Excerpt from "Looping" by Sarah Jane Smith
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     In 1979 my mother read in the Chicago Tribune: "Train crash caused by motorman with marijuana bags." The downtown El had jumped its tracks and landed in the loop, right near Eddie Bauer's plaid flannel. Some passengers had crawled through the cracked windows. Others were pinned inside by the plastic seats. The train was olive and oily and dirty yellow, keeled over on the sidewalk, a caterpillar dropped from a tree. The injured passengers had revolved, galumph, into the gilt-doored stores: the women tried on crepe de Chine, the men wanting snowshoes. There was blood on their thighs, glass pinned to them. The train had backed into another train, and some of the passengers died. Some of the pedestrians died, cars come crashing down on them.

     "Have you died?" my mother had asked my brother over the phone. He rode that route nearly every day. "Twelve killed, young lady," my mother said to me in the kitchen, looking at the newspaper. "Take this as a sign. For once your brother stopped for lunch. Taking time out for lunch saved him."


From No Thanks and Other Stories, 2001