from FM 104

"Coyotes, weasels, green flies, crows. The animals heard it first. Along the weedy edge of Route 20, a turkey buzzard quit the possum she’d lucked into and took cover in a stand of pines. The wild pig under Cecil Dawson’s oak trees snorted twice and froze. To us, it came from out of nowhere: two blasts and the roar of a crashing train that rumbled far too long. Our windows rattled, our floorboards quivered, our breakfasts trembled on their tables. We thought terror, we thought bombs, we thought of our loved ones. A few of us thought to scream. Those of us who ran outside, the ground beneath us shaking still, saw wobbling plumes of smoke in a Texas postcard sky."