Flag Stop

The sun was high, the sky was clear, and things were slow at Froame depot. Nevertheless, Chick Curry sat at his desk, upright and alert. There was a local freight due, and he would soon have to tend to the conductor (probably that old grouch, Rauf), the orders, and the paperwork. Moreover, the telegraph could sound at any instant. It wouldn’t do for the dispatcher or the division superintendent to be kept waiting.

Still, a body could only sit so long. The elderly telegraph operator rose, yawned, stretched, and shuffled into the waiting room and out onto the platform. Cicadas were starting to hum, the air was closing in, clouds were rising to the south. A little rain might be just the thing. Wake everybody up. Enjoying the sun on his face, he gazed up and down the line, then up at the train order semaphore. As always, he felt a thrill that it was his hand that controlled the signal, and, at this small but vital point, the entire BB&S Railroad.

Chick Curry savored another moment of reverie then returned to his desk. All was quiet. Too quiet. Communication up and down the line lately had been disgracefully lax. In fact, the whole railroad was not what it used to be. The track was weed-grown, the rail joints loose, the sidings empty, and the trains—what was left of them…Well, there was no holding off the touring cars and motor trucks and all the other new ways of doing things. The passenger trains were gone, and with them the baggage wagons and milk cans, the mail bags and mysterious parcels, the joshing conductors and express messengers. Even the old platform gang, those generations of depot loafers, had vanished. Things changed, nothing to be done about it. After all, who missed the canal boat or the stagecoach? Everything had its day, and Chick Curry was glad enough he’d had his. Still, there was a railroad to run. Where was that local?

At first, the sandy-haired stripling seemed little different from the other boys who haunted the depot in the after-school hours. But he was different: Elbridge Curry did not loaf on the platform or indulge in tom-foolery, but stood quietly in the depot watching Mr. Hake as he performed his duties. The kindly agent was quick to notice (and not unflattered by) the attention of the quiet sixteen-year-old. Here, Hake quickly realized, just might be “good timber.” Slyly, he began inviting his protégé to sweep the waiting room and platform, then asked him if he would care to pull the big levers that controlled the semaphore. Would he! The lad snapped right to it, and then ran right outside to make sure that the signal was showing the correct indication.

Satisfied with his charge’s diligence, Mr. Hake began to initiate him into the mysteries of the Morse. Young Curry demonstrated a keen ear for the wire and was quickly transmitting and receiving like an ace. A proud day came soon: After the westbound Special had made its evening stop, Mr. Hake smiled to his helper, “All right, Elbridge, go ahead and OS her out at”—he looked at the Regulator clock—six forty-seven p.m.” Taking his place in the still-warm operator’s chair, the boy put his thumb and index finger on the telegraph bug and rapped out in a firm, steady hand, 19 FM. No. 1 OS 6:47 pm. OT. He then took up the pencil, one of several he had just sharpened, and wrote out the transmission on the big train sheet. Number 1 was “on-sheet” and on-time, and duly noted by Elbridge Curry. “Good,” said Mr. Hake. “Well, Elbridge,” he smiled, “we’ll make a railroad man of you yet.”

It was several weeks later that Mr. Hake asked Elbridge to hold the fort while he ran a quick errand “for the missus.” The agent assured him that he would be only gone only for a minute, and after all, it was the afternoon lull, with no trains due. “Yessir,” said Curry, not without some trepidation. The door slammed and Elbridge Curry, schoolboy, was alone in the operator’s bay of Froame depot. The Regulator ticked, the wire was still. Across the track, the cottonwoods fluttered in the breeze. Curry sat down in the well-worn operator’s chair and scanned the train sheet spread out in front of him. Not long before, the table of cryptic numbers and abbreviated notations would have been an incomprehensible mystery to a boy of no particular mathematical or reading abilities. Now, however, he took it in with easy familiarity and saw that Number 2, the eastbound Special, had passed three hours earlier, on-time, preceded two hours previous by the eastward time freight. Curry stared at the train numbers on the sheet, pondering their significance, aware that they were not merely figures but trains carrying important businessmen, mothers and children, farm implements and furniture and…

Clack-clack! The telegraph sounder rent the silence. Curry’s heart leaped. Mr. Hake’s minute was well past, but the agent had trained his charge well. Elbridge grabbed one of the pencils he had just so diligently sharpened and accurately copied the order. Without a thought, he acknowledged the brief transmission with the regulation 19 FM. Then he read what he had transcribed, and his heart raced. An inspection special bearing the general superintendent was due in Froame in forty minutes. And here, occupying the operator’s chair, was not Mr. Walter Hake, duly appointed and authorized agent, but Elbridge Curry, schoolboy.

