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She’s standing just outside my driver’s side window, perfectly still a few feet away from the tracks. The light from the passing engine hits just enough of her that I can see her hair flying around her head. She’s actually leaning in toward the cars, her feet planted maybe a foot or two away but her head craned forward. Like she’s inspecting the welds and riveting as they scream past. I feel the color leaving my face as I watch her. I can just picture her leaning in closer and closer, sobbing hard as inky mascara rivers run down her cheeks, wishing she knew another way out. DING!
Next up, please step past the line. DING! Clean-up and sterilization team to platform three. I imagine a passing door handle or exposed piece of steel taking her head smoothly. Then just her leaderless body standing there a moment longer, swaying. In limbo. Not really knowing just what to do—crumpling to the stones as the spinal cord’s message to the brain comes back stamped “Return To Sender: Address Unknown”. But I guess she’s thinking otherwise because she stays right there, two feet from no more emergencies, bills, funerals. I open my door and slide off my seat as she’s pulling her hair back and leaning in sideways to listen to the rumbling wheels. I come up behind her but I know she can’t hear my approach, so I stand a few feet off to the side. I’m afraid to touch her arm or try to pull her away from the train because if she yanks herself out of my grasp… DING! Premature execution, platform three. So I motion to Bill to hit the lights on the roof of the ambulance. When they come on the whirling red makes her pallor look hellish. She turns her head just slightly to look at me—she’s still leaning straight into the steel wheels. She kind of smiles and nods. Like we have this in common or I know what she’s doing or something. I stand there with my hands in my pockets waiting for the last car while she stays hunched over, watching me and nodding but intent on the hammering steel. Her head moves in time to the banging cars and wheels, her eyes go closed. This is her seat in the orchestra pit, her symphony. By the time the last car hammers away into the dark I can feel the heavy pressure in my ears, like my eardrums are seizing up. I try to work the feeling out by working my jaws open and closed, rubbing the mandibles. There’s that and the tears leaking from my air-blasted eyes, the smell of creosote and oil thick in my nostrils. The girl is fine by the way. She flattens her hair down and walks over to me rubbing her hands together. Her cheeks are flushed and her eyes are all glazed over. Even though she’s right next to me I can barely make out what she’s saying—my ears are still on fire. “…ride in your…capper for me…sirens on…” “Huh?” She cups her hand around my ear and yells straight in. And it still sounds like she’s at the bottom of a well or something. “I said ‘A ride in your ambulance would be really be a capper for me, but you’ve got to keep the sirens on’.” “Oh. OK.” What the hell does she want a ride in the ambulance for? I mean, she doesn’t seem to mind sticking her face into the wheels of trains, so what does she want, a ride to the E.R. now? “Well, it’s not really a hospital ambulance. Sorry. I could probably get into trouble if I showed up with it.” She’s looking at me like I’m an idiot. Like I just had my head halfway under a moving train. “Yeah, I know it’s not a hospital ambulance—a real paramedic would have pulled me away from the tracks. I just want a ride in it. And I don’t even care where. I just like the sirens.” And for real, I can tell she’s not lying about it because she’s looking right through me to the ambulance. Her face goes white-pink-red with each revolution of the lights and I can see the sirens in her widened eyes. I don’t really know what to say to her—it’s like she’s having one of those intensely personal moments right here in front of me. Her mouth is hanging open and each time the sirens swing around they glint off a mine of fillings. “Wow. They’re so pretty up close.” She speaks more to herself than to me as she’s heading for the ambulance. By the time I climb in she’s already scrunched down between the front seats fiddling with the toggle switches on the dashboard. They’re each labeled underneath with old yellowed masking tape—they work the auxiliary lights and supply power to the outlets in the back of the ambulance. Bill is completely unfazed by her presence. He’s busy with his pants bunched up around his knees, pissing in the now-empty wine jug. Side Note: You are only as good as the company you keep. So
where do I end up taking Robin that first night I meet her at
the railroad crossing? Somewhere I figure she can really get the
full effect—the sounds, the lights, the near death experience. |