4.

Well I didn’t, well maybe. Jonesy sayin the look on my face. Mouth all hangin open. That ole puddin eatin mouth. I didn’t see nothin. Heard a ratchet of the leg, like thump thump thump like momma yon comin down the stairs and that ole train just a bellowin coal and bellowin. Sonny! Sonny! Come get you some. Somethin tossin me off and a light bouncin off the windows or the chug chug chug hoot hoot, ratchetin like crankin, crankin yon cross that ole hard floor. Sonny! Sonny! Where you at? I was thinkin of that leg chug chug and Jonesy sayin real loud back there sayin crunch crunch crunch like ice they given us chillins play with Easter bellowin, Lordy! Crunchin chewin.

It was maybe three o’clock and that ole sunlight just ate up all the windows, ate up them folks sittin in the cars, just crunch crunch chug chug. Just lookin at the glass and them shadows ole three o’ clock cast.

Yeah, I saw that pretty little white woman chugga chugga bump. This wind blowin in her hair. East wind carryin off the smoke from the chugga chugga crunchin ice and Easter. Windows and blue east wind. Church bells ringin in her ears and the last hymn them white folks yon singin far off, yonder hill where the East move in the trees and whistle and crunch and bump the bright, Lordy! Leaves. Hot bright cool breeze hard hard hard.

She was holdin down her dress all full up on East and smoke and burn and burn and my eyes was lookin at her all full up on smoke like lookin in on the sun in the windows and them folks sittin in the cars till bunch bunch bunch of people start up hollerin in the wind in the East and the trees asp asp and Jonesy throwin his hat on the ground and it just sittin there all crumpled up and quiet like grass on the hill when the crunch crunch crunch hush hush yon bellowed off the tracks and everybody runnin like them chickens in the yard, ole chillins runnin to catch them. String their necks out, goose them good old Jimmy said me goose them strong now or they wake up fightin. All that white girl in the windows, she was gone. All I saw the bump and bump and grind and hush. The wind out rumblin through the station, and the train stop. Dead train on the tracks. Just hush hush and push and crunch.

First I thought she fallen but them ole white girls ain’t fallin lessin someone comin pick them up at the waist. Jonesy sayin she was goin to walk on the water like all them bugs at the branch just floatin on rumble rumble on downstream till the train push her on into the rocks. She wasn’t even there. I was studyin my hands on the ground howlin howlin nothin but them moony nights in the branch, on the hill after we stop drowin us. Jonesy run up and look in sayin ain’t but the stringy grindy grindy pieces that old white girl white red dress.

Up the hill that old East just blowin gurglin gushin gushin till all them chicken necks all rung out all hollowblurriedeyed deadlike faces pushin on the bright hot windows and the bells singin what all the white folks yawnin debt debt.