one way, hills the other, shining rails connecting the two worlds. The descending dusk purpled the sky behind the trees and made them murky and spooky-looking, the lair of mysterious monsters. The passenger trains and through freights came through at night, but he could sense them out there, far away but moving inexorably closer.

In summer he often pedaled over to watch the local shunt cars in and out of the feed mill. The hard-faced crewmen going resolutely about their work made him feel vaguely uneasy. What are you going to do when you grow up? everybody asked. He didn’t know. He knew only that he liked hanging out by the track and riding his bike around town and studying crumbling stonework and weathered siding and iron stairways plunging into shadowy basements. Everything was old. What happened back then, what were the people like? He pictured figures sitting on the high-backed wooden benches in the station, milling around on the platform beneath the tall semaphore, peering into the distance for the train that would take them away into the trees or the hills. Now, the only life was the slouching sandy-haired agent who worked from eight till four three days a week. The boy always asked, Any trains coming? Nope, the agent always replied. Nothing till late. The old man smiled at him, secretly pleased to have a boy hanging around the depot.

For some time he considered walking up the track into the trees. Maybe he would see a fox or a bear, and beyond the trees a sunny upland world full of surprises, a distant city of shining towers. But something held him to his spot. Then, late one afternoon after the agent had gone home, he got off his bike, stepped between the rails, and began walking east. The trees came slowly closer, the world shifted ever so subtly, the land rose under his feet, he was leaving behind a place he knew and going toward a limitless unknown. But the spacing of the ties made his feet fall unevenly, it was hard walking and pushing the bike and trying to look at things all at the same time, and pretty soon he felt dizzy. He got off the track and trudged slowly back to the depot in the mocking glare of the semaphore’s green eye. He felt like he had been somewhere he couldn’t see, and experienced something he could not remember. He did not try to walk on the track again, and anyway, looking down the rails from his spot, it was like you could almost see clear to New York or California.

But he still wanted to see the passenger trains. At supper one night he asked if they could take a ride.

“Don’t stop here, son,” his dad said, “and only runs at night, both ways.”

“Maybe we could go where it stops and get on there.” His mother looked hopeful.

But his dad frowned. “Probably have to stay overnight someplace. All costs money, you know.”

He knew he shouldn’t push. His father was touchy, things “set him off,” his mom said. He did not like bugging people to do things. And so he would sleep, and sometimes in the small hours wake to wailing horns and rushing wheels, like the echo of a dream.

The other kids knew only their own imaginations—“Hoboes hang out by the tracks and kidnap people…The train tracks are haunted…My dad knew somebody who found a head on the tracks, no body, just a head…The reason they only run at night’s ‘cause they’re ghost trains, nobody’s on them only dead bodies…” In the school library he found an old book with a picture of a station just like theirs, with a steam train spouting smoke, men in dark suits glaring at the camera, two or three women in long dresses, looking lost. A dog. The text said little (and nothing about where the picture was taken), but it didn’t matter. That’s what it was like.

One warm August night, the house was quiet, his parents slept soundly, as they always did after drinking beer. Heart pounding, he slipped out the back door and pedaled into the night. The depot was dark and spooky-looking, a lone bulb burned dimly in the telegraph office. It was almost two. He waited at his spot, looking around nervously, watching for someone to come out of the night and challenge him. Nobody approached, even the cicadas had gone quiet. The semaphore glowed balefully. Then, a faint tick from the rail. From far to the east came that strange shrill wail—again, closer. Behind the far trees a nimbus of light bloomed, then burst into blinding white. The roar crescendoed, the ground shook, the light turned the boy and all around him into unnatural day, and the locomotive loosed its manic howl for the crossing. The engine and cars blasted past in a great wall of rushing steel, he gazed up at the windows looking for faces but saw only a black blur. Nobody’s on them only dead bodies. A red taillight glared back at him then vanished around the curve to the west. The horn sounded faintly, his heart was still racing. He thought he should get home, but the eastbound was due soon. Another faraway cry, another glare of blinding light, rushing wheels and black windows. The red light disappeared into the trees, stillness settled. Diesel exhaust lingered in the tremulous air, the rail pinged once. He thought of the people sleeping inside the moving metal wall; what was it like, waking up far away in a strange place? What did they have to eat? What was it like driving the train? He wished he could ride it.

