Praire Mourning

Prairie Mourning

by

Peter Green

 

Every evening as the golden sun settled in his western sky, kissing the day goodbye, the old man strode up the wooden ramp, atop the rundown platform, where the train from the city stopped every day at 7:02 pm, day upon week, week upon month, month upon year.

 

Chores completed for the day, this was his moment to sit, to relax, to think, to dream, to re-call days and lives past.  He sunk into the wooden bench lining the platform, and stared forward, following the sun as it fell into the earth.  Today felt special, not like the others.

 

Maybe today would be the day.

 

The flowers he snipped from his garden this morning, hung over his lap.  The splash of colors from the bouquet strewn across his lap and falling onto the bench, brightened the dull scene, overpowering the black and gray vibrations of the workers returning home from the city, their minds fractured and poisoned by their days events.

 

The old man, in his old tired suit, smiled.  Her image returned to his mind.  He felt her beauty.  He fell into her golden eyes.  He rode her smile, like a child on a roller coaster.  He chuckled to himself at the thought of her funny laugh.  He thought of kissing the tears off her cheek, removing them forever.  His hands remembered her gentle curves.  He stared forward, in a trance.

 

He didn’t hear the train rattle to a stop, the steel wheels squealing, the smell of diesel and oil burning together, dissolving into a blue smoke.  He didn’t see the conductor jump off the passenger car and slam the stairs to the ground.

 

As usual, one or two workers from the city straddled down the stairs onto the platform.  Bags and briefcases hung over their shoulders.  They gazed straight ahead, the old man a fixture they had come to expect on every arrival home.

 

The old man turned his head and waited.  The stairs went back up.  The train slowly pulled away from the platform.  The old man wasn’t sad.  He wasn’t disappointed.  For tomorrow he would come again…and the day after…and the day after that.

 

He stood to return to his home.  To take the long path back to the place that held the memories he cherished every day. To take the path that lead him through the neighbourhood’s and the people of his youth. He would listen to the sounds of lives being lived.  He would inhale the sweet fragrance of families and friends existing in harmony.  He would remember the life he once had that was now stored in the walls, the floors, the roofs of the very homes he strode by.

 

A familiar voice resounded in his head.

 

‘My Love?’

 

She stood before him.  Her sundress adorned in the colors of his mind danced in the warm breeze.  She was laughing.  Her strawberry blonde hair shimmered in the setting sun.

 

Without a word he offered her the fresh cut flowers from his garden…their garden.  They walked arm in arm off the platform, down the ramp, into the sun.

 

None of the workers waiting for the train in the hot morning sun noticed the old man sitting on the bench.  They didn’t notice the flowers, wilted, fallen to the ground at his feet.  They didn’t notice his head tilted oddly to one side.  They didn’t notice his eyes were open, staring at nothing.  They didn’t notice his chest no longer expanded and contracted, taking in the clean, warm, prairie air.

 

The train pulled to its stop.  Squealing, screeching, and rattling.  The workers jumped on.  The train carried them away.