Train Yard

Mark goes down the old Santa Fe line that once passed through his town.

Long shadows reached towards the horizon and grasped at the foothills bordering the Sierra Nevada Mountains �" who’s silhouettes loomed in the distant skies before him, as the red rays of the setting sun caught on the sparse brush that managed to poke through the cracked and dried earth as Mark stepped over the deadwood tracks. The back of his neck and arms burned, and his calves ached and throbbed as the sunburned skin seemed to pull and tear with every movement he made; whether it was to turn his head to look at something that had caught his attention at the peripheries of his vision, or to raise his arms to scratch at a dead flake peeling from his equally sunburned scalp. It would have been painful if it weren’t for the dulling toxins of THC and alcohol competing for control of his bloodstream.

He watched his feet carefully; making sure to step on each of the tracks that ran parallel to one another through the twin, rusty iron rails. There was an odd fear he had, that constantly nagged at him in the back of his mind since the moment he stepped onto the tracks back in town. A fear of his foot wedged in the space between two of the boards and not being able to pull it out. How long would he be out there if that happened? Hours? Days? Weeks? Perhaps some intrepid transient would come across his dehydrated corpse in the not so distant future...

Every so often a small lizard, of the same pale color as the deadwood under his feet, would dart out from beneath one of the tracks he stepped on and scurry across the earth to hide within the long reaching shadows of the brush. Occasionally, when he followed the path of the darting reptiles, he’d see a shorn spike or a discarded plate tossed in the shadows. When he spotted one for the first time he stepped off the rails and knelt down to pick it up; nearly falling forward as he done so. It felt like sandpaper between his fingers. Flakes of rust fell off, and stained his fingertips red. He had shoved it in his pocket; the dull spike nearly puncturing through the netting of the gym shorts he wore, and had been pulling them down for quite some time before he gave up and tossed it to join the others. Discarded. Forgotten.

Mark had never walked the rails before. His mother and father had told him when he was younger that only drug addicts and transients went down them. Not for good people like him with futures to look forwards to. His legs swayed again, as another wave of dizziness flushed through him. His stomach seemed to do several flips and he retched to the side of the railroad�" chunks of what little lunch he had lay in a putrid pile as he continued on.

Normally, he’d already be passed out on his bed in the small studio apartment that he had called home for the last three years that seemed to house a permanent miasma of stale grease that stained the air inside. But he couldn’t go back. No. There was nothing but darkness waiting for him there today. A complete shroud of dread that flooded his mind whenever he thought of heading back. A shroud filled with thoughts of Her. Of rough hemp knots, tiny blue pills and sharply shining razors. And so he walked. He walked to avoid going back to that apartment. He walked, despite the protests of his body �" his flabby muscles, and the folds of fat on his chin making it harder to breathe, and the built up fat on his stomach pulling at the small of his back causing a dull ache that seemed to radiate in it. But still, he’d push himself. There was no alternative.

After about an hour or so of his rambling down the path of the railroad track the scenery began to subtly shift. The color of the scraggly bushes and creeping vines against the ground shifted from the dead brown to a more lively shade of brown, and finally green. The grass, too, that grew in large yellow patches that sometimes reached out through the gaps between the boards to tickle at his knees were soon replaced by their more verdant cousins. The trees, too, were changing the closer he got to the foothills, the more frequent they became. They were rare, at first. He’d see one every Slowly shifting from the thin wispy things that he had seen along the trail to the trees surrounding the and even the earth itself rose around him, as if the rails were cutting straight through the ground. Loose sand and fist sized stones rolled off the side of the bisected slope and skittered off the rails.

It was when he stepped into that small wood, that he noticed it. He wasn’t sure what he was looking at, at first. A large, brown square that jutted above the treeline with an odd limb attached to the top of it. It took him a moment to realize it was the roof of some large building he hadn’t know was there. As he continued down the tracks, cutting through the burgeoning woods, the entire structure slowly emerged past the trees and the crowding brush, until he was standing in front of it. A large gate; locked with a heavy iron chain as large as his arm, and a large padlock, as large as his fist, impeded his progress.

