Late night, listening to the rain outside … it slackens, then increases, then slackens again, but never ceases all through the long December night … what a contrast with last year at this time when brush fires were raging across the state … all through the night, the rain patters outside my window … sometimes through the pattering I hear the faint hornblast of a train on the Track, the original Track …

In the morning, Diane and I drive northwest through the rain … down wet country highways, past scattered houses strung with Christmas lights, inflatable Santas and Frostys in yards, and horses and cows and goats, and rolling farmland, everything wet … the man at the Shell station asks for directions to Shreveport … he has little grasp of Texas geography, it seems … he thought he was almost there but we show him the map: he has at least a five-hour drive ahead of him … back on the road … lunch in Mexia at the only place open, a turkey and dressing buffet, then back on the road again … the road takes us to I-45 and as we enter Dallas County the rain increases, so does the traffic … the roadspray is almost blinding, it's white-knuckle driving as I pass 18-wheelers …

Christmas Eve at my father’s house … he is weak following his operation, but better than last time I saw him … after dinner, we exchange gifts with him and his wife … we talk, tell jokes, laugh, I perform a card trick … later I sit up talking with my father … he has trouble sleeping these days … we drink wine … on the wall is one of the fiddles my great-grandfather Ware made … my father reminisces about him … when he was young, great-grandfather Ware saw John Wesley Hardin at the depot as he was brought back through Texas under arrest … my great-grandfather was a cowboy in the late 1800s, rode line in West Texas, later farmed cotton on ground not fit for cotton … in the 1920s oil was discovered on his property and he never had to work again … he played dominoes every day, drank whiskey, played the fiddle, and enjoyed himself … always dressed well … his domino-playing buddies in Ranger all believed he was a rich retired rancher even after the money ran out … outside the rain patters, my father reminisces about great-grandmother Ware … she was a faith healer … people came from miles around for her to lay hands on them and mutter a secret Bible verse over their ailments … and they were cured too, or so the family has always said … she was a shouting Baptist and tobacco-chewer, and a mean old woman my father says … her life had been hard, they were dirt poor when she was growing up in Reconstruction-era Texas … her father got killed in a fight over cards in a Hamilton saloon … the rain patters on … the talk turns to politics, a topic we have been avoiding the past few years when we get together … it is my father who brings it up … he wants me to know he is disgusted with Bush and the war … we talk on through the rainy night till at last the clock strikes Christmas … I have to go to bed … my father sits up with his wine and memories …

In the morning the sun is shining, the sky is a brilliant North Texas blue, and the wind is strong and biting … we leave for my mother’s house … in addition to my mother, my sister and her husband and his mother are there, also my two nephews and my older nephew's wife and baby … the younger nephew dons the Santa cap and passes out the presents … then my mother, aunt, sister, and Diane begin to bustle in the kitchen … my uncle, brother-in-law, nephew, and I go on talking … when dinner is ready, my uncle says grace, after which I announce it is Diane's birthday and everyone sings Happy Birthday to her … then we eat … I can’t eat as much as I used to … sure could pack it away when I was younger, but now one helping is enough …

After dinner, a copy of last week’s Austin Chronicle is passed around, the cover story is about Austin cartoonists and there is a short interview with me … prompting my aunt and mother to talk about their father, my grandfather Walker, who was an aspiring cartoonist … I had been told this before, but for the first time my aunt tells me he had a college scholarship to study art, but his old-time rancher father wouldn’t let him go to college … college was for sissies and art wasn’t real work … so grandfather Walker became a farmer instead, on land given to him by his father, land that was originally part of Charles Goodnight’s ranch in Palo Pinto County … in 1943 he died of cancer, his dream of being a cartoonist unrealized …

Later, Diane and I join my sister and uncle for a walk through the cemetery down the road … the cold wind blows so hard I have to hold on to my hat … tall trees and tombstones in the late afternoon sun throw somber shadows on the winter ground … we come to the grave of my great-great-great-grandfather Hue Kinney on my father’s side … it was this great-great-great-grandfather whose son, my great-great-grandfather, later went to West Texas and died in the Hamilton saloon … no dates on Hue's grave, but on his second wife Martha’s grave the dates are 1799-1871 … the wind is too cold and hard to stay long in the cemetery, plus we’re tired … we leave the ancestors to their sleep, driving out through the newer part of the cemetery where the graves are decorated with poinsettias in the setting sun … then, back in the land of the living, we all sit up late, talking … there is a great deal of laughter as funny old memories are shared …

Next day, we drive home … rural churches and adult video stores incongruously share I-45 … near one store looms a billboard, admonishing porn addicts to change their ways or suffer eternal damnation … in Ennis, we stop at the Waffle House, where country music plays on the juke box and on the wall hangs a poster board with photos of the local boys who are fighting in Iraq … after steak and eggs, we drive on, passing more churches, then an all-nude strip club, then at Richland we leave the Interstate for the country highways … it is a good day for driving, sunny and dry, unlike Christmas Eve … we stop in Calvert, once the fourth-largest town in Texas, now forgotten … most travelers barely notice the Old West buildings as they roar through town … some of the buildings are as old as the early 1870s, with high awnings and original iron facades made in St. Louis … two buildings house antique shops, one houses a coffee shop, another is a justice-of-the-peace office, another the Calvert ISD office, most are empty … we walk up and down the windy main street … a train blasts through town, it is so noisy we have to stop talking … it was the trains that caused Calvert to prosper, specifically the arrival of the Houston and Central Texas Railroad in 1868, but prosperity did not last the century … back in the car, we cross the tracks and drive around looking at the historic old homes and churches … all decorated for Christmas … not a soul is stirring on the streets but us …

After awhile, we leave Calvert, rejoining the busy highway … the highway runs parallel to the railroad track all the way home … it is the original Track, the track I have lived near all my life … late at night, lying in bed, resting from the journey, half-watching "Rocky" on television, I listen to a train on the Track, hornblasting through the night … train, train, carry me back …