Trains

Cristina Baisden was back in Williamson. Williamson, West Virginia. And no matter how often she reminded herself of the last 19 years, she couldn't shake the feeling that she had never left.

When her boss took her in his office to give her a new assignment, her mind refused to believe what her ears had so clearly heard. Cristina worked for a large drugstore chain based in Cleveland, Ohio. Her job, as compliance manager for the Columbus area, took her from store to store, making sure that the aisle displays were set up properly, that the pharmacist knew how to use the automated prescription system, and that the checkout girls, who always seemed to wear too much makeup, were reminded that they need to look respectable. Cris spent at least a week on the road every month. It kept her away from her husband and two kids, but she knew that if she just hung in there for another year or two, she would probably be promoted to regional manager, and wouldn't have to travel nearly as much.

So when Cristina was called into her boss' office that Monday morning in late August, she expected to be sent somewhere for the week, but certainly not to West Virginia, and definitely not the place that she grew up.

"Now I've got something a little different this week," said her boss, an expressive, bearded thirty-something who knew more than anyone about women's makeup. "We absolutely need someone with your eye for style. With Linda out, it should be a cinch for you. It's in Williamson, West Virginia, and I told the stuffed shirts upstairs you'd do a

fabulous

job.

Cris just stared at him with disbelief.

"Now I know it's West Virginia," her boss leaned towards her, and began to whisper, "Fuck, I wouldn't want to be there either. Ha! Could you se

me

down there? Tell you what, if you really kick ass," he paused, and leaned even closer to her. "Tell you what, if you really kick ass in that god-awful Williamson I'll ask those cocksuckers upstairs to give you off the rest of the week off."

All that registered in Cristina's mind was the name of her hometown, and the shock that she would be there again: "But it's Williamson, Jerry! Why doesn't Linda handle it? That's her region!"

Jerry was taken aback by her response. Hell, he was willing to go out on a line for her. Well, he could be just as bitchy as she was. Jerry stood up, and leaned over his employee. "Look, missy, if you want to bitch at me, fine, but don't play dumb. Linda's hasn't been here for a week, and she won't be back for at least another."

"Damn her," swore Cristina, "and why the hell is she gone?" she demanded, sternly.

Flabbergasted and annoyed, Jerry turned away from her. "Um, excuse me? Her father is dead."

Cristina opened her mouth as if to shout back what a stupid excuse it was when she realized what he said. "Oh—I… I forgot." She held her head in her hands as her anger and fear turned quickly to shame.

Only later did she realize that Jerry had no idea that she was from Williamson, or even West Virginia for that matter. Not that she really cared. Jerry would have his world as he had always had it, but she knew other worlds. The shack with floorboards that cracked in the middle and warped upwards at the ends. The lamps without lampshades and the mattresses on the floor. The dirt road that could hardly be driven when the spring rains fell. The stray cats that the boys up the next holler had pelted with rocks and shot with their bb guns. And if she closed her eyes she could hear the squealing of metal on metal as the trains passed on the train tracks behind the house. That sound, she could hear it in her brain, and it brought her back to that dirty old town squeezed between two mountains, a place where the sound of train after train gave her comfort in the hope of somehow going far, far away.

Cristina Baisden was 38 now. The last time she had been to Williamson she was 19.

And she wasn't Cristina Baisden, she was

Christine

Arnold. She had changed her name when she married Frederick Arnold, and decided that as long as she changed her last name, she might as well change her first name too.

But when her urbane, homosexual boss sent her to the town that she had spent the first half of her life, the name Cristina Baisden came out of

her

closet and claimed its right as her true identity. Now she remembered the time in college when she was absolutely determined not to change her name after marriage. She would not be like her mother, she thought. Her mother was born Alice Simpson, became Alice Farley when she married her first husband, and then Mrs. Baisden when she married her second. For a time in college she was determined that her name would be hers, but she later realized that her name was never hers. Like her mother, she had changed from Farley to Baisden when her mother's first husband left them and they moved in with the man who delivered the coal. As a college student she so desperately wanted to keep her identity constant, to resist the "dominant patriarchy" (or something like that). How naïve she was then! All of her names were names of men. So when Cristina met that gentle, generous man who made her laugh, she scrubbed the old name from her identity and took a new one, freshly painted, and pretended that has always been her own.

