What happened when I was in Hawk Center

Hello everyone. This is Horace.

I'm writing becasue Sebastian encouraged me to. He wanted me to say what happened in Hawk Center when I temporarily was gone.

First off. I want to say that Hawk Center is actually North Platte, Nebraska. I don't know why Sebastian was covering that up. Sebastian?

The reason I bring it up is that North Platte has one of the biggest railyards in the world. That's where I went.

There were lots of switches in yard. Switches and tracks and many, many train cars. The cars were mostly yellow and black and red. All were rusted.

It was a windy day in North Platte and the whole place was filled with a great metallic creaking.

I should say that I was taking a tour. There were three other people on the tour. It was a mother and her two children. The mother was in her thirties I thought and had bangs. She was skinny. The children were a boy and a girl. Five or six and eight years old. Our tour guide was another lady. Her hair was short and it was gray. She was wearing a decorative scarf.

The train yard is called the Bailey Yard. It was remarkrably busy. Too busy for us to walk in much, so we just stood outside.

There were men in towers watching the trains. There were other men controlling locomotives by remote control. The long trains were picked apart and put back together with cranes at great speed.

I was having a hard time hearing the tour guide. The little boy and girl were fighting with each other. But I couldn't hear what they were saying. I didn't know why they were gouging at each other.

We walked back into the building we started from.

"This has been a most unusual tour," I said to the tour guide.

The kids said they wanted to go home.

"Oh?" said the tour guide.

"Yes," I said. "It's really noisy out there. The people on the tour can't hear what you're saying."

"I'm sorry," said the tour guide.

The kids repeated that they wanted to go home immediately.

"You bored the heck out of my kids," said the mom.

The tour guide looked sad.

"It's ok," I said to the tour guide. "Children are golden and fickle." Then I looked at the mom and said, "Do your children need sleep?"

"Probably they do," she said. But she blushed when she said it. And then she took her kids by the hands and rushed out the door.

I looked at the tour guide. She still looked sad. Her lips were twitching. "Truly this train yard is a wonder," I said. Then I tipped my hat and walked out.

When I reached the parking lot, the mother was in an old Chevy with her children. She was turning the ignition and nothing was happening. She looked more and more distraught as I walked up. She looked up at me, cursed, turned the ignition. Nothing happened. She cursed. She looked at me. She looked at the steering wheel.

As I walked up, I said, "How thin is the veil that covers us!"

The children were staring at me. I love children. They looked terrified and enraptured at the same time. It is how they look when they look at a large centipede.

"Do you need a ride?" I said to the mother. "I can take you home."

I looked in the car. The back seat was full of possessions. I looked at the mother. She had tried to turn away from me. But the seatbelt held her. I saw tears on her cheek.

I walked to my car and got in. I put it in reverse and backed up so that my rear bumper was touching the family's rear bumper. Then I got some wire that I had been keeping in the back seat and tied the two bumpers together.

I walked to the driver's side window on the Chevy. I leaned down to the open window and said to the mom, "You can put your car into neutral. I'll take you somewhere to get your car fixed."

"No," she said. Her gaze was fixed on the steering wheel. "My brother will fix it."

"Can I take you to his house?" I said.

"He's out of town," she said.

"When will he be back?" I said.

She said, "In a couple of days. Maybe tomorrow. I don't know."

"I'll take you there. And you can rest." That's what I said to her. Then I got her brother's address.

I walked back to my car and got in. I watched in my rearview mirror as she put her car into neutral. Then I drove us to her brother's. It was a tan plastic house in a subdivision.

I got out of the car and walked to the mom. Her children continued to stare at me.

"We're just so tired," she said.

"I've heard this before," I said.

"From me?" she said.

"No," I said, "From a hunter in Wisconsin. He was a good man. But there is a great weariness in the world. All the noise. And not just of trains. All the voices of friends and family. All the noises of televisions and music. We turn to these things--even to our very friends!--because we long for acknowledgement. We want to prove something to the world, to God, I don't know--do we want to prove our existence? But the noise works upon us, the great noise of empty conversation, the great noise of keeping up appearances, and such a great noise of entertainment. The noise distracts us from our weariness and our wounds and defects. So it all festers. And life drains away."

"That is so depressing," she said.

"Take your sleep," I said. "You and your children."

"The neighbors..." said the mom.

"They'll be more interested in me than in you," I said.

"I don't know," said the mom.

"Here," I said. "This is what I do. I stay awake."

"You must sleep sometimes," she said.

I said, "I'm using a metaphor."

"Oh," she said.

I said, "Sleep is a gift and a healing river." Then I went back to my car and waited. Eventually the mom and her kids fell asleep. They slept for a long, long, long time.

A couple days later (I think?) the brother came back. I went back to find Sebastian.

I had kept a long vigil.

In His Holiest Name,

Horace