Tracks of Time

In the morning’s snow were small tracks; some the bold steps of the predator, some the almost openly meek meanderings of a creature not yet aware it was prey. There were the sure steps of deer, another set of small, fairy-like paw prints that simply ended, perhaps with a shadow and a mouth set in the “O” of pain that bespoke owl.

If you looked closely enough, you could see the narrative variants of the cessation of life, a tuft of rabbit fur, blood-speckled snow. Further on, a scattering of feathers, designed for speed, intermingled with the downy innocence of plumage, which had been designed for failed hiding, lying in a tiny snow crater. It seemed like only yesterday when summer was blazing. Now, as I walk back to the house I share with my husband, darkness is already approaching even before dinner. 

We’d set our clocks back, and we’d stopped saving our daylight. My days begin as I lie under a blanket of night that starts to thicken and bunch up around six, when just for a moment, light hovered in an orb over the lake. Then, with a blink, it vanished up into the heavens, leaving just black exhaust in its wake. Summer was just here, and now it was gone, time passing much too quickly.

Against the wall, a clock of Mom and Dad ticks, the evening light illuminating only its face, so it appears to hang suspended in space. A ticking clock, holding in its hidden depths the regimented chaos of this world I’ve inherited, its ordered cadence the sound that moves me onward at a dizzying speed into a future still unperceived. Two hundred years ago, the days had their own measured order, as full and steady as the moon that rose each night in the sky. No one could have imagined today’s electronic dislocation, when, with the advent of the industrial age, time was taken from us and enslaved to a clock. Time changed from that of a fellow worker to an overseer, a sharp rap with a stick, a shrill whistle of warning. 

Off in the distance, I see a train stopped, yet with that sense of imminent departure that trains seem to possess. I like living by the train line that runs in and out of Union Station in downtown Chicago.  I like hearing it and watching the people bustle on and off as I simply enjoy my morning walk.  People traveled less on trains as years passed; we went in cars, faster and faster as roads got longer and days got shorter; driving to the market for our dinner instead of walking the land in search of game. The game itself had moved further inward, as had we.

In the dimming light, I looked through some photos. There was one of me in the cockpit of a jet, where I spent several years pushing my limits. There was a photo of a piece of lace that helped make a wedding dress, which I burned with the rest of the memories of that youthful mistake. I got married so young and too soon because I had a broken heart and thought a husband and another child would mend it. It only showed me how fixed the scars upon my heart were and how unforgiving he was who saw them. But bringing a smile, there were pictures, so many pictures of my brother and me.

Log trains ran behind my childhood home, and at night their path would cut shadows across our neighborhood. Shadows that would slide over the wall above my bed, over the model boats, planes, and trains my brother and I played with. By day, we'd grab our bikes and go ride the dusty gash of a roadway near the railroad tracks, where we could see and hear the trains go by, the engine passing in hissing thunder, sparks flying up like fireflies let loose from the rails, dust coiling behind it like a tornado in a trail.

We had no timetable, yet we always seemed to know when the train would come by. One moment the tracks would be empty, the next filled with the rhythmic rumble of sound, of life that materialized seemingly out of nothing; with an air of the deliberately accidental that lingered like smoke long after it disappeared from sight. I stopped my bike and simply stood watching, compelled to pause till in that infinite clutch of the temporary confederation of two elements, water and air; the frailest of integers and units of measure combining into a force that cannot be bound, not even in death.

The yard at the timber mill had more than one track running into it, and as two trains would travel in, we'd hold our breath in fear of a collision, only to have one veer off and stop, while a quarter mile of cars passed. I think of the missing man formation, in which a squadron of fighter planes performs a low pass, one separating and flying off to the heavens. A howling ballet, its performers, mighty machines. Both sights bring a lump to my throat.

Stopping on our bikes, out of breath, we see the engineer up in the engine, he's indistinct, and we wonder who he is and what's in his heart as he holds the power in, his steady foot balancing on an engine that knocks and rumbles. We're not supposed to be this far away from home, this close to the tracks, and we're going to be late for supper. But we knew enough, having learned the lesson before, that for something you love, for the ineffable feeling of rightness, of being exactly where you want to be, in tune with nature, the gods, and the sound of a train, there will be a price to pay, and it will be worth it.