When Mr. Hake walked in a very long moment later, Elbridge jumped from the chair and blurted out the message. Ever unflappable, the agent only tapped his pipe and said, “Ah, is that so? Well, good work.” And when the inspection special swung into the depot thirty-five minutes later, Mr. Hake had some special words for the superintendent: “We have a smart young chick here who’s coming right along in telegraphy studies.” Elbridge beamed at his friend, silently thanking him for his kind words—and for not spilling the beans about him actually putting out company wires. Hake finished the momentous interview by saying, “Curry here will make a good operator.”

“Well, now!” the official boomed, “that’s fine!” He thrust a beefy red hand at Elbridge and said, “Let me know when you turn eighteen, young feller, and we’ll put you to work.” Elbridge Curry floated home that evening two feet above the ground. His normally reserved mother and father effused at their son’s future prospects, and in school the next day his friends were newly respectful of one they had largely dismissed as a nonentity. Elbridge then informed his chums that, as designated by the top local official of the BB&S Railroad Company, his given name was hereby and henceforth “Chick.”

One year and eight months later, Elbridge “Chick” Curry was hired as provisional extra-board operator. He was ordered to report to telegraphers’ school at headquarters, but after one day his abilities were plain to see; the requirement was waived and Curry was posted to his first station. As a neophyte operator, or “lid,” he would over the next decade be posted to virtually every station on the Western Division. The Great War came and Curry, though willing to enlist, was informed by the draft board that his work as a railroad telegrapher was vital to the national defense, and he accepted his exemption without protest. And by the time Mr. Hake passed on to the great celestial junction, Chick Curry—no longer a youth, himself—had attained sufficient seniority to bid on and secure the job he had long hoped for: day shift at Froame.

As he stepped off the local passenger, the station semaphore arms seemed to wave in greeting. Curry parked his valise at home and plunged into a career full of happy industry: keeping the wire hot with train movements, official railroad business, and Western Union messages…hooping up orders to through freights…receiving express parcels and carload shipments…filling out receipts, waybills, demurrage reports, stock-claim forms, and daily ledger… sealing remittance envelopes with hot wax and mailing to headquarters…selling tickets…wrestling milk cans…and presiding over the enameled black monster that was the company’s true local representative: the safe. Curry took pride in his brass-badged agent’s cap and stoically endured the jibes of the depot loafers and the relentlessly grim prognostications of sour old Ethan Gudge: “Just hope I ain’t here when Number One hits the ground and comes through here sideways…” Not least, Curry made certain that a succession of loyal depot dogs and cats was fed and coddled. And when former schoolmates and teachers, and more than once his mother and father, embarked upon journeys, he stood in grave but inwardly beaming attendance.

The sun was dipping behind the hills, and still no local. Curry forgot all reticence and rapped out a curt “Local by yet?” to Sugar Valley, the next station west. The sounder remained silent. He tried Westrona, Krupper, and Peas. Peas was kind of a laugh; the town was really named ‘Pease,’ but appeared in the timetable with the final ‘e’ missing, and the mistake had never been rectified, probably because no one on the railroad knew or cared or, in any case, cared enough to spend the money on a correction. And so, by the finger of some unknown dope of a clerk or typesetter, the late Mr. Pease was transformed into vegetables. You had to laugh, and Chick Curry did, often enough. And after all, when listing in a railroad timetable meant the difference of life and death to a jerkwater town, the inhabitants of “Peas” were no doubt happy to be listed at all. Not that any of it mattered; there was no reply from Peas, either. Curry sighed in disgust. Things were well and truly going to hell.

He closed his eyes for a moment. After all, nobody was talking to him, anyway. The afternoon wore on, the silence deepened. Since they put the highway through on the other side of town and the feed mill had tapered off, this end had been pretty quiet. In fact, if you thought about it (and Chick Curry did think about it), the railroad had become a damned lonely place. Never told you a thing, always keeping you in the dark until the sounder went off and then you had twenty minutes to get ready. Sometimes, you thought you heard it—then it turned out it was all in your head.

