Abandon

Abandon
by Susan Pogorzelski

If he closes his eyes tightly, he can imagine the speed of the trains riding past as he stands on the platform, feel the slight vibration of the floorboards beneath his feet as the cars pull into the station. If he stops for a moment and listens, he can still hear the tearing of the metal against the tracks, the echo of the whistle’s announcement, the conductor’s hearty bellows.

Some days, he sees a woman with long legs made longer by a pencil skirt, stockings, and heels running by, grasping the hand of a little child in a collared sailor dress and a bow nestled in her limp curls. Some days, he imagines her husband trailing behind in a long coat, suitcases and a small rag doll clutched in his hands. Some days, he remembers reunions and goodbyes all in the same moment. Some days, he remembers nothing at all.

The old clock above the arch, despite broken glass and a missing hour hand, is a relic of a once-working time, though there’s no one but him keeping track anymore. It chimes once at half past one, an echo that fills the empty space for scarcely a second, lingering along the air.

The newspaper boys hollered their Extra, Extras in front of the corner post office just down the road from the station. The headlines that swept in on the wind — now a decade outdated — claimed the factories were shutting down, and from the window near the telephone booths that never ring he imagines he can still see the line at the clerk’s office wind around the corner, still predict how far it trailed, past the baker who used to give a cream puff to his little girl each Saturday morning and the butcher shop that tossed in the marrow — No, no, free of charge, for the mutt.

He had followed behind as his wife and daughter ran to greet a new life, clutching a rag doll and carrying their suitcases, and when it was time to board, he hugged his goodbyes and watched them leave with promises of reunion and change. The dog stayed behind with him and the house, and when he couldn’t keep the house, she followed him to the station where they both waited and remained.

This train station is his home now, despite the damaged wooden benches and surface-scratched floors. Glass from shattered windows, an accident of a street stickball game, still litter the ground among dust and debris from broken scaffolding and peeling paint chips. In the winter, he stays far away from those front windows, setting up his home instead behind the ticket counters; in the summer, they offer a cool respite, reawakening the once stale air and carrying memories in on a lost breeze.

His home. His memories. As abandoned as the train tracks now, save the wildflowers and weeds that grow alongside raw metal, adjacent to the new tracks that run past the new mill, towards the new station the next town over.

He doesn’t know how long it’s been, but he acknowledges the passing of the days by the rise and fall of the sun, by the shadows traveling across the empty lobby, by the gray hairs he sees in the cracked men’s room mirror, in the slow gait of his best friend as she wanders over to nudge his hand.

He sits on one of the broken benches, tucks his overcoat around him, and pats the dog on her head. He hasn’t spoken aloud in weeks. There hasn’t been a reason to. He thinks how his voice must have grown stale and opens his mouth to speak, tests out a vowel and emits something like a growl. The dog cocks her head, pricks her ears, but remains sitting.

“Good…girl,” he says slowly and the dog opens its mouth, pants a smile, and he forces his lips to curl into a smile, too.

He coughs, and the noise echoes off the high ceilings and gives the station new life. Another cough, another smile; the dog wags her tail, lets out a whimper, a whine, a bark. And then they can’t stop, the sounds reverberating off the walls, moving with the wind past the broken windows to where neighborhood boys are playing baseball and, frightened by the sound from the abandoned building, they drop their bats and gloves and run home.

For a moment, the train station is alive again.

For a moment, the walls are laughing.