Railroad Stories

Railroad Stories

Sometimes, like today, I make a special trip out to the old house. I come out here and just sit in the empty kitchen for hours, waiting for a train to go by. You may not know it , but you can actually feel a train coming long before you can hear it. Subtle vibrations in your feet first. The floor kind of shakes - just a little - and then you know somethings coming. Sometimes I sit out here and think so hard that I can't tell anymore if I'm just thinking or if I actually start to talk out loud. My kids, who have kids of their own now, tell me that I'm beginning to sound like an old man - rambling on about things that nobody else seems to care about - telling stories that no one else can verify. Just like a freight train, the stories are slow to get started, but when they get rolling, pick up steam, they're almost impossible to stop.

When a train is rumbling along at 55 to 60 miles per hour and suddenly hits the brakes, it sends up a metallic scream that tingles the back of your neck. There's a lot of smoke too, thick and white. You wouldn't think that metal on metal, would smoke like that, like rubber tires skidding on pavement, but it does. The sound and the smoke hangs in the air when a freight train hits the brakes. Paralyzing – disorienting.

I guess you could say that I know a lot about trains. Well, I like to think I do. I grew up just twenty yards from the Illinois Central's main line of track that ran through Sangamon County. I heard the trains every day of my life until I left for college. The house was so close to the tracks that it would sway and rock gently when the trains passed by. When I would stand in the kitchen as a kid, and the vibrations started, it felt like I was actually riding on a train - or at least that's what I imagined a train would feel like. I never actually rode on one, so I was just guessing really. Even now, at sixty-three, I can still say that I haven't ridden on a train and I probably never will. They just don't seem to be going anywhere I really need to go.

The accident happened in the summer, in July, the day after my tenth birthday. Summer birthdays really are unfair, you know. The other kids, the ones with birthdays during the school year, always seem to have more fun. Twice as much fun to be exact - a party at home and another one at school. The day after a birthday, especially a summer birthday, is kind of a lonely day, almost like it was just a dream. Like it never really happened. It was one of those lonely days when that train hit the brakes and jarred me out of my imaginary game of baseball. A tennis ball and the back side of the old house were all I ever needed for a ball game. When the trains roared by, I'd pretend that it was the stadium noise surrounding me. The eruption of my many fans as I made yet another fabulous, game-saving play.

The high-pitched metallic screech and thick smoke hovered in the air of my backyard for at least fifteen minutes that afternoon. It had been a long train - a freight that was hauling more coal than usual. It came all the way up from the coal mines of Havana, Illinois, over by the river, and was headed further north to Chicago, to the Commonwealth Edison power plant. The box cars and coal cars all crashed against each other in an awkward and gangly chain reaction as the train desperately tried to stop. It seemed to take forever, and even when it did stop it would occasionally buck and heave, like an animal that refused to die. I thought of dominos as the bumps and thuds moved from one car to the next all the way down the line until I couldn't see or hear it anymore

I was the fourth or fifth person to make it down the tracks to where the accident was. A woman had been hit by the train. She and her two young daughters, twins, had been running across the tracks, impatiently trying to beat the train, when one of the girls tripped. The mother came back to pick up the child and throw her to safety. The girl was okay - but the mother wasn't quite quick enough. Some of the railroad men jumped off of the caboose and were huddled around the woman by the time I got there, They told me to “stay back”, “don’t look.” So of course I had to.

Her right outer thigh and flesh of her hip was cleanly cut away. I was amazed that there wasn't much blood, just red, raw, glistening meat where that chunk of her leg should have been. I wondered where that piece of her had gone. Probably got sucked up under the train and carried down the line somewhere. I'd seen dogs hit by trains before. They loved to bark and chase the hypnotic wheels; they just couldn't resist. But the vacuum created by the box cars would sometimes suck them in and under. Sometimes I'd find their mangled body a half mile down the tracks. Sometimes I'd never find them.