Confused and vaguely worried, Curry looked again at the train sheet. Had the local come through yesterday? No, there was no entry on the train sheet. Granted, his penmanship wasn’t what it used to be. His heart gave a nasty jolt: Could he have slept through the local?He had closed his eyes for a short minute just now, hadn’t he? He well remembered poor Sprough over at Marmoset, who fell asleep and wrecked that grain extra. Curry jerked upright, shook his head. No, that was not possible. He had never fallen asleep at his post, ever. Hadn’t closed his eyes near long enough, anyway.

The standard clock ticked on. Heard that Regulator everywhere, even in sleep, the unfaltering tick-tock embedded in the brain, oblivious to everything but time itself, imperious, inflexible, inexorable. Even now, when just about everything that gave that relentless beat meaning was gone: the passengers, the timetable, the chief dispatcher, the express shipments, the Special. And now, the confounded local, it seemed. He stood up again, went to the door, and stared across at the silver oil tank and the feed mill, both of which had moved the lion’s share of their business to trucks after all the years of faithful service the railroad had given. Turncoats, all of them.

Gustave Froame was a shrewd, hard man with an eye on the future. As owner of Froame Lumber Company, he offered free right of way through his holdings to the BB&S Railroad in return for a depot at the site of his Camp no. 12. The railroad accepted and the town boomed with waves of thrifty, hard-working settlers, many from Scandinavia. Ard Hansen came from St. Paul and built his big sawmill in direct competition with Froame’s. A sash-and-door factory, a cooperage, and two furniture makers opened, and the Daily Guardian fomented against the menaces of unionism and free silver. (Emphatically not discussed was the equally—if not more—pernicious menace of self-delusion.).

It was noised at length that large Eastern interests (unnamed, but on highest and most unimpeachable authority) stood poised to “take the town in hand.” Long lines of brown boxcars stood upon the yard tracks and choked the mill spurs, requiring the services of two and even three local freights a day, and true glory was reached when the BB&S inaugurated its maroon-varnished, electric-lighted, fully-vestibuled Special. As a matter of course, the crack train was allotted a full five-minutes at Froame. No one would have imagined otherwise. Froame roared on, and when the Great War intervened, business boomed as never before and Chick Curry could scarce tell if he was coming or going. But then, as Armistice cheers faded, there came a sudden and disconcerting slump. Orders fell off, carloadings slipped, then plunged. The local freight was cut to once a day and fewer and fewer souls came to the depot to await the passenger trains. An eerie quiet settled over the once-busy station platform, and Curry was left to gaze in bewilderment at an empty waiting room.

Dark was the day in October 1922 when the Special made its usual parade-ground approach to Froame depot—then kept right on going. The more astute may have perceived in the new fall timetable a tiny “f” beside the name Froame. Dread and mocking “f”! For in its imperious, official-looking type face, it in fact and without appeal reduced the town to the level of a muskeg fishing shack. Froame had been demoted to a flag stop.

Curry had not been ignorant of that little “f.” Nonetheless, the spectacle of the Special roaring by caused an odd catch in his breath, a catch that in turn led to an odd, sharp twang in his heart. Well, so be it. So be it, too, when a few years later the Special was removed from the timetable. And when the local passenger failed to appear, and failed again the next day and the next one after that, there were considerably fewer people who paid notice, let alone cared.

By then, his parents had been long dead, proud of their boy to the end. Mr. Hake (whom he could never bring himself to call “Walter”) too had passed on, and Chick Curry felt himself enveloped by solitude. He rented out the big house—no sense rattling around in there all alone—and took a room near the tracks. Then came the Great Depression. Froame depot went on day-shift only, the local freights were cut back to three days a week, and for a now gently-graying Curry, the hours grew longer and emptier. At supper his landlady cast a wary eye upon the aging telegrapher’s growing absent-mindedness, praying silently that her star boarder, whom she secretly loved, would not over-strain himself.

Quitting time came, and not a peep on the wire. Undoubtedly, the local was delayed, or maybe even annulled. The railroad had no obligation to tell you what was happening if it wasn’t your direct concern. In fact, it often seemed to Curry that the “brass” liked keeping secrets more than necessary. Sneaks, that bunch, but they never put anything past Chick Curry, not in his thirty-eight years on the BB&S! He shuffled slowly back inside and gazed around the waiting room. The wan sun slanted on the silent room, the lone surviving oak bench still waiting for passengers, the chalk board long bereft of train times, the cold pot-bellied stove. He was startled to see a small hole in the ceiling and a clod of plaster on the floor beneath. When had that happened—and what would Mr. Hake say? Curry swept up the debris and trudged the two blocks uphill to his apartment.

