The Reincarnation of Selena Rogers

"I've got a one track mind, movin' down a one train line...leavin' the past far behind...going West. I gotta pick up speed, just to get what I need. The end of the line guaranteed. Your love is my rest." - Jimmy Dale Gilmore

Selena slumped wearily to one side in her seat by the window. Her cheek rested lightly on the glass, her breath fogging it just below her gaze to the world outside. Her body yielded in a small swaying motion to the sudden jerks as the engine began to stretch the train back into motion, car by car. Each one complained with a loud clank of the big iron knuckles that joined them together like slaves in a chain gang forced to move on. Selena had purchased a one way ticket going west.

Blackened shacks and shanties passed slowly by. Gritty people here and there stopped to stare, some perhaps wishing that they too were leaving all this behind. Clothes on a clothesline speckled with soot fluttered as though waving goodbye. It all looked so bleak and dismal, and yet Selena felt drawn to look as though it had its own allure. The way the windows must rattle in these places so close to the track. The way dishes and glasses in the dirty cabinet must chatter about the train's passing. The way the train's long wailing whistle must wander through restless dreams at night, and make one toss and turn on the dingy linens. She thought about what it must be like in such a place. What is life like in that shack there? And that one. And that one. And so on, until the view broke away into fences, pastures, and moody sky.

Two grey-haired women, their hair in buns, sat in the seats in front of her.
"Looks like we are going to get some weather," one said, as she looked out the window. It made Selena smile to hear her high pitched trembling voice. A warble of sorts that sometimes comes with age. Like her grandmother's voice. And it was just like something her grandmother would say on a day different from the others.

Eliza Knight stepped out onto the porch.
"Looks like we're gonna get some weather today," she said to her little grand daughter clinging to her hip.
"How do you know, granny?" the little girl said in a small voice, tilting her head up to look at her grandmother's wrinkled face.
"I kin jus' feel it in my bones, I reckon," she replied, running her fingers through the little girl's golden locks as she smiled down at her. "And smell the air, dearie," she added. "That's not Arkansas air there. That's Louisiana air done snuck in durin' the night."
"How come, granny?" the little girl asked.
"I 'speck its come to bring us some of the water from down there."
"Granny," the little girl said, tugging on the woman's dress. "When will Selena come back?"
"Lord only knows, child. But don't you worry none. Your big sister can take care of herself. You'll see her again one of these days. You can take my word on that." The little girl turned her eyes up to where her granny was staring at the sky beyond the wooded hills across the way.
"I hope she is ok," the little girl said softly.

"Are you doing alright back there, dearie?" one of the old women said as she peered back at Selena from between the seat backs. Selena smiled and nodded. What good would it do to say,
"No, damn it! I am a far cry from alright!" She looked down at the railroad map unfolded across her lap. A long line dotted with unknown places that would lead eventually to Albuquerque, New Mexico. There was nothing special in her mind about going to that particular place. It was just as far away from the place she had left behind as she could go on the money her granny had given her. In her mind, any point along the way might find her jumping down. Any train station the train pulled into seemed to have its own invitation as a place to begin starting over. She laid her head back into the niche between the seat back and the window, and closed her eyes. Maybe somewhere in Oklahoma. Maybe some place there. Some place with handsome cowboys. But, who knows? Maybe some rough shod gang of ruthless men may force the train to a stop in the middle of nowhere. Maybe they would abduct her. Carry her away. Maybe by some campfire they would get drunk and want to have their way with her. But, maybe a band of warring Indians might steal up in the night and kill them all, and take her to their village. Maybe she would fall in love with the chieftain's son. A handsome brave who would cherish and protect her. Eventually she fell asleep amidst such musings. In spite of all that she had been through, she was still hoping that love was out there somewhere for her. "You don't have to know what is right for you, before you walk away from what is wrong." That is what her granny told her.

When Selena woke, the train was really flying along. Telephone poles raced past her window. The sudden clanging of bells at the railroad crossings distorted behind her in a fading whine. And then there was just the rapid rhythmic metallic clicking of the wheels along the rails. The rain appeared as horizontal rivers of water across her window. She could feel her spirits rising as the miles passed by this way. Making the dark and menacing angry face she had left behind seem smaller and smaller. Soon he was as small as an insect she could squash with her foot. In awhile she would hardly remember how bad it had been. The heart has a way of licking its wounds.

Selena settled down to a life in a small town in Oklahoma. She actually got a job at the little train station there. At the ticket window. She sent money to help her granny out whenever she could. And she wrote in her letters of a young man that seemed to be coming around more and more often. And how she liked him. She described him as a 'gentle giant'. Her little sister was coming to visit soon. Each day she sat in front of the ticket window studying the faces of those buying tickets. Some faces were lit up with happy anticipation of reunion with some one down the line. Some had the look in their eyes that she once had in hers. A scared desperate look. The train was for them, what it had been for her. It was not the destination that mattered so much, it was more about what must be walked away from. What must be left behind. Without such courage, one doesn't stand a chance. That's what Selena's granny said, and she was right.