The Conductor and the Bear

My engineer, Mark, scarfed down his peanut butter and jelly sandwich while operating the train—a necessary skill acquired by seasoned railroaders. His greasy hands stained the Wonder Bread black, but he didn’t seem to mind. He even licked his fingers clean when he finished, then hammer-fisted the whistle button as we went over a crossing. Long, long, short, long was supposed to be the sequence, but he gave one long horn blast instead. 

“Yellow for forty,” I said, pointing out the yellow flag north of the tracks. (A yellow flag means a speed reduction in two miles.) We were only doing sixty, but freight trains don’t slow down quickly.

“Speak up, kid! I’m old as balls!”

The engine was loud, and Mark was, in fact, old as balls. He also used cheap, disposable earplugs—the orange, memory-foam ones you cram into your ears like wine corks. When I showed him my custom earplugs, he flipped me off with his thick, hairy, Oscar-Mayer middle finger. His way or the railway.

“Forty coming!” I yelled over the rattling. 

“No shit, Sherlock!” 

Mark throttled off and let the train ease down to forty. There was nothing else to worry about for miles. I had already called the last foreman, and now it was time to do my real job: stay awake. After all, train conductors are just overpaid passenger princesses—or, as Mark says, “professional window lickers.”  Admittedly, the view that evening was quite lickable.  

Poised between two mountains was a dark, bulbous thunderhead; behind it was a DreamWorks moon (a waning crescent, Mark told me) competing for space in the sky. Deep-green pine trees flanked the tracks, and as we chugged west, somewhere around mile forty on the Pyeford subdivision, the sun finished bleeding its last light. Red sky at night, conductor’s delight; red sky in the morn’… Not sure. I don’t work mornings. 

Mark opened his window and lit a cigarette. 

I opened mine and let the cool evening wind style my hair. Business-messy. 

“Start of the forty,” I said, pointing out the green flag.

“Thank you, Mr. Detective.” He tapped his speedometer, which read forty on the dot. 

A little about Mark: he started at APEX Rail in the late nineties, before I was born, and as one of the last original “hoggers,” he didn’t care for young, overly eager conductors like myself. He had a son twice my age and a pension waiting for him at the end of the year. To Mark, the kid to his left calling out flags, signals, and speeds was an inconvenience, but I didn’t let that deter my work ethic. I was here for a reason. 

An hour passed, and the waning moon disappeared behind the mountains, leaving only our headlights to guide the way. Undoubtedly, the most powerful sedative in the world is the monotony of train tracks. If I could find a way to bottle it, I’d run NyQuil out of business.

Sure enough, when I glanced to my right, Mark was hunched over, head bobbing in and out of dreamland. There is a built-in alarm called TMS (Train Monitoring System) that wails every thirty seconds if the engineer doesn’t touch the controls. It’s loud and annoying, but it keeps us both awake some nights. Awake and employed. 

The alarm went, BEEEEEEEP! Mark sat up straight and smacked the off button, wiping his beard and checking his collar for drool.

“Kid, you gotta tell me a story,” he decided. “Unless you got a Red Bull?”

“I don’t.”

“Okay, then story time it is. Whaddya got?”

I thought for a moment, then shrugged. “I don’t know. I don’t really have any good stories yet,” I admitted. “I still live with my mom.”

He chuckled. Making him laugh was a win in my book. “Come on, kid,” he said. “You gotta have something. Ever been in a fight? Or a threesome in college or something?” Railroaders are the most uncensored people I know—and my dad works construction.

I laughed. “No. I was hired right after high school.” 

He sighed, massaging his eyes with the meat of his palms. “Were you even alive for nine-eleven?”

“I was one.”

“Christ …  all right. Let me know when you think of a good story.”

“Will do.”

Up ahead, above the tracks, there was a big, red arch bridge for pedestrians. I’d seen it before, but there were never any people on it. Tonight, however, a group of five stood on the outside of the railing on the ledge.

“Have an eye!” I shouted, pointing out the window.