Until now.

As she got out of her shower in the Sycamore Inn in Williamson she looked at her naked reflection in the mirror. She saw a woman with graying hair, crow's feet, and full but heavy breasts. She was not the 17-year-old girl who used to live in this town. A girl whose body exuded a youthful sexuality but whose manner was shy and timid; stung too often by the bitter comments directed toward her and her mother.

The squealing of the train began, and she clutched her towel to her breast and ran to the window to see the train inching by. Williamson was one of the largest freight train hubs in the country when she was a girl. Even with a sagging economy that couldn't get much worse, the trains continued to come and go, taking the coal away to the power plants, hauling the very mountains away.

Cristina stared out the window from her hotel room, transfixed on the train that rumbled slowly by. Her company would have paid for any room she wanted, and the rooms away from the train tracks, the ones facing the river, were quieter, had more light, and were more expensive. But she didn't like the river. The river was where little blond boys and their doting fathers would go out fishing. The river was where the rich people would take their motorboats and where the police and the members of the Elks Club would sit around looking at what everybody did and telling stories or making them up when the truth wasn't interesting enough.

Cris wanted to see and hear the trains. She wanted to look down on the same tracks that she was standing on when she and raven-haired Jenna promised to be sisters forever. The train tracks, where she had all of those ridiculous, insignificant, yet monumental thoughts for the first time in her life was the place that she knew she had to see again.

When her mother got remarried and she first set foot in that little house by the railroad tracks she cried and cried. Her mother did everything to stop her, but she couldn't change the fact that Cris did not want to move in there with the strange man that she did not like. Somehow, though, when she saw the train come by the window for the first time, she fell silent. She had heard the sounds for her entire life, but this was different. When she saw the train heading towards the house, as if it was coming right for her, she was filled with a mixture of fear and exhilaration. All she could think of was its power, and how she wanted to be part of it.

Lifting up her head, wiping her tear-stained eyes, she asked, "Where's it going, mommy?"

"Darling, that's going far, far away," her mother told her.

When she was little she used to think that she would ride away on one of those trains. Before too long she soon learned that they didn't take passengers, yet she still used to daydream about running away on one of those trains and riding it as far as it would go. Of course, she never did ride on one of those trains, but Cris would go out there with her friend Jenna and they would walk along the tracks like they were balance beams and talk about everything in the whole world.

She looked out the window and smiled, and in the half darkness she saw the childlike smile that she had never lost. She ran back to the bathroom and looked again at her reflection. No, here was not the shy, youthful girl that she was when she was 17. Here was the confident, motherly woman that she had become. But she was still sexy. She looked into her eyes that saw the sexual need that she had always felt but had been absolutely terrified of when she was a girl.

And then she remembered that Peter was coming over. She ran over to her nightstand to check her watch and saw that he was scheduled to come by in less than 10 minutes. Quickly she dressed, brushed, and applied her makeup. She even put on perfume. The closer she came to being presentable the more nervous she became. But when she thought about what she was prepared to do, she shivered—not out of fear but from her deep arousal.

Peter Symes was the first man she had ever loved. He was her first kiss, her first boyfriend, the first boy she had ever told her feelings to. He took her virginity (and she took his) in the bedroom of her old house one late afternoon in early fall when her mother was away at work and her stepfather was long since dead.

Peter Symes was the farthest thing from her mind when she was driving to Williamson that morning. It was odd that she never thought of him. He was her entire world when she was 17, and she was his. But he wasn't on her mind that morning, the mountains were. A funny thought to some, perhaps, but to anyone who grew up in the zigzagging foothills well west of the broad Appalachian ridge, there is nothing so comforting as those steep hills and narrow valleys. There, where she grew up, the people were dangerous, but the earth itself could keep you safe.