His dad watched TV and drank his beers in the den, he sat in the kitchen with his mother and told her about his visits to the railroad (though not about sneaking out), and about seeing into the past. “Ever since I found that book in the library, I can see just exactly how it was. The trains, the people. It’s like it’s all in my head, even like I was there.”

She tilted her head at him. “You’re an old soul, you know that?”

He looked at her quizzically.

“So serious. You should enjoy being young.” She ruffled his hair and smiled. “Don’t let it get away from you.”

“Huh.” He wasn’t always serious. He liked hanging out with his friends and he liked it when he and his mom and dad went fishing at Wendigo and ate by the river, or hung out in the yard and had grilled burgers and coldslop, as his dad said, and his mom would say, Oh, you! and they would all laugh. But he always got serious again and wondered what he would do when he got older, and if things would stay the same for any much longer.

Another year passed, and one night at dinner his father looked at him. “Almost thirteen, aren’t you? Given any thought to what you’d like to do for work?”

“Honey, he’s still just a boy. Give him a little time, for God’s sake.”

Just a boy: it sounded so fragile. Besides, he wasn’t “just a boy,” not anymore.

“World’s movin’ too fast, now,” his dad said. “Got to plan ahead.”

“Maybe I could work on the railroad.”

 “Not much future in that these days. How ‘bout aviation? Be an airline pilot, make good bread, meet lots of pretty girls. Wish I’d learned to fly…”

From his bed that night he heard his father’s voice through the wall. “Town’s dying…sick of being jerked around…no future here…” Two weeks later, his dad announced that as soon as school was out they would be moving to Minneapolis.

He rode to the track one last time. The station windows gaped blackly, the semaphore arms jabbed the sky, saying nothing. A jaybird lit on the eaves, cocked its head, and squawked twice. Don’t leave, don’t leave! He looked toward the hills: the future. Okay, hills, here I come. He looked toward the trees. Only trees, maybe, but they were… friends. He got off his bike and sat down against the building and cried. After a few moments he cleared his eyes and stared blankly into the east. Shit, maybe moving wouldn’t be so bad. People always moved, no big deal. Maybe he’d seen enough of this place. The city would be cool. Where the rails dipped over the swell of earth and disappeared into the trees, something moved. Small, indistinct—a coyote? No: a head. A head on the track. It floated just above the horizon like a lost balloon. Then, abruptly, it grew into a man, walking toward him.

The boarded-up station was a sullen mask. Near thirty years the trains had been gone yet the depot remained. Waiting—for what? Well, here I am. He smelled dry rot, old-building stink. Were the big oak benches still in there, caked with decades of dust? The weary structure gave a small grunt as it moved from day’s heat to evening cool. How many more years could it settle before it collapsed? The agent was surely long dead; being only a dumb kid he’d never asked his name, now the man and his stories were gone. God, the things we let get away! He let the warmth of the clapboard seep into him. It’s me. You remember. I know you do. A few blocks away, strangers were eating supper in his house. The cottonwoods whispered, yellow leaves drifted down.

One by one, the boxes had been checked off: work, professional success, parental approval. And then the greatest of all things came shyly, sweetly to him, and he gladly surrendered his solitude and his innocence. How had he deserved her—he of leaden silence and thousand-mile gaze? Old stick, he called himself. She laughed and stroked his arm and they went to the opera, drove country roads, and traveled by train to California, New York, and through Spain. “It’s funny,” he said, “I can ride trains everywhere but my own hometown.”

“We should go back there sometime,” she said. “I’d like to see where you came from.”

Talk moved on to other things, travel to other places, youth to age. Eros’s smile dimmed with time, slowly, wistfully, by mutual unspoken acceptance. Or so he preferred to believe. But not entirely. At times they quarreled, but not for long, and nothing broke their devotion. But she never saw his house, his railroad, his trees, his hills. He never told her about hanging out by the track, staring into the distance, waiting, dreaming. Hadn’t wanted to seem odd, he guessed, same way he never told the other kids. It was all his, his alone. Guess it couldn’t have been any other way. “Fatalism doesn’t become you,” she had said, once.

