Here’s so a sneak peek of an upcoming story from my third volume of short stories.

Train Wreck

There was no one in sight. Lino looked down the old road in the direction of Padova, from where he had just come. The Italian countryside stretched out all on sides, a pale green plain dotted with patches of yellow. It was silent. Nothing moved. It was cold. It was clear. A normal winter day in northern Italy.
He turned back in the other direction. His worn shoes made a grinding sound on the gravel, surprisingly loud in the stillness. He knew that ahead of him lay the town of Vicenza. A town he had never seen. He looked down the road. It appeared to be a mirror view of the view behind him: a shabby pavement, stretching on into the distance. Pale winter farmlands spread out on either side. An occasional clump of trees and sections of old stone walls in the distance. To the right, the countryside rose slightly. At the top, far off, was what appeared to be a stone farmhouse and a barn. It could well be abandoned. Just ruins. Or it might be full of life in the midst of this cold, clear afternoon. From this distance, Lino could not tell. All seemed quiet and still.
Now he turned to his left, breaking the silence once again. Train tracks stretched away in this direction. A row of trees lined one side, an open field on the other. Telephone poles were standing on the right side of the track. Silent totems evenly spaced, each one down the line seeming to be smaller than the previous until they disappeared in the distance. A line of carefully planted trees functioned as a windscreen between each set of poles. At first glance, the scene had a very neat, ordered geometry. Two straight iron tracks, receding away until they touched. Wooden cross-ties layed at specific intervals under the rails. The evenly spaced telephone poles and trees. Lino counted thew number of trees between the two poles closest to him. Thirteen. He counted the next set, and the next: as many as he could until the distance made it impossible to see. Thirteen each time.

Lino turned a fourth time. Crunch. Once again, a mirror of the opposite direction, except in the distance the tracks curved around rising hills, the line of trees hiding the poles after the curve. He could only count three poles (thirty-nine trees) from his vantage .

Standing in the middle of the street where the tracks crossed, Lino imagined what he looked like from far above. A small, insignificant dot, standing at the center of a cross made of wood, iron, and dirt. He raised his arms up from his sides. He knew that one of his arms was longer than the other, one was stronger than the other. His hair was combed to the side. The left pocket of his coat had some bread and cheese in it. An uneven geometric figure in the midst of the straight, ordered geometry. An unplanned flaw in the midst of the carefully planned crossing. “A strange disfigurement standing at the cross,” he said out loud. His voice startled him. It sounded loud and rough, like the gravel at his feet.

Why is order so important? Why do people think everything must be neat and structured? Why not unordered? Why can’t disorder have meaning too? Why can’t the nasty and disheveled and dirty and chaotic also have a function? Is order significant because it gives a sense of security? The boundaries are clear. We know where one thing ends and another begins. Beginnings. Endings. Crucial.