Cristina had not been there in 19 years, and although the mountains were still there, the government had built a four-lane highway through them all. The steep old winding road had been turned into something modern, something foreign to her, and although this was a place she thought she might never return to, she felt a need to see it as she remembered it. At about 3pm, with only 10 miles to go, she saw where a portion of the old road joined with the new one and she took it.

But her little 4-cylinder engine couldn't take the steep grade of the old road, and by the time she reached Williamson, nearly an hour later, her engine had overheated, and the radiator was boiling over. She pulled into a garage on Main Street and told the mechanic the problem. She assured him that she wanted him to fix it, not just get it running. Yes, she said, she was sure she could afford the repairs, whatever they were.

She was on her way out when she saw Peter. Although she hadn't set eyes on him since he was 18, she was absolutely sure that it was him. She blinked her eyes. Opening them, she saw a scruffy, balding, 38-year-old man in jeans and a tee shirt. He had a beer belly. He had oil on his callused hands. His athletic teenage body had grown paunchy. And yet, he looked exactly the same. His brown eyes were the most comforting sight she could remember seeing. His nose and mouth and cheekbones were the same, the way he stood, the way he brought his hand to his face to wipe the sweat away was absolutely Peter. The confused look on his face when he saw her for the first time in 20 years was the same also.

His voice was the same too, when Peter asked, "Are you…?"

"Yes." She interrupted him.

There was small talk. Nervous, slow, excruciating small talk. Her eyes saw him, the him that he used to be and the him that he had become. Everything was different and yet nothing had changed. And Cris wanted to cry in his arms and have him hold her, but she knew she couldn't.

Alone, she walked to the hotel from the garage. Her bags were so light that when he offered to carry them she could reasonably refuse. She registered at the hotel, went up to her room, and put down her bags. Although it was a small town, the hotel was decent. Growing up, it seemed luxurious. Still, she had never really wanted to stay there. She'd have rather had the cheapest room somewhere else, she once thought, as long as it wasn't there. But now, here she was in the hotel and wishing she were in her old house, sneaking out after midnight to go out back, down by the train tracks, so Peter could give her a goodnight kiss.

It sent shivers down her spine and she longed for his touch, his kiss, his body weighing down on hers. Automatically her hand reached for the phone and dialed the number of the garage. "Hello, I need to speak to Peter, um, Pete Symes."

"Just a moment."

"Hello, this is Pete"

"Peter, this is Cris, I need to see you tonight."

The line was silent for a moment. Then, a quiet voice, "I don't get off until 4:30."

"Come by then, I need to see you. I'm in room 301 at the Sycamore Inn."

Another pause. And then in a mostly futile attempt to hide the nature of the call from the other mechanics he responded nonchalantly, "OK, no problem with that."

Then her voice became a whisper. "I'll be waiting."

A half-hour later she was dressed, made up, and sitting on her bed. God, she was a mess. The last time she saw him was right after she turned 18. It was June, and he was shipping out with the Navy. They had decided to break up, and he wouldn't really give her a proper kiss. But he had hugged her, and she thought she would absolutely die of that feeling that came over her.

But when she went to college, her life changed. That small town, filled with ignorant busybodies, gave way to a world she never knew existed. She did extremely well academically, had a small group of good friends, and never looked back.

Yes. It was good in college. It was nearly perfect.

What wasn't good was the intense pressure she felt to excel. Back in Williamson, she was the daughter of a twice-married cleaning lady. Nobody thought much of her. But when she brought back honors from Ohio State, a price was put on the success that she had enjoyed. In the last days of her mother's life, Cris was all her mother lived for. The last time she saw her mother, the last time she saw Alice Baisden/Farley/Simpson she told Cris to be as successful as she absolutely could, and to never come back to Williamson.

So why was she doing this? Why did she feel this incredible lust for a man who hadn't seen in 20 years? Why was she willing to put her entire marriage and family in jeopardy? Why did she secretly want to move back to Williamson and be with this man for the rest of her life and play with their kids on the railroad tracks and tell them that they were good beautiful children? Why?

