The Trestle by Arthur Shattuck O'Keefe
There was a trestle at the eastern edge of town, part of a stretch of the Delaware & Hudson Railway. It crossed above the Batten Kill, a tributary of the Hudson. The trestle served as the focal point for some of the stupid things I did as a kid, which I suppose peaked the summer I turned 13. I won’t use my youth as a defense. I was old enough to know better. We all were.
Sometimes late at night, I and my elder brother Marv and our neighbor Ron would climb up to the trestle and drop water balloons onto cars as they passed under. We aimed for the windshields, occasionally hitting one. There were no crashes, luckily. When you’re that age, you just assume no one’s going to get hurt or killed. Or at least I did.
On occasion, during the day, we’d stand along the tracks and shout obscenities at the caboose men on the freight trains as they passed by. This was long before everyone could instantly record each other’s actions and show them to the world, and it felt exhilarating to insult adults with impunity. Most were poker-faced, but one day one of them looked distraught.
We stopped doing it after that. His face is the only one I remember.
Arthur Shattuck O’Keefe was born in New York and lives in Kanagawa, Japan. His debut novel The Spirit Phone was released in 2022 by BHC Press. His short fiction has appeared in Johnny America, ScribesMICRO, Ragazine, The Stray Branch, and Flash Fiction Magazine.
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Photo by Jack Delano – on Openverse via trialsanderrors on flickr
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