Beside Cool Waters

Why did everything have to have a time? The Indians weren’t slaves of time, some said. Bullshit; they had their own time, “Indian time” or whatever you wanted to call it, but it was still time. The seasons, the weather, the buffalo: they were the Indians’ time, and those things, in turn, had times of their own. Everything had its time.

The sun burned through the haze, and on the little prairie the heat rose in vitreous ripples. Beyond the cottonwoods to the north, the white boxes of eighteen-wheelers hurtled down the interstate in furious procession, their exhausts farting across the vacant fields. On the intervening flatland, the chaste white gables of two elderly farmhouses protruded from groves of cottonwood and cypress. Goldfinches sailed through the midday air, a dog barked. Standing in arrogant incongruity beside a small stream, the beige-and-blue concrete slab of a new warehouse broke the bucolic harmony. At the west end of the hulking structure a large willow draped itself over an access road, and to the east loomed a dense green wall of Lombardy poplars. Piercing the poplars and paralleling the stream were two bands of rusty brown steel set atop slabs of weathered fir. A railroad.

If one transports back a hundred years, banishing the paved roads and automobiles and ugly striped warehouse, the prairie looks much the same. The stream is here, along with the fields and farmhouses and bobbing goldfinches. The same poplars stand in the east, bisected by the same tracks. Presently, the wind from the east carries a faint, keening musical chord. An instant later it sounds again, louder. A plume of gray smoke bursts from the poplars: the Pacific Express is on headlong homestretch to its terminus twelve miles distant, and everyone on board—engineer, fireman, baggageman, two conductors, two brakemen, four Pullman porters, four dining car waiters, three chefs, and eighty souls of traveling public—is eager to arrive. Crowned by its billowing nimbus, the round face of the locomotive swells alarmingly, then the juggernaut roars past the transported viewer in a blur of clanking drive rods and dusty green Pullmans. Beneath its acrid scrim, the express recedes into the west and dwindles to a dusky speck before disappearing around a far bend. It leaves in its still-tremulous wake a thinning haze of coal smoke and two brightly burnished rails.

But one cannot transport, and though the prairie and its birds and poplars and farms remain relatively unmolested by time, the rails have long since lost their burnish. Passenger trains disappeared decades ago, and by the 1970s the railroad company, itself merged into a giant conglomerate, had demoted the valley line to a desultory branch. Rust grows thick upon the rail, and if you ask the locals when they last saw a train hereabouts, they will pause, scratch their heads, and shrug.

The sun was well into its afternoon descent when a speck materialized in the west. The speck hovered in the distance where the Pacific Express had long since gone, and slowly grew, not into a rushing train (though the speck itself might have ventured a wry smile at the irony), but into the gray and tremulous figure of a man.

Johnny Hardin squinted down the track into the east. He’d been on foot since the previous evening and he felt it. Not so long ago he’d walk all day and not feel a thing. He kept on several hundred more yards, then stopped and gazed around. This place, with its old farmhouses and chirping birds, felt about right. Nice little stream, too. Too bad about the goddamn warehouse or whatever the hell it was. Fuck it, the legs were done. Hardin shucked off his nylon backpack, sat slowly down on the rail, and sighed with pleasure.

It was good to be done with the bitch, good to be done with the crummy little town and its crummy little people with their crummy little narrow minds. He’d tried—oh, he’d tried. But no, he wasn’t good enough. Not for her, not for them, not for nothing. What else was there to do but grab stakes and git. Years past, Johnny Hardin escaped his rancorous parents by sitting at the railroad near home and watching the trains pass. He loved gazing at the rails vanishing into the distance and imagining what lay beyond the far hills. Now, he was finding out. Now, he was escaping. Escaping was one thing, going was another, but both felt good.

The railroad had been silent for hours. It must have been around midnight when a long line of cylindrical grain hoppers blew past him heading south. At least, he thought it was south. Walking for so long at night, without rest or anything much to eat, you got turned around. Hardin was dog-tired when he lay down in the brush, and when it was still dark got up and stumbled on, peering nervously into the blackness for bears and feral dogs and other night walkers. Now, he sensed something wasn’t right. The railroad was too quiet. He remembered a switch and a darkened signal. He studied the rusty rail, the sagging joints, the rotting ties. Shit. He had strayed off the mainline and onto a branch. Maybe not even that, anymore.

Johnny took a pull from his water bottle and moistened his eyes. The cool water felt wonderful.

