There is a train track running straight through the heart of my hometown. Put there during the steel age it might once have been a center of commerce, a contact to the coast of Lake Michigan and all the wealth it brought to the mid-west through Chicago.

In another time it carried tons of grain from our fertile fields. Luxurious passenger cars filled with the jet set of their era, crossed the fields to the West Coast. These days sixteen wheelers take our grain into the city and leave no reason for these thundering locomotives to give our small farm town pause. Still, they pass through with dizzying frequency, blaring their whistle all the way through town.

Through the day they pass two or three times an hour, increasing in frequency towards the evening. At night, they burst into my tense dreams, through the crumbling plaster against my bed, just yards from the tracks. The walls shake fiercely and constantly, and in my dreams it becomes one continuous serpent of steel, stretched across the heart of our town, feeding.

It feeds on us.

Sometimes at night when it passes, I hear it calling, a language of banging railroad irons and ties, couplers slamming back and forth against their pins, sheet metal siding rumbling like distant drums, and that constant whistle like a child’s distant falling cry.

It calls out to those of us close enough, ” come to me, come to me.” It draws the downtrodden to its tracks to end their lives, the impetuous to chance the dash across the slippery rails to save time, and to me in my bed.

Thats why I did it.

Billy Haggerty, shaggy beard dripping from spilled brew, eyes glassing over, took me into his confidence one evening, a progression of growing trust, as I watched him deteriorate into the ruins of his last relationship.

By the time I took the stool beside him, his cap was crooked from tilting back for the last drip of each successive shot. His eyes squinted open and closed as he spoke, and though it was nearing closing time, his face was still smudged with grease.

” just, just,..don’t need to take any more shit from her. Know what I mean?”

I nodded.

“The hell with her.” He downed the last of his mug and slapped his hand on the bar, a slightly irritated bartender approached him. “Hey Baby, me and my buddy here want a coupla shots, how bout a coupla more Cuervos? You’re ready for a shot, aint ya buddy?”

I shook my head. “I just got off work. I dont think so.”

He slapped my shoulder again, “Ah come on, ya pussy! Do a shot!”

“Well, okay.”

Four or five shots later I stumbled home, just across the street. My apartment, over a restaurant, had a lock on the street side entrance in addition to the one at my front door. I decided that one key lock was enough to negotiate in my condition and headed around to the back steps that ran along the railroad tracks.

Somewhere near the bottom of the steps, as I fished the keys out of my pocket, I heard it. Soft, insistent, like someone letting out a breath and as they spoke. “Come to me, come sssit with me.”

I turned and looked at the tracks, at the exact spot I thought the voice came from, wanting to see it for myself.

“Right here right here right here right here.”

I took a couple of steps towards it, conscious of nothing else, staring at the spot, just inside the rail. The rest of the world tuned itself out. I listened for another call, and searched for confirmation. Just along the inside of the rail, maybe a real snake, maybe just a rodent, scurrying along making strange noises, something I could see and understand. I walked to the rail and leaned over, looking up and down the railroad ties and red stone.

There has to be something.

The flashing red lights of the crossing gates broke my trance, moving into the periphery of my vision. When I noticed them the entire rest of the world came blaring back. Bells rang loudly, fire alarms, the shrill whistle of the approaching train deafened me, its single front headlight outlined me.

Reflexes alone got me out of the way, pushing away from the tracks, faster than my legs could keep up, shoving myself vertically away from the train until I ran headlong into the railing of my back steps.

Shoulder bones crunched. Blood seeped into my mouth from my bitten tongue. I crumbled to the ground safely, numb, knowing all the aches would be saved for me until the next morning.

Afraid that it could somehow drag me back if I let my guard down. I fought to stay awake and stared at the passing locomotive through slitted eyes. It raged at me for not succumbing to its siren call. After it passed, vomiting returned enough of my senses to pull myself up the steps. I went inside the apartment, finding sleep behind the lock and security latches.

The next night, after the last of the pots and pans had been cleaned and put away, and the dining areas had been reset with silverware, I took the twenty dollar bill I found on a table that I cleaned off and stuck it in my pocket. The last waitress had already clocked out, in a hurry for some date, leaving me to finish up for her. She missed out. The twenty rode across town with me on my bicycle, to a secluded lounge far away from the railroad tracks, where I could sit and not hear the trains constant roar if only for a moment.

I was quietly finishing my second glass of beer and the local newspaper when she tapped me on the shoulder, “Well, you’re a ways from home. What brings you all the way over here?”

