Saturday Morning
I make it home before the sun rises. I lay back down to get a little more sleep before my day begins. I wake to the sound of my alarm. It’s 8:00 AM.
I didn’t have any dreams last night. No dreams I can remember anyway, that’s a relief. Saturday typically begins with meeting Ayla for a run on the bike trail between our houses. We are half brother and sister, having the same mom but different dads. She lives with her dad, I live with mine and my stepmom. Our mom was good at getting pregnant but not the best at raising kids.
When I sit up I am still very sore. I can feel it everywhere, in my calves and forearms especially. A good long run should work a lot of the lactic acid out of my muscles. I get dressed for my workout. I prefer loose fitting clothes when I do anything physical. I grab a grey T-shirt with red and white letters from a slow pitch softball team I play on in the summer. I cut into a tank top, a pair of black gym shorts, my running shoes, and sunglasses.
I step outside. It is warm, sunny, and there is a light breeze. It feels more like early September than late October. This is perfect work out weather to me.
The place we meet to run, from an overhead view, resembles a peace sign without the circle. The vertical line of the peace sign has my house at the top and her house at the bottom. The path to the left heads towards the school. The path to the right goes past the depot. I jog to our meeting place and she drives. When I get there I am usually winded, this makes us pretty evenly matched and she can keep up during our workout.
I get to our meeting place and her car is already there. She is usually outside stretching her legs when she gets here first. There is a small parking lot next to the intersection of the paths. It is marked by telephone poles lying in the grass. Just behind that is a two room building, a restroom, with running water and a drinking fountain on the outside. I walk up to take a drink. I glance back at Ayla's car and see her driver's side door is open. I don't see her in the car or anywhere in the area. I bet she is in the bathroom.
I hear a scream from just inside the tree line behind the restroom. "Aaaah! Get away from me you son of a bitch!"
I run through the trees toward the voice. I hear the voice again screaming. "I said get away!"
It’s Ayla, but I don't see her. She is so far from the path, off in the trees. Who is she screaming at? I see her behind a tree kicking her right leg at something on the ground with her hands on her hips.
"Ayla!" I yell as I run up to her. "What the hell are you doing?"
As I get to her, I see what she is screaming about. Between the trees, in a little patch of grass, I see it. I grab a stick off the ground to hit it. She needs her big brother to save her.
"Kill it!" She yells.
"It's not even poisonous." I tell her as I put the stick between her and her foe. "It's just a Rat Snake."
"I don't care! I hate snakes!"
I tap the snake with the stick to prompt it to slither away. I can see why she would be scared of the snake if it surprised her. They are not the friendliest creatures in the woods. This one was about five feet long and solid black. I look back at Ayla and she is tying the draw string on her athletic shorts. She dresses like she is prepared for the work out. She wears her running shoes, blue shorts, sleeveless T-shirt that says something about volleyball on it, and she has her long blonde hair up in a ponytail to keep it out of her face while running.
We walk back to the intersection of all the paths. "Which way do you wanna go?" I ask.
"I want to run by the school to see the light pole that got struck, oh my god! I completely forgot, are you ok? What happened last night? Oh, and happy birthday!” She says.
She always talks fast and throws out a lot of information at once. One of the few things I pick on her about. She is also the kind of person who has to include a compliment with each negative thing she says about someone.
"Thanks, and I'm still not sure, I don't remember anything. And I want to run by the depot. I heard about the accident, I want to see it." I tell her.
"Let's go check it out!" She replies.
"What the hell were you doing out in the timber?" I ask, with raised eyebrows.
"The bathrooms were locked and I had to pee."
"So bad you couldn't close your car door?"
"What? No, I closed it. Are you messing with me or was it really open?"
"Yeah, it's still open, I didn't close it."
We walk back to the parking lot to inspect her car. The door is closed. Maybe the wind blew it shut, or maybe someone else on the trail closed it for her.
"Sooo, brother, are you confused about the difference between an open and closed car door? Cause that looks closed to me." She says sarcastically.
"Smartass!" I say as I try to burn her with my eyes. "Let’s go."
We start down the trail. It’s paved, six or seven feet wide, and has a white line down the middle to separate people going in opposite directions. Most of it runs through the woods with the exception of a few bridges that open it up to only water on both sides. It contains a few hills, a good number of turns, but for the most part it is pretty straight forward and easy to run. As we approach the first bridge on the trail I am reminded of a time we were chased by a goose.
We were on an easy run early in the spring and came across a woman pushing a stroller towards us. I still don't know what she said for sure as we ran past her but it was something about turning around. When we reached the bridge we found out what she meant. There was a mother goose in the middle of the bridge with three baby geese.
Ayla got the bright idea to approach the goose to try to scare her to the end of the bridge so we could pass, much like I did with the snake. When Ayla was about ten feet away from her, she stopped, clapped her hands, and started yelling at the bird. The goose spun around to her, started hissing, honking, and flapping her wings with her chest out. They had a standoff. I stood back to see how this played out. I have dealt with an over protective goose before. I was excited to see this because I knew I would remember this moment forever. Ayla stomped on the wooden planks that the bridge is constructed from and clapped her hands again.
The goose charged! Ayla screamed and ran toward me. The goose was faster than she looked. She caught up behind Ayla, but a little off to the side. She hissed and tried to bite her. Ayla screamed and jumped. She tried to run faster but the goose bumped her legs and kept slowing her down. I was laughing hysterically from the end of the bridge. The goose was so persistent she somehow tripped Ayla and started biting her legs. I thought I better actually help her at this point. A goose bite hurts, but without fangs it typically doesn't pierce the skin, just leaves welts and bruises. I ran up and got the attention of the goose. She was distracted just long enough for Ayla to get up and run away.
The thought makes me laugh out loud. Ayla gives me a confused look.
"I wonder if we will come across your little friend today..." I say jokingly.
"Shut up!" She says between breaths.
"She is probably waiting for you at the end of the bridge!" I tell her. When we get to the end of the bridge I say, "Oh shit, here she comes! HONK!" I do my best goose impression and pinch her triceps. Ayla shrieks and swings her arm forward away from me, then tries to punch me. I laugh and so does she.
We get close to the depot and it seems quiet. That is strange for a place that crashes steel box cars into one another 24 hours a day. The entire property is surrounded by a chain link fence with barbed wire at the top but that is nothing new. It has always been high security since some guys went drinking on top of a few of the train cars a few years ago. One of them got hurt, they all got charged with trespassing. Since then they have added all sorts of security measures. Even the employees are required to wear badges with picture
s. It seems a little overkill to me. I look and listen closely. There is no wind and I don’t even hear birds. The silence and lack of movement is eerie.