{"id":516,"date":"2018-11-09T01:47:16","date_gmt":"2018-11-09T01:47:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/?p=516"},"modified":"2018-10-13T20:50:39","modified_gmt":"2018-10-13T20:50:39","slug":"tracks-by-michael-conlon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/2018\/11\/09\/tracks-by-michael-conlon\/","title":{"rendered":"Tracks by Michael Conlon"},"content":{"rendered":"
Michael Conlon retired from teaching high school English in Southern California after 37 years. He is a published essayist and short story writer currently working on a novel about a father’s lengthy train trip to escape the pain of his son’s death.<\/em><\/h6>\n

 <\/p>\n

Tracks<\/h3>\n

\u00a0<\/strong>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rich swayed gently, side to side.\u00a0 He rested in the cushioned seat gazing out the window at silhouettes of distant dark hills drifting to the south.\u00a0 He continued to roll over the tracks–\u201cclick-click, click-click.\u201d\u00a0 He was weightless, floating, tethered to earth by the slow sway, punctuated by \u201cclick-click.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cDaddy?\u201d<\/p>\n

Click-click.<\/p>\n

\u201cDaddy!\u201d<\/p>\n

He opened his eyes and looked down at the window seat beside him, barely filled by his son, Danny, a little freckle-faced boy with wheat-shock hair shaped somewhere between a bowl cut and Bantu warrior, all strands radiating from the middle of his head.\u00a0 Rich recalled his own hair being that blonde as a child, yet always in a butch or crew cut of varying lengths, depending on the time of year.\u00a0 He never had such flowing, uniform locks, soft to the touch.<\/p>\n

Danny continued looking up, the green cat eyes of his mother sparkling, his eyebrows and forehead squinched as always in a question mark, sorting through the playful puzzle of his life.\u00a0 He could be strolling up and down the aisle, at ease talking to a stranger, or skipping in his size-three red sneakers and white socks nearly reaching his bare knees beneath the oversized blue shorts and red horizontally-striped t-shirt.\u00a0 Instead, his tiny fingers scratched at Rich\u2019s upturned palm lying across the gap between the seats where the armrest had long since been lifted.<\/p>\n

\u201cDaddy, what makes the clicking sound?\u201d<\/p>\n

Rich paused for a moment, then offered his best logic.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s probably because when they laid down the rails for the train, they could only make them so long, so where one stops and another starts, there\u2019s a teeny space where the wheels click.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBut why does it go \u2018click, click\u2019 instead of just \u2018click\u2019 then?\u201d<\/p>\n

Rich paused.\u00a0 He knew his answer didn\u2019t have to be correct, but it had to be an honest attempt.<\/p>\n

\u201cMaybe it\u2019s because we\u2019re going so fast that the back wheels of the car in front of us and the front wheels of our car go over the spot right after each other.\u201d<\/p>\n

Danny weighed the possibilities.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo, if we stood in the place between the cars that we walked through when we got dinner, the clicks might go together?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI suppose that could happen,\u201d said Rich.<\/p>\n

Danny started to scrunch forward on his seat, his shoes slowly descending to the carpeted floor.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat are you doing, Danny?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI wanna go hear the click, Daddy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rich knew it was perfectly safe, nowhere to fall off, or get lost or kidnapped, but still he didn\u2019t want him out of sight, not now.\u00a0 He felt Danny\u2019s hand rap around his thumb for leverage down.<\/p>\n

\u201cLittle boy, not yet. When we get up to brush our teeth in a little bit, we\u2019ll listen for the one click together, okay?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOkay, Daddy, but when are we going to brush our teeth?\u201d asked Danny.<\/p>\n

\u201cNot too long.\u00a0 When that orange sky turns to purple, then to black, and we see the first star. You let me know when you see it, okay?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOkay,\u201d Danny replied. He pressed his nose to the moist window, looking up into the darkening sky.<\/p>\n

Rich laid his head back on the cushion and closed his eyes for a moment.\u00a0 Slowly, the sway returned, back and forth, noticeable at first, then the rocking, click-click, rocking, click-click\u2026<\/p>\n

\u2026something brushed his shoulder.\u00a0 He opened his eyes to see the porter walking down the aisle, rechecking destination tags above the seats.\u00a0 He looked down at the seat next to him.\u00a0 It was empty. \u00a0He glanced right and thought he caught a glimpse of Danny in the window\u2019s reflection, then he thought maybe he went between the cars without him. \u00a0Then he remembered that Danny was gone, gone for nearly three months. \u00a0Rich was back by himself, alone.\u00a0 His eyes began to sting.\u00a0 He turned his head and stared out into the darkness, waiting for a first star.<\/p>\n

Click-click, click-click.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Michael Conlon retired from teaching high school English in Southern California after 37 years. He is a published essayist and short story writer currently working on a novel about a father’s lengthy train trip to escape the pain of his son’s death.   Tracks \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rich swayed gently, side to side.\u00a0 He rested in the … Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-516","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pa867U-8k","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/516","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=516"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/516\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":519,"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/516\/revisions\/519"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=516"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=516"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=516"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}