What We Witness

Today, a sunny one, driving home from exercise class in my Scatter Joy baseball hat with a good brim, I witnessed what was nearly a disaster. This is to calm you in advance, to scatter joy (weal, instead of woe). As I came up to the train tracks, the signal lights began flashing, and the striped bars came down. I saw the light of the engine car as the passenger train approached the crossing.

And then, on the slight hillside beside the tracks, a man in a black winter coat walked straight toward the tracks, and on them, running a little as he touched the ties. The train was slowing and stopped.

The man was in black, not orange, like one of the manual signal workers, and not near the signal at all. He seemed a pedestrian, but in those few moments in which I leaned forward in fear for him, gasping, he was a potential suicide. I was feeling for the driver, too, wondering if his heart stopped. There was no awful screeching of brakes. The brakes had already been applied. But still...

A door opened, and a conductor stood there for a while, looking. He was too far away for me to tell if he was concerned, or talking to the man in black. Or what.

Then the lights stopped flashing, and the bars went up. It was safe to cross the tracks in our cars, and the train would pull into the station a little while later. Once home, I listened for and heard the horn.

I told my husband all about it, and he listened patiently, as a priest listens to confession. We've been dealing with a suicide that touched the family. Our hearts are open.

Then, eating my delayed brunch, I read a short story in the December issue of The Sun, something I had somehow missed when it arrived. "A Good Idea," by Craig Hartglass, about one man saving another from suicide. That wasn't a spoiler; you'll know right away. You can read it here.

What a great name, "Hartglass." Like a glass heart. Or a glass hart.