Bloody Finger Points At Me

by Shaun Lawton 


   It was on a bright and chilly Saturday that I discovered the old abandoned locomotive in the rail yard just a few blocks from my apartment complex. Standing by the kitchen sink, I had just eaten a bowl of granola in rice milk, watching the dust motes swirl in the sunbeam arriving through the dirty window while I chewed and swallowed.  

   After consuming my breakfast with a glass of fresh orange juice thrown back for good measure, I became dizzy from the pressure exhibited by the low ceiling in my living quarters. The lone rotary fan was circling slowly and making a keck sound once every revolution. It was time to grab my hat and head outside into the late morning sunlight. 

   Out on the sidewalk the release I felt from being freed out from under the oppressive atmosphere of my apartment was immediate and powerful. A wide smile formed on my face as I breathed in tremendous lungsful of the raw March air. 

   I walked down the cracked concrete sidewalk with the red bricked condominiums sliding by to my left. Upon reaching the corner I could smell the scents of frying onions and cheese steaks drifting out of the Marlboro Market, as people milled in and out of the place for their daily items and groceries. 

   I continued on another three blocks until the playground loomed up before me. There wasn't a soul in it although two swings gently rocked back and forth and the old chipped and fading carousel spun slowly counter-clockwise, as if the place had just been abandoned by a gaggle of kids.  I looked about but they were nowhere to be seen. I spotted some dust still drifting on the breeze near the south side entrance. 

   Crossing through the playground I spied the old railway yard over on the other side. There was a veritable delta of old tracks converging on an abandoned station. Rusting hulks of train cars lined up on several of these tracks, with about half a dozen non functioning locomotives perched at the fronts of them, soaking in the radiance of the Sun.  

   At the far side of the playground, I had to climb the short green rubber insulated chain link fence and drop down to the other side onto crumbling asphalt and gravel.  From there I continued on toward the rail yard, the soles of my sneakers crunching along as I watched luminous rays of light glance off broken chips of windshield glass and other shiny forms of debris littering the ground. 

   After ten more yards I came to another, taller chain link fence and I made a running jump to grip the topmost rail, clambered over it, to dropped down inside the rail yard onto a patch of soft grassy turf. The first set of tracks lay before me like an uncoiled watch-spring: as if all the tension had been leached out for years. Oddly, the tops of all the tracks were still gleaming bright as strips of mirrored platinum. I reflected on the casual idea that time had fully ceased flowing in this abandoned property, and that it could start back up at any minute.  

   The silence was cushioned by the distant hum of city sounds being carried on occasional lazy breezes. Remote screams of children's laughter mingled with the combined thrum of tires in traffic, punctuated by horns here and there and the infrequent piercing of a siren's wail. Overhead the sky was perfect blue with only a small grouping of clouds floating away into the distance. 

   The sunlight radiated down to blind me if I dared to glance up, so I kept my eyes glued to the ground, grateful for the brim of my worn gray fedora. I followed the slanting silhouette of my shadow as it led me across three parallel sets of tracks toward the fourth one which held a line of sixteen old passenger cars rusted together. 

   As I approached the rear portion of one of these cars, I thought I heard a footstep and subsequent tittering from within, so I froze in my tracks, listening more intently for further evidence of intruders. The sound of a fire engine siren in the distance warbled by in the air and faded out. It could easily have covered over any further sounds possibly generated from within the old train car. 

   My heartbeat quickened its pace as I recognized the distinct possibility of there being gang members potentially hanging out in any one of these solemnly arranged train cars. I listened again but only heard the continued amalgamation of city sounds weaving in and out of the air. 

   My curiosity getting the best of me, I stepped up onto the rusted platform steps leading to the rear doorway of one of the cars. Reaching out to grab ahold of the  handle, I gave it a twist and the door opened without a sound. Inside shadows piled up into the receptacle and I stepped into the car, then began walking down its center aisle, the empty seats on either side gliding by as I strolled onward.  

   Sunbeams shuttered through the windows on my left as I passed through them, sending the dust motes tumbling in swirling maelstroms of disturbance behind me. In my mind's eye I pictured each sunbeam as a sort of piano key which set off an inaudible tone as my passing body broke through them, my mere passage composing random music for the imponderable spirits lingering here for God knows how long.  

