When I remember my days spent at the old house, I remember the burnt orange reflection on everything the sun touched as it snuck away. That was when the trains still ran, one plodding right through one of our fields behind the house- it was a clinging hope for a thriving business in a world where the 18 wheeler and cargo aircraft were beginning to snuff out the very remembrance of the railroad.

My sister Sarah and I would climb on top of the hay bales, first brushing over the tops with our hands to check for dead mice, and then we would nestle into the prickly, dusty-smelling things and be shaken by the passing train. When my father was younger, he lived in a house right by railroad tracks too. He used to tell us that the train made the whole house sway back and forth, back and forth, when it hurtled past--screaming angrily in the night. There was something about them that bothered him, created a sense of dread within him. I shared his fear until we moved into the old house and I got to see a train go by. It wasn't a bad thing at all, I thought. It made the earth kind of rumble, made it purr. My sister and I would sit on that giant cat's back, all prickly with cold grass and let the train vibrate our insides. I always knew that there was a conductor, but somehow to me trains were like cars on the highway at night--the pavement amplified with headlights that only preceded empty metal shells.

When I went back, a grown up with a slimmer face and wiser eyes, the field was smaller than I remembered. Everything is smaller than you remember when you go back and look at childhood things. Things like playgrounds and murals and closets. But the field seemed extra smaller. It's been about twenty years, I told myself, and trees never stop popping out of the ground. The train was the same though, bigger even. Still a cold, robotic caterpillar, unmoving on the ground. I crept closer, feeling reverence, fear even. I had never felt close to the train. It was a childhood memory, but not a comforting one. Sarah and I always watched the train, soaking up the hay bale's warmth and the enjoying the feel of the crisp air stinging the curves of our ears--but never really loved the train. We loved the sounds, the quaking earth, the smell of the outside. But never the train itself. I was still scared of it in a way. Looking back, I understand my father's strange fear of the mindless beast, eating over the land.