The Engine Man Cometh

So, I hate small towns. May they all die the same death as this one...

He used to sit and watch the cars. From his porch by the freeway he would count the license plates, the brand, the model, the make. In England, he had heard, there was a tradition called trainspotting based on much the same premise. He felt his experience was more varied, more interesting, more American.
On a good day he would note down, in his little book, nearly two hundred cars. For simplicities sake he only ever watched the traffic southbound down the dusty four lane freeway, but he also made sure to catch each car that stopped in any one of the four gas stations (two on either side of the road) that competed so fiercely for their business. He couldn't catch them all, of course, but he did his best. It kept his mind and hands engaged and working, and at nights he would go over the days traffic log and try to find patterns, cars returning time and again, particular cars drawn to particular stations. These connections to he would note down in another, larger, book that he kept on his dining room table.
He lived alone, the old man, and his house was sparsely decorated in natural colors, any ornamentation made by hand and accumulated over the years. He was a neat man, but slowing with age and dust crept into the corners where it thought he wouldn't notice.
He was well known and well tolerated in the town, one of the many small affairs that springs up along highways every so often. It was the type of town ringed by farmland, most of it owned by mega-farms but not profitable enough to be regularly used, and so leased to the locals, and built around a single downtown street. That street contained the obligatory four gas stations, the chain restaurants with their bright neon signs and freeway advertising, as well as a scattering of shops and eateries attended almost entirely by locals.
The town had a population of seven hundred fifty three, it had grown in the last generation. The old man remembered fondly when it had a mere seven hundred forty eight, and he knew every one of them. It was the sort of town where the rumor mill spread to quickly for it to support a local paper, and where outsiders were judged immediately and treated accordingly. Every other year the town voted Republican, seventeen to nothing.
When the rail come through the townsfolk thought that it might be the best thing they had ever seen, gliding on air at speeds in excess of two hundred miles an hour it bore little resemblance to anything that the old man considered a train, but if they built a stop in the town he wouldn't mind. Of course they didn't, they laid the track in one night, with no warning, and the next day the trains were running. Short trains, carting raw materials for use further on.
He went out to see them go by, everyone did, and they wondered what the silent silver bullets would do to their town. He began to go every day, leaving the road unattended, carrying a basket of crusty bread and aged cheese, and occasionally a bottle of wine. For a while the others joined him, the women with their young children, the elderly with what comforts their savings and social security could afford them, even once the towns science teacher bringing with him the high school physics class. As time passed though, and nothing changed, they stopped coming. Eventually the old man was left alone with his thoughts.
He wanted so badly to jump a train, like he had seventy years ago, when he was young and everything was different. He even worked up the nerve to try once, almost, but he caught himself and thought better of it. He was too slow, his bones too brittle, he doubted his ability to jump even one of the old heavy rail trains, let alone something like this.
So he sat and he watched, watched and sat, and behind him, unnoticed, the town began to die. The first wounds were small, a for sale sign on third street, two rental properties opening up on twelfth and they bled just a few cars onto the freeway. No one took any notice of which way they left, north or south didn't matter so long as it was out.
Left unstaunched the bleeding spread as the skin began to tear open. Soon their were shops on Main, gutted, with Closed signs hanging in the windows at awkward angles. Eventually even the chains shut their doors and shuttered their windows.
To late the old man noticed his towns death and he turned his attention back to the cars, but there was only one state represented on the license plates now, and all but one gas station had closed down, and there was only one lane of traffic left to watch.