The sun was high, the sky was clear, and doings were slow at Froame depot. In fact, doings were nil. 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 the door to the platform. Cicadas were starting to hum, the air was closing in, and clouds were rising to the south. A little rain might be just the thing, Curry thought. Wake everybody up. Enjoying the sun on his face, he gazed up and down the line, and up at the train order semaphore. As always, he felt the thrill that it was his hand that controlled the signal, and thus the whole railroad at this point. He savored another moment of reverie then walked slowly back inside and sat down at his desk. Where was that local?
Curry rubbed his eyes and pondered the lack of communication from the neighboring stations. Sadly, the railroad was not what it used to be: the track had become 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 change, 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.
At first, the sandy-haired boy seemed no different from the others who haunted the depot in the after-school hours. But unlike the other kids, Elbridge Curry’s steady, attentive manner impressed Mr. Meckstrothe that here just might be “good timber.” Slyly, the tall, kindly agent allowed his protege to empty the office trash, sweep the platform, and even pull the big levers setting the train order semaphores that rose above the depot.
Satisfied with his charge’s diligence, Mr. Meckstrothe 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 Special had made its evening stop, Meckstrothe 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. Meckstrothe. “Well, Elbridge,” he smiled, “we’ll make a railroad man of you yet.” Elbridge went home tingling, could hardly touch his supper, and the next day in school his friends listened slack-jawed as he told his tale. Elbridge Curry was a railroad man!
It was several weeks later that Mr. Meckstrothe 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. Curry said “Yessir.” He sat down in the operator’s chair, the door slammed, and Elbridge Curry, age sixteen, was alone at the operator’s desk of Froame depot. The chair was smooth with wear, the window shades yellow with age. The Regulator ticked, the wire was still. Across the track, the cottonwoods fluttered in the breeze. Curry 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. Now, 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. Meckstrothe’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. Samuel Meckstrothe, duly appointed and authorized agent, but Elbridge Curry, schoolboy.
A moment—a very long moment—later, Mr. Meckstrothe walked in. Elbridge jumped from the chair and blurted out the message. The always unflappable Meckstrothe 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. Meckstrothe 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. Meckstrothe finished the momentous interview by saying, “Curry will make a fine operator.”
“Well, well, now,” the official boomed, “that’s fine!” He thrust out his big, red hand to 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, and at school the next day informed his chums that his new first name, as designated by the top local official of the BB&S Railroad Company and to be used in all but the most official of circumstances, was “Chick.”
One year and four 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 his draft board that his work as a railroad telegrapher was vital to the national defense, and he accepted his exemption without protest. Some years later, long after Mr. Meckstrothe had moved on to the great celestial junction, Chick Curry—no longer a youth, himself—attained sufficient seniority to bid on, and get, the job he had long hoped for: day shift at Froame.
As he stepped off the local passenger that day, the station semaphore arms seemed to wave in greeting. Curry quickly found a room nearby, then plunged into long days 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, daily ledger… sealing remittance envelopes with hot wax and mailing to headquarters…selling tickets…and presiding over the enameled black monster that was the company’s true local representative: the safe. Curry took pride in wearing the black, brass-plated agent’s cap at all times, not just when officials were nosing around, and happily endured the jibes of the depot loafers and the relentlessly grim prognostications of 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. It was a busy life, a strenuous life, a demanding life, a good life.
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, Cat’s Claw, and Peas. Peas was kind of a laugh; the town was really named ‘Pease,’ but some unknown dope of a clerk had printed up timetables 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. Anyway, at a time when railroad listing 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.
It must have been four hours now that the Special came through, on schedule. No—of course, the Special had been off the timetable for years. Well, no matter. The local: that was what mattered. Curry closed his eyes for a moment, just a short moment. After all, nobody was talking to him, anyway. Curry’s heart lurched: the Special—had it come through? No, don’t be silly. Damn local got him balled up. What the devil were they up to, anyhow? There was nothing more on the lineup, though of course an extra freight could show at any time. Been a while since they’d run an extra, though; some little while, Curry thought. He leaned back in his chair and stroked the armrests, so well-worn by the arms of his predecessors. Who had they been, those fellows who sat in his chair before him and before Mr. Meckstrothe? One followed another and another.
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 damn 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, but then it turned out it was all in your head! Times like this, it seemed like the whole damn company was conspiring to keep you in the dark. Curry had always been a company man, tried and true, but truth be told, he felt that loyalty slip when the new bunch of bean-counters came along. They didn’t have railroading in their blood the way his generation did, and it showed.
Froame began life as Camp 12 of the Froame Lumber Company. Gustave Froame was a shrewd, hard man who offered right of way to the BB&S Railroad in return for a depot. It was a common stratagem, worked the nation over by men with hopes full of metropolitan glory. 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, 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 red 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.
For a time, things continued as always. But then, the Great War intervened and America was transformed. Business held brisk during the conflict, but Armistice Day was followed by a disconcerting slump. In Froame as in thousands of other towns, carloadings slipped, first gently, then badly. Equally ominously, there were more and more empty seats aboard the local passenger and even the Special, as onetime passengers took to motoring on the newly macadamized state highway. An unfamiliar and unsettling quiet settled over the once-busy station platform.
Dark was the day in October 1922 when the Special made its usual parade-ground approach to Froame depot—and kept on going. The more astute may have perceived in the new fall timetable a tiny “f” beside the name Froame. Dread, dire, 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.
Chick Curry had been on the platform that day. He 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 the Special was taken off just a few years later. 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. But Chick Curry did care. For him, the days grew ever longer and ever emptier.
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, though 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 the poor dope at Marmoset who fell asleep several years back 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. He didn’t think he’d closed his eyes near long enough.
