At 2:22am, I stand on the front porch of my house having a smoke. My porch lights are off, as are the lights of most of the houses on my street. The huge pile of brush in the yard is gone, and my legs still ache from the work it took to deal with said brush. I am admiring the sight of my yard sans piles of tree limbs and tree tops. In the distance I hear a low rumble that at first I do not recognize. Then I hear the horn blow, and I realize it’s a train.

I love the sound of trains in the distance. I grew up a couple of miles from a train line, on one of the ridges that borders the otherwise nearly deserted valley through which that line runs in Horse Shoe. I used to go outside to listen for the train, just a ghost of a sound across the valley. Now the train tracks are more like half a mile away, but the sound is still distant. I’m surprised it’s not louder, but it’s still that same low rumble.

2:22. Two months ago, Bruce’s death was still a fresh stab wound in my chest. Two years ago, we were about to buy our first home and I was scared shitless. Two decades ago, I was standing in the driveway of my parents’ house, listening for that train in the distance. I’d just started to figure out a lot of things - that my creeping childhood suspicion against my parents’ faith wasn’t going away anytime soon, that I liked boys, that I wished I could get on that train and see the rest of the world. I didn’t hate Horse Shoe (yet), but I wanted to see more of the world. Given my inability to take the train, I took to the library instead. A branch had just opened up down the road in Etowah.

I go back inside and the two cats are rambunctious. The Boyf is watching the second episode of a new show about melodramatic Mormons. I climb into bed early and the cats are all over me for attention.  I spend a few minutes rubbing kitten bellies as they purr in rhythm.  I pick up the book I’m reading (second in a series) and promptly fall asleep on it. Life, I think in the morning, is pretty good.