The sound was a foghorn. I was sure of it, that low double note rolling off the water, the kind the container ships used to give near the lock gates when I was a kid.
Then I saw the barrier arm coming down across the towpath. Not a foghorn. The crossing horn on the rail bridge, the one that means a train is already committed to the span, past the point where anyone could stop it.
I was running my usual loop along the canal, six-forty in the evening, the light doing that orange thing it does over the gasworks in September. My trainers were the old pair, sole starting to peel at the left heel. I kept meaning to replace them before the frost came, the way you keep meaning to do a lot of things. The barrier came down slow, the way those old ones do, like it had all the time in the world.
I ducked under it. I don't know why. Everyone on that path had done it before. There's a gap of maybe ninety seconds between the horn and the train, and I'd always made the footbridge with time to spare.
This time I didn't reach the footbridge. I was still on the gravel when the rail started to hum under my feet. I thought, clearly, in full sentences, that I'd step off to the left, into the reeds, let it pass, and still be home for the football at seven.
The sound was a foghorn again, low and doubled, rolling off water I couldn't place, because I wasn't near the docks anymore. There were no docks at all here, just the canal narrowing into a green tunnel of willow. I ran along the bank and the reeds opened for me. I thought about the trainers, the peeling heel, how I'd need to get to the shop on the corner before it shut at nine, they did a decent trade-in on old pairs, my sister always said I should just buy new ones outright but I never did. Someone was calling a name from the far bank that might have been mine.
I didn't stop to check.
There's a version of this where I get to the shop. The man behind the counter recognises me, says the usual thing about the football score, and I laugh, and I don't think once about a horn or a rail or reeds. I want that version. I keep reaching for it.
The sound was a foghorn. I heard it and thought of the docks, then the crossing, and after that there wasn't time to think of anything, only the gravel under my left trainer, the peeling sole catching on something, the horn very close now and not doubled at all. One long note. No second half.
My hand was on the cold iron of the barrier, three fingers curled through the gap under the arm. The paint had come away in a strip the exact width of my thumb, showing the rust beneath, orange-brown, flaking a little where I pressed it.
"Delaware Canal Towpath" by James Loesch is licensed under CC BY 2.0. To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/.