There was a terrible train accident today on the route I use to get to and from The Big City.

When I arrived at the train station, a garbled voice boomed through the horn speakers mounted on the faux-antique lamp posts.  The announcement went something like this:

"Attention all passengers on the Boondocks Central Line: due to an accident near the SmallTownVille station involving a FREIGHT TRAIN, the service on the Boondocks Central Line has been halted.  Passengers may wish to find alternate transportation.  Repeat, due to a FREIGHT TRAIN accident at a gate crossing near the SmallTownVille station, all service on the Boondocks Central Line has been suspended.  There is no estimated time to restore service ..."

I almost crapped in my pants.  Because Monday was a holiday, I was already down a full day's pay (no, I don't get paid for holidays, and the fact that I can't help it doesn't mean jack), so I've been working an extra couple of hours each day trying to recover some of the loss.  Here I am, freaking out.  How am I going to get to work?  There's no way I can find "alternate transportation", and driving my poor ol' jalopy into The Big City is out of the question.  Especially since it's in need of repair right now.

The parking lot of the station seemed pretty empty.  I knew whatever happened, it happened much earlier.  Many of the people who normally take the train abandoned the idea before I ever got there.  As the thunder clapped above and the world lit beneath the strobe flash of lightning from the low-hanging belly of clouds (a nice touch to the gloomy start to the day, btw), fat raindrops assailed the impervious surfaces around me and died in violent explosions of mist to rush in miniature freshets across the asphalt.  I sat in the car and prayed.

When the rain abated enough to go into the station house, I found a large group of older people, most of whom I didn't recognize.  They must be regulars on another train, because they all knew one another.  Well, most did.  They laughed at a joke I just missed as I sauntered through the door.  They spoke about whether they should send someone named Eddie for breakfast, and if things go too long, they could order from a local restaurant to have lunch delivered.  My heart sank.

I tried not to eavesdrop as the loudmouthed crew continued griping about the situation.  They were upset because of its duration; they stated  how usually a crane or similar device is brought down to push the train away.  More laughter, more grumbling.  The mood of the crowd sobered.  The "experts" came out then.

You know the "experts" -- they're the ones who have all the answers, regardless of the topic.  You can catch a conversation about cars, and the "experts" will be opining about what’s best, what’s great, what’s crap, all the how-to’s, and talking with great authority about whatever it is, and they're experts on cars at that time.  Or the topic of politics, either national or regional, will arise, and of course they all have solutions for all social ills and problems, and this candidate is best for that reason, or that candidate is best for this reason, etc.  Or, maybe the topic is sports.  Oh, Lord, sports!!  Then the experts come in droves!  Everyone with a newspaper subscription knows everything ever knowable about sports!  Baseball!  Football!  Basketball!  (Almost never hockey.  I find that strange.)  The thick upper Midwestern accents, with harsh vowels and nasally twang, rips loud and reverberating over the tiled floors and concrete walls, scratching my nerves like nails on a chalkboard.

The "experts" decided they (and by "they", the "experts" meant "the transit authorities and/or police -- whoever's in charge, of course") should just push (I believe "scrape" was the term they bandied) the wreck to the side of the tracks and have done with it.  Let the trains run again.  Hmph.  Indubitably!  Without question!  The "experts" have consensus, what is left to ask?

Someone asked to borrow someone else's cell phone.  I was grateful they didn't ask for mine; I would have refused.  I stepped outside and called my boss, left him a message indicating I'd be late but didn't know HOW late.  He's pretty patient, but I hate the idea of pushing his patience.  I trudged back inside and slumped onto a bench next to a tall, angular, mousy blond woman who volunteered her phone for the stranger's use.  I convicted myself of being selfish and reclusive.

Another person made a phone call, and the announcement continued repeating over the loudspeaker at regular intervals.

The sound of a conversation carried to me.

"Oh, yeah?  Really?  Oh man.  Okay, thanks."  The elder man hung up his phone and muttered discontent under his breath.

"Didja find out what happened?"  The nasal female voice echoed in the station despite the number of bodies.

"Yeah, freight hit a car down at 120," he spoke with irritation.

My heart fluttered.  Someone was hit by a freight train.

"Oh, izzat what happened?"

"Yeah, I guess da train side-swiped a car."

I almost vomited.  I put my head between my knees and prayed.  I prayed first that it wasn't accurate.  I prayed second for the person in the car.  I prayed for their family last, in the event of the worst case scenario.

"Well, dey jus' gotta shove it aside, dat's all.  Jus' push it to da side."

I've noticed the "experts" -- at least in my area, and I don't know what your neck of the woods are like -- seem to be the loudest, most verbose in the crowd.  They're seldom soft-spoken.  In this case all of them were over age 60.  They'd been "experts" for most of that time, I guessed, and probably started as "experts" in sports, graduating to other topics from there over the years.

