10/30/2021
To celebrate Halloween, here's the first part of a ghost story my mother, Gail Gray, wrote. The main character is based on herself and some experiences she had while living in an art studio in the bad side of town. The full version is included in her book, a collection of poems and stories, LESSONS FROM A LUNA MOTH, now available on Amazon and published by Shadow Archer Press. eBook version should be out in a couple days.
THE WORKMEN'S TRAIN
I can hear the whistle of the train - sad, mournful - in the distant night, through the rain massaging the roof over my head, itching the scalp of this place.
Tonight’s the night I said I would go out and watch as they got off the train. My studio is on the third level of the Woodside Gallery, so I have the perfect vantage point of the whole place, Woodside Artist Village, they call it, after the textile mill that shut down. I call it home. Politicians call it urban renewal. The locals call it the void, ‘cause there’s not much here. Well, there’s more here than there used to be. Now, there are 30 artist studios scattered in 5 or 6 of the buildings. The rest of the storefronts, outlining the 5 point intersection of neglected commerce, are empty. I hope, in the future there’ll be shops and coffee houses, seedy bars and used book and record stores, hip boutiques and trendy thrift shops.
In the daytime, it’s busy enough, a smattering of cars parked every so many spaces, artists setting up their places or hauling canvases in for shows. Sometimes, on Friday nights or weekends, when we have an art crawl or open studios, it’s really packed. Folks come for the free food and wine, sometimes for the art, most often to see and to be seen - all for free, all at our expense. But we don’t mind. We need people to come so we can reclaim this place. And I know that more than anybody.
At night, it’s me - just me. All the people have left, all the cars are gone. Not one single car parked anywhere, lest it get stripped. But, to be fair, the only thing they ever took off of mine was one mudflap. Just one. Maybe my old car wasn’t nice enough to vandalize. On the other side of the tracks lies cracktown, people crazed out on crack and m**h, who don’t want us here even though we’re trying to clean up the place. Even now, there’s a spray of new bullet holes in the bricks on the building down the street that used to be a vacuum store. I am kind to some of the hobos who live under a bridge closer to downtown. We sometimes cross paths in the daytime, and I’m always surprised how far they travel, like mountain lions prowling their territory with shopping carts, looking for soda cans and metal bits. Tired, cold men carrying their bottles in brown bags, sometimes dragging a rusty lawnmower or struggling with a bulky TV. What the heck do they do with all those old TVs?
Some of my friends call me crazy; some say I’m ahead of my time. Fact is, I’m broke and rent here is cheap, the place spacious, and I can paint to my heart’s content and not have to sell my soul to the corporate world anymore.
In previous incarnations this building, built in the early 1900’s, had been a furniture store, a funeral pallor, a carpet store. There are still markers on the floor to measure out carpet lengths - 10 ft., 20 ft., 30 ft. - a hopscotch for grown-ups or a reminder to toe the line. I step over those lines, like avoiding cracks in sidewalk (“step on a crack, break you mother’s back; step on a line, break your father’s spine”) while thinking about the people who had worked here.
Every night, I creep down to the main gallery and spy. After I put on my alpaca wool robe, that is. Dirty white and so oversized it drags across the floor when I walk. But I need it because it’s always frigid cold in here, even in the summertime. To avoid attention, I don’t turn on the lights after dark or even use a flashlight. Some nights I do light a candle, for ambiance mostly, shielding the flame from the drafts. Using the glow from the streetlights outside, I’ve learned my way around in the dark. This building also boasts huge rafters and ancient wooden tongue and groove floors, so I wear socks on my feet so as not to get splinters. Going down three flights of stairs, each wooden step creaks, and shadows seem to follow me.
It’s exciting checking out the scene from behind the huge, plate glass windows - old glass so thick that images seem blurry and features distorted. The streets are yellow, gleaming golden in the rain, and empty, oh so empty. It’s lit, like every night, in those yellow ochre colors, like sodium lights used in movies by such directors as Alex Pyros, in films like The Crow and Dark City. You know, those movies set in abandoned urban neighborhoods where the subcultures hide and the criminals flourish.
This night, I see one lone figure shuffling up the sidewalk after dark, head down, walking with purpose. Just as the hooded figure grew nearer, I was about to duck behind the windowsill when the person looked up. We locked eyes for a moment, a middle age black woman carrying a bag of groceries - cradled in both hands like a football player protecting the ball. I’m surprised to see her, and she’s surprised to see me. With a mutual nod of the head, we made a silent pack. Maybe she thought she thought she saw a ghost?