The standard clock ticked on. Heard that Regulator everywhere, Chick Curry did, even in his sleep, the unfaltering tick-tock embedded in his brain, oblivious to everything but time itself, imperious, inflexible, inexorable. And why? Everything that gave that relentless beat meaning was gone: the passengers, the timetable, the chief dispatcher, the express shipments, the Special. Even the confounded local, it appeared. 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 provided. Turncoats! Why, he himself had spent many an evening coddling old man Klontz, owner of the big hardware store, trying to keep his business. But Klontz had deserted too. Turncoat, that’s all he was, couldn’t trust anybody, anymore.
Quitting time came, and still not a peep from 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 47 years! He shuffled slowly back inside and gazed around the empty waiting room. It was so…Where were the benches? Why was the floor littered with fallen plaster? Curry felt his knees buckle. He steadied himself on the table and rubbed his eyes.
That damn dream again. Been having it awhile, now. Eyes were going, probably ought to have them checked. But then what? Bad eyes—discharge! That was unthinkable. No, his eyes were plenty good enough yet. Curry shuffled toward his bay, then stopped in his tracks as the waiting room again went blurry, again suddenly turned empty and derelict. A dull ache slid up Curry’s left side, and now, the awful vision would not clear away. Curry slumped down in his chair and closed his eyes. He felt terrifyingly alone.
Curry opened his eyes to darkness. He felt better now. He stood—the company wasn’t paying overtime—and padlocked the door. Taking a last look up and down the line, he shook his head and walked the two blocks to his apartment. He had lived there his whole time in Froame, the landlord was a good egg, didn’t raise the rent too often, kept it clean. You could see the trains, too, which he liked. He closed the door and, without bothering to turn on the lights, took off his jacket, tie, and shoes, and lay back-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? He didn’t understand. Things had gotten so sloppy. Well, tomorrow would be better, it had to be, had to be better, had to be….
Tick-tock-tick-tock. A whistle—the Special, on-time. Headlight, bright, brighter, whistle, screaming louder, louder, wheels rushing, closer, closer, white light—blinding. Ahhh! The train crashed into the station itself, burst into the waiting room in an explosion of rending wood and blasting steam. The whistle screamed, the clock ticked…
Curry jerked awake, heart pounding. Thank God. He heaved himself from the sofa, staggered to the window, and looked down at the depot. It was still there, dark and silent in the night, waiting for a new day. He stared out awhile then lay back down. After another hour of fitful sleep he woke to the sallow light of dawn. He dressed, put the coffee on, then walked quickly to the depot. He swung the door open and—there it was again: empty! Chick took a deep breath, one, two, but the lungs did not want to fill. Again came that terrible stabbing sensation, the room wheeled, and Chick Curry slumped to the floor.
Far in the distance, a whistle blew. Curry opened his eyes. The stabbing pain was gone, he felt fine. Bright sun flooded the waiting room—but it was a mess: rubbish on the floor, fallen plaster. And where were the damn benches? Cripes! Curry struggled to his feet and lurched out to the platform. Down the track to the east, a locomotive moved toward him, gray smoke curling from its stack. The local! He checked to see that his order board was set. Yes. He looked around for a broom—he hoped there wasn’t some official riding the caboose.
The train looked 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 as the train neared he 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.
A moment later, as the locomotive approached the depot, one of the men walked up to Curry, a red flag in his hand. “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! Worked for ‘this outfit’ forty-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 locomotive clanked to a halt beside the depot. “You’re still here…,” the muttered the young foreman. The engine crew peered down from their cab, two other men walked diffidently up to stare silently at the tall, elderly man 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,” he said. “Look, you got the circular, didn’t you?”
“Circular?” Curry felt a strange nausea well up. “Don’t know about any circular.”
“Well, they put it out months ago.”
Curry’s head spun. Circular? Had there been one, awhile back? Maybe; he couldn’t quite recall. Hell, you got so many. 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’s left hand, which had been raised in a half-demonstrative, half-defensive position, dropped like a semaphore blade.
“Yessir.” 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 oughta let the head office know.”
Curry’s eyes darted at the man’s anxious face, at the sky, at the depot, at the train order signal still awaiting his instructions. He sighed and waved his hand in resignation. “Aw, skip it. Head office don’t care, anymore, anyhow.”
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…
Outside, machinery roared to life. The young man 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 out of here. B&B gang’s comin’ to knock ‘er down.”
“Knock down the depot? Now?”
“Yep, ‘fraid so.”
Shaking, Curry stared out the bay window. The trees, once so serene, so pleasant, loomed mockingly, fingers pointing to vanity and mortality. Beyond them, the indifferent blue sky shimmered, as it had yesterday and the day before. Shaking, he moved to his desk and stared at the trainsheet and the telegraph sounder. He picked up the bug and unscrewed the wires. “This is mine,” he said, glaring at the young man. “Had it forty-eight years.” He stuffed it in his coat pocket and walked to the door. “All right,” he said to the track foreman, waving his arm, “go ahead. No skin off my nose.” Head throbbing, Chick Curry left the depot and walked toward town. His head vibrated 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 now-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 steadily deteriorating degrees of legibility, followed on every line by the time, 2:17. He took up the sheet and beneath it found a small, flimsy piece of paper. It was a telegram, torn and 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.—S. Meckstrothe Oct. 14, 1898.
“By God,” the foreman whispered. He stared at the flimsy another moment, then folded it carefully, slipped it in his pocket, and rejoined his men on the platform. “Crazy old bird,” he muttered, “guess he didn’t get the word.” He gazed off into the distance a moment, then shrugged. “Okay, let’s get goin’. We got to make Peas by sundown.”