Train Wreck

“…know what son, this here trains 'bout to derail, I think I'll be gettin' off real soon. Ya feel this car rackin' from side to side? We're up on two wheels as this here box jumps from one rail to another! I'm tellin' ya, don go holdin' on ta anythin', I don know which way she's gonna go, so when I say jump, ya git yer behind o'er that door there like a hound 'bout ta sink his teeth in ya! Ya hear?!” As the western bound tracks head into a sweeping arc the right embankment drops away several thousand feet to a verdant green valley below. The engine strains to hold the tracks, but the weight she's hauling is too much and she’s yanked abruptly backward. The sound of metal on metal screams down the mountainside as the first boxcar jumps the track pulling thirty-three others in straight succession into hapless flight, as one man jumps into oblivion. The other, his mouth the shape of a huge “O” stands frozen at the gaping boxcar door, as he and the stream of loaded cars are suspended, weightless and silent for an eternal moment. In the next moment the cars continue on their downward trajectory and the first car explodes into the rocky earth, followed by five others that plunge and disappear into the first. The remaining line of cars is stacked up, end to end, as a child playing with building blocks that tries to build too tall. The snaking ribbon buckles and the last several cars whip forward, spitting their loads of timber, scrap steel and coal high into the air. The entire screeching stack is crushed together and moves as one in a slow arcing descent as if it were a felled giant ancient tree. There’s a twelve foot wide, fifteen hundred foot long depression left in the valley floor that runs halfway up the mountainside where that train came to rest. Nothing ever grows in that scar. Only thing living from that wreck is the one telling the tale.