Grayling Junction - Chapter Thirteen and a half

That Day Again

Tam often remembers arriving in Grayling Junction:
Back then his rooted beard was a sparse and downy suggestion. In those days the journey from Randallstown – a noisy contemplation of puffed-out chest keen to be taken seriously as a city – followed a meandering line of sluggish progress.

Like a good 93% of voyages made by train the scenery that crept by in fits and starts was a blackened hinterland of places unseen as one after the other exposed buildings gaped open to reveal glimpses of raw innards. In the oily yards where slick pools of weeping chemicals greened in the sun, bundles of taut wire and bales of chain link fencing lay together as man and wife. Piles of discarded wooden pallets leaned against the walls, reclining in the sunshine like a missing alphabet.
Seen from the rear these structures were strangely denuded, pipes poking like arteries from the brickwork and corrugated tin panels. Gaping holes furred with clinging moss gape with the secrecy of newly revealed genitalia. From inside the carriage it was impossible to smell these secret places and the sounds were no more than a pulse here or a throb there. Cocooned inside the train Tam was simultaneously a witness to the forlorn sideshow of industry and an image of himself, imprisoned as a fragile sliver within the quivering glass of the carriage window.

In the dusty trench between the track and the buildings dissociated clutter passed by in steady rhythm: cold mounds of clothing slowly at rot…a smashed record scattered on the ground like broken night…a filthy tangle of rag doll spread like a high-rise suicide…woven amidst a penumbra of fluttering litter was a series of lone shoes of conflicting origins; the abandoned brogue of a one-legged salesman, the torn training shoe of an three-time bronze medal Olympic hopper, a shiny red, leather stiletto heel wrenched free of a missing leg...

Between the buildings vegetation bloomed despite a diet of soil soaked in diesel and a side of iron filings. Shrubs of varieties unknown to Tam huddled like angry beasts, shaking and straining in the warm wake of the rattling carriages. Spindly trees had wriggled free of the brickwork and arced toward a song of sky overhead, new growth exploding as green fire as it formed a canopy over the tin roofing. Within this arboreal shade timorous glints of metal showed through the dense undergrowth, a chrome bumper winking in the flash of clattering carriage sunlight, a smooth, painted flank protruding from the shrubbery as inside these chameleon vehicles the hidden sweat of adultery steamed the windows, suspension joints forced to clench and relax with a tempo of passionate haste.