Speaker 1: The train home. The station was quiet, not empty, but quiet,
Speaker 1: the way places are late at night, when most people
Speaker 1: have gone home, and the ones who remain are waiting
Speaker 1: for something they cannot name. I stood on the platform
Speaker 1: with my hands in my coat pockets and looked down
Speaker 1: the tracks. And the tracks went on and on into
Speaker 1: the dark, two sildered lines that caught the station lights
Speaker 1: and held them like rivers of light flowing into nowhere.
Speaker 1: I did not remember coming to the station. I did
Speaker 1: not remember leaving the house. I only knew that I
Speaker 1: was here, standing on the platform, and that the night
Speaker 1: was cool, and the air smelled of rain and old wood,
Speaker 1: and that I was tired in the way that is
Speaker 1: not about the body, but about the soul. Tired in
Speaker 1: the way that makes you want to sit down and
Speaker 1: close your eyes and let the world go on without you.
Speaker 1: For a while. A train came. I heard it before
Speaker 1: I saw it, a low rumble that grew into a
Speaker 1: hum and then into a roar. And then the train
Speaker 1: was there, pulling into the station with a sound of
Speaker 1: brakes and breath. It was an old train, the kind
Speaker 1: with wooden seats and wide windows and a bell that
Speaker 1: rang when the doors opened. The lights inside were warm
Speaker 1: and yellow, and through the windows I could see rows
Speaker 1: of empty seats, each one lit by its own small light.
Speaker 1: I stepped on. The train was warm inside, and the
Speaker 1: seats were soft, and the air smelled of polished wood
Speaker 1: and something faintly sweet, like cinnamon or old book. I
Speaker 1: sat down by the window and looked out at the platform,
Speaker 1: and the doors closed behind me with a gentle sigh,
Speaker 1: and the train began to move. It pulled out of
Speaker 1: the station, slowly, gathering speed, and the platform slid away
Speaker 1: and disappeared, and the lights of the town fell behind us,
Speaker 1: and we were in the countryside, moving through the dark.
Speaker 1: The fields were black and shapeless, but the sky above
Speaker 1: was full of stars, more stars than I had seen
Speaker 1: in years, and the moon was high and bright, and
Speaker 1: the train moved through all of it like a dream.
Speaker 1: I did not know where the train was going. I
Speaker 1: had not bought a ticket, I had not asked any one.
Speaker 1: I had simply stepped on the way you stepped into
Speaker 1: a river because the water is there, and because your
Speaker 1: feet are tired, and because sometimes you just need to
Speaker 1: be carried. The first stop came without warning. The train slowed,
Speaker 1: and the brakes whispered, and we pulled into a small
Speaker 1: station with a green roof and a wooden sign. I
Speaker 1: looked out the window and felt my chest tighten cuneon, thinking,
Speaker 1: in this one of the stand not really going to
Speaker 1: my school, I'm probably just really happily like a toe back.
Speaker 1: I made it believe this manacal exta tree, one of
Speaker 1: the school I had gone to as a child, with
Speaker 1: the red brick walls and the tall windows and the
Speaker 1: playground behind it. It looked exactly as I remembered it,
Speaker 1: exactly the way it had been forty years ago. The
Speaker 1: swings were still there, swaying slightly in the wind, and
Speaker 1: the basketball hoop was still there, and the door to
Speaker 1: the main building was still painted the same shade of blue.
Speaker 1: A light was on in one of the windows, and
Speaker 1: I could almost see myself sitting at a desk, bent
Speaker 1: over a book, not knowing that one day I would
Speaker 1: be on a train looking back at it all. The
Speaker 1: train moved on, the school slid away and disappeared, and
Speaker 1: the dark fields returned, and the stars turned slowly overhead.
Speaker 1: I sat back in my seat and watched the world
Speaker 1: go by. The second stop was a cafe, not just
Speaker 1: any cafe, but the cafe on Maple Street, where I
Speaker 1: had spent countless evenings in my twenties, sitting at the
Speaker 1: table by the window with a cup of coffee and
Speaker 1: a book, watching the rain fall on the street outside.
