The Horse Latitudes
by Stephen Black

THE STORY: Sitting in the makeshift and sadly shrunken waiting room of the Cincinnati railroad station, Neva Jo tries to divert her restless children with stories of her youth, when the railroads were in their glory and her traveling salesman father often took her with him on his far-flung and exciting trips.

They are waiting for one of the now infrequent trains, and Neva Jo laments the deterioration.

A young soldier comes by and but senses that Neva Jo and her brood are not really going on the arriving train—which only heightens her alienation.

As the train arrives mother and children pick up their belongings to depart, not to board the train but to go back to the numbing routine of a life from which, for a brief time, they have found some measure of escape.