   I heard the click of a door about two cars ahead of me, and a scraping sound suspiciously like that of a shoe across oxidized metal. What would I do if I actually did encounter some random gang members in one of these old cars? Maybe they were sitting on one of these dusty passenger seats smoking some crack or doing crystal meth or drinking some Mickey's Big Mouths out of paper bags. 

   For all I knew, I had stumbled onto their territory, a trespasser of their privately sanctioned domain. The silence of the yard continued to beckon me onward through this car until I reached the front hinged double doors.  I pushed through them and stepped from the front of the car onto the rear platform of the next one, and continued through its rear double hinged doorway, noticing as I did that the car ahead of me also appeared to be empty. 

   I halted in my tracks to listen for any further evidence of being in the company of other interlopers. A gust of wind soughed through a halfway open window and the shadow of an overpassing bird swept through the cab, displaced along the various surfaces as it went, making me imagine the sound of imperceptible music being played once again.  

   That's when I thought I heard the slightest cough, this time from outside the window to my left, from in the train next to mine. Was that the hushed whisper of someone beseeching their companion to listen? I froze in my tracks and then ducked down, squatting on the balls of my feet with my head just below the level of the backs of the seats. I didn't want anyone seeing me should they glance over in my direction. 

   A flutter of bird wings interrupted the lucid silence and some automobiles began honking a few blocks away. The dirty old river swept by just a couple blocks beyond that, and I could suddenly hear the melodic clinking of chains hanging from the over-passing drawbridge which separated this part of town from the industrial section across the mud brown waters. Funny how little sounds carried on the wind like that. After crouching with anticipation for a few moments, my ears attuned to the ambiance  in the yard, I breathed a small exhalation of relief and stood up again. 

   I resumed striding through the cars, one after the other,  until I had crossed through five of them. Standing at the juncture between the next cab, I looked over to my right at the train parked next to me. There was white spray painted graffiti along the side scrawling out the letters WORRIARS with an illegible tag after it. In the back of my mind I heard the distinct sound of empty bottles being clinked together. I decided to hop from this train over to the next, and realized I could do so without actually stepping onto the gravel piled up in between the railway ties below me. 

   It was the old game we used to play as kids. Any ground area not represented by the railway tracks or wooden ties or any other protruding foothold was relegated to boiling lava thousands of feet below. I had to move from one train car to the next by either leaping across or scaling the gaps one way or another. I had to step down onto the extended plank of railroad tie first, then calculate a deft leap to the next set of tracks. I landed adroitly atop another wooden tie, then hoisted myself up in between the two cars of this next train.  

   When I got up in between the cars, I entered the one on my left, proceeding in the same direction I'd been traveling before in the other train. I was headed toward the front locomotive, which appeared to be about another half dozen cars or so ahead of me.  I noticed the smell in this car reeked of old dog shit, and sure enough there was a pile of it over on one of the dusty vinyl ripped seats halfway through the car.  Upon closer inspection I realized it was a human turd, left not that long ago. Two flies stood upon its surface  while another one buzzed around lazily in orbit around it.

   The turd was one long tube of coiled feces which retained its shape as it piled into a figure eight. Its crust was blackening from the sunbeam filtering in through the halfway raised window of Plexiglas. Frowning faces were scrawled into the dust of the window along with some obscene messages drawn in black marker. The green iridescent bodies of the flies winked in the dappling sunshine. 

   I snapped out of my momentary trance realizing I'd been mesmerized by the sight of the shit and the flies. Their droning buzz became apparent which made me realize that total silence had enveloped the spectacle for a few moments. My brow creased as somewhere in the back of my mind I began assembling this various sensory data. Why would sudden spells of silence blanket out everything else like that, I wondered.  

   I moved on to the next car, cutting short the distance between myself and the lead locomotive. By the time I passed through the following four cars, at last I approached the back deck of the freight train at the front. The doorway into it was fixed shut with rust. No matter how hard I pulled on the metal handle, it wouldn't budge. There was a set of step rungs leading up to the roof of the train. 