Mark throttled off, but we didn’t slow down much. People don’t usually kill themselves en masse. “Coffee’s on me if one of them jumps,” said Mark. 

I readied the radio in case I needed to make an emergency broadcast, making a note of the subdivision mileboard as it passed on my left—mile ninety-one. As we neared the bridge, they appeared to be around fourteen or fifteen years old, laughing and waving as we passed underneath them. With their free hands, they were all holding their … well, Oscar-Mayer Wieners.

“CLOSE YOUR WINDOW!” I shouted, and then it started raining piss. I slammed mine shut, but it was too late. My arm had been sprayed. To my right, Mark had taken the brunt of it. His face was soaking wet, dripping down his shirt like an eaves trough in a very yellow thunderstorm. 

“GOD DAMMIT! CALL THAT IN!” Mark roared. “REPORT THEIR ASSES!” 

I picked up the radio.

Then, there was the bear—

WHAM! CLUNK! CLUNK! CLUNK! 

—followed by the loud release of our air: TSSSSSSSSS! The smell of burning brake shoes steeped the cab as we began our slow, unexpected stop. The emergency alarms followed suit: BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! 

I picked up the radio and broadcasted the emergency stop to rail traffic control. “Emergency, emergency, emergency, APEX  ten-seventy-seven with the eight forty-one west, stopping in emergency at mile ninety-one, Pyeford subdivision. Emergency, emergency, emergency.”

I stood up and put on my hi-vis safety vest. Time to go for a walk.

“Don’t forget the hose, kid,” said Mark, gesturing to the spare brake pipe hose propped against the wall behind him. The air hoses carry compressed air throughout the entire train. If one of them disconnects or starts leaking, the emergency brakes automatically apply—hence the uncontrolled stop. The bear must have broken or detached one of our hose bags, and my job was to fix it. 

I turned on my handheld radio, clicked the knob to channel eight, and tucked it into my vest pocket. When I put on my gloves, Mark rolled his eyes. I’d like to keep my Wonder Bread white, thanks, I thought, before throwing on my backpack containing everything I might need (tools, flashlight, and my APEX Rail manual in case I needed help remembering how to manage hose bags). 

I buckled the chest strap on my backpack and opened the engine cab door. When the train came to a complete stop, I threw the hose over my shoulder, climbed down the ladder, and planted my boots firmly in the slag. Our train had one hundred and nine cars—more than a mile long—which meant I was about to get my steps in. 

The looming thunderhead that had been swelling over the mountain had arrived and began pelting me with cold, needle-sharp rain as I walked east. Despite the storm, a part of me enjoyed stretching my legs in the fresh air; the other ninety percent wanted to yard this train, so I could get back to the hotel and conk out. Luckily, my inspection ended after just twenty cars (about ten minutes of walking on uneven slag in steel-toed boots). 

I stopped and gaped when I found the damage. Tangled up in the hose attachments was a grizzly cub. The poor thing was missing an arm and dripped blood down the steel knuckles between cars. The worst part? It was still alive, gurgling up fluid and twitching.

I hung my head for a moment, thinking up a plan, and then I turned to look for a big piece of slag—a rock large enough to put the cub out of its misery. I scanned the ground, picking up candidates and tossing them away when I found bigger ones. Finally, I spotted what looked like a two-pounder. As I went to pick it up, something plucked me into the air by my backpack.

I dropped my flashlight and flailed my legs like a kid on a bar stool. Thunder cracked. My mind tripped over itself, trying to make sense of reality; it was as though I had been plopped into the middle of a dream. Before I could reach for my radio, whatever had picked me up started thrashing me around: left, right, up, down, side to side. I white-knuckled my backpack straps, bracing for impact and/or projectile vomit.

This went on for what felt like minutes. Then, to avoid being shaken to death, I unclipped the chest buckle and flew ten feet into the grassy ditch. That’s when I saw Mama Bear. She looked like they do in the movies: dished face, rounded ears, and large, humped shoulders reminiscent of bodybuilder traps. I reckoned she was more than five hundred pounds. 