No one expressed grief over the victim, or worse, victims, of the accident.  It flashed through my head like the lightning, fleeting and bright, that it was probably their own fault.  The gates at rail crossings are generally a good distance from the tracks themselves, though not all crossings even have gates.  I knew the crossing the "experts" mentioned, though, and there are gates.  Gates, flashing lights, clanging bells ... and a traffic light to boot.  It's a major intersection.  A shudder twisted up my spine when I considered what happens when a car and freight train collide.  It's not a new occurrence, neither uncommon, unfortunately.  The result is never good.

I bowed my head and prayed again.  This time I started with the family and worked the other way.  I dropped the part about it not being true.

More news from the peanut gallery trickled down to me via their voluble voices.

"I guess da car's stuck unner da train," someone twanged.  My heart spasmed.

Oh my God.  This was a horrible accident.

"Oh, well, jeez, dat's gonna be anudder two, tree hours at least," another "expert" offered.  "Yeah, at least anudder two-tree hours."

I sat silent, not that I would've spoken anyway, but I couldn't stop my hands from shaking.  "Under the train" echoed through my brain like a gunshot.

I was dumbstruck by their callousness.  More laughing as the discussion turned to the train company offering a limo service to get passengers to work in compensation for the delay ... caused by a freight train running over someone's car.  With someone in it.

"Yeah, eidder dat, or a buncha conducters'll come an' carry us on deir backs!"  A rousing round of mirth for this statement.

I prayed.  And I prayed.  And I prayed.  And yes, I was worried about getting to work, and what had to happen for me to get there and still have any chance at all of getting something like my normal paycheck next payday, but I couldn't rid myself of the image of some mangled, twisted, smashed heap of metal and plastic strewn along the rails and ties, broken glass and shattered light lenses spread across the intersection, and blood ...

I shook my head to clear it.  I stood, and pressed against the door handle to go out when I heard someone's voice grating behind me.

"Well, dey ain't gonna be able ta lift up dat train, no sir -- dey gotta jus' cut da car outta unnerneath it.  Jus' cut it out, an' den mebbe dey can get da body an' whatnot."

An' whatnot.  I fought back the bile rising in my throat.  I banged through the door and breathed deep of the rain-washed, humid air.  I felt dizzy, like I moved through a dream-haze.  Nothing seemed real.  No one -- not a single person -- expressed the slightest sympathy for whoever may have been in the car, or what might've become of them.

I realized with growing horror that, not very long ago, I wouldn't have either.  Not long ago at all.

I prayed.  I prayed, this time, for me.

An announcement that train service would be restarting momentarily drew more noise from the gaggle of honking geese and buzzards in the station.  I took my leave.  I went for my cigarettes, in my car, and tried to calm down.  I didn't go to the station house on my way back; I went straight to the platform, but it did me no good.  The "experts" herded out there as well, just in time for the loudspeaker voice to announce the next train coming through wouldn't be stopping at several intermediate stops between SmallTownVille station and the next stop, Bison Orchard.  This set off a new wave of grumbling complaints about Bison Orchard, how "dey" (the train company) kissed "deir asses" and such.

At least outside, I couldn't hear them, and their irritating nose-oriented voices wouldn't echo.  I climbed onto the train, and prayed still more.  I didn't know what to pray for anymore.

The train rickety-rocked down the rails, past one intersection, then another.  I knew the next would be the accident site.  Well before my train reached it, the triple engines of the freight came into view.  My heart sank.  Three engines.  A big freight.  Before the first engine, men in neon yellow and reflective-stripped vests waved flares, took photographs with large black cameras, and milled about.  I looked through the windows opposite me, and the blazing lights of emergency vehicles splashed over rain-soaked streets and bounced from windshields of cars held back or detoured.

Train car after train car rolled past my window.  Stacks of truck trailor boxes piled atop one another rested on the flatbed cars.  Slowing to a crawl, my train eased through the crossing, the gates down, red lights blinking emotionless warnings.

The "experts" across the aisle from me muttered "JEEZUZ" and "OhmyGAHD" and other such ejaculations of horror.  I caught sight of a piece of the vehicle's wreckage, just a glance, but what I saw iced my blood.  An unrecognizable lump of ruined metallic shrapnel, like the branches of a twisted, ancient bramble, stabbed into view from the back of a flatbed tow truck, and part of the dashboard, remnants of what may have been something expensive and foreign-built, but I could see the seats, the interior of the car, and my brain jarred, that's not right, something's not right, who'd have the top down on a convertible in this weather?  That's wrong, it can't be right, there's something --

The roof of the car was missing.  The car had no top, at all.

I couldn't look anymore.  I turned away to stare at the freight cars flashing by, my commuter transit gaining speed as it cleared the accident site.

I'm not sure that image will leave me.  I got to work about half an hour late this morning, and still haven't shaken the image.  I've written this, and done several other things that are actually work-related, and yet ... there it is, burned on the screen of my mind, so I can see it even if I turn my brain off.

And I'll pray again.  I'm not sure what for this time.

-JDT-