A Freight Train to Laredo

A Freight Train to Laredo Daniel Peña (bio) I might as well get acquainted with death, I thought and so I took in a deep breath. My throat reacted violently. The reefer-car becomes a pressure cooker with heat radiating from every surface. It rises upward from the great iron wheels plowing beneath you As well as the track which radiates heat from a days baking in the sun. It suffocates you so that when you exhale, your breath becomes liquid instantly And you feel your muscles begin to tense from the dehydration. In the heat, corpses begin liquefaction prematurely so that large bubbles begin to form Underneath the skin and as they burst The intestines, the blood, and the water from the stomach lunge out of the body Along with the gases that remain trapped beneath the skin. When you smell a corpse, you smell the worst of organic amalgamation, Perfumed with the sweet, concentrated smell of dehydrated blood. It plugs your nose with its scent like sun-ripened sewage and decomposing meat, Tinged with lilacs. The gases are unbearable once ammonia condenses on the sides of the cabin. When this happens, you can forget about putting your tongue to the walls To collect the water driblets you so desperately need Although a few desperate souls do anyway. [End Page 128] Daniel Peña Daniel Peña is an undergraduate student studying English and linguistics at Texas A&M University (College Station), where he won the 2007 Charles Gordone Award for Fiction and the 2008 Charles Gordone Award for Poetry. Copyright © 2009 Charles H. Rowell

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