There was a knock on the door.

She looked at her watch. It was 4:45. Peter was here. "Get a hold of yourself!" She commanded to herself quietly. "How do you know anything will happen?"

But when she opened the door there he was again. That face, those eyes. Somehow he had managed to shave since she last saw him. He had combed his hair and he smelled like cologne, but he still had traces of oil under his fingertips. And he was still beautiful.

Peter took a deep breath, and looked nervous. "You look really nice, Cris."

Cris did not remember what was said next, what she said, and what he said in reply. She did not remember what was said before he touched her, before he took her in his arms and kissed her on the lips and held her so close to him that she could hear his pounding heart. She did not remember what was said before they began to make love, before their sense of rationality and of the present stepped out of their bodies and they both became completely 17 again.

Cris did not remember what was said after Peter's first comment to her because maybe because nothing was said. Maybe she did say something and he in return, but if they did, her thoughts were so far away from dialogue that it was as if someone else was talking. What she did remember was his soft lips, his strong hands and arms and back, the sound of his breathing and his heart beating, the smell of sweat and engine grease and cologne.

At first, they just touched. Breathlessly, nervously, they touched each other's bodies, as if it was their first time. This time, though, when he held her breast, and felt the size and heft of it, he knew just how to hold it and how to squeeze it ever so slightly. And when he sucked on her nipple, he knew just how hard, just how much to suck and just how much to lick, and just how to rub his teeth over it.

Her mind was not with her, but every once in a while, her mind returned. When it did she looked at this gorgeous man feasting on her breasts like she was the most beautiful woman in the world and she could not contain her joy.

Her hands ran through his hair and down his strong shoulders. She felt the bigness of him, his muscles, his chubbiness, his appetite. She looked down at his penis, and it was big too, and she wanted it.

"I want to kiss you, Peter." He lifted his face from her breasts and it was like he was a boy again, thrilled that a girl would want to kiss him "down there."

Wordlessly he turned his body around and she began to make love to his gorgeous prick. It was so fat and so hard and so long and she wanted more than anything in the world to make his cock happy. But soon after she started licking it, she felt him lift her up and he crawled under her pussy. Then his tongue started doing unspeakable think to her puss, licking the lips, pushing his tongue inside, and finally sucking, sucking on her incredibly sensitive clit. All the while he was caressing her thighs and holding her ass close to his face. She began to grind her pussy against his face, and started to moan.

She had never felt so incredibly aroused in her entire life. She never felt so free and yet she never felt so safe. She wanted to be his forever and ever and ever. She wanted to hold his cock in her while he held her in his arms.

"Fuck me, Peter, please fuck me."

She must have been incredibly wet because his cock, his gorgeous purple throbbing cock, the biggest cock of her life, which had never in his life been so big, slid in her with one powerful thrust.

"Aaaaaaaaaaaaahhh!" She screamed.

It was in her, and she never wanted it to leave. She wanted all of him in her. If he could slide his entire body into her pussy she would be happy. She wanted his big dick to shoot all of its seed deep into her. She wrapped her legs around his ass and pulled him closer.

Their thoughts were the same. Below him, the girl of his dreams, still as beautiful as he had ever remembered her, had opened herself up willingly to him. He reached down and pulled her closer to him, he hugged her and kissed her face and all the while his cock pounded into her.

She felt his weight on her. She was pinned to the bed and could not move but she didn't care. The tighter he held her the more liberated she felt. His power felt tender and his smell was fragrant. She could think no longer.

But her body had a mind of its own. Her pussy, clutching the cock she held deep within her started to squeeze Peter's cock as if to pull him completely in. She felt a warmth begin to build in her toes, in her breasts, in her ass. And as he continued thrusting in and out of her, she felt the warmth converge on her pussy. Her entire existence was there, between her legs, filled with his wonderful cock. Squeezing it one last time, she began to come and so did he, shooting his thick, milky seed deep into her womb.