Mama Bear dropped my backpack and stood on her hind legs, her hooked claws the size of Mark’s fingers. She roared at me, canines on full display as she slammed her front legs back onto the ground. I was winded, but I didn’t have time to be winded, so I jumped to my feet.

She charged. 

It’s not easy running on wet rocks in steel-toed boots, even fueled by fight-or-flight adrenaline. I made it a whopping five steps before tripping and slamming head-first into the slag. A loud hum rang out in my head—womwomwomwom—and then her shadow swallowed me whole. 

She slammed her weight onto my back and dug in her claws. With one clean swipe, she tore off my shirt and vest—along with a good chunk of flesh—and then pummeled me into the ground jackhammer-style. Her deep, resonant roars would have drowned out my screams had I been able to manage any. Under the weight of the bear, my lungs were two deflated whoopee cushions, and the joke was on me. She bit down on my leg and threw me against the nearest freight car. My ribs cracked audibly like a handful of party snappers. 

The bear charged again, but I managed to pull myself over the rail and underneath the nearest car, where she was too large to fit. She stuck her head underneath and roared at me. I could see all the way down her dark-purple throat as she freckled my face with bear spit. She swatted at me with her claws, but, luckily, I was just out of disembowelling distance. 

Taking quick, shallow breaths, I assessed my predicament. The bite mark on my right calf gushed with blood, and I imagined the gashes on my back looked like ground beef … but I was alive. My handheld radio was in the vest she had clawed off my body; going back for it was a death wish. But I couldn’t stay here. What if I bled out? I had to get back to the cab.

With a strong push, I rolled myself out from underneath the car onto the south side of the train (the non-bear side, obviously). Using the cars for balance, I staggered back west. The bear followed me on the north side, bashing against the train and roaring. The ground shook beneath her, and I knew Mark couldn’t hear a thing. I vowed to buy him custom earplugs if I made it out alive.

As I neared the engine, the bear started running. She knew. She knew she could catch me if she ran around the front of the train. This was a race. I’ve heard about the tortoise and the hare—but what about the conductor and the bear? I reckoned the bear takes first place. 

I staggered as fast as I could, clutching my broken ribs. My foot sloshed around in my blood-filled boot. There was no time to get to the far ladder that led directly into the cab, so I would have to climb up the back through the engine room. That’s when Mama Bear made it to the south side. She found my eyes, roared, and barrelled toward me. 

I jumped on the bottom rung and climbed as fast as I could, but before I could pull myself to safety, she clamped her jaws down on my heel and thrashed her head from side to side. My boot came off in her mouth, and I half expected my foot to go with it. Instead, it was only broken, cocked ninety degrees at the ankle. I fell on my stomach and army-crawled toward the back engine door. 

Mama was roaring and swatting at me but unable to climb the ladder. Millions of years of evolution created one of the most dangerous beasts in the animal kingdom, and it couldn’t even climb a ladder. Somehow, I still felt bad. She’d just lost her baby.

Nevertheless, I was safe from imminent death. Albeit, there was always a chance I’d bleed out on the way to the first aid kit. 

I unhooked the train keys attached to my belt by a cheap carabiner and found the long, brass one for the engine room. I struggled to my knees and lifted the keyhole cover. My fingers trembled, and my hands were slippery with blood and sweat, but eventually, the key clicked, and the door pushed open. 

The engine room was loud, and the steel floor was hot, so I crawled on my elbows. My mangled legs left a long, bloody snail trail behind me. 

At the end of the narrow hallway, I reached up for the handle and fell into the cab, wheezing as I rolled onto my stomach. Mark jumped out of his seat and took in the scene. I must’ve looked like a zombie. Shirtless and bleeding, bootless and groaning, bitten and shaking—not to mention the gashes on my back. 

“KID! WHAT HAPPENED?!” He sprinted for the first aid kit. 

The urge to laugh overcame me. I couldn’t help it. I just fought a fucking bear.

“Mark,” I said, spitting out blood. “I have a story now.”