Furlough

We’re moving empties. The coal is dumped. It’s no urgent thing to bring a freightless train into the depot. We haven’t moved in three hours. Six more until we hit our twelve and they send a taxi to ferry us the last twenty-five miles, swap a fresh crew.

I think I feel my phone vibrate in my pocket. I try not to speculate about whether it is my wife or whether it is Ravenna. I try not to think about the sentence I know about Ravenna.

I’m sitting in the big orange train engine outside of Mason City and I’ve been awake for thirty hours. My conductor turned the AC off when it started blowing rot smell into the cab. Either it’s breaking or something died up there. I imagine the depot in Ravenna. The squat little motel. The couple of bars up the road. The train could reach it in thirty minutes. But the dispatch is silent and here we bake.

This is furlough. Working a job you hate so much that coming home to a town is relief. It doesn’t matter that it isn’t your town. It doesn’t matter that your people are far off. You find little pleasures.

I know about Ravenna.

I watch the shadow of the engine lengthen into the field. I’ve been furloughed to Ravenna seven months. Sometimes I make runs to the town where my home is. Often, we hit our twelve and we don’t make it that far.

I feel or think I feel my phone vibrate again. I leave it in my pocket. Phones have always been against regulations, but the new cameras installed in the cabs make it more risky than it used to be. The job gets stricter, or the job gets furloughed, but the job is still here. At least the union will keep fighting the robotic engineers they’re testing.

Twenty-five miles. Ravenna in twenty-five miles.

I know—

My conductor cracks a sunflower seed in his mouth, spits in a cup. He’s through most of the bag. The sound needles at me. I grit my teeth, say nothing. Some railroaders turn to worse vices than salt to pass the time. This conductor’s alright.

Is that my phone vibrating again?

I wonder about the girls, what they’ll be doing. I look at my wristwatch. Six o’clock—Christ, is that still all? Hitting your twelve pays well. They’ll be going to practice. Soccer and band. I think there’s a game coming up soon. But that’s not right. It’s hot in the sun, but the grass is brown. It’s wintering. Basketball and band, then. I try to remember how long it’s been since I’ve been to a game. I try to remember being off these tracks.

I watch the shadow of the engine lengthen into the field. I try to predict the timing of the conductor’s seed cracks. I try not to think about anything. I try not to think about wasted time and Ravenna.

I know about Rav—

I blink and it’s night and we’re moving. I look at my watch. One more hour, whether we make it to Ravenna or not.

The night is black. No moon. My lips are cracked.

The train roars down the tracks. The headlights splinter the night. We carve our reality in the blank. The Sandhills loom all about.

The screeching alarm cries out through cabin of the engine. My eyes focus. By the time they do, the alarm quits. My hand knows to hit the button. Automatic. I glance to my left. My conductor's chin still hangs to his chest. The alarm sounds every ten minutes while the train moves to keep the crew awake. Sleeping through it is part of the unofficial job description.

My lids are heavy but I do not feel tired. I feel like I’m waking over and over in this chair, but I know I never sleep on the tracks.

Movement.

My eyelids stretch open and I see them. Two pairs of eyes streak across the black. They are far away and off to the right. They draw nearer. The first will be a deer or an antelope, I know. The way it arcs and bounds. The second pair of eyes is dimmer and it follows behind the first and it comes on constant.

I turn to my conductor. The cup of seed shells is full. His beard falls down to his obvious gut. Bleach and coffee stain his shirt. Railroaders don’t live long enough for me to wake him for this.

I turn back to the eyes. One hundred yards at most.

I see wildlife on every run. But I’m squinting through the window. Gripping the arms of the chair until my fingers cramp. I can’t explain it—I am reading the night now.

I move outside onto the catwalk. Hands wrapped around the railing. I look. The air whips my clothes about me. I could scream and still only hear the train. The eyes are there. Closer, closer.

Fifty yards out the chasing eyes stop.

The first pair—the deer—keeps coming, bounding.

Then.

The beams splash over the buck, illuminating it in the midst of one of its powerful leaps. Its chest is confident and full. Its antlers are impressive. Its legs are frozen in the air, ready to meet the ground, ready to fling it forward into a hundred more flights. Just below its legs: the tracks.

The train does not break pace as it strikes the buck and scatters it dozens of ways into the forgetful night. Flecks of blood pelt me and shake me. I let go of the railing and step back. My hand goes to my mouth. I dry heave.

I double over but manage to look up as we pass the second pair of eyes. They do not blink. The headlights flash on the cougar where it sits on its haunches, watching. The beast does not move. I could mistake it for a replica if not for the truth of its yellow eyes. They seem to peer through me as I hold back my vomit.

Just as quickly as the puma lit up, the dark swallows it up again.

I slip to my knees on the catwalk. The onrushing air stings my skin and waters my eyes. The train bellows through the black.

I feel my phone vibrate in my pocket. In the distance, I see the first glow of Ravenna’s lights.

Sean Theodore Stewart

Sean Theodore Stewart is a Pushcart Award and Best American Short Story nominee. His stories have appeared in The Arkansas International, december, Barrelhouse, Epiphany, The Normal School, Guesthouse, Salt Hill, The New Territory, Full House, and Bayou. He holds an MFA from the University of Idaho, where he served as Fiction Editor of Fugue. He is originally from the Sandhills of Nebraska and now lives in Brooklyn with his wife, Samantha, and their pups, Ramona and Molly.