is anyone else here? (Train in Vain)

Dark. Can't even see the yellow stream in front of him, but the thing is, he can feel it.

"What a weird-ass dream?"

His eyes are two moons on two different days, half crescents, part yellow and white. He hears a hoot.

"Is that you, Owl?"

Owl doesn't say anything. Owl listens. His name is Crescent.

"You're probably wondering what I'm doing, Owl? The thing is, I'm asking the same question."

Crescent looks left and right, then zips his pants. Doesn't remember a night as dark and as bright.

"Look at that moon."

He turns around.

"I know you're there, Owl. Come out while I still haft a smile on my face. That's half a smile, like a grin. Suppose you think that because I've been gone so long, you don't have to answer anymore? Well, that makes two of us."

He hears a hoot.

"Chasing that glass of milk, again. Four nights in a row. I'll hold up my fingers if you don't believe me."

But Owl does.

"Thought so."

Owl can talk.

"You know what that cup of milk means to me." Crescent's nostrils flare. He doesn't know it, but everyone else does. "Got on my knees for the first time in years. Said, well, more like a reminder that I never ask for anything. Thought I had a lot of chips on the table, Owl, still do. I go through a Rolodex of the people I know and love, wishing them good health and happiness. Never done anything more. Guess that's entitlement. Wishing for others, thinking you'll collect yours later. It's a dream, Owl. They're just dreams."

Crescent sits on the back of his boots, rips a branch off a bush, and tosses whatever it is into the stream.

"Pretty sound…Pretty sound."

He's folding it up and mashing it in his hands. Can see what falls and floats.

"Maybe."

Crescent sees a shadow behind the tree across the water.

"Everything casts shadows."

He lets go of everything in his hands and watches it float in the moonlight.

"Maybe this is what happens. Carried by some current you can't stop, nor want to because it's so beautiful to a big light in the night sky. Beautiful to us, too. Four nights in a row, Owl. Four nights!"

He holds up four fingers.

"That's how many. They get more intense. I love her, you know? Didn't think I did." He removes his cowboy hat and sighs. "But I do. She's so consistent, and I think I'd die happy if we kissed. Never done it with her, but one night she did ask me to hold her. It's ridiculous."

His smile returns. Didn't know it was gone, doesn't know it's there.

"We were babies. 2010? 2011? I don't know. I don't want any money. Fell like the Buddha sometimes because of that, but I thought this morning that if I had a lot, I'd send her 50,000 dollars in an envelope with a letter that doesn't have my name. Just say this money is for any toll my feelings may take, and then I'd lay them all out. I'm terrified she'd be scared, but then again, I remember what she looked like when she saw my boots in the hallway. Never going to mention that again."

Crescent dips.

"Four nights in a row, Owl. Four nights!"

He holds up four fingers.

"Count em' while they're hot! Sure, it's going to be cold tomorrow. Have I said Hell once? I noticed I've been holding in my goddamns."

Crescent looks down the darker end of the water.

"Owl? You there?"

Nothing changes.

"You ever love someone? I got two confirmations."

Owl hoots.

"Don't even remember how it feels. I loved my daddy when I was a boy. He uprooted and left. This cup of milk, I don't know. Sometimes it's got cinnamon in the milk. Sometimes she looks like her mom. I only know where they are on Christmas, and I have a guess during the summer."

Crescent stares at the stone curves and moss on the surface of the stream. He is quiet for a while.

"You ever garden, Owl, or you still killing mice with rocks?"

Lady Bug listens on the other side. Crescent has seen her shadow, but has yet to confirm any woman. She touches the bark. Hard bark, and peers over, wondering who or what Sandy Milk is.

"Far as I can see," says Crescent. "Years just add up til there's just a block with a number tattooed in the top right corner. It's a button you can press that plays things you thought were the other button. Sounds goofy, but you do what you have to do the way you have to do it. I stopped drinking to spend time on the road. You ever see a sky that turns you to nothin'? The most comfortable place I've ever slept was on the hood of a Buick Le Sabre under a thousand stars, surrounded by 50 coyotes and some deer. Then I woke up in the city. It was a beautiful thing, being..."

He shaved and feels what he has missed.

"Seeing friends carry your luggage. That's a heavy weight. Then you forget… Ever imagine doing anything else? I can't. Guess that's who I am. People want to change, talk about it until they realize there's nothing else. It doesn't make any sense to change."

He takes off both boots and inspects them.

"I certainly don't want to do this. You ever feel like everything is written down?"

Puts his boots back on and smirks.

"Owl?"

The moon is good to him.

"You sound like the cricket when I don't talk."

Lady Bug listens. Owl hoots.

"Remember ringback tones, women who look like sand and stone? Five days on, and two days off?"

Crescent takes a deep breath.

"I'll just say it, it's late, and there is a rock in my boot that is not coming out. I love you. Four nights. Four dreams. Four milks."

He folds his arms, and a cloud covers the light. He nods.

"All goes round again… Is anyone here with me?"