Research: Journals
The Journal, Issue 30.2
Prose: "Robbertrain"
by Renee ReighartJennie can tell the moment her mom nods off to Jay Leno because she stops laughing along. Jennie opens the window next to her bed and waits. The lamps in the parking lot of her condo complex cast orange rectangles onto her peach sheets. She can just make out the gray chunks of limestone that line the train tracks fifteen feet from her building. The cool air from the air conditioning rushes out, skims over her skin. Sometimes, when she wakes up before light and peeks through the blinds, she sees a train sitting perfectly still and quiet on the tracks, the tank cars emblazoned with swirling white symbols. Jennie's mom asked the manager about the trains when she and Jennie moved in and he went, lady, if one-a them things derails, it'll happen so fast you won't even have time to wake up.
Evergreen bushes sit against the bricks under Jennie's window and throw bushy shadows on the screen. Jennie and her friend Amanda like to yank off the ends of the thin branches and throw them in each other's hair until it looks like they're both wearing lopsided tiaras made of miniature Christmas trees. Television laughter rises and falls in the living room and car commercial announcers yell. The breath of the A/C unit knocks to a stop and the freeway like rushing water fills the bottom of the night. Conan comes on and Jennie is about to shut the window, give up on Amanda, when a rock swings out of the dark and ticks the window above her head. Jennie waits, the blood in her legs pulsing. Tonight is the night. The air conditioner musters itself and the sound of the freeway is buried beneath it. She is thankful for the noise. Amanda steps out of the dark. Her Garfield nightgown, her tangly hair, her skin all glowing orange except for the brown stains on her shins—bruises from lying on her back in the street kicking the leaky oil pan of her dad's minivan. Come on, she mouths.
Jennie pops out the screen. The night feels warmer once she's outside, closer to the skin. The weight of the darkness pulls her down. They sneak across the tracks and crouch in the bushes on the other side, waving away mosquitoes and kicking at crickets that bounce off their bare legs. Light from the train engine's headlight pulses bright but cold—part of the sky fallen. Jennie closes her eyes as it vibrates by, heavy, rolling the earth flat, thinks, you can't see me if I can't see you. Amanda jams her ribs when the head of the train slows to navigate the switchyard. She drags Jennie up by the arm and pulls her toward the creeping cars, says, I told you, it's fun. Just like in gym—see how long you can hang on. Dad says that handle is safe. She points to a curved bar that juts out beside the open door of a boxcar drifting by. Through each open door Jennie can see a horizontal sliver of her living room window blinking like she does when she wants her life to seem like a movie.
Amanda has already stepped away from her. She paces the train and reaches for the handle. Her legs lift and she floats down the tracks away from Jennie. Her suspended form seeps darkness, delicate against the gray shadow of sky. It seems as though it is the darkness itself that grabs her arm and drags Amanda into the boxcar. Jennie spins and runs the other way as the train picks up speed, limestone cutting into her bare feet. In a moment the train is beyond her, traveling fast until it becomes a void in the center of the brightness cast into the sky by the train yard in the distance.
