Gale Massey is the author of RISING AND OTHER STORIES (April 13, 2021; Bronzeville Books) and THE GIRL FROM BLIND RIVER, which received a 2018 Florida Book Award. Her work has appeared in Lambda Literary, CutBank, CrimeReads, Sabal, the Tampa Bay Times, Saw Palm, and Tampa Bay Noir. Gale was a Tennessee Williams Scholar at the Sewanee Writers Conference, a fellow at Writers in Paradise, and has served as a panel judge for the Lamdba Literary Awards. Her stories have been nominated for a Pushcart prize in fiction and nonfiction. A native Floridian, she lives in St. Petersburg with her partner. You can visit her online at galemassey.com.
Read on to discover The Train Runner, which is just one of the stories from Massey’s Rising and Other Stories!
The girl with the straw-colored hair stands on the railroad track, sunlight glaring, bouncing off the metal rails, sparkling against the flint in the fill rock. She rubs the top of her head to soothe the heat building there, wishes she owned a ball cap to protect her burning scalp. The four o’clock train is due. Push her for words and she’ll say the thundering train thrills her to the bone, or that she has no fear.
She’s dressed in her father’s threadbare work shirt, the only remnant of him after he left for the war, and hand-me-down shorts, frayed at the cuffs, but with deep pockets where she can keep a coin. Her dog, still plump with puppy fat, has taken to following her through the afternoon hours after school lets out. He sits on the track, scratching at his ear. Reaching down to tighten a shoelace, she wonders if the train will be on time, though it always is.
Shielding her eyes with a salute of sorts, she looks up the track, trying to see beyond the bend. It’s obscured by a stand of reforested pine. With her right foot resting lightly on the steel rail, she feels for a vibration. For a moment she imagines herself an army scout listening for enemy invasion. Sensing the softest rumbling, she sighs with satisfaction, for her skill is sharpening every day. She pulls the coin from her pocket, spits on it and places it in the center of the rail.
A plume of white smoke lifts over the tree line. At the first sight of the black iron grille coming around the bend, the girl and dog run into the shallow ravine and crouch. Maybe this time the coin will withstand the shuddering quake of the engine and be flattened to perfection.
The train lunges closer. The conductor leans out the window, sees the girl and tugs hard on the whistle pull. A screeching wind booms down the gully.
But smashed coins are useless. The candy aisle at the commissary, its bins of bubblegum, caramels, and chocolates, will be lost to her. She leaps out of the broad ditch and runs toward the track to grab the coin that would open the door to a sugary afternoon. It’s a trick she’s done before. The dog stands, the fur along his spine stiffens. He wants to follow her but the train is bearing down now, billowing steam and a deafening roar.
She reaches the coin, snags it with her fingertips and rolls it into the palm of her hand, then darts across the track to the opposite ravine. The windblast from the speeding train whips the shirt against her skin and pins her to the ground. Her heart pounds in her chest. Her lungs heave and contract. Blood pulses in her temples, floods her brain, rushes through her limbs. She feels it in every muscle, even in her marrow, this youthful, fatal notion that she will live forever.
Excerpted from RISING AND OTHER STORIES, Copyright 2021, Gale Massey. Originally printed in Seven Hills Review. Reprinted with permission from Bronzeville Books.
