Wymans Creek

The train slowly clanged down the grade. Rachel clasped her hands together, feeling a sense of suspended elation at the familiar sights. The north side of town lay like a peach pit sunk into the flesh of the fruit, its soggy marsh land cratering rundown company houses. The heat of the August sun beat against the window, but she could see sandbags still piled along the creek as a reminder of rampant spring runoffs, when the snow melted in the mountains and ravaged the lowlands. The sawmill, tin-sided and monstrous, zigzagged to fit the pattern of the creek, ballooned to hold logs, corralled like floating steers fattened for slaughter. Shooting flames spit through the door of the wigwam burner, as it caught the waste and hurled blue-streaked smoke into the air obstructing the sight of the mountains. Even inside the train, Rachel could hear the shrill gratifying whine of the mill machinery. It was a sound that was absent when she left. 

The train slowly clanged down the grade. Rachel clasped her hands together, feeling a sense of suspended elation at the familiar sights. The north side of town lay like a peach pit sunk into the flesh of the fruit, its soggy marsh land cratering rundown company houses. The heat of the August sun beat against the window, but she could see sandbags still piled along the creek as a reminder of rampant spring runoffs, when the snow melted in the mountains and ravaged the lowlands. The sawmill, tin-sided and monstrous, zigzagged to fit the pattern of the creek, ballooned to hold logs, corralled like floating steers fattened for slaughter. Shooting flames spit through the door of the wigwam burner, as it caught the waste and hurled blue-streaked smoke into the air obstructing the sight of the mountains. Even inside the train, Rachel could hear the shrill gratifying whine of the mill machinery. It was a sound that was absent when she left.