“I know,” he said, more than once, “but what are ya gonna do?”

Old friends helped: Turner, Hopper, Dickens, Beethoven. They felt his pain, intimately. A shadow passed—a heron, majestic, slow, unconcerned. She loved birds. Thank you, Heron, your shadow warms me. It felt good, resting here at dusk once again, almost like he’d never left. Ghost town, ghost railroad: Stephen King and Ray Bradbury made their fortunes on places like this. They would have loved the track-walker.

A hundred yards away, the man’s eyes bored into his. He felt a shiver, considered riding away, did not move. The man walked slowly, steadily toward him, short, stocky, dark. Baggy pants, a wide-brimmed hat. Old-fashioned-looking. He came up to him and stopped. “Hello.”

“Hi.” Hoboes hang out by the tracks.

“You live here?” A serious face.

“Yep.” Kidnap people.

“Waiting for a train?” A canvas pack on his back.

“Nope.” Found a head. The man looked old, his face was brown and crinkled, his clothes dusty and worn. Probably slept in them. In the woods, maybe. “Are you a hobo?”

The man chuckled, glanced away to the west, and set his pack down on the station platform. “Nope, just an old bindlestiff. Well, more of a walker. Walk the tracks, see the country. Watch the sky. Walk the roads, sometimes, but I prefer the tracks. Tracks are quiet, closer to nature. Saw a coyote back a ways. Unpredictable, coyotes…dangerous if you get ‘em in a pack.” The man peered around at the woods and the nearby buildings. “Nice feeling, here. Peaceful.”

“Yeah,” the boy laughed, “it’s pretty peaceful, all right. Trains don’t even stop here.” His voice sounded—older.  

“That’s one thing I like most about walking the tracks: the trains.” The man raised his hand and moved it slowly, like an airplane. “Hear them waaay off in the distance, calling like lost souls…then, that rising roar, like destiny, and all of a sudden it’s upon you, a great juggernaut of civilization! Then—gone, in the blink of an eye, like it was never there. The birds sing, the trees rustle, you’re back a thousand years, just you and nature. Don’t get that on the highways.” He regarded the boy. “Ever taken a ride?”

Juggernaut…civilization…The guy talked weird, like he came out of a book. The world seemed to grow larger. He felt very small. “No.”

“Ought to, before they’re all gone.”

“Gone?”

“Railroads are cutting ‘em off. Nobody’s riding anymore. Me, I’ve ridden my share, right enough: passenger, freight—prefer passenger. Cushions beat boxcars all to hell.”

The boy could only look away in silence. The man’s words hurt—suddenly, nothing felt permanent. Why couldn’t his dad have let them take even just one crummy train ride?

The man smiled, the skin around his pale blue eyes crinkled. “So, what’s a wide-awake young fellow like you doing hanging around an old railroad track?”

“I dunno—I just like it here.”

“What do you like?”

He had never had to express his feelings to a stranger like this. But the words came surprisingly easily. “I like looking down the track, thinking about where it goes. I like to think about the trains in the old days, the steam engines and all the people and everything. I think it was exciting. Nothing’s exciting here now.” His voice sounded grownup. Old, even.

The man lifted his hat from his head, revealing slicked-back gray hair, then gently replaced it. “I saw those things,” he said, nodding. “Might even have ridden a train through this very town, once.”

It struck him that the man looked like the men in the old photo. Now here he was, standing right in front of him. “So…have you ridden on lots of trains?”

“I should say I have. Passenger, freight, and everything in between.”

“Never heard of an in-between train before.”

The eyes glinted eerily. “Sure! There’s trains like what everybody’s used to, and then there’s other trains. Trains that—well let’s just say that run to in-between places.”

“Like here?”

“Oh, this looks to me like a solid enough place. A town with history. Maybe not what it used to be, but still a good place.” He focused on the boy. “What do you think?”

He chuckled nervously—he had not often been asked what he thought of anything. “It’s old. A lot of the stores and places are closed-up.”

“How do you like living in a town full of old things?”

“I like it.” It had always been difficult, looking people in the eye. Now, he did, and it felt right. “Where are you from?”

The man nodded his head toward the trees. “Between here and there.”

The boy frowned.

