The Burning

nothing. When a belligerent construction worker wearing a head scarf and wielding a shovel finally demanded, 'What are you staring at?' Dennis decided that it was time to go.

He stayed in his motel room that night, declining to accompany Carl and his friends on their nighttime rounds. It was fun to do once, to take a vacation from his reality and sample someone else's world. But it was depressing as well, because he knew that if he had been born here instead of in Pennsylvania, this would be his lifestyle, too. He was only a visitor. This was how they lived.

He watched the last half of Robocop, then called his sister, feeling sad. He told her about the Chinese cemetery, and her response was a matter-of-fact, 'I'll bet that Store's going to be haunted.'

He laughed. 'Maybe,' he said. There was a pause. 'But ...'

'But what?'

He didn't know what to tell her because he didn't know what he was thinking, didn't know what he felt.

There was just a vague unease about dreams and graveyards and the history of the Chinese in America that didn't quite make sense.

The conversation concluded awkwardly, and Dennis clicked off feeling worse than he had felt before he'd called.

At least he had Brigit's Well to look forward to. Although just thinking about going to a coffeehouse to see a female duo play Celtic music made him feel like the biggest banana on the planet, especially when he realized that it was the sole reason he had stayed over in this town.

He wished Cathy were here.

She was a banana, too.

Carl and his friends were much more hard-core. He doubted they would be caught dead listening to Brigit's Well.

After a night's sleep filled with terrible nightmares that he could not for the life of him remember, Dennis ate breakfast at Waffle House, spending the morning at the park writing down the events of the last few days in a spiral notebook he'd bought at Walgreens. He'd decided to keep a journal of his travels, and though he'd only just started, he figured he'd go back and fill in the blanks as time allowed. For lunch he went over to the Golden Phoenix.

'I saw it,' Jack Chu said from his post at the cash register as Dennis walked in.

Carl and the others were seated around the first table, laughing. 'Yeah, right,' Victor Yee taunted.

Dennis picked up a menu. 'What?' he said.

'I saw a black train engine last night.'

If this was a joke, he didn't get it. 'Aren't most engines black?'

'No! This one wasn't even on the tracks. It was next to the tracks! In the field behind my house.'

'Did your mom or dad or anyone else see it?' Carl asked.

'No, but-'

'You dreamed it.'

'No, I didn't!' He turned toward Dennis. 'I think it was a ghost train.'

The others were laughing even harder, but Dennis didn't laugh at all. There was something in Jack's face that made him realize the boy was totally serious, and there was something about the image of a ghostly black train in an open field that pulled at him, that dovetailed with the graveyards and the nightmares and everything else he'd encountered on this trip. He could even see the massive engine in his mind, and he wondered if it had appeared in one of the dreams from last night that he'd forgotten.

Over egg rolls and chow fun, they discussed Jack's ghost train. As the conversation went on, as the need to make each other laugh abated and the desire to rag on the youngest member of their group was sated, Carl and his friends conceded that Jack really did seem to believe he'd seen something strange. It was Bobby Lam who suggested that they stake out the field tonight at the same time Jack claimed to have spotted the train. 'We'll see if it comes back.'

'And if not,' Carl said, 'we'll drink beer.'

They all laughed.

Dennis decided to go with them. He didn't really think anything would show up, not two nights in a row, not with all of them waiting there, but there was still a chance, and as he was flying by the seat of his pants on this trip, allowing himself to be overtaken by events, he figured it would be a good idea.

But two hours in, with both six-packs consumed and every topic of conversation having seemingly run its course, he was not so sure. It was after midnight, and his motel room, bed and television were sounding pretty good to him right now. He looked back toward Jack's house, then across the empty field. What was he doing out here? If his friends back in Pennsylvania could see him now, they'd be laughing their asses off. Cathy would give him a lecture and say he'd been corrupted by the ignorant yahoos who populated the hinterlands. Even his mom, superstitious as she was, would think he was wasting his time on nonsense.

He was about to suggest that they give it up when ...

Something changed.

They all felt it. A shift in the air. A drop in temperature. The faint whiff of foul-smelling smoke. On the hood of the car, Carl and Bobby sat up, and Jack ran around from where he'd been leaning on the trunk, breathing heavily. Victor, who was taking a piss by a tree off to the right, hurried back, still zipping up. It was coming.

Dennis heard it from far off, not a chug-chug-chug like a normal train, but more of a whooosh, like wind or water heard at a great distance. They were all swiveling their heads in various directions, trying to determine from where it would appear. Would it come up from the ground or down from the sky? Would it crash into one of the houses or just pass through it ghostlike? Would it come in on the real rails and then veer off?

It simply appeared. Not in place, but at the edge of the field, in motion, heading not toward them or Jack's house but toward the line of windbreak poplars to the west. The locomotive was indeed black, with a tender behind it and an old-fashioned passenger car behind that. After those three, the train grew more indistinct. Dennis had the impression that more cars were coupled to the train, but the night was dark, the rear of the railroad blurry, and it was impossible to tell what was there and what wasn't. Even the three visible sections did not seem to have the heft of reality, and though they weren't exactly transparent, they were, in some indefinable way, ephemeral.

The train stopped.

And passengers got on.

They were ghost passengers, but he could still see them clearly in the moonlight, shambling out from between the close-growing poplars, climbing up the step on the side of the passenger car, grabbing the assistance bar and pulling themselves in through the open door. The people whose graves have been disinterred, Dennis thought, and he knew that was right the second it occurred to him. He saw baggy shirts and coolie hats, pigtails and sandaled feet.

They were leaving Milner, going someplace better.

Something in the scene spoke to him on a deep level he didn't even know existed. He was not frightened, as he probably should have been, but, rather, moved, touched by the knowledge that after untold decades these souls were free. He saw a woman go up the steps to the passenger car, holding the hand of a little girl. With each person who climbed onto the train, the black locomotive became a little less evanescent, a little more substantial.

The whooshing noise had stopped when the train did, but there was another sound now, a more organic sound that seemed to be coming from the smokestack and that reminded him of mUsic. He stood still, listening, and thought he had never heard anything so wonderful: so peaceful and comforting and welcoming. There were no words, not even a tune, just strange swirling tones, but to him it sounded like an invitation, and before he knew it he was walking forward, toward the train.

This was why he'd driven across country, why he'd come on this trip.

'Hey!' Carl said. 'What the fuck are you doing?'

He was vaguely cognizant of the fact that Carl was talking to him, but he didn't answer, kept walking across the rough grass of the field, his attention focused on the black railroad cars in front of him. He wasn't dead, wasn't a ghost, so he probably wouldn't even be able to get on the train, but he knew he had to try. This was his purpose. This was why he was here.