The woman lived - but she lost her right leg at the hip. I remember seeing her throughout the rest of my childhood at PTA meetings and chili suppers and such, hobbling about on crutches with the twins weaving around her, sometimes even darting between the crutch and where her leg used to be. The twins grew up to be promiscuous (“sluts” was the parlance of the time). Now I know that’s a terrible thing to say - but it's true. It seemed to be their combined mission to have sex with as many boys as possible in our high school. They were freshmen when I was a senior, so I'm not quite sure what the final tally was by their senior year.

The twins chose to add me to their scorecard (each individually and on separate occasions, of course). Both times, as I slid my nervous fingers past the elastic waist bands of their panties and touched the fleshy moistness that waited there, I remembered their mother's leg – raw … glistening - and for a moment, I thought that I would throw up. I wondered if anyone had ever found the part of her that had been sliced away.

Everybody knew about the twins and most everybody felt sorry for their mother. They'd say, "That poor woman, losing her leg and all and then having them girls turn out like that." Most people traced it all back to the accident. They said that if it wasn't for the train that day then their lives would have been different – better. But my dad was always quick to point out that it was her own damn fault, "Don't go blaming it on the railroad," he said. "That's what you get when you don't respect the tracks. I hope you kids learn something from this. Hell … everybody wants to blame the railroad for everything. But it ain't the trains that are stupid, it's the people who are the goddamn idiots." Sometimes entire meals were dominated by such lectures. But mostly we just sat and ate in awkward silence, except when a train roared by, of course. Then the chaotic rumble from the train would cover us all like a blanket - soft and warm. Nobody had to worry about the lack of dinner conversation on those occasions.

Dad worked for the Chicago and Illinois Midland Railroad - the good old C&IM. It was a small railroad that had discontinued its passenger service and mainly just hauled coal. As long as I can remember the constant threat that the C&IM was going out of business hung over our heads. Each year, at the company picnic, the old guys, the "lifers", would sit around the kegs and complain that the whole business was "going to hell in a hand basket."

Better enjoy this free food while you can boy. It'll probably be gone next year," they'd tell me. Then, when they thought I was gone, out of earshot, I heard one of the old timers say, "The company is really out to screw the union this year boys. We gotta stick together or we're all fucked." He looked around, as if to make sure that no "company men" were wandering by, and added, "Just remember boys, there's only two kinds of people in this world; the Fuckers and the Fuckees. And I damn well know that it's always better to be one of the Fuck-ers." Then they all laughed, but a hollow nervousness, an uncertainty, could still be felt in the center of it all.

All these years later and the C&IM is still running. The annual forecasts of doom are still circulating as well. Conveniently for the owners, the rumors of closure or buy-outs and layoffs always seem to appear right before contract negotiation time. A healthy dose of fear helps keep wages low; every manager worth his salt knows that. Dad worked for the railroad for forty-four years. He retired and then died just two years later. The doctors said it was all of that diesel smoke that he inhaled every day for four decades. A slick blackness coated his lungs and just choked the life out of him. He was a wiry little guy – but strong, with forearms like Popeye. But in the end his fabled strength was gone - he just couldn't seem to breathe.

Mom's in the nursing home now and the old house just sits here, empty. I'm trying to sell the place to help cover her expenses, but nobody wants a house that close to the tracks. Young families don't want their kids to grow up by all those trains. Not that there are that many anymore. Now, just four or five go by now in an entire day. A couple of St Louis to Chicago Amtrak shuttles and of course those coal trains, still heading north to light up the city.

Hell, that many trains used to fly by just between dinner and bedtime. That was the time of day I liked best. In the evening, I used to sneak out and duct tape pennies to the tracks. I'd collect the flattened coins and sell them for a dime the next day at school. The kids loved the way old Abe's face would get all stretched out and funny looking. But then dad found out. After the whippin', he told me that I could have caused a derailment, that I could have sent the entire train crashing down on our house, killing all of us. "The tiniest little thing on the track could do it boy. A pebble, an old bolt, even a penny," he said. His perfectly straight face had me believing that crap for quite a few years.