“Don’t mean to confuse you. Suppose my way of talking must sound strange to a young fellow. I guess what I’m trying to say is, some folks never really feel like they’re from anyplace. More like they’re going someplace. Folks like me. Neither here nor there.”

“But you’re from someplace, right?”

“Sure, long time back. I prefer to look ahead, not back. Ever hear the old saying, ‘You can’t go home again’? Well, I mean to say, you can’t go back to where we come from, and who knows what lies ahead? In between, that’s the place to be.” He nodded toward the depot. “Do you think they’d mind if I went in and sat awhile?”

“It’s closed up. The man who works there’s gone home.”

“Oh, well, then, I’ll just hunker down a bit.” He picked up his pack, leaned it against the station wall, and sat down beside it. He squinted back at the boy on the bike. “Make a funny sight, I reckon. Anybody sees me, they’ll think I’m waiting for a train.”

The boy grinned. “An in-between train.”

“Yes sir, an in-between train.”

He had never been called “sir” before. It felt weird. An old soul. He was thirteen, now. Childhood was fading away, he could feel it, dropping behind, down the track. A woodpecker laughed in the woods.

“Now ain’t that a sound,” the man exclaimed—“like Mother Nature singing ‘hallelujah!’” His thin, reedy voice shattered the dusk. “You know what ‘hallelujah’ means?”

“Not really.”

“‘Praise God.’ You believe in God?”

He shrugged. “Dunno. Sometimes, I guess.”

“Sometimes—you guess. Ha-hah! That’s what I call in-between, and a good policy, too. Hedge your bets. God: don’t really know a damn thing about him, do we? We believe, we have faith. Well, that’s good enough for some. Do some pretty rotten things in the name of faith, though. Guess you’ll find all that out soon enough. But me, I say ‘Hallelujah’ in celebration of the possibility of God, and in celebration of all the possibilities of life—God or no god.”

The man stared off down the track again, then looked up at him. “Glory. That’s what gets me, what keeps me moving. Man’s glory, nature’s glory, God’s glory if you want…Glory all around. That bird, laughing at some inside joke, only now I feel like I’m in on it. Maybe you’re in on it, too. Right now, you and me are in-on-it-in-between folks. One foot in man’s world, one foot in—well, nature’s world. Maybe even God’s world.”

The man talked crazy, but the words stirred something. The boy did not feel so bad about moving, now. “So, you think we’re living in more than one world?”

“Yes, indeed. Many worlds, all in one.”

“How do we know which one we’re in?”

“Don’t have to know, don’t have to be in just one. Live in ‘em all! Feel the land beneath your feet, your body rising up out of the earth, your head touching the sky. Be one with the world—all worlds! If that isn’t living, nothing is. Hallelujah!”

Now—really? Now, with no one to share it with? When desire felt only like disloyalty. “Now”: weird damn proposition. What were you supposed to do, when most everything else had become then, and tomorrow was a sick joke? And yet, here he was: little Johnny Jump-up. How she’d laughed, laughed and moaned, writhing beneath him like an alien entity. You had to figure it was the last thing some people felt, even as the lights dimmed. Such was the power of the human animal. Juggernaut. Sorry, world.

What had she felt, slipping away? Fear. Loneliness? Or, possibly, desire? Crazy, but what took her was crazy. Crazy-evil. Sorry, sweetie.

He stood and walked onto the track. Weeds grew thick between the rotting ties, nature persisted and prevailed. The trees, unchanging, implacable, waiting patiently to reclaim what was theirs, even as they shed their own years in golden drops. It came again, the thing he’d played in the college band—Glazunov, The Seasons. Months and years passed, then here it was, front and center, that sad little Russian tune. Like desire, only nicer.

What made him dizzy when he tried walking the track? Like a hand was holding him back. Why hadn’t he tried walking the other way? So many whys. Something trying to tell him something? Maybe it just felt better standing in his spot and seeing from New York to California, from past to future, and feel himself moving toward something even as he stood still. He exhaled and tried to recapture the feeling, but that was fifty years ago and he’d seen those places and many others and done what he’d needed to do. What could possibly come next?