The rail continued past the chain link gate and splintered off into six other tracks, each ending before they got to the far side of the complex, which itself ended before a steep climb up the first of the large foothills. The corpses of industrial giants lay still on each of the tracks. Rust caked everything. The smell of iron tinged the air and mixed with the subtle earthy smells of moss and duff and loam. Something stirred in him. Something that he had long since forgotten. It was the something that he felt whenever he was a kid and looked out the car at the passing scenery whenever he and his family went on trips. Or whenever the shadows of the distant mountains penetrated through the thick fogs that often settled in the valley in late autumn. Something that he thought for sure had died out inside of him long ago when he learned to accept the reality of life. A yearning for adventure. A yearning for something more real.

Rusted tipped barbed wire line the top of the fence that wrapped around the perimeter. So climbing the fence �" even if he were capable of that, was out of the question. Next he fell to his belly and tried to push himself in the small gap between the bottom of the gate and the ground. He got half of his right shoulder in before rusted, pointed bottoms of the gate poked and prodded at him through his shirt and tore long, red lines through the pliable flesh as he pulled out. He looked around on either side of him; though a majority of the yard was obscured through brush and the trees he was still able to judge the distance between him and the fence on the far side of the yard, and was able to see where it made turns in the dark distant woods on either side of him. It would take him at the very most fifteen or so minutes to walk around completely, he estimated. If he didn’t find a way in then he’d turn back and make the long walk home.

He looked around for a moment for a good way to begin his walk around the perimeter in an attempt to quell the wanderlust that had built up in him and was yearning for release. A couple feet back, and to his right there was a small path �" nearly invisible if he weren’t looking for something similar, that cut through the underbrush and vanished somewhere in the trees. Calling it a path would have been a bit too ambitious. More like a balding spot on the grassy ground that stretched a bit out of view. When he went to go investigate it did he notice that it curled into the underbrush and curved towards the fence before vanishing once again through the fading light. It didn’t take much thinking for him to stumble and sway down the path.

Just as he saw the path curved a few steps ahead, back towards the fence. It led after a dozen or so yards, to a part of the fence that had been cut away. A small vine snaked around the fence in this location; covering a large portion of it in green leaves and soft blue flowers. All except for one location where the fence had been cut away in a large triangle that the faded path led to. The part of the fence that had been cut off was behind a large train, halfway sitting on a rail hidden by the fallen corpse of the industrial giant. Mark pushed through the opening; the ground rattled as he stepped on the discarded piece of gate buried beneath the foliage and squeezed into the compound.

A smile pulled at the sides of his lips as excitement rushed through his intoxicated veins. He approached the rusted cargo hull and ran his hand over its rough surface �" clumps of moss and rust fell to the ground at his touch. Though the rust had eaten through to the monster’s innards, revealing the iron ribs that held the container together, there was one section of it that still had some thing on it. A curved, yellow line stuck to blue paint beneath another clump of moss that grew over it. He gently brushed past the moss so that this preserved chunk didn’t fall way like the others. A large yellow cross, encircled in a yellow ring revealed itself slowly. Inscribed within the cross were the words, “Santa Fe.”

He had heard that the Santa Fe line used to cut through his town. The last of the engines had rolled through his town when he was still in diapers. According to his parents, the entire population of the town at the time �" all 1500 some odd of them, gathered on Main Street to watch it go by, and mourn the ending of an era. They had a whole festival and everything for it, though he was far too young to remember. They had never told him of this, though. He had figured that it continued back east until it reached somewhere far away; somewhere that he’d never see. Yet here he was. He ran his fingers over the yellow wording. It crumbled and fell to the ground at his touch.

The building that he had seen before loomed over him just behind the c-train. The odd limb sticking out from the top had been a crane, presumably once used to load and unload cargo carried by the industrial beasts. He walked around the container and climbed up the cement platform that led into the warehouse. A large hole bled light into the darkness. Beneath the hole was another crane; it’s wooden arm sticking out of the moss and grass growing around it like a skeletal hand reaching from its grave. A train engine sat still and empty on a track that bisected the building; the smoke stack cold and black. Empty hulls and containers howling as a cold wind swept through the building, and chilled the sweat clinging to his forehead and soaked into his cotton shirt

There was a sound that he began to take notice of when he began walking inside; inspecting the ruined loading dock. 

Click. Clack. Click. Clack. 

It went. A slow, steady beat. Like someone tapping two stones together continuously. 

Click clack, click clack.