That night he had the dream again. The dream where he walked to the depot, opened the door, and found a waiting room full of people. Men and women, sitting on the bench and staring at him, not speaking, not moving. He cleared his throat and said, “Sorry folks, no trains today.” The people stood silently and filed out, leaving the door open. Damnedest thing. Well, dreams were like that.

It was near sundown next day when Curry stood and looked into the waiting room. What the–! Debris littered the floor, plaster peeled from the walls—the big oak bench was gone! Curry felt his knees buckle. He steadied himself on the table and rubbed his eyes. Ought to have them checked—but then what? Bad eyes meant discharge. Unthinkable. No, the eyes were plenty good enough yet. But the awful vision held! Curry turned away, felt a dull ache stab his right side, and slumped down in his chair. Darkness. A truck rumbled somewhere, faded. Pain gone. Sleep. Slowly, Curry stood. Still there, the ruined waiting room. What on earth had happened? That rumbling—an earthquake? Yes, must have been!

Curry felt a pang of horror. Sleeping on the job! But all was still, nobody on the wire, the waiting room was as it should be. Curry sighed, gazed out at the distant trees. Still there, still his old friends, just like Mr. Hake saw them. The sun was sinking, the day over. Damn dreams—what did they mean? Feeling punk. Rest, that’s what he needed. His landlady asked him if he wanted supper, but Curry shook his head and went up to his room. He closed the door and without bothering to turn on the lights removed his jacket, tie, and shoes, and lay down on his modest sofa-bed, and let himself go limp. What a day—that damn local! What the hell was happening to the railroad? Well, tomorrow would be better, it had to be, had to be better, had to be….

Tick-tock-tick-tock. The station door in front of him, the waiting room full of people, people on the benches, sitting, waiting. Someone standing—a small boy, staring at him, eyes boring into his. The boy looks like me! He hears his voice, his voice faraway, say, “Sorry, folks, no trains today.” A whistle, a light, bright, brighter, whistle screaming louder, louder, wheels rushing, closer, closer, white light—blinding—the great black monster bursts into the waiting room, rending wood, blasting steam, the whistle screaming, the clock ticking, tocking, louder, louder…

Curry jerked awake, staggered to the window and looked down at the depot. Still there, undisturbed, dark and silent in the night. Thank God. He stood staring awhile then lay back down, and after another hour of fitful sleep woke to a sallow dawn. He sipped a cup of coffee and hurried to the depot, eyes fixed on the door. What would he find? There was his waiting room, in shambles. Curry staggered toward the broom closet, felt that terrible stabbing sensation, and fell.

A whistle blew. Curry opened his eyes. The pain was gone, he felt fine! Bright sun flooded the waiting room. There was the debris, the crumbling plaster, the holes in the walls. Curry clenched his eyes but the scene did not change. What did they call it—a hallucination? Nonsense. It was simply a quake. Didn’t get them often, but what else could it have been? He struggled to his feet and lurched to the platform. Down the track to the east, a locomotive!

The machine moved toward him, gray smoke curling from its stack. The local! He checked to see that his order board was set. Yes. The train seemed to be moving awfully slowly. Only gradually did the engine grow larger. Then he saw men walking alongside the track. A faint cloud of dust hovered over the engine. What the devil were they doing? Arms akimbo, Curry studied the approaching train, ready to give the wayward crew a piece of his mind.

But something was damned odd. He blinked and focused, and saw trailing the engine not freight cars but flat cars, flat cars loaded with rails and, behind them, a crane. He felt sick. The crane was slowly, steadily lifting rails from the ties. They were taking up the track. One of the men peered toward him, then held up a red flag and waved it in broad circles. The locomotive ground to a stop.

The man walked up to Curry. “Hello, Pops,” he cried, “What’s up?” He was young and bluff, his clothes dusty, his eyes impatient.

Curry frowned. “What’re you doing, there?” he croaked.

“Takin’ up the track,” replied the young man, who was in fact the foreman.

“On whose authority?”

“Why, on the authority of the BB&S Railroad. You work for this outfit?”

“I should say I do! Been on ‘this outfit’ thirty-eight years, most of ‘em right here.”