Yup, that’s my neighborhood all right. And every night I’m the only one here, in the whole district, like a guardian or a queen. Upstairs in my studio, too small for a loft, too big for a garret, I can look out my window and witness all the unspeakable things happening beneath the overpass of the train trestle. I can look into the white-hot squares of light in the train engines, study the faces of the conductors. Sometimes, I leave my curtains open just to make their nights interesting. There must be ten, fifteen, twenty trains going by here any given night. And I just have to go meet one. But it’s raining and I’m tired. My bones ache from working on the building all day - physical labor I’m not used to. I’m an artist, not a builder, but this place always needs so much work. Even now, as another train goes by, plaster bits flake off the high celling of my studio and into my hair and on my art books. Sometimes, I collect the plaster bits and crush them into dust to mix in with my paints, incorporating some of this old building’s DNA into whatever painting I’m working on at the time. It adds a little texture that you can run your fingertips over, like reading brail. If archeologists from the future happen to do carbon dating on one of my works, their analysis will be thrown off by a couple hundred years at least.
I stretch out on my little narrow futon, one of those oriental affairs made for small bodies. Luckily, I am small. The mattress is hard but keeps me off the ground and out of line of the mice highway.
Tonight, I try sleeping like a lowercase L; that usually gets me to the dead zone. But once again, the bed feels hard and slim. I turn into an S position, uppercase; this time, my feet are hanging off the end. That doesn’t work, so I pull up into one of those fancy lowercase C’s with the squiggle beneath it, like in façade. Damn, still can’t sleep and it feels like a sacrificial table now. I can’t seem to get the visions out of my head. I flop around until I stretch on my back into a modified lowercase T: Arms akimbo, crossed at my chest, fingers linked at my breastbone. Geez, let me sleep, dammit. I have a lot of work to do tomorrow.
Finally, I slide my leg up until it makes a triangle; my foot rests behind the hollow of my knee. The hanged man, I can’t find an alphabet letter to match it, but then I remember som**hing. The memory creeps in from the back of my mind, a symbol. I almost sit up from the insight, it reminds me of the sigils for angels I saw in a book one day, but not a regular angel, not a good angel, ‘cause the sigil is upside down. It’s the symbol for a fallen angel or archangel, Danyael or Samuel or one of those with that melodic spelling I like to roll over my tongue. I should get up and look it up, the book’s just over on the other wall. But dammit, my bones ache, and I’m finally comfortable, if only I could get my thoughts to stop racing. I program my mind to remember, look up sigil, look up sigil, find the name of the angel, it might mean som**hing, it might help. And finally, I fall asleep.
I wake up to Norman, sitting next to my bed again. He’s sitting in the chair that matches my futon. It folds out to make a small altar, or sacrificial table, but it’s very narrow and very short - made for very tiny sacrifices.
“Why don’t you stretch out, Norman, take a few winks?”
“On this itty bitty thing that claims to be a chair?” the Black man leans forward, and I can hear his clothes rustle, the blue workman’s uniform he wears every night, the one with his name on a patch across the chest pocket. That’s how I know his name. He never did bother to introduce himself.
“Nosirree,” he continues loudly, sort of hissing the word. “You might like your morbid thoughts of altars and sacrifice tables, Charlene. But keep ‘em to yourself. Nonsense.”
"Charlie,” I correct him. So I can sleep, I consider flipping to a lowercase S with my back to him, but I’m so comfortable. I finally found a position where my back doesn’t kill me.
“What d’ya want tonight, Norman?” I ask him, my eyes still closed, knowing exactly what he’s gonna say.
“You’re supposed to meet the train.” He’s a man not to waste words; he cuts right to the core of everything wrong with this place.
“Yeah, yeah, I know. But I’m exhausted. It’s always so late and I’m so friggin’ tired after hammering and hauling and working all day.”
“The train’s never late.” He misinterprets me, corrects me. “It’s always right on time. And if you don’t get your skinny little butt off that narrow little bed one night, you’re never gonna stop all this. You know that, don’t ya? You gotta meet the train. Otherwise this is never gonna stop.”
“Dammit.” I flip over into an uppercase S - it hurts like hell, but I’m hoping he’ll get the message, leave me alone and go the hell away. “Why am I the only one who can meet the stupid train?”
“Cause you’re the only one here, you blame fool.” He stands and begins pacing. I hate it when he does that. Next thing he’ll be making rude comments about my art. He doesn‘t get surrealism.
“Who else is gonna do it?” He just keeps at it, won’t give it up.
“I don’t give a sh*t.” I just want to sleep. I hope my rudeness will make him leave.
“Get off the pity pot, you whiny kid,” he snaps. I’ve ticked him off now.
“I’m not a kid. I’m twenty-six,” I say, hearing myself sound like a middle school brat, but I can’t stop myself, even though I like Norman, really like him. He reminds me of the neighbor up the street who used to take care of everybody’s yard, bring groceries to the old folks, buy the kids ice cream when the ice cream truck came around. I don’t know why I’m so grouchy and ready to p**s him off. After all, he’s here to help me. But I’m so damn tired.