“Is anyone there?” His voice echoed off the wood and tin walls.

The noise stopped as soon as his voice ceased its ringing. He looked around. Perhaps he was imagining it. Perhaps it was the sound of some water trapped in the wooden rafters above falling against the concrete platform. Perhaps it was nothing. He chased anything else from his mind and convinced himself that it was a figment of his imagination and continued his exploration. 

The control panel for both of the cranes sat across the tracks at the opposite side of the building, so Mark did the only thing that was in his mind; he clamored over the run down train and hopped off onto the other platform; his foot steps ringing hollow against the metal slab that lay across the train platform. Rust ate away at the majority of it, but a few of the levers were still, mostly in tact. He pulled at one of them, and the large crane still attached to the building creaked and groaned as if it were in pain. The wood beneath it buckled and Mark let go of the controls; his heart racing in his chest as he watched the ceiling �" specs of dust dancing through the wayward beams of setting light that had been knocked free from the movement. He stood perfectly still as if any movement would cause the whole building to collapse. As soon as nothing stirred, and no more creaking could be heard, he hurried out of the building.

The light had turned a dull gray in the sky as the sun continued its downward arc. It would still be twilight for a few hours, as the summer solstice had just passed and day still lingered long past the time one would think it shouldn’t. He didn’t worry about the setting sun and continued his exploration; a kind of childlike wonder flowing through him, like the wind rustling through the trees and roaring like a lion as it collided against the slope of the hill.

Mark hopped off the concrete patio that connected to the door �" nearly slipping on the moss covered, cement steps that led to the ground , and picked his way through the crawling brush, stone and rubble hidden in the grass. He made his way to the nearest dead train, on the opposite side of the compound that he had entered from. A large container, painted the same dark blue color as the one that he had seen when he first squeezed through the fence sat on the platform of the train. Plates of rusted blue paint had fallen loose, and were littering the wooden ground within. Both sets of sliding doors were open; a rusted spike jammed into the railings on the ground to seemingly hold them open. Mark noticed these as he pulled himself up into the opening, and into the container.

The stale smell of urine assailed him as it stained the air. He took a quick glance around the space he was in. A dingy mattress was laid in the corner of the container; browning and moss covered. Circles of dirty wax stuck to the floor around it. In the corner on the other side of the container the stench was the strongest. His nose wrinkled and he stepped out of the container, stumbling on the ground a bit as he landed awkwardly on the iron rail hidden beneath the grass and crawling brush.

Mark followed the track east, towards the engine that lay shrouded by the trees and wildly growing brush. He was nearly pressed against the northern perimeter fence, now, and was nearing the east, when he noticed another gate at the corner intersection of both. He followed the fence to the gate. It was closed in a similar manner to the one above the tracks; a heavy iron chain snaked through them and tied in a rough simile of a knot, with a padlock holding it together. A paved road; pocked, and in the process of being reclaimed by creeping nature, stretched from its mouth. Two turn offs; which he presumed were for parking, tapered off of the edge about twenty feet from the gate, and the road stretched well beyond that. Another fence enclosed the road and parking lot, and if he squinted he could make out the faint outline of another gate at the end.

As he was observing the presumed parking lot that sound he had heard in the warehouse started up again. Once again, it was subtle, and he hadn’t been sure if he were hearing something or not. This time it resounded and echoed; like stone being hit repeatedly against metal. Not loud. Barely audible in fact. It was soft. Subtle. But there, and constant, and enough for drive clarity into his clouded mind.

Thum. Thum. Thum. Thum.

It resounded. He turned his head as quickly as he could.

Thum. Thum. Thum.

It came from the direction he had just come from �" from the hollow interior of the shipping container with the mattress and the stench of stale urine.

“Hello?” He called. “Is anyone there?”

The sounds stopped once again after he called. He kept his eye on the shipping container for a moment. Was there someone in there? Were they following him? For how long? Maybe they were the owner of that mattress, though he couldn’t imagine ever willingly sleeping on something like that; he supposed if he were desperate enough… Maybe they were trying to scare him away. To force him to leave what they called their home. 

“Hey,” he called once again. “I’m sorry, alright? I’ll leave. I was just curious.”

No answer was forthcoming from the stillness. Maybe the sound came from something he had unknowingly knocked loose from the darkness and had been clamoring around on the ground due to his brief intrusion.