He walked back to the depot and sat down again. Inside, something thumped. The agent, sealed inside forever? A wayward wolverine? Hah! His too-near ancestors had trapped them to near extinction, along with the wolves and God knows what all else. But hey, look at all the sports teams we’ve named after you! Good old Heartland, made safe for corn, football, and ghost towns, all the moldering detritus of Christian America. What had happened to his bike—his toys, his kid clothes, his favorite pillow? Things that seemed forever in a small life, suddenly and irretrievably gone.

Maybe it had all been nothing more than a long sleep, 50 years in five minutes. No. She was no dream. But the town and the track, the trains and his old home: they had been dreams for that half-century. He had never gone back, never liked retracing his steps. I prefer to look ahead, not back. Only now, here he was. Sorry, sweetie, I should have brought you. Coulda-shoulda-woulda, me and my stupid guy-phobias. God, I miss you.

Dusk deepened, the far horizon darkened, no headlights, only a star, glimmering faintly, then another. Like eyes, those pale blue eyes coming out of the dusk, suitcase, gangster hat. The shiver of fear, then the soft voice, the voice of the world. Mister in-between—where had he ended up: Minneapolis? Tacoma? “A good place,” he had said, settling in against the building, right where he was sitting now. “I can feel it. ‘Course, maybe you being here, you give it something of your own, make it something good to you.”

How did a kid respond to that? Monosyllables. A young old stick. Still, the man seemed to think him worth his while. She sure did. Go figure. He never told her about hanging out by the track.

“I know, I sound like a crazy man,” the man had said, “but if you put good energy into a place…How long you been living here?”

“All my life.”

“That’s a goodly while. I’ll bet some of you has gone right into the ground, into the tracks.”

The idea startled him. Pieces of skin, falling onto the ground. “You think?”

“I do. We leave little bits of us wherever we go. Energy, good or bad. And you’ve had plenty of time to leave more than just a little.”

“We’re leaving tomorrow. Moving to Minneapolis.”

“Ho-ho…Well, how d’you feel about that?”

“Kinda sad, I guess. I like it here.”

“I’ll bet you do. This is about all you know, huh?”

The boy nodded, blinking back tears.

“It’s a hard thing, leaving. But leaving is part of living. Heh-heh, how’s that for two-bit philosophy? Can’t get around it, though—we humans, we got to be moving. Always on the go. Railroads, automobiles, airplanes—these damn spindle shanks of mine, even at my age. You’re young, you got the whole world at your feet. Don’t get stuck in one place, let yourself get root-bound. Now, this may sound goofy, but I can see you got good bones and a good head. The eyes never lie, and yours are good eyes: clear, bright, seeing eyes. You’d be amazed at how many folks just never see.”

The walker pulled a piece of paper from his jacket pocket and showed it to him. It was a black and white photograph, crinkled and yellow around the edges, of a young woman with pale features, dark hair pulled back from her face, a dark sweater over a blouse. Small, dark eyes looking away into the distance. Her clothes and her face were from another time. She was pretty, he guessed, but old-fashioned pretty.

“Been lookin’ for her right along.” A crafty look stole across his face. “Don’t suppose you’ve seen her hereabouts, have you?”

“Hereabouts”: He had not heard that word before. It sounded cool. Like he knew places beyond the town. “No.”

“Just have to keep on, then.”

“You’re walking on the train tracks looking for her?”

“Sounds crazy, doesn’t it? Still, the hunt, makes life worth living. If you’re not willing to search for something you want more than you’ve ever wanted anything in your life, then you’re living a poor kind of life.”

“How long you been looking for her?

“Years.”

The boy smiled. “Years of looking for a girl?”

“Oh, much more than just a girl—not that a girl is any slight thing. Not at all! But years of looking for her: the one. She loved me, she was going to marry me. Then the war got in the way.”

“You fought in a war?”

“Second World War. Me and a whole lot of other young fellas.”

“We wrote to each other, but then her letters quit. I was one of the lucky ones: I came home. Her people said she went over to the next town for work, I went there. At that town they said she was back home, I went back home, they said she’d gone off somewhere else. Made no sense to me. She said she loved me, after all. Always thought of her as truthful. To have a gal say she loves you, that’s the sweetest sound you’ll ever hear. It was enough to start me on the trail, and I’ve been looking ever since.

