Because you told us in weighty mother tones not to, that we could be arrested, and because deep down we were thrilled at the thought of a single penny derailing an entire train (My God, we wondered, what damage could a quarter do?) we snuck to the tracks that afternoon through cooling shadows to the woods edge where we waited, breath rattling in our smooth skinny chests.
The first flicker of the lightning bug was our sign to do it, and with pennies tight between forefinger and thumb we bolted for the tracks. We pressed the coins onto the flinty rail, securing them with a firm click that reminded me, ominously, of the sound the Host made on Sundays when the Reverend Spencer Turnipseed popped the wafer into my cupped hands.
Pennies deposited, we retreated into the black-green woods to wait for the 5:13 to Atlanta and the headline-making catastrophe that would certainly leave mangled bodies strewn across the country side as the engine tripped on the copper dots and cars buckled off the tracks one after another. We knew and accepted that our fates would be sealed in the heat of that instant and that, as you predicted, we would become big-time sinners and maybe even convicts. Bent at the waist, we leaned toward this new being and waited.
Of course you know how this all turned out: There was no calamity, no carnage. Just two wafer-thin copper smears, one for each of us, with only Abe Lincoln bleeding over the edges and two boys, hearts in throats, running to beat the sun-down curfew, breathing familiar air, relieved to be free.
- Robert Lauder
The Rail Bed was first published in Press Magazine.
After School
"Step on a crack, break your mothers back," we laugh in our deepening, blackberry-thickened voices, tumbling along the tired sidewalk, a pack of squirming pups finding our way.
Beneath the quick fun, we hear in our imaginations bones cracking and snapping as we swack the scored cement with scuffed Hushpuppies, allowing ourselves to wonder could it be true, could it happen?
Smelling the rain on its way, we scatter one by one into our homes, into neat yellow kitchens with tie-back curtains just to be sure everythings in its place, to feel the fear recede, still young enough to care, but too old to admit it.
- Robert Lauder
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7/11/97 Issue. Copyright 1997 by CAMP Rehoboth, Inc. All rights reserved.