   I climbed the rungs at a brisk pace, dully ringing each one with my feet until I reached the top. Once I hoisted myself up there and stood, I could see the front of the train well ahead of me. There was a sort of catwalk embedded along the roof of the locomotive, making it safer to walk across until I reached the very front of the train. When I came to the end, I was standing directly above the front windshields. 

   It looked as if I were peering out past the top of a metal head. The ridge above the windshield very much resembled a brow. I got down on my knees and peered over it so I could get a better look at the front of the train. Even from this close distance, and upside down, I could see how very much it resembled a face. Startled, I got back up on my feet and looked around the rail yard for signs of intruders. 

   The two puffy clouds in the sky I'd seen earlier were further dispersed and well over the river line, by now. All the rest was a pure uninterrupted blue that made me feel as if the inside of my head were echoing with silence. A pepper flock of starlings shimmered over the city skyline and tumbled on its way. I suddenly felt very vulnerable standing atop the head of this particular train, so I went to slide off the edge, but found I was too high up to do so safely. I retreated back to the rear of the locomotive and carefully stepped back down the rungs, and let myself drop onto the wooden ties below. 

   The ends of the rail ties jutted out just far enough for me to hop from one to the next as I made my way forward to the front of the train. I really wanted to get a look at the locomotive's face again, this time from a better perspective. As I passed the front I continued on for another seven rail ties and turned around to face it. As a matter of fact the front of the locomotive looked so much like a face now that it made me feel uneasy.  I laughed softly as I marveled over its uncanny resemblance to human features morphed into the industrial sleekness of a train. 

   Then I got the feeling the train was studying me as intently as I was examining it.  The canted windshields each reflected the sunlight in different directions. The old windshield wipers perched like eyebrows above them. An old cracked headlamp pointed forward like a nose. Despite having a benevolent look to it, there was an underlying expression beneath its crusty exterior that intimated something more mysterious. Though I heard nothing at this point, something inside of me responded as if the train had called me to it. 

   I tracked back over the ties until I reached the conductor's door. Stepping onto the platform before it, I tested the handle and pulled the door wide open. It emitted a screech of metal on metal that pierced my ears and caused the hairs on the back of my neck to rise. With the noise still ringing in my head, I quickly entered so as not to be seen should my loud interruption give away my location. Steep steps led up into the train, and once inside, I looked left down a narrow corridor which snaked away from me and disappeared into the murky gloom. To my right was the entrance to the front cab, but try as I might, the doorway into it was jammed shut tight. 

   I proceeded back down the narrow pathway into the depths of the freight train, feeling as if I were being swallowed by a gigantic metal python. The feeling only intensified the further along I went. Some panels in the wall were missing from my right, revealing all manner of pipes and tubing assembled into the inner workings of this great vehicle. The silence within became magnified and the smell of oil and rust overwhelmed me. 

   For some reason the idea of rogue gang members no longer bothered me as much as the peculiar notion that I might not find my way out of this locomotive, despite the entrance remaining several yards from where I now stood, in a relatively straight line from me.  Glancing further into the inner workings of this train, I became anxious that it might twist into an impenetrable labyrinth, and that after making one or two turns, I might find myself trapped inside, unable to retrace my steps back. 

   After a moment's consideration, I worked my way back to the front entrance. The feeling I was inside a titanic snake would not abate. I felt like a lone church mouse that had ventured too far from its normal habitat. After grabbing ahold of an iron handle to facilitate my walk toward the cab, I pulled my hand away to find black grease covering my fingers. I wiped it off on my worn blue jeans as I reached the conductor's door, which was still open letting in the constant streaming sunshine. 

   Stepping out of the freight train I breathed a sigh of relief as my feet collided with the gravel in between the railway ties. The sudden crunching sound brought me back to my senses and I realized two things simultaneously. I had forgotten about my rule of staying off the boiling lava and I was no longer alone in this desolate location.  

   Standing before me staring as if I had just crashed their party were three rough looking tattooed individuals in baggy cargo pants and nylon mesh tank tops. They were well tanned and each held handmade shivs glinting in the streaming sunshine.  Their smiles were all identical. Lopsided grins which stated quietly how satisfied they were to see me.