The Railway
The train passed every day at twelve o’clock, over the old bridge. It’d run since before the town had become a town, and before people had come to try their luck here. It was an old steam train that hauled who knows what to who knows where. It isn’t where, or what, that matters. It’s the how and the why, he thought, that’s what matters.
He stood on the bridge, looking down at the dark waters churning beneath him. It was eleven fifty-four. He leaned against the railing, looking down at the chaos of life. He stood on the solid bridge, solid enough to stand life’s harsh treatment for more than a hundred years, looking down at what he imagined his own life was. He imagined his own life was a boat, floating down the river, going wherever it took him, and he thought there was a hole in his boat.
He leaned out over the railing, reaching for the water—the cool, blessed escape of the water; it was blue oblivion, release from the solidity of the world around him. He pulled back from the edge.
He took a coin out of his pocket and flipped it twice. It landed heads once and tails once. He could hear the train coming, still a minute away. He placed the coin carefully edgewise on the railing, making it stand still. The train’s horn sounded, echoing across the water. It came closer, and he could feel it in his feet. The coin trembled, but stood up against the shaking of the very ground it stood upon. It wobbled, and began to turn, but stayed up. The train came closer.
Suddenly it was there, flashing by, the wind whipping at his hair. The coin bounced and jumped on the railing, and then the train was gone, passed, and the coin lay across the railing, halfway over the side, hanging out over the river. He leaned against the railing, staring at the coin and contemplating its meaning. He pushed the coin over the side and didn’t watch it fall. He walked away: away from the coin, away from the river, away from the train, away from the bridge. There’s no hole, he thought, it’s just my rocking about has gotten some water in here with me.