Speaker 1: The cafe was still there, and the table by the
Speaker 1: win window was still there, and the sign above the
Speaker 1: door still said the Wren in the same gold letters
Speaker 1: on the same green background. The lights inside were warm,
Speaker 1: and I could see people sitting at the tables, talking softly,
Speaker 1: their faces blurred by the glass. I wanted to stop.
Speaker 1: I wanted to go inside and sit at my old
Speaker 1: table and order a coffee and stay there until morning.
Speaker 1: But the train was already moving, pulling away from the platform,
Speaker 1: and the cafe slid past the window and was gone.
Speaker 1: And I was moving again, carried forward by something I
Speaker 1: could not see and did not understand. The third stop
Speaker 1: was the park, the park where I had taken walks
Speaker 1: with my father when I was small, where we had
Speaker 1: fed the ducks and sat on the bench by the
Speaker 1: pond and watched the clouds move across the sky. The
Speaker 1: park was quiet, now empty of people, but the bench
Speaker 1: was still there, and the pond was still there, and
Speaker 1: the ducks were still there, sleeping on the water with
Speaker 1: their heads tucked under their wings. A street lamp cast
Speaker 1: a circle of yellow light on the grass, and in
Speaker 1: that light I could see the path we had walked,
Speaker 1: worn into the earth by years of footsteps, mine and his.
Speaker 1: The train moved on, the park disappeared, the dark returned,
Speaker 1: and I sat in my seat and felt something I
Speaker 1: had not felt in a long time. I felt held.
Speaker 1: I felt carried. I felt like the train knew where
Speaker 1: I needed to go, even if I did not. More
Speaker 1: stops came and went the library where I had read
Speaker 1: my first book, the corner where I had my kiss,
Speaker 1: the bridge over the river where I had stood as
Speaker 1: a teenager and looked at the water and wondered what
Speaker 1: my life would become. Each stop was a memory, solid
Speaker 1: and real, preserved in the amber of the night, like
Speaker 1: insects and stone. I looked at each one, and each
Speaker 1: one looked back at me, and there was no sadness
Speaker 1: in it, only a kind of warmth, the warmth of
Speaker 1: knowing that all those moments had happened, that they were mine,
Speaker 1: that they were real. The train began to slow again.
Speaker 1: This time it was different, This time. The slowing was
Speaker 1: not the slowing of a stop, but the slowing of
Speaker 1: an ending, of a journey coming to its natural close.
Speaker 1: I looked out the window and saw a street. I
Speaker 1: recognized my street, the street I lived on, with the
Speaker 1: old oaks and the stone wall and the mail box.
Speaker 1: At the end of the drive, the train stopped, the
Speaker 1: doors opened. I stood up and walked to the door
Speaker 1: and stepped off, and the train waited behind me, warm
Speaker 1: and glowing. And then the doors closed, and it pulled away,
Speaker 1: silent and smooth, disappearing into the night like a dream.
Speaker 1: Waking up, I stood on the platform and looked at
Speaker 1: my house. It was there, exactly where it had always been,
Speaker 1: with the porch light on and the curtains drawn, and
Speaker 1: the garden dark and still. I walked up the path,
Speaker 1: and the grass was cool under my shoes, and the
Speaker 1: air smelled of roses and night air, and the front
Speaker 1: door was unlocked, the way I always left it. I
Speaker 1: went inside. The house was quiet and warm, and everything
Speaker 1: was exactly as I had left it, the coat on
Speaker 1: the hook, the book on the table, the cup in
Speaker 1: the sight. I walked through the dark rooms without turning
Speaker 1: on the lights, guided by moonlight and memory. And I
Speaker 1: came to the bedroom and the bed was there, and
Speaker 1: the covers were pulled back, and the pillow was soft.
Speaker 1: I lay down. The bed held me warm and close,
Speaker 1: and the house held me quiet and sure, and the
Speaker 1: night held me dark and endless and full of stars.
Speaker 1: I closed my eyes and I was home. I had
Speaker 1: always been home. The train had brought me back the
Speaker 1: way trains do, the way life does, always circling, always returning,
Speaker 1: always bringing you to the place where you belong. I slept.
Speaker 1: I slept in my own bed, in my own house,
Speaker 1: on my own street, in the town where I had
Speaker 1: grown up and fallen in love and become who I was.
Speaker 1: I slept and the night was gentle, and all was
Speaker 1: well