Waiting for the Train

Warm on the inside, cold on the outside.  Cold on the outside, and cold on the inside.  The people standing on the platform at the Briercrest train station had very different feelings waiting for the train.

The common feeling amongst them all was the anxiety of waiting for the train.

Blink and you’ll miss it, Briercrest is the town we wish we grew up in.  Everyone knows each other.  All 159 people.  When Mr. Woodley broke his arm, all the men of the village helped out.  If he didn’t grow food, prices would rise and there would be a shortage in the winter and many of them would go hungry!  When Mrs. Gadd makes strawberry jam, everyone prepares a small gift so they can secure a jar of the world’s best spread for toast.  If you have a dozen eggs, a pair of knit socks, a bundle of firewood, or a loaf of bread, it will do.  When the village’s beloved little Johnny went off to college in the USA, everyone stood on the platform to see him off.

But this day wasn’t the day little Johnny went off to college.  It was a cold day.   The lifeless ground added to the lifeless feelings of the old woman standing on the platform.  The frozen, silent earth did little to distract her from her thoughts, but rather intensified them.  She was leaving Briercrest today.  Every moment that went by brought her train, her exit from her beloved village, closer.  Each moment was the last of its kind.  But this wasn’t a sad thing for Mrs. Chester, nor was it a happy thing.  She was numb to it. There was something else making her sad.

The others standing on the platform kept her silence.  What could they say?  To talk together amongst themselves of their excitement for their brother’s return seemed rude.  They already knew where she was going and why she was going and that she wasn’t coming back, and they knew that she knew they knew, so making conversation again about it would simply be trite.  No, waiting for the train this day was in silence.

Mrs. Chester recently sold off what was left of her possessions to buy this train ticket.  There wasn’t much left after the bank took the house. Her neighbors bought most of her old things, not because they wanted or needed them, but because she needed them sold.  Mr. Chester passed away six-months ago suddenly, in the summer heat.  They never had children, which they never talked about.  Now, she had no one to take care of her and nothing she could do to take care of herself.  She was on the way to her sister’s a few hundred miles away, and she would never come back.

The train must be getting close now.  Hearing the whistle that warns of its approach will be first, followed by seeing the smoke come from its engine.  Both would interrupt the frozen atmosphere.

The man returning today was on the way for a Christmas visit.  He had left long ago on business and had never come back.  A letter here and there kept his brothers aware of his doings and had become quite a popular topic for the village.  Gossip and rumors quickly filled in the lines of any of his letters, placing feelings, thoughts, and even stories wherever people saw an open door. 

One time, rumor had it that between the sentences “I went to the Caribbean for a short vacation,” and “I really enjoyed it,” a series of adventures, some that could be discussed publicly and some that could not, had occurred that, of course, a businessman like him would not write home about.  It would not be an exaggeration to say that everyone in the village was awaiting his return, more because of what they imagined him to have become than because of what he was to them before he left. 

“He is on this train, isn’t he?” his three brothers were all wondering but not asking aloud.

A single suitcase containing three sets of clothes. That’s Mrs. Chester’s complete list of possessions.  They were sitting on the old wooden platform with cracks that let a frigid breeze come through and bite your feet. They had never been rich, but no one would have said they were poor.  Mrs. Chester was wondering what was awaiting her at her sister’s.  No, we would think that, but she was actually imagining what she had lost. But the thought of what was next did come into her mind every time she came back to reality. She and her sister had never gotten along well, which is one of the reasons she came out to Briercrest in the first place, but she didn’t have any other options.  She was hoping that time and pity would make her welcome. 

“The train is coming, isn’t it?  I’m sure it should have been here a while ago,” she thought waiting for the train for what seemed like an eternity.

The train station at Briercrest was nothing more than a little house.  Two sets of train tracks ran in front of the house, the one that seemed to never be used and the one that ran alongside the platform.  To convert the house into a train station, they had built a long wooden platform and put up a few signs.  Since it was no part of the national railway system, it was well maintained, looking better kept than any of the houses in the village.  It had a brown, shingle roof with white trim, light green walls, and a white gutter on the side of the platform that drained into a barrel on the backside of the house to prevent the rain from dripping off the roof onto the platform and those standing on it.  The houses in Briercrest kept warm by burning wood in the fireplaces, the smoke of which would travel up and out of the house through the brick chimneys, and the heat of which travelled through the roof and melted the snow, which would drip and form icicles hanging from the roof and icy surfaces on the ground below.  Gutters helped a little bit, but they usually froze through and then the ice would find its way over the gutter.  Thanks to the government maintenance, who was paid to live in the little house, the ice was removed before every train would stop.  The lack of ice on the platform and hanging from the gutters was a sign to those on the platform that their long-awaited train was on the way.

Or at least should be.

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