Trainyard Angel

The kids freighthopped, sure, but they never took suicide cars.

They'd take a gondola with a wide welcoming trough, where the wind tears your eyes out, but never a suicide car. They had no floor. You crouched: legs stretched and arse on the bar, watching the ground rush under you. One slip, and down you went.

You have to be desperate, to hop a freight train. Beaten down by life, hopped up on dreams of the mainland. You’d try anything, except suicide cars.

So why did this kid try it, ponders Trainyard Officer Gorsky.

It’s midnight dark at high noon and his shift just ended. His poker game is minutes away. But he’s freezing his balls off in the trainyard, in the midst of blizzard.

All alone, for the trains are automated now.

He misses the drivers, misses talking to them. He's a bull alone in the yard, the last human in a world of dumb machines. But those dumb machines are bright enough to detect warm breath in the cold air. To stop the train and give him a call, with their telemarketer voices.

He shines his torch over the virgin snow: footprints leading away. The car holds no clues, no bags or stubbed out cigarettes. He sighs, knowing in his bones that the Transport Authority shall give him absolute shit if he just left it.

Can’t leave a kid to freeze.

TO Gorsky’s steelcapped boots crunch on the snow, sinking him up to his ankles. In the white wilderness he is a dark blip, an alien in many insulating layers. He follows the trail. The edges of the yard are lit up with floodlights, but he still can’t see a fucking thing in this weather.

The footprints grow shorter and shorter. Long strides become little steps. Handprints join them as the kid begins to crawl. God willing, he is too late.

But then his torch spotlights a beautiful man amongst the snow,

With a pair of feathery wings.

TO Gorsky should fall to his knees in supplication.

But, he’ll only be ten minutes late for poker if he left right now.

On the walk back, he reasons it was happy where it was, but he doesn’t know what he’ll tell his friends.

“You won't believe what I saw,” he says, practicing. “In the trainyard, I saw this guy… Not a guy. He was a… A trainyard angel…”