“Hello?” He called again, just to make sure.

Nothing.

He turned around; the chain link fence clinking ever so quietly as he let it go. He had to confirm his suspicions. Maybe he’d see someone in there. Perhaps he’d see something lying on the ground that hadn’t been there before. Otherwise, a constant and persistently niggling feeling of dread would eat away at his mind while he continued to explore, and perhaps even after.

He crept towards the container; his feet sinking into the loam, then slipping and sliding against the slick iron rails. He stopped just before the dark abyss of the open door of the container. Slowly, he peeked into the darkness �" the light barely bleeding in through the other door. His eyes quickly scanned the area within the container; his head barely poking around the bend. The grass that poked up above the door line on the other side jostled slightly contrary to the way the other surrounding blades shifted from the wind.

Mark pulled himself up and into the container. Perhaps the something that had made that clamorous noise had rolled into the grass. The wooden platform beneath him creaked and groaned like the dying gasp of a diseased man. Forwards, inch by inch he crept through the container. His heart beat as cold as the sweat rolling down his forehead, and sticking his thin cotton shirt to his back. He kept his eyes solidly planted on the grass that had shifted. It no longer moved. Maybe whatever had fallen out of the container was finally settled. Nonetheless, to ease the fear eating away at his resolve and at his mind he had to see what it was, so still he moved to see what it was.

Just as he made it to the edge that hollow, thuming sound resounded in the container on the platform to his right, down the track and away from the cold, dead engine. Coldness rushed through his veins, chasing out the last of the poison that clouded his mind.

Mark leapt out of the shipping container and stumbled over the iron rails, nearly rolling in the grass. He caught himself before he fell flat and continued on his way, swerving past, and vaulting over the piles of hidden debris. Just as he began his mad dash out of the container, the thuming in the one next to him ceased. Now, he could faintly hear the grass rustling behind him. Was it a man? He glanced back, and nearly tripped over a railing jutting out of the ground, so he faced forwards. Nothing. He saw nothing in his brief glance backwards. Surely, however, something had been following him. He could hear the rustling of the grass behind, and the faint sound of heavy breathing that didn’t come from him.

Visions of phantoms rushed through his mind. He had never really believed in ghosts or the like, but now what choice did he have? There was something that he couldn’t see chasing after him. How close was it? There was no way to know. He watched the ground and made his way through the minefield of jutting rubble, and sprang up the stairs that led to the concrete pad; nearly slipping on the slick, slimy moss that stuck to it.

The brief fancy that he had been imagining it fled from his mind as he heard the sound again. Chasing him.

Click. Clack. Click. Clack.

Like stone smashing against stone.

Click. Clack. Click. Clack. Click clack click clack.

Mark hopped onto the empty platform on the train that sat inside the warehouse, and leapt over to the other side of the warehouse with the gaping hole in the roof where once stood a crane, on the concrete pad.

Thum. Thum thum. Thum.

Came the resounding reply as whatever it was hopped onto the platform he had just left, as he found his footing on the other side. He sprang for the exit.

Click. Clack. Click clack.

It continued its pursuit after him. Mark nearly fell as he hurried. His lungs burned. His heart; pounding away in his chest, hurt. His legs felt like jelly, but still he pressed on. He swerved around the fallen container, and burst through the gate that had been cut away; the edges once more pulling a hole into his gym shorts. He stumbled forwards onto the path and rolled to a stop.

Something stepped on the fallen part of the chain link. He could hear it clinking and sinking into the earth. Mark tried once more to stand; but his legs had lost all feeling as they shook to try to recover from the shock of his quick jaunt through the train yard. He crawled, and pressed his back against a nearby tree, and raised his arms above his face as he looked towards the thing that was chasing him. He expected to see some ghoulish figure. Something grotesque. Some deranged transient, set on his disembowelment. What he wasn’t ready for was what came out of the fence.

A fawn �" its tan hide spotted with little white dots all over it’s back, and it’s ears perked in the air, with a playful look in its dewy black eyes as it approached him. His jaw was slack and the fear that had been coursing through him like a river of lava congealed. The small deer sniffed at Mark and nibbled at his thinning brown hair and bumped its forehead against his before walking away; it’s tuft of hair tail flicking in the air as it vanished through the cut open fence, and vanished inside the train yard.

