Impressive words

  This time they raced down the tracks that curved toward the river, picking their way in the dark along the junkyard bank, flipping rusted cables of moored barges, running through the fire truck graveyard, following the tracks across the blackened trestles where they'd once shot pigeons and from which they could gaze across the industrial prairie that stretched behind factories all the way to the skyline of downtown. The skyscrapers glowed like luminescent peaks in the misty spring night. Manny and Eddie stopped in the middle of the trestle and leaned over the railing catching their breath.
  "Downtown ain't as far away as I used to think when I was a kid." Manny panted.
  "These tracks'll take you right there," Eddie said quietly, "to railroad yards under the street, right by the lake."
  "How you know, man?"
  "A bunch of us used to hitch rides on the boxcars in seventh grade." Eddie was talking very quietly, looking away.
  "I usually take the bus, you know?" Manny tried joking.
  "I ain't goin' back there with you tomorrow," Eddie said. "I ain't goin' back with you ever."
  Manny kept staring off toward the lights downtown as if he hadn't heard. "Okay," he finally said, more to himself, as if surrendering. "Okay, how about tomorrow we do something else, man?"

                                                    ーStuart Dybek, GRIEF