Lonesome Sound

LONESOME SOUND Old man said he could hear that whistle blow a hundred miles and they could write a song about that. Said he could tell how many cars a train freighted just by how sad was its wail. Old man said, trains usually sounded out at crossings or towns or coming upon another train. Said No. 149 out of St. Louis left the towns a hundred miles back. Had no call to think about meeting another train'til Lander. Or maybe Crawford. Old man said, keening cross the plains like that only thing took it to heart was coyotes and jack rabbits. Mayhap a snake or two, sunning hisself on the rails. Said, last run she made, leaned on her whistle from the Missouri straight through to the Rockies. Never let up, just hollered cross the land like the world come undone. Like something lost couldn't never be right again. I said how that train was probly thinking of the long empty plains ahead. Of fenceposts ticking by and cattle scabbing up the buffalo grass. Thinking of passing unseen and unheard the grassed-over soddies hunched at springs once piped now trickling through old stock ponds. Of empty match-box homesteads timber-bleached and bowed before the vast order of sun and sky. Of tilted windmills wheeling, listless as a fly wing-plucked and turning, turning round on bleary heat-cracked panes what look myopic upon the prairie the grass, the sky, the land to come. Old man looked at the middle distance. Said don't know but she wailed for the thought of her last pull through the pass at Lander stockyards. Or for what she maybe wouldn't find coming out t'other side.