Author's Note

constructive criticisms please

Reviews

[JayG]

• Long shadows reached towards the horizon and grasped at the foothills bordering the Sierra Nevada Mountains—who’s silhouettes loomed in the distant skies before him, as the red rays of the setting sun caught on the sparse brush that managed to poke through the cracked and dried earth as Mark stepped over the deadwood tracks.

You begin with a 55-word run-on sentence. That matters, because an acquiring editor would stop reading right here. The why of that, in addition to the problem presented by the length, is worth looking at:

First, it’s obvious that in the opening, you’re trying to be literary. Nothing wrong with that, but after placing the mountains you state the obvious, that mountains, being high, are seen against the sky. Never tell the reader what they already know.

Then, you tell the reader that it’s sunset, and talk about the setting sun, and only then, introduce the protagonist. So…what’s the subject of the sentence? And isn't it HIS story? If it is, why begin with something he's ignoring?

And does the reader care that the ground is both cracked AND dry? Does that situation influence the protagonist’s actions? Were there range grass and the ground dusty would the story change in the slightest. If not, why mention it? Every word you use should either develop character, meaningfully set the scene, or move the plot. Anything else serves to slow the narrative. Remember, if it takes longer to read about a character crossing a room than to do it in life the story is moving in slow motion. In your first 500 words, how much story has taken place? The protagonist walks, picks up a railroad spike, and barfs. And we're on the THIRD page. As James Schmitz observed: “Don’t inflict the reader with irrelevant background material—get on with the story.”

Our medium doesn't reproduce sight or sound. Added to that, the reader has no way to know how the narrator would speak the words. In general, that means the narrator's voice is dispassionate, that of someone reading a report. So every word by the narrator that's not absolutely necessary needs to be ruthlessly chopped. What matters to the protagonist in relation to their short and long term matters to the reader.

The first thing an acquiring editor would conclude is that this is NOT Mark’s story. Instead, it’s a transcription of you talking to an audience, as a storyteller. But, can that work on the page? Verbal storytelling is a performance art, where how you tell the story—your performance—matters as much as what you say, because in that performance, your changing expression; your eye movements; the gestures that visually punctuate; and your body language, substitute for the actors in a film. But none of that makes it to the page.

More than that, your tone; your cadence changes; your vocal intensity, and all the tricks of that marvelous instrument we call the human voice, are stripped out, as well.

So what’s left? A storyteller’s script minus the performance notes. That's one reason that having your computer's Narrator program read the work to you as an editing step is an excellent editing tool. You'll be surprised at how much jumps out at you.

In writing fiction for the page, we can’t tell the reader a story as we do in person because the medium doesn’t support a performance. Nor can we use the nonfiction report-writing skills we were given in school, because they prepared us for employment. The goal of that kind of writing is to inform the reader—as you do here. But as E. L. Doctorow observed: “Good writing is supposed to evoke sensation in the reader. Not the fact that it’s raining, but the feeling of being rained upon.” And that can’t happen with the storyteller standing squarely between the reader and the protagonist, passing on their own summation and interpretation of the events. To make it real we need to make the reader live the scene in real-time, from within that tiny slice of time we call “now.”

So, it’s not a matter of talent, or your writing skill. It’s that you, like pretty much all hopeful writers made the reasonable assumption that since we learned a skill called writing, that word, in the name of the profession we call Fiction-Writing points to that skill.

But it doesn’t. Not even close. For one thing, we universally forget a critical point: We see and hear everything that happens in the story BEFORE the protagonist can react. So the first one to react will be the reader. But unless we know the scene exactly as the protagonist does; unless we know what that character sees as important; unless we know what resources the protagonist has, plus their desires, and their interpretation of what matters, our reaction won’t match that of the protagonist, so, too often, we stop and say, “Wait...are you sure that's the right…” And that is the literal kiss of death, because your reader wants to feel that rain exactly as the protagonist does.

Think about it. The universities offer degree programs in Commercial Fiction Writing. Surely at least some of what’s taught there is necessary knowledge. Right?

So that’s what you need to look into, the tricks the pros take for granted. We don’t see them as we read fiction, because, as always, art conceals art. But we do see, and expect to see, the result of using those tools. More to the point, your readers expect to see it in your work.