I turned to face the familiar voice, Ellen, Billy Haggerty’s “ex”. She was looking much better than he had, though she’d obviously been in the lounge for some time herself that night. She was wearing one of the nice outfits she had for work at the bank, and there was still a hint of perfume left in the air around her.

I smiled at her. I’d always liked Ellen. ” Hey, even I get tired of that place sometimes. I like changing watering holes every once in a while.”

She smiled, an always pleasant smile that was somewhat hindered, as if her mouth was tender, “Well, you know why I cant go down there anymore. Im tired of arguing with Bill, he just doesnt get it. We dont get along. Steve and I get along a lot better.”

She pointed at a man down the bar, suit and tie, sloshing his drink around in a rocks glass, pretending not to watch us. She talked at me for some time, with hardly any encouragement. I found myself enjoying the conversation, one sided as it was, and noticed her nervous habit of clutching her throat as she spoke.

Finally her new friend decided to come join us, offering a meaty hand, squeezing hard. He crowded up between us. “Nice to meet you. Hey, want another? “As Ellen took her hand from her neck and put it around her friends waist, I saw bruises on her neck where shed been clutching before. Makeup hid most of them, but her constant handling of the area had uncovered them in the most apparent area, fingerprints, once probably deep blue now finally fading red and healing as the bad blood was taken away.

Her friend held his glass up, “Barkeep, Ill take one more glass of the good stuff on the rocks, and a draft for this guy.”

I raised my hand, stomach churning. “No, no, I need to get home, thanks anyhow.”

I pedaled home, and went in the front entrance of my apartment.

Bill Haggerty was in his usual place the next evening, in his usual form. I took the stool beside him. I drank my own draft. Looked into his eyes and considered the amount of fog there.

He tilted his head back and drained the last drops of a shot of tequila into his throat, slammed it down, ” ‘Ya ready Buddy? I’ll buy.” We sidled up to the bar together and began downing them in succession.

I ordered the next two, slapping Bill on the shoulder, “What the hell, we’re friends, right?”

“Yeah, here’s to friends, who needs women?”

I nodded in agreement, and waited until I was looking him right in the eyes before I spoke. ” Hey, you’ve been doing just fine since she left, haven’t you? Don’t have to worry about staying at the bar too late. How long ago did she move out?”

He crooked an eyebrow. “A couple weeks, why?”

” Just wondered, I guess that’s about when I started seeing you down here, because you could hang around that late.” Suspicion crept up into Bills face, but I dissipated it by calling for more liquor.

Billy put the shot back and ceremoniously slammed the glass back on the bar. ” The hell with all of em!” He said, then retracted with a grin at the bartender. ” Except you, Darlin.”

After the fourth shot, I twirled the glass in the air. “Yeah, the hell with that woman, LET that other guy have her?”

Billy had been staring ahead vacantly at the bottles behind the bar, but attention filtered into Billys face, ” What other guy?”

” Oh, I saw her the other night across town. With a guy. ‘Said they’ve been together awhile.”

His wide shoulders and rugged body worked into the stool.

” More shots?” I said.

Two more.

He slurred through his beard, ” Well, at least I know I have One friend, SOMEONE told me the truth.”

I slapped him on the back, ” She said not to tell you because you would get mad, but I guess she was wrong.”

I excused myself to the bathroom.

She had definitely asked me not to tell him about her new boyfriend, but not because she thought he would get mad. How had she put it? ” He would probably walk in front of a train. He talked about it sometimes.”

Looking down the bar coming out of the restroom, the stool beside mine was empty, spun towards the front door. Through the open front door, I could hear the whistle of the train. By the time I made it to the front door, the brakes were screaming into action.

Far too late.

Beneath the serpent, scattered along the gravel, nothing was left of him but separated bones, hair, cloth and skin.

They took about an hour cleaning up the mess. Policemen with plastic bags and plastic gloves walked along the tracks with flashlights, picking up the last pieces of Billy Haggerty.

I watched from my back stoop. After they left I went down and walked along the tracks. The trains had blessedly stopped running for a short time. I looked around in the stone railroad bedding myself, thinking that every once in a while I saw a tuft of hair or piece of flannel in the dim light.

Mainly, I was listening for the call. Some acknowledgment of satisfaction at another meal, an assurance that it might let me rest.

There was nothing.

In a few minutes, the trains would start coming again and I would wonder if there had ever been a call at all.