We are on a train. An apocalyptic gray bench, a plank of wood on two legs, sits alone in a field to our left. A North Carolina field, covered in mossy-green grass swishing in the wind, soft, like baby’s hair. Crumbling buildings float in peripheral vision, trailers, forgotten dogs on chains in front yards, chickens wandering the neon woods. This is our home but we rarely see this. Trains take people through the backwoods, through the forgotten places. Through realities that we forget easily when we return to civilization and progress. A man in long johns and suspenders sits on his riding mower in his front yard, still. It is good that we are here, moving through still places.
The conductor, a short man with gray facial hair, has a tattoo on his forearm: “Sola Gratia.” He wears a silver bracelet on the same wrist and he enforces the rules of the train with an iron hand. He makes a man move his bag from the empty seat beside him:
“Sir,” he says, “you paid for one seat. So you get one seat.”
I am afraid of him as he scans my ticket. But respectfully so.
Sola Gratia: Grace Alone.
The images outside of the glass send the word “poignant” to the tip of my fingers. A rusted pipe that leads to nowhere, hangs in an empty parking lot: the remains of an industry. The white hearse next to Roy’s Auto Palace; the tiny, blue-gray church with the play-ground right next to the cemetery, and the children’s mural with the colorful paintings. A green house in a field with rows, perfectly even rows, of dirt pyramids. Then Elon University, the first glimpse of well-maintained buildings, sturdy streetlamps, well-loved and small white-paneled houses with university flags. Another factory, a parking lot full of wooden crates, rows and rows of empty wooden crates.
Under the gray sky, greens look deeper, rust more definitive. Fallen trees, like collapsed men, occasion the long lines of forest and abandoned landscaping that we pass. The people and the houses wear blues, the other buildings grays and browns and rusty reds, the rest of the world deep browns and greens. Patches of wild flowers in fields give them the appearance of balding, leaving the scalp of the earth revealed, the young growth looks hopeful but lonely. Ponds and creeks sit still, stagnant, under layers of pollen and other flora debris. Telephone poles remind me of internet, of cyber cafes, of robots and instant information and cities and connectivity. But here there is silence, distance. That wooden fence has been graffitied: a purple octopus and indecipherable writing circles the house inside the fence.
Dry dust roads and small clearings where trees have been burned or cut down remind me of South Africa, of the dry season in the savannah and bumpy van rides for hours, dust that gets through glass and coats your clothing and your throat and tangles in your hair. Empty green fields remind me Delaware, where I always had the urge to run, to be in the distant middle of open land, swim in oceans of wheat and tall grass.
From the window I see parking lots filled with the ancient frames of old automobiles and a place called Joey’s Kitchen. Everything here is named after its owner. A dog walks along the street without any purpose or concern. The high school has blue roofs, a cluster of identical buildings and a single baseball field. We are stopping in Greensboro soon. Any minute now. Churches, factories and warehouses, diners, and cemeteries: the life cycle of a small town, of every small town, reveals itself to me on this short journey. I seem to be surrounded by the ends of things, by things and people waiting, mostly unbothered, to end.
The train carries us through—never to—these places.