The foreman’s eyes widened. He took off his hat and scratched his head. “You mean—you’re the agent here?”

Curry stiffened. “That’s right.”

The young man got a strange light in his eyes. “You’re still here…” The engine crew peered down from the cab, two other young men walked up to look silently at the gray-haired old fellow in the green eyeshade.

Curry eyed the men suspiciously. “Sure, I’m still here! Any reason I shouldn’t be?”

The foreman smiled queerly and shook his head. “Man, oh, man. Well—you got the circular, didn’t you?”

“Circular?” Curry felt something nasty in the pit of his stomach. “Don’t know about any circular.”

“They put it out months ago. About the abandonment.”

Curry’s head spun. Circular? Didn’t he get some damn thing like that just recently? Couldn’t quite recall. Hell, you got so many. Then, he remembered the letter, some damn thing about “retirement.” Complete nonsense, of course; he had no intention of retiring. So much foolishness nowadays, these kids running things. And anyway, on a matter like this, certainly the GM would have visited the station in person and not put out some goddamn circular. Chick Curry knew that much about the railroad business! He shook his head. “Don’t know about any circular. We get a lot of ‘em, you know…” He looked hard at the flat cars loaded with rail, and the crane. “Track replacement, is that it?”

The foreman exhaled loudly. “Hoo boy! No, it’s not track replacement, mister, we’re rippin’ ‘er up! Line’s closed. Abandoned. They must’ve told you.”

“Closed?” Curry felt his knees going again. This couldn’t be happening.

“Yessir, since the first of the year.” The man’s voice carried a new note of authority. He shrugged one last time and said in a placating tone, “I’m sorry, mister—what’s your name, anyway? I ought to let the chief know.”

Curry’s eyes raced from the man’s anxious face to the sky, the depot, the trees, the train order signal faithfully awaiting his instructions. The bright sun steadied him a moment. He waved his hand in resignation—“Aw, skip it. Chief don’t care, anymore, anyhow. Nobody cares.” He turned and walked toward the door, and for a fleeting, flickering instant thought of phoning the chief dispatcher and demanding explanation. This couldn’t be! Maybe someone upstairs was trying to pull a fast one. That damn operating department at it again, trying to gut the railroad. They wouldn’t just—they couldn’t…Chick Curry walked into his bay and collapsed into the chair—the good old well-worn chair, his chair, the same one that…

The foreman stood in the doorway, his shadow lancing deep into the waiting room. Chick Curry’s waiting room. “Look, mister, you’re gonna have to get on outa here. B&B gang’s comin’ to knock ‘er down.”

“Tear down the depot? Now?”

“Yep, ‘fraid so.”

Shaking, Curry stared out the bay window. The trees, once so serene, jabbed the sky like mocking fingers. Beyond them, the indifferent blue sky shimmered. Shaking, he stood slowly and stared at the trainsheet and the telegraph sounder. Shit! He picked up the telegraph key and unscrewed the wires. “This is mine,” he said, glaring at the foreman. “My ‘bug’! Had it forty-eight years.” He stuffed it in his coat pocket and walked to the door. “All right,” he said, waving his arm, “go ahead. No skin off my nose.” Head throbbing, Chick Curry left the depot and walked quickly away toward town, his head buzzing with random messages, forgotten telegrams, lost words. Hard to make sense of it. Never did hear from that damn local.

The foreman surveyed the operator’s bay and looked up at the Regulator, long stopped at 2:17. No sense in letting that go to waste, he thought, and plucked it from the wall. Beneath the dangling telegraph wires, the train sheet was still in place. The foreman studied it, shaking his head. It was a jumble of numbers written in a crabbed hand, in progressively poorer degrees of legibility, followed on every line by the time: 2:17.He took up the sheet, and beneath it found a flimsy piece of paper. It was a telegram, torn, tattered, but legible enough to make out a firm and clear hand:

It is my opinion that Mr. Elbridge Curry will make an excellent telegrapher. He is fully qualified and prepared for all responsibilities as station agent on the BB&S RR.—W. Hake Oct. 14, 1898.

“By God,” the foreman whispered. “Poor old bird.” He stared at the flimsy another moment, then folded it carefully, slipped it in his pocket, and rejoined his men on the platform. He gazed away into the distance a moment, then turned to his crew. “Okay, fellas, let’s get goin’. Got to make Peas by sundown.”