Rail Bridge At Dusk

The 7:42 freight was late again, its approach telegraphed not by headlights, but by the familiar, bone-deep shudder of the riveted iron beneath my boots.

I stood midway across the massive rail bridge, a labyrinth of rusted metal girders that stretched endlessly over the dark, sprawling artery of the industrial river below. Faint, cool fog was already beginning to uncurl from the water's surface, swallowing the rusted pylons and blurring the boundary between the heavy flow and the soot-stained warehouses lining the banks.

Above, the sky was painted in a bruised, dusky violet light. The urban skyline bled into the gloaming, a jagged silhouette of smokestacks, cranes, and flickering sodium-vapor lamps that hummed with the electric pulse of the night shift. Down below, chemical barges churned the oily currents, their distant horns groaning against the encroaching stillness.

With a sudden, deafening roar, the locomotive tore out of the twilight tunnel on the east bank. Sparks showered from the screeching brakes as the heavy steel serpent thundered past, vibrating every bolt and beam of the ancient structure. I pressed my back against the lattice-work, feeling the raw, imposing might of the industrial age rush right through me.

And then, just as quickly as it had arrived, the train vanished into the violet haze of the western yards, leaving behind only the acrid scent of ozone, the gentle lapping of the river in the dark, and the slow, heavy breathing of the city settling into dusk.