He worked in the "railroad yard" at C&IM for all of those years - but even to this day I'm not quite sure what that means. At dad's funeral I saw all of his old railroad buddies. They shook my soft office hands with their gnarled and knotty hands, some with missing digits. They told me that I was a good son and that my dad was one of the finest "yardmen" ever. I wanted to ask them what a "yardman" did, but it was way too late to ask by then. I looked into their tired, milky eyes and just nodded. They huddled there by the coffin for a few minutes. Nobody spoke, they just stood and looked, thinking their private thoughts - or maybe not thinking anything at all. Then, without a word, they turned in unison and walked over to mom and told her that dad was one of the finest "yardmen" ever. She looked up and smiled through her confused tears. I wondered if she knew what dad actually did out there in the "railroad yard" all those years … and for that matter, what was so damn fine about it.

I’d met most of dad's railroad buddies before, of course: picnics, fish fries, and sometimes they'd even stop by the house for a beer. I remember them the most, though, from that day they all came over to help build the garage. The foundation had already been poured and set – ready for framing and roofing. Seven of his buddies came over that Saturday. The entire job was miraculously done by sundown. Dad let me help some. Mainly I just kept their nail pouches full and delivered beers all day long.

As the day went on, and as I delivered beer after beer, they became more animated than I had even seen them before. Laughing, shouting, joking, just like boys …like giant boys. I watched them periodically walk around back of the building as it began to take shape. They'd take a long piss out back there, and while they did, they'd continue to talk and even yell to each other. They seemed to be afraid that if they took the time to quietly urinate they might miss out on some of the fun. But when the trains whooshed by that day, only a few feet from where they were, I saw them all stop working on the garage and just stand there – silent, reverent - watching the train fly by. I could almost hear their thoughts, but the noise of the train drowned it all out.

When the last shingle was tacked down and the last piece of trim was put into place around the door of the new garage, we all piled into cars and pickup trucks and drove over to the C&IM “yard." It felt like a great secret, a risky adventure, as these giant boys and I sneaked into that Quonset hut building on the railroad property. It was the building where the locker room and large communal shower was located. It was a Saturday evening and the railroad yard outside was silent, but on the inside of the metal building, their laughs and whoops ricocheted off of the ribs of the corrugated galvanized steel. I watched them find their own lockers, work the combinations on the lock and then strip. I stripped too and followed them into the shower room.

Their bodies amazed me. Except for their brown forearms and necks, their skin was a pale white color, almost translucent. I thought that if I looked hard enough, I could actually see through to their internal organs. They had thick patches of dark hair on their chests and between their legs; a couple of them even had hairy clumps on their backs that seemed to have grown there by mistake. They laughed and talked freely in the shower, sharing each other's soap and shampoo. Their penises dangled rhythmically like the pendulums of old grandfather clocks and I wondered if I would ever look like that. I wondered if I would feel like that too. I wondered if all men were that way. I hoped so.

Butwait. Shhhhh.Be quiet. I can feel it now. I can feel it coming.

The vibrations in my feet tell me it's about a half a mile away, maybe less……..

You know, I lie to my wife about coming out here. I tell her I have an errand to run or something. I don't want her to worry, I just don't think she'd understand. Hell, I don't even understand. I wonder if she really thinks that I could be strolling around a hardware store for all this time. I wonder if she even notices that I'm gone.

The vibrations are getting stronger and wider now - more of a rocking feeling than a vibration really. I can feel it moving up from the floor. Up through my legs and the legs of the old wooden kitchen chair that I'm sitting in. And finally, I begin to hear it; that low soothing rumble, like an old man's deep weathered voice whispering into the ear of a child.

Then the whisper gradually gets louder, faster, deeper - until it's no longer a whisper at all.

The noise of the train starts to gather in the kitchen the way a family does just before a meal, all bumping around and causing a commotion.

The house begins to sway, and I can hear dishes RATTLING in a cupboard, as if a table is going to be set. I close my eyes and just rock with it.

Finally, the engine ROARS by the house, just outside the back door, and the deafening clatter of the passing train takes on a dozen frantic voices.

Now the old kitchen is crowded … FULL OF PEOPLE … people I used to know.

… and for a few minutes, they’re all YELLING – all at once.