The Corner House - Draft 1

The Corner House - All rights reserved © Martha Binford

This is a little vignette I wrote that I want to expand into a real story. I hope to get comments from others to help me improve it. I will post these as comments for this draft. Later drafts will follow.

(This is fiction; any resemblance to persons real or fictional is purely coincidental.)
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It's the sweet house on a corner lot owned by an old woman who has lived there since she was 19. Hers is the big house with the sun-room and the hand lettered poster board signs. One sign on the gate says "No strangers allowed" and the other on the adobe garage says "Leave my land alone".

She lives on the corner where cars make the turn to reach the new commuter train station. The traffic has quadrupled, even from when there were two crack houses down the street. Every weekday from about 5:30 am until about 7:30 at night the cars stream past her home to the train station. Every day the commuters rush into the new Railroad Cafe, freshly stuccoed and serving cappuccino and pastries. The man that owns the cafe wants to buy more houses in the neighborhood, to clean it up. He talks about creating a good clean neighborhood with morals. This doesn't impress her; it seems like robbery to charge over a dollar for a cup of coffee.

The train yard has never been clean, and the neighborhood has never been quiet. There were always the trains... the rhythmic "bangity bang" of the trains on the tracks, the train whistles, and the "bang clang" of the train cars coupling. Her husband worked in the railyard until he died. Most days he came home black with grease and petrolium. She rubbed lotion on his giant callused and cracked hands every night. They never came clean but she loved his touch. Her children were conceived to the sounds of the trains coupling. The trains meant a home for her family and provided a rhythm and stability to her life. Even the long night after he passed, she lay in bed comforted by the trains, listening, almost hearing him sleeping next to her.

Her children grew up in the neighborhood, but like many who spent their childhood in Benson they moved away at the first opportunity. Those that stayed never made much of their lives but they felt solace in the neighborhood and never left. The old woman knows most of the drug dealers from when they were children. They were pretty good kids too, not like you might imagine. They played ball in the streets with her boys. They never found work but found drugs instead.

They faded further and more distant while never leaving, sharing what was once their family homes with other addict friends. She watched houses fall apart, and become more filthy. The black trash bags multiplied in their backyards, growing brittle and spilling their contents in the wind. On walks she would sometimes notice hypodermic needles under bushes, and she knew times had changed. It was the sounds of the trains cleansed her.

The noise of boom cars and people arguing about drug deals or women replaced the sounds of children. She sometimes heard the "bang" of guns, as violence of all kinds increased among her neighbors. Occasionally there were police sirens but mostly the neighborhood was left alone to its internal trauma. The old lady minded her business and expected others to mind their business too. For the most part, life was good.

There was only one time she was afraid and called the police. Only once, to save the life of a woman being beaten in the street. The sounds of her screams woke her up, mixing with the train's "bangity bang" until they gave rise to something half-human and spine-chilling. Looking out her window into the darkness she could not see what was happening, but she could tell by the screams that the woman would die. The police arrived so quickly that she wondered if others had called before her. She watched and listened from her window as the police arrived, and then the ambulance. She believed they saved the woman's life, but she never knew for sure.

Now, strangers keep banging on her door telling her to sell. They don't ask, they tell. They know so little about her and her life that they insult her. They tell her she must be so tired of the the trains and the crime, and instead ready for peace and quiet. They tell her she will be "rich for life" and that she doesn't need "all that yard".

She watches from her window as the last of her neighbors leave. As soon as their houses sell, the work crews descend to dismantle the homes. The new townhomes and houses are too expensive for locals to purchase, and are sold to newcomers who commute on the new light rail train to the city. They ride the train, buy three dollar lattes, and know nothing of her neighborhood or her town.

So many want her house now. They don't know she will never sell. Now the sounds of cars rushing to the station, and the "bang bang" of hammers on roofs mix with the train whistles and "bangity bang" of the train on the track. The trains still comfort and purify her while the newcomers seem to busy to notice the magic.