Coal Cars Head West

Jun 17, 2022

I done wrestled with an alligator, I done tussled with a whale; handcuffed lightning, thrown thunder in jail; only last week, I murdered a rock, injured a stone, hospitalized a brick; I'm so mean I make medicine sick. -Muhammad Ali

On the wooden bleachers, I sit baking in the sun, waiting for a cloud. Out past the fence, Arle is walking across the infield dirt towards center. She doesn’t look at me even though I know she knows I’m looking at her. It’s the privilege of the ballplayer/ to walk to and from the dugout ignoring the outside world. Some might say they are in the zone, but I know that’s not it. She knows I know, too. But she walks her beautiful walk out across that special dirt leaving cleat tracks that won’t last a day.

I like it.

I like being ignored on purpose.

It reminds me of everything she means to me and what it might be like if I was gone. Dead. Or never existed in the first place. Or we never crossed paths, maybe. Never ended up in line to see Santa at the same exact mall at the same exact time on the same exact day/ years ago now. Most people barely think about the world without them in it. But me? I get off on it in my own strange way.

This Sunday afternoon sunshine is pounding down now and so I take a swig from my warm bottle of Diet Coke and pop a toothpick into my mouth. Her team is good this year, better than the teams she has been on in the past, and I know that makes her happy. Playing the outfield bums her out though, so I keep a special wish dangling off my heart for her today. I want her to have a good go of it. I want her to make some catches, feel good about that space she inhabits long past the infield spots she has always claimed before now.

She used to be the shortstop on all her other teams. But now the shortstop on this team is this young buck, a college baseball player. He looks to be about 20. His batting stance is right out of a hitting video on YouTube and he hits the shit out of the ball and makes leaping grabs in the air and seems humble about his talent. I mean, I fucking hate him, but still. I like him too. He’s really good. But so is Arle.

This country town ball field on the banks of the Juniata River is along some railroad tracks and it’s something I dig. In my body I have new medicines still moving through me/ stuff for my head/ stuff I hope will help me feel less edgy and afraid and uncertain and alone. It’s been a few weeks and I’m feeling pretty good, like things are changing, but I’m also afraid to think that because, well, you know. Knock on wood and all. I don’t want to jinx myself. I don’t want to blow this somehow by assuming what can never be assumed. I take a deep drag of June into my lungs though and I admit it to myself anyways.

I feel good, I say inside.

I feel like I’m heading in the right direction.

Before long a train comes by. There’s usually at least three or four that pass the field on the tracks out beyond center and right. Some are headed west towards the whole entire world/ others are headed east towards Lewistown and maybe Newark or Jersey City. This train is the first I have seen since I started taking these anxiety meds and so I’m curious about it in some way that I just can’t explain.

I watch it like I’m watching for some kind of sign. But what? I don’t know. Plus, that’s so stupid. I mean, what kind of sign can a train bring a man sitting on the bleachers cooking in the midday heat? And what the hell are ‘signs’ anyways, you know?

Bluebirds outside your bedroom window are your dead Grandmom telling you she’s okay in Heaven?

Is that a sign.

Motherfucker, please.

Come on.

I believe in signs like a believe in ghosts. I believe they could be. But I don’t believe they are anything like any of us imagine them. At all. Ever.

Which leaves me with nothing until I hear this freight train blow it’s whistle as it passes all of us by. I look at Arle and she is out there in center watching the next pitch come down over the plate for a strike. She isn’t paying attention to the train. It’s that ballplayer’s cool removed privilege again. You can ignore the people in the stands. And you can ignore 500 tons of goddamn train if you want to, too.

I find that hot.

I wink at her from a hundred yards away. She misses it.

The call of a passing train is like the sound of something wild and timeless. It is both haunting and remorseful/ happy and sad. In it’s long-winded sigh I hear the real voice of Abe Lincoln and the howling of Montana wolves and the beach crashing up on the rocks down by this one jetty in Sea Isle City and the roar of the Mississippi River and the winds of Wyoming: blasting along the plains: carrying the dust of long gone mountain men and Lakota warriors and cowboys and pioneer ladies dragging crying kids by their hands/ promising them everything at the end of the road/ but secretly wondering in their own heart of hearts if there is any end to all this wandering.

In that train’s cry I hears the old slaves singing.

And in there too, I hear them crying for their dead.

Soldiers making coffee. Kids on the bus. Dogs chasing raccoons up the side of some moonlit mountain side and the splash of a big bass on a pond in the middle of the night in the middle of nowhere.

Girls talking on the phone.

Boys talking shit.

They/Them watching me watching them out in the yard, their quick flash of a smile lighting up the sky with the sound of every locomotive that ever lived all at once.

I take it as a sign, I guess. That train whistle. It’s hokey as hell and I know it, but I take it anyway. I’m older now. I’ve got to let go of some of these lifelong hang-ups.

The train whistle sounds like Hank Williams and hamburgers grilling.

There: I said it. Who cares? I stopped being cool a long time ago, man.

The last car of a long line of them clacks down the east bound tracks and then rumbles out of sight. I can hear it going then, but she’s fading. In the moments before she is gone forever from my sight and life, I hear one last blast of the whistle.

