When I was younger and dirtier and poorer and lived in Greensboro, I would take a Hershey bar, a Coke and a pack of Camel Filters and walk up to the railroad tracks at night and climb up under the trestle bridge and sit there and fiddle with the gravel and the scraps of loose rusty metal. I would sit in a shadow until the train went by, mere feet over my head, dangerous seeming, and it would come on with an unbelievable gust of rattling noise and whistles and stay there chugging on and on while your brain says "I'm getting used to this, I'm getting used to this, I'm getting used to this..." over and over, in railroad rhythm until the last car passed and the last whistle and the dark long silences that seemed as concrete as if they had fallen off the back of the caboose itself, a giant all-encompassing cargo-box of quiet. After, you could throw an old spike and listen to it crack hard against rock or wood somewhere further than you could see. And then I would walk home and wonder where that particular train had come from and especially where it had been heading.
