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Chris McHenry
The Third Rail
Like some behemoth steel a.m. radio signal, the Red Line races on six hundred volts to its progressive stations. It receives and tunes out its passengers at frequences arbitrary unto itself. Where they deabark is a matter of the rider’s own choosing, urgency, and taste. Longo’s chosen point of embarkation was deep and cool beneath the crowded frenzy of rush traffic. Where he tuned into the signal the faint autumn rays of sun had just begun their horizontal slant. Their soft yellow beams pierced in comfortable geometry through their concrete and glass obstacles and danced harmlessly on all they touched. It was with this imagery being wired into the synapses of his memory that he drifted into a dream.
A stark rural landscpae in the troughs of a freezing late autumn afternoon slowly focuses in front. A vast carpet of flattened brown cornstalks terminated horizonatally by pale gray-white skies stretch the limits of vision. In the forward middle of this panorama runs an isolated narrow two-lane highway. Wisps of powdered snow move with the breeze like translucent white snakes across the asphalt strip. Steel signposts placed shoulder-high and spaced evenly apart run the gamut of the road for as far as the eye can see. They extol the virtues of hybrid seed or fertilizer or piece together quaint jingles for Burma Shave. There is an electric humminecho of wind in the power lines, which hang in an endless straight cat’s cradle. A crow describes a vast arc in the sky. Chorded on one end by an abandoned sheet metal grain silo and terminated in a cluster of ramshackle buildings. Above all is infinite loneliness, which emanates from this secluded and barren space. Where the crow had landed, he recognizes and his grandfather’s dormant farm complex. Going on twenty years now since any crops or stock had gone through here. The gravel road, which leads to the neglected farmhouse, is littered with rusted junk and broken split rail fencing. A couple of grim cur dogs cut in and out of the obstacles with their withers hunched and their noses close to the frozen ground.
As the train accelerated and slowed to the tune of its station stops, so did Longo’s subconscious vision. Now he was in the farmhouse. The greenish-gray phosphorous presence of a black and white television dominates the main front room. A grainy and static transmission belies the scarcity and distance of broadcasting facilities in those parts. Barely audible, a gameshow host displays the products he is about to give away to his overly exuberant contestants. all the furnishings and appointments in the main room are of a style dating back to the first quarter of the century. An occasional modern convenience punctuates the dreary decorum. In a backdrop, away in the sparse kitchen, sits his grandfather. Head cradled in the upturned heels of his hands, he gazes in silence out the back winow and across the snow swept prairie. The game show noise is over. It has been replcaed by a high-pitched combination of stringed instruments and fast forward child voices. It is the banter of cartoon characters.
It wasn’t just Smurfs that startled him awake, but also his natural time-space alarm system. His mind’s way of telling him that something important was about to happen that needed an immediate call to attention. The urgency at hand was that he would soon be approaching his point of debarkation. The Red Line had completed its mad-dash expedition through the dark tunnels to emerge cautiously onto the elevated structure and new surroundings. The megawatt subterranean signal had morphed to something more vulnerable. With its metallic screeching of twisting wheels, clatter of opening doors, and a constant side to side rocking motion, the train was now more akin to the “Little Engine That Could”.
Now the train has stopped to trade passengers and wait for a go ahead to move on. A wide avenue stretches below, enveloped in nether pre-dusk stillness. Intermittent street lamps begin to wink on, leaving a string of amber twinkle. They give the illusion of stage lights before some dark drama. A rainbow of neon signs punctuates the opposite aisles of sidewalk. A fading sun is hidden, but its muted light penetrates the building gangways to contribute an eerie, soft, and humid glow to the entire urbanscape. Longo thinks of Golgotha as he exits the car.
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