Out over the town behind us, out into that long blue sky with thunderstorm bruises.

Arle is moving towards the dugout now, walking but not running. It’s their turn to bat. I watch her and wonder what she would say about all of this brainstorming I’m doing over here right now. All this train sign medicine jive.

I think I know what she’d say. I think she would smile her gentle smile and look me in the eyes and say, “Yeah.”

As in: I believe that. I believe you had a sign from a train. And I believe the sign was that you are on the right track. So far/ so good.

But just ‘Yeah’ would be enough. I would understand her perfectly. It happens a lot anymore. Less words are needed as two people who ought to spend time together end up spending time together. Less talk as life rolls out. That’s not to say I’m more pensive or quiet, don’t get me wrong. For all of Arle’s strong silence and graceful introspection, I am still the over-caffeinated Jabber Jaws of Penn Street in her world. I talk too much. Too often. I talk all over sunsets and I talk all over morning beaches. I talk the shit out of tired togetherness when words aren’t needed because there are no words.

Still, I find ‘em.

I find the words and I talk them OUT, dude. I probe with language. I use ishkibbible like prison guards use those powerful roving spotlights: just looking for something/anything/ a clue/ a shadow/ a sign, sign, sign.

But Arle is good at dodging it all and it makes me horny. The more she embraces the peace of a moment in her calm confident way, the more giggly and fucked-up I get. Then I talk and talk until I finally get the hint.

Shhhhhh, big boy.

Hush now, child.

In that way, these softball games are kind of some great equalizer for Arle at long last. I just sit there with my Diet Coke, my skin glistening from all the bug spray and sun block, making the bleachers a place to avoid looking at, all in the name of love.

Because when she does venture a glance my way/ every now and then/ like if she gets thrown out at first after hustling to get there, she knows I’m right there/ just beyond the chain link fence/ staring at her hard/ watching her not watch me/ it’s in those moments then and there that I can feel her adjusting the torque on her light saber/ dialing in her superpowers/ lifting me up off of the bleachers with her avoiding my desperate eyes until I can barely stand the torture of it all.

And then, subtly, on the down, down low, flicking her glance at me for an instant. Smiling just a moment. The sparks in her brown eyes come up out of this very old Appalachian fire down below and they pop me like a BB gun and I feel the sweet sublime stinging of my burning desire being recognized.

A new train hollers at us from a mile away and I feel my heart start chugging harder at the idea of it. This whole new big old snake. This whole new river of possibility. If I ran now/ I could easily climb the stony slant of the grade to the tracks out beyond the right field fence. And once there, I could no doubt stand there in some green trash weeds and wait until that bad boy was almost at me and then:

Poof.

Leap.

Run.

Step out.

Pitch myself into nothingness forever.

But I don’t want to. I’m not even thinking that for too long this afternoon/ I let the thought come along like it always does because who doesn’t also see a long tall thundering train as a good way to die, hoss? I let it go though. I let it blow off like an empty bag of Funions as I tilt my bottle of Diet Coke back and bask in the swift look from the woman of my dreams.

I imagine putting her foot in my mouth later on when we watch ‘Stranger Things’ on the couch.

I imagine her with a cold beer and me with some wine.

I imagine the dogs on the rugs sloppin’ on a bone.

I imagine the cool smooth of her heel on the blades of my teeth. I rough them across her skin but only just deep enough to flirt with a bite. To mess with hurting her just a little tiny bit.

I imagine the curtains in the living room swishing into the house as some breeze blows by. Some ghost kicking their way into our lives. Maybe to stay. Maybe to go through the kitchen and out the back window.

Later on in the game, as Arle tracks down a long shot some big dude on the other team slams, I watch her watching the sky as she closes in on the fence out near the warning track. My throat closes a little and I tense up. My blood stops. My legs feel numb.

An old guy in front of me is talking to some ladies as all of this is happening. He is wearing a dirt track racing t-shirt and he seems to be happy just being out here on these sun-splattered bleachers, living the day away.

I stare at Arle but I have to hear him as he talks above a fresh passing train.

“I don’t know why that thing is heading east,” the guys says. “All filled with coal like it is, I mean.”

The ball is falling fast now. Arle seems fixated. It is a pin dot. Now an aspirin. Then a blueberry. Now a nickel. Falling, falling, falling.

She moves her long legs and she seems to be floating, gliding through the air.

Now it’s a slice of pepperoni.

Now it’s a marshmallow.

Now it’s….

“Coal cars head west,” he says. Then adds, poetically and matter-of-factly, “They just do.”

The ball lands in Arle’s glove a long, long way from where it started.

Like a tired train pulling into the station.

Like a single raindrop heart falling from the summer sky.

What are the chances?

I mean, what are the odds?

Me and her.

Her and me.

This.

These days.

This guy talking as she makes the catch.

The train blowing its whistle one more time.

Everything.

The meds.

Look at your boy: sitting there watching this game, watching this small section of world unfolding.

Feeling good.

Knock on wood.

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Serge

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Thunder Pie

Coal Cars Head West

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