At night I would lie awake in the roll away bed in the far corner of the living room in the two-room apartment dominos still on the card table mother often asleep for the night curled in her chair bathed in light from the crook neck light with pull chain newspapers, books, the dictionary, clipping piles at her feet waiting to be sorted and mailed when far away I could hear a grain train coming and in minutes not more than fifty feet from her screen window I would look down and the train's sound would fill every sense and I would begin to count to an impossible 124, 125, 126 railroad names, Monon, Erie, Nickel Plate, Wabash open cars of wheat or corn or soy beans their field smells come enveloped around the cars rumbling by thumping at the unmarked railroad crossing below and a caboose would suddenly end it all and maybe just maybe the train would have stirred a breeze maybe the noise would make it cooler All the while the entire two-story apartment building shook It made mother's miniature elephant and thimble collections dance and drum their fingers the train leaving a hole in the torrid Indiana night. Bill Hoke December 11, 2010
After Evening Dominos
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