By the light of dusk, to Kansas
Night harvesting in Western Illinois, shot at 70 m.p.h.
After a brief coquetry with air travel last month, I find myself once again embarking on steel stretched from Illinois to Kansas.
The sky is smokey, filled with a soupy mixture of burning fields and dust kicked up from the lighted combine machines harvesting late this year. It’s quite a sight, and one that I had no time to capture. I’m running late, and I’ve already cost myself dinner.
–
In the observation car, there’s a boy and a girl conversing. The girl is giggling more than necessary; the boy boasting a bit too much. But this is flirtation, after all.
“I never asked you, but what’s your name?”
“John.”
She giggles again, until a lull forms, cloud-like. There’s a few moments of silence, the eye contact disappears, but they push forward and resume talk: of meditation, of ex-boyfriends, of curly hair and of mountains climbed.
Strange conversation – these strangers – as we lurch through rural Missouri via locomotive. Next stop: Lawrence, Kan.
November 23, 2009