Dear Little Jo,
You write me up as such a hero with that train situation but I didn’t feel it to be dangerous exactly. I mean Shayna may be pretty unhappy these days but she isn’t suicidal. Also the way I got her to come down off the tracks is I used you. Told lies about you basically. I said you were scared to come down here with us because being hit by a train is your worst nightmare. You had only agreed to come along because you didn’t want to look like a coward. I said you were back there shitting your pants probably. So would Shayna mind please showing a little mercy for your sake?
She smiled finally, and pouted her lips and put her arms up around my neck. I carried her down the slope like some rescued princess. Until I stumbled and we both went face-first into a snowbank. It loosened things up though didn’t it? You’re welcome for that part, because that was heroic. Even Bron laughed.
And we still had just enough time for Bron to remember the magnet lights in her bag and hand them out. You’re supposed to stick these magnetic LED lights on your car bumper if you break down at the roadside so the tow truck can find you. Or I guess so nobody mows you down. Bron had read that people throw them at passing trains at night. I like Bron for that. I will read something and think about it, but Bron will read something and go do it.
So the train came past and it was shorter than we thought, only about ten or fifteen tankers. We all tossed our lights but only mine stuck. It lit up right near the top of the very last car.
Bron said it would look like a flare going up, but this was better than any flare. This was a blind throw and then a sudden red sword cutting its way through the night. This was the muscles of my arm, my ribs, my guts, my groin, all flung out of my body at once so that only space was left inside. It was like watching Prince onstage that time. Like empty space filling me up to bursting. Filling up the moment with now, right now.
I gave a sort of whoop. A laugh, and then I couldn’t stop. Laughing and shouting and running along the tracks after the disappearing train with its red beacon. The rest of you came running and yelling too, up and down the slope, and none of us stopped until the train was completely out of sight and it was quiet. Then we went back and searched without much hope for the three lights that had missed the mark, until Shayna said, “Fuck it’s cold, let’s get out of here.”
Nearly at the car I said I had to piss. I yanked at your sleeve until you caught on and said, “Me too.”
I pulled you behind some bushes. I looked all around to make sure, even down at the ground and then up. There was nothing but shadows and pockmarked snow and a flat black sky.
You yelped at my cold hands down your pants but then you did the same to me. We rocked and swayed, swore and laughed. Touching you was like finding myself in the dark, Jo. That one moment stretching itself out again like now now now, like steel wheels on tracks. I mean the train was long gone but I swear I could still hear it when I came. Me first and then you right after me, shuddering, leaning into each other, your nose pressed hard into my neck and both of us laughing and gasping in the freezing dark. We could hear Bron yelling for us to hurry up. We wiped our hands with snow and found our dropped gloves and ran.
In the car Bron asked what took us so long, and weren’t we aware how brutal the Escalade’s idling was, in terms of emissions?
Emissions. I didn’t even look at you, Jo, for fear of laughing. We laughed anyhow, both of us helpless with it. That swift secret. That joy.
Sincerely,
AK