“Truth be told, I guess at some point the walk became more important than her. I had to accept the fact that she ditched me, plain and simple. Well, human beings change. She changed. Can’t hold that against her. The walking helped me get hold of that—that’s something that happens time and again, to millions of us poor wandering souls. Walking—getting out in the world—helped me see there was a lot more to life than youthful romance. A lot more. Walking was the truth of it: seeing the world, living here and now, even as I was marching on toward something—what, I don’t know. I haven’t stopped, yet. You ask me why, I have no real answer, except to say I love the going—the motion, seeing the stars at night, hearing the birds like that fellow, smelling the earth. Feel like I’m part of the whole thing—hallelujah!”

The man yawned, lay an arm across his pack, and smiled again at the boy. “Yes sir, and now I’m feeling the miles. You will pardon me if I shut my eyes for a spell. Don’t be sad about moving. This place—any place you love—will always remain within you. Remember: a step going is a step coming.” The man raised his hand in farewell and pulled his hat down over his eyes.

Puffy white clouds were piling up to the west, the cicadas were starting to sing, he thought of his dad, always so youthful, exuberant at choice moments but more often distant, lost in his own dreams, unwilling even to take him on a train ride. And now, the trains were gone. Thanks, Dad.

His mother, warm, gentle, her smile hinting at small secrets. Always seemed happy with his dad, fulfilled. Always walking one step behind, would have happily taken a train ride if her husband had given the nod. They never talked about it later, like so many things, just moved on. Take it as it comes. Maybe the walking man’s girl sensed that life with him, a man who would walk for years searching for her, rather than being wonderful, would be a jail cell. Maybe she had ridden the night train through here on her way to the great unknown—maybe worked in the café years before his mom. Maybe the walker had passed through as she worked and lived blocks away. The pulled-back hair, the dark slits of eyes, the small mouth struck him as severe, possibly difficult. Maybe she had done the guy a favor. Still, to walk for years in search of lost love? Poetic. Many would die for such devotion. Poor guy.

Be one with the world—all worlds.

How many worlds were there? For years he combed the literature hoping to find photos of his town and his depot, without success. Not that it mattered, for his mind returned again and again to the first picture, the steam train, the stiff black-clothed figures, the dog—the station that looked so much like his that it may as well have been. He stood and studied the decrepit building: the brown wood, so like human skin; the leaning chimney, the bowed-out operator’s bay, once a railroad nerve center, a window on the world. He ran his hand along the clapboard, and as he came to the bay saw faint words etched into the wood.

Jimmie L. 6-11-70 Hallelujah!

Him.

What did the “L” stand for?

Left.

Lost.

Lonely.

Looking.

Little bits of us wherever we go

He took out his car keys and scratched his name next to his friend’s, the same date, the current date. Then, Hallelujah!

He gazed around, felt his spot one last time, then began walking eastward up the track into the twilight. She was out there, waiting. It could not be otherwise. Waiting in the cicada song, the clouds, the far hills, the trees. She always was.

A step going is a step coming.

The cottonwood smell blasted his guts and he thought of her and all the mornings and nights, his mother and father in the next room doing the unthinkable, the walking man walking, the signal light glaring, the lonely agent at his desk, the wolverines and moose and Indians in their village between the hills and trees. The trees looming closer than ever, now, and the first stars were winking on. Many worlds, all in one.

He gazed up at the treetops, spread his arms, and raised his voice in a long, piercing howl.

Far to the east, someone answered. A shiver ran up his spine but he stood still and waited. Something snorted and figure emerged from the growing darkness and moved steadily toward him.

A coyote.

“Hey, boy, how are ya?”

The animal sniffed at him then gently nuzzled its snout into his thigh. Its gray coat marked it as an elder.

He touched the coyote gently, stroked its soft fur. “Looking for your mate?”

The coyote cocked its head at him and whinnied softly.

“Good to see you, too. I hope you’ve had a good travel.”

The two stood silently, then, the animal shook itself and blinked its pale blue eyes.

“Moving on, eh? Well, take care.” The coyote turned abruptly and trotted away into the west, a diminishing silhouette in the amber sky. A moment later, a faint howl floated to him.

He howled once and resumed walking slowly eastward. The waiting trees spread their arms in welcome.