“If you were my girl, twenty-six years old or not, I’d put you in your place,” he says, the words harder than his intent. He sits back down defeated. He sees I’m a lazy ass. I feel really bad.
“Okay,” I say, “I’ll get up. Just give me a minute to get dressed.”
“We don’t have time,” he says. “But you’d think you’d give a hoot what you look like, pretty girl like you.” I pull my robe away that I also use for a cover and he helps me up. I’m embarrassed. I have the same dirty clothes on I’ve worn now for…what is it: three, four days? I’ve been too lazy to change, too busy working on an art series and fixing this building at the same time.
“Norm, let me change.”
“No time! C’mon, grab your shoes. We’re gonna have to run, I can hear it coming.”
We do have to run, down the three flights of stairs, through the gallery, pausing at the front door to undo several latches and locks, take a right up the street and over to the next street, where my friend David has his studio. At the end of this little street, which could be a street in France, if not for the dilapidated buildings, are the railroad tracks. It’s further uphill, so here the tracks are level with the road as the trains leave the trestle and begin their route towards the trendy upscale downtown area.
I can hear the train. It’s a powerful one, maybe three engines, lots of cars this time, freight cars, a few passenger cars, tanker cars, Norfolk and Southern linking town after town after town. Who knows where they all originated from with their graffiti tagged sides hauling freight cars and containers with lettered brand names like UPS, Lance Crackers, Cape Cods Chips, U.S. Express Enterprises.
We wait until it comes. Even before it’s arrival, it pushes the air in front of it, blowing through my ratty hair, lifting my skirt.
“Why you wear such short skirts, girl? You outta have more sense than that in a neighborhood like this.”
There he goes, acting like my dad again. He looks older outside. I see his face is more weathered than I pictured it when I tried to paint him one day. Sometimes, I feel that you don’t really know a person until you paint his/her portrait. He stands next to me in his blue Dickies, starched to perfection, creased at the legs. He’s a dapper man, one who could have made his way through life on his looks, but chose to work hard instead…only he didn’t think he’d be working this hard, this long.
I put my hand on my hip and look up at him. “I have to lure big brawny-shouldered guys down here somehow to help me do all this work,” I sass him back.
“The only men you’re gonna lure with that get-up are street thugs and muggers. You look like you found your clothes at the dump.”
“One step up,” I say, “the thrift store. I kind of like the street waif look. I think it’s artsy.”
“Yeah, right,” he turns from my pose and looks down the tracks. ‘Give me a long sleek skirt any day. Elegant. That’s the way I like ‘em.”
He talks like he’s forgotten I’m standing there.
Finally, the train pulls up, one huge glaring light signaling its approach, a cyclops invading my turf. The brakes squeal and yank the huge, beat-up engine to an abrupt stop. Doors of passenger cars and freight cars alike open and out they pour, dozens of them. Workers, lots of workers, like they’re just getting off the 10:38 from Spartanburg and walking up the street to the mill. They file past us with their toolbelts and pickaxes, each one wearing a blue uniform with his/her name embroidered on it. They don’t talk to each other, totally ignore me, but some of them nod to Norman.
“They don’t see me.” I look up at Norman, feeling snubbed.
“If I can see you then one of them will,” he says calmly and sure.
“And what’s supposed to happen if one of them does see me?” I ask, suddenly wondering what the hell I’m doing here.
“I’m not quite sure; we’ll have to wait and see.”
It only takes a few moments before we’re alone. They’ve all filed past, some of them talking to each other, many of them just sullenly heading to work. Norman and I walk the five points of what was the commercial and retail area. The workers are hard at it, crowbars in hand, destroying door jambs here, unseating a joist there. Plaster sprays the sidewalk, brick walls crumble and ceilings cave in. They are slowly, m**hodically dismantling the place.
The noise is incredible, echoing out through the night, the jarring sound of wood being ripped apart, the tumbling thuds of masonry and the cymbalbright shock of breaking glass. It makes my back tighten up and I put my hands over my ears because it makes my head hurt. Norman looks at me and laughs.
“The sound of progress,” he says. “Demo, that’s what our crew does best. Experts, every one of them, so no one hardly ever gets hurt. Even though I hate to see it happening, night after night, I gotta tell ya, my crew knows their job.”
“How do we stop it?”
“I’m at a loss, honey.” Norman pauses and surveys the busy worksite. “I want to stop it as much as you do. I don’t know why they quit listening to me. Afterall, I’m their supervisor. That’s why I had to talk to you. I need your help.”
..
https://amazon.com/Lessons-Luna-Moth-Synchronicities-culture/dp/B09HFS9815/
