Manifest: The Complicated Weight of Air, #1

By Jennifer Ellis

A train disaster in a small town, multiple suspects, and the complicated lies we tell ourselves and each other...

In Clayton, the smelter sits at the center of town and dominates the local economy and narrative. Curtis Lane, a homeless man, spends his days sitting outside the drugstore in town issuing dire warnings about the trains that transport chemical waste from the local smelter. Is Curtis crazy, or does he know something? James Allenby, the son of one of the smelter executives, sets out to film a documentary about Curtis and the trains and learns more than he had intended to about the smelter, and his comfortable life.

Manifest is a 10,000 word short story and the first in a series of shorts. The second will be released in October 2014.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jennifer Ellis
• Release date: Sep 28, 2014
• ISBN: 9780992153854

Book preview

The Complicated Weight of Air

Part One: Manifest

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By

Jennifer Ellis

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Copyright © 2014 Jennifer Ellis

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be used, reproduced or transmitted in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This book is a work of fiction. Any references to real people, events, locales or organizations are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are imaginary, and any resemblance to actual places, events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Cover Design: Design for Writers

Editing: David Gatewood

Moonbird Press

ISBN-13: (ebook) 978-0-9921538-5-4

For more information on Jennifer Ellis or to read her blog, visit:

www.jenniferellis.ca

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Chapter 1 – Man by the Tracks

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James Allenby raced down the path from school and turned right onto the tracks, heading away from Lafayette, away from the stacks and the grainy scent of industry that hung in the windless afternoon, faint but omnipresent. The rail grade was flat and cleared of the sprays of Timothy and Johnson grasses that made his legs itch and his nose run. He looked back to make sure nobody had followed him. This was instinct now, ever since Seb had tripped him during the cross-country run in ninth grade, resulting in a fall that fractured James’s tibia, so that Brian could win the race. Even now, two years later, his leg clicked in funny ways when he ran too long and hard.

The tallest stack of the smelter loomed black on the horizon, a bleak otherworldly creature jutting out of the rolling green hills. Even from this distance James could hear the hum of the complex that never rested, that spent every day and every night extracting gold, copper, lead, and zinc from the trainloads of ore that were shipped into Clayton from all over the world.

Satisfied that he was alone, James turned and started running down the tracks, the crickets heaving and calling in the fields around him. Today was a six-mile day at a nice, easy pace. There would be no leaden weight of exhaustion in his legs, no clicking, just the satisfaction of moving quickly. As always, he carried his video camera in his backpack. He hoped to stop and film something for his entry into the film festival. He just wasn’t quite sure what yet.

His mother hated that he ran along the tracks. She worried constantly that a train would hit him, despite his repeated reassurances that the trains approached with a violent thunderous scream that could be heard from miles away. It was the humans lurking in figurative bushes with figurative weapons that he feared far more.

James pushed the afternoon out of his mind: the other guys in their navy soccer jerseys and cleats, leaning against lockers with their newly hairy legs on display, while flirty girls milled around them,