" Weeping My Tears Away"

Heavytree the town - 1989.

“Hi honey, I won’t be late tonight. The train is almost empty and I’m running on high speed to see you soon. Put on your dancing shoes. We’re going to have ball at the dinner dance tonight.”

“Harry, have you been drinking on the job again? I can hear it in your voice. Please drive safely, you have passengers on the train. Let’s rather skip tonight and sleep in tomorrow. Then we can go dancing, laughing at the jokes you tell so well."

Clara Jones with her three children, are waiting at the station for the train that will transport them to Clara’s brother’s farm. They giggle and laugh as they board the train."Look mommy, we can sit in the front carriage that has large windows and see the passing views.You can sleep if you wish, and dream of when you were young, playing there with your brother and sister on the farm."

I wake up startled, hearing my Mother screaming at her brother. “Joe slow down - you’re drunk and driving recklessly, the crossing light is showing red to stop."

Harry, seeing the pickup truck smashing through the crossing gate, makes the fatal mistake of only applying the front carriage emergency brakes. The train engine and the front coach swivel out of control, sideways into a minibus that has swerved away into a ditch near the tracks.

In the confusion that follows, I hear myself crying in pain lying in the twisted wreck.I’m staring at the blood on my hands, screaming for help in the pickup truck, now buried under the train at the railway crossing. There where the impact tears steel and flesh falling upside down into the corn fields.

The second coach ploughing straight ahead, dragging the pickup truck another seventy yards into a mangled mess.

A scary deathly silence, as the emergency vehicles arrive with the fire brigade and emergency services.Twenty-one souls are dead or dying, like the three children found torn in the corn fields, photographed by the angry local police.

The only survivors, the Conductor screaming in the rear coach with a phone in his hand. "Son, don't move until I call for someone to help us. You are in shock and I need to stop the bleeding of this lady holding you.I can feel that her body is broken.

I can only remember mumbling. "Are you an Angel to save us?"

Thirteen lost and lonely years living in this rehabilitation centre, I dream of that scene, blood all over me and the passengers that died in that terrible accident.

My fear of failure, shuffling to the church yard to pray for Mom and Clara, my aunt with her three children buried together in our family grave.The stone I engraved, while weeping my heart away.

"Dear God of mercy, may my family be Angels with you in heaven."

To Harry and Joe, may you lie drunk with the devil, broken and burning in hell.



495 - Words