Until the day he died, my brother was my best friend, even after a lifetime of years. As adults, just as we did as children, we’d sit out at Dad’s as we traced the stars with the beam of our flashlights. Not as a point in space, but a moment in time, the pinnacle of childhood, where morning, night, and summer are one; the sleight of hand of fate and blood that would later shape us both so far distant as not to be conceived yet. Over the years, he pretended not to see the occasional tears; I pretended I had accidentally dropped an ice cube from my drink down his neck. 

Years later, another picture, a camping trip with my brother.  We were out all day, heading in not by any clock but by the rhythmic cadence of breath and the measure of bone and muscle. My dog was reluctant to come in from the water, “Just once more!” he seemed to speak to us. But our stomachs signaled dinner, and we called him in with a whistle. He came up the bank panting and trembling with the excitement of the day, to a soft voice and gentle hand, seeking his pack.

Back in camp, we settled to clean our fish and prepare our supper, and hot coals lit our work. My brother said grace over a small glass of whiskey and water, giving thanks for slightly burnt roast meat, a can of beans, and some bread that once actually resembled bread before it had seen my backpack, tasting of the outdoors. It was the best meal we could all remember eating in a long time, tasting our labor and tinged with the smoke of our wildness.

The dog settled into sleep by the dying fire, as in the darkness we prepared our bedding beneath an ancient sky. As the world slowly wound down, stars began to spin their stories in space, and we talked.

We talked of the world and its beauty, love, and sin, where the words are our history, not other people’s words, which are not their past but only the empty gaps of their days. We remembered Dad’s stories of hunting as a boy in Montana when, as children, we lay quietly, listening to bedtime stories that knew no age limit, looking up at the quiet belly of the canvas, hearing not a clock but only the measured breath of contentment as sleep brushed up the remaining crumbs of the day. 

When was the last time you spent a day like that with no clock, no schedule, just time with those who mean the most to you? Now, too often, we rush, scurry, and do not take the time to stop and think of the times we gave up—the times spent rushing after something we didn’t really want or something demanded of us. Wasted minutes, wasted days. Suddenly, years have passed, and the second hand poises in mid-second as you pick up the phone to make a call in the late hour. But there is no one there to pick up that call.

As adults, my brother and I had many more rides together, this time on a motorcycle, cruising the high roads, racing down steep grades just as we did as children on our bicycles, plummeting down fast and breathless as if banshees themselves were at our heels.

I remember one summer evening in particular, after our very last ride together. As the bikes idled in the driveway on that last night together, in the light of his front headlamp, my brother was suddenly surrounded by tiny bits of brilliance, a swarm of fireflies that we disturbed as we parked next to the grass. He put his face down to get a closer look, and for a moment, it was all I could see: his laughing in the glow of the headlamp, tiny bits of light rising up like little angels. Then, just as quickly, they moved away, leaving us there in the dark. In the darkness, I felt an inexplicable cold, and time, for an instant, seemed to stop. 

He was diagnosed with Stage 4 cancer a few days later, and, on Good Friday 2014, he was gone.

Now, as evening shadows gather, I can still recall our last phone call, when all I could hear was breath and my heartbeat, the phone held to my ear. Outside, the rush of the wind, and somewhere far away, the mournful sound of a train as I gazed at a photo of the two of us on the wall, the red hair standing out like a flame, waiting for him to answer.

We talked as we always did, as if nothing had changed from our shared childhood, but as I listened to him, I heard something else, the proverbial clock in my pocket. It was still ticking, more slowly, with a sound  I had never noticed before. Then, with the moonlight reflecting off a tear forming, when I was certain the world was still hushed, I heard a bark from the backyard: Barkley, the Labrador retriever, wanting to come in and share your time, all he ever asked for. So I set the phone down for a minute and opened the door to call the dog in, as that happy bark filled the world with articulate tone, a measured beat of time. The time that, at that one single moment, we both still had. - Brigid