Where do you begin? The library’s fiction-writing section is a huge resource. Personally? I’d suggest Dwight Swain’s, Techniques of the Selling Writer, which recently came out of copyright protection. It's the best I've found to date at imparting and clarifying the "nuts-and-bolts" issues of creating a scene that will sing to the reader. The address of an archive site where you can read or download it free is just below. Copy/paste the address into the URL window of any Internet page and hit Return to get there.

https://archive.org/details/TechniquesOfTheSellingWriterCUsersvenkatmGoogleDrive4FilmMakingBsc_ChennaiFilmSchoolPractice_Others

It’s an older book, but still the best, and it's the book that got me my first sale after six repeatedly rejected novels. Maybe it can do that for you. Certainly, like chicken soup for a cold, it might not help, but it sure can’t hurt, and it just might give your words wings.

So…I know this is pretty far from what you were hoping to hear. And something like this is ALWAYS hard to take. But since you can’t fix the problem you don’t see as being one, I thought you might want to know.

Hang in there, and keep on writing. If nothing else, it keeps us off the street at night. 😆

Jay Greenstein
https://jaygreenstein.wordpress.com/category/the-craft-of-writing/the-grumpy-old-writing-coach/

[JAM]

First of all, thank you for taking the time to read review my little thing here.

Second of all, thank you for your feedback: I do find myself constantly being redundant in my writing, and it's something I actively strive to be more diligent in catching.

Thirdly; I am trying to cultivate a more story-teller narrative voice, so I'm glad it was picked up here! I personally love the old storyteller stories and would like to see a resurgence of them at one point in the future, so here I am doing my ever-so-small part in that.

I tried to make the scenery and everything more of a reflection of Mark's inner life in a way, especially at the beginning of the story. Do you have any idea how I could better portray that so that the reader can pick up something like that without going full on, 'hit them over the head,' route?

[JayG]

• I personally love the old storyteller stories and would like to see a resurgence of them at one point in the future

There are ways to do that, but transcribing yourself performing in person won't work, because in all the world, only you can hear and visualize your performance. And, as you read your own work, every word points to images, backstory, characterization, and more, stored and awaiting release, in your mind.

But the reader? Unless you make use of the skills the pros take for granted, every word points to images, backstory, characterization, and more, stored and awaiting release, in YOUR mind. And without you there to explain...

• Do you have any idea how I could better portray that so that the reader can pick up something like that without going full on, 'hit them over the head,' route?

Sure. As I said, the problem isn't one of talent. At the moment, your approach to writing is the one drummed into us in school—to explain, to report, and to summarize. And using that approach, you say things like, "It was when he stepped into that small wood, that he noticed it. "

But does he notice "IT?" No. He noticed "A large, brown square" Better yet, he noticed the roof of a building, where there should have been nothing but trees and earth. And since it's his story, not yours, you need to get into his viewpoint, and take the reader with you. It's not a matter of which personal pronouns you use when talking about the protagonist's actions, it's placing the reader into his persona, moment-by-moment. The narrator's role is to support that, and to step on stage between live scenes, to zip through periods where nothing interesting takes place.

You may enjoy the narrative heavy tales of the past, but film killed that by taking the viewer onto the scene in real-time. Someone talking ABOUT events can't compete with being made to literally live the story.

But faced with that, fiction writers saved the form by taking the reader somewhere that film can't, into the head of the protagonist. And like it or not, it's what readers expect you to do today.

The narrative heavy past still survives in the literary genre, but even there, the norms have changed, dramatically, and the necessary skills must be acquired, because our school-day writing skills are useful only for nonfiction applications.

So...what can you do? Well, first, you might take a look at the articles in my WordPress Writing blog (link at the bottom of my post, above). They're meant to give a feel for the major differences between nonfiction and fiction, and are based on the kind of thing you'll find in any good book on fiction-writing technique—like the one I recommended.

And if they seem to make sense, hop over to that book, to read or download. He says it better than I can. And as I said, that book is the reason for my being published. It has over 200 5-star reviews on Amazon.

Wilson Mizner put it well when he said, “If you steal from one author it’s plagiarism; if you steal from many it’s research.” So, do some research. It's a very good working substitute for genius.

Hope this helps.