Across the stream, the blank wall of the warehouse revealed nothing and offered less. He snorted softly: Once, the wall would not have been blank, it would have had windows and doors, and alongside it would have been a rail spur, and on the spur would have been boxcars. The crew of the local freight which provided the boxcars would have joshed with the warehouse men, and the foreman would have been on good terms with the local station agent, who would have been diligent in his attendance to the foreman’s needs and the needs of all his other customers in the area. The railroad would have provided reliable service at reasonable cost and the crews would have taken their jobs seriously. In their denim caps and overalls, the men would have worked together, joked together, and made good money together. What had gone wrong?

A hard life, railroading. Johnny Hardin knew that well enough. A hard life on hard time, cold-as-steel common time, time that cruelly violated the natural rhythm as casually as a crow picking at carrion, time that destroyed your sleep time, your family time, your every fiber of natural being time, and turned your days and nights inside out and numbed your limbs and pickled your brain. Nonetheless, three times he had tried to hire on a railroad, and three times he had been turned away. The time had been wrong, and now, he was too late.

What was Johnny’s time? He had been trying to figure that out for years. He had seen styles and television seasons and car models change, and he had seen friends evolve and move from crappy job to better job, from little money to more money, from solitude to love. But he had not evolved. His life remained what it was and what it had been a decade before and a decade before that. So, what exactly was time, in his case? A joke? A warning? People talked about “Indian time” and romanticized their “natural” lifestyle. But Indians had their own cruelties—hell, they even kept slaves. He knew because his grandmother, a Lakota, told him. He never could figure her time out, either.

No, thought Johnny Hardin, sitting on a railroad track in a valley due west of a stand of poplar trees, what it all came down to was, you were either in time or out of time. The rest was bullcrap. As for himself, Johnny Hardin reckoned that, more than likely, he had been born out of time. He fixed his eyes again upon the distance. Down the track, through the poplars, around the bend, and on to the east lay the hills, and beyond the hills, the mountains, and beyond them the plains, and beyond the plains, the East. Cities, old and dark and full of alleys and canyons of skyscrapers and rat-faced men and lurid women, jazz, liquor, money, and sex. It would have been nice to see it, but Johnny did see it in his mind’s eye. Anyway, this place right here was all right, with its poplars and singing birds and shining stream of cool water, and its railroad track laden with memories. Even despite the ugly new building, it was a good place.

The stream gurgled quietly, inviting Johnny to lie down between the rails and sleep. The weathered fir ties were soft with age and warm with the sun’s heat, and lying on his back in the warm, wooden trench, Johnny imagined he was lying in a woman’s arms. A good, kind, warm woman. He stretched luxuriously, flexing his toes, his heels, his knees, his arms. Johnny wished he could be part of this place, or the railroad, or something. He wished he could get his bearings. But how—where? The breeze was soft and warm, like the blue blanket he had as a child, long ago. So long ago…

The ground trembled. Through closed eyelids Hardin sensed light. “Mister!” someone yelled. “Hey, mister!” Johnny opened his eyes, sat up, and saw a big man in overalls standing over him. Behind him was a looming bulk emitting a blinding shaft of white light. A locomotive. “Hey, friend?” the big man said. Another figure stood beside him, a small man with a wizened face.

Johnny struggled to his feet. It was night. The two men stood facing him, anxious looks on their faces.

“Gee, mister,” the big man said in a booming voice, “you oughtn’t to be layin’ on the track, you could get hurt.”

Hardin shook his head, tried to focus. “Yeah…Yeah, sorry…” Hurt. That was a good one. “Hurt” couldn’t begin to describe a human body run over by flanged steel wheels.

“Oh, that’s all right, now,” said the small man. His voice sounded foreign. “No harm done. I’m just glad we found you here and not on the curve a mile back.” He smiled, a nice smile, and asked, “Well now, friend, are you headed anywhere in particular?”

Johnny tried to collect his thoughts, but none collected. “No.”

“Well, now…” The small man stroked his chin a moment then turned to his partner. “Chief,” he said, smiling, “it appears to me that this lost soul may be in need of transportation.”

The big man nodded soberly. “Irish, you may be right.” He turned to Johnny and said, “You might’s well ride along with us a ways, ‘least till you figure where you want to set down. You look like you could use a change of scenery.” He clapped Johnny on the back, beaming an infectious grin. “What do you say?”

Johnny was confused, but there was no confusing the fact that here was a train and a crew that was actually inviting him to ride along. A crew that had stopped short of killing him. “Sure,” he said, mumbling, “okay….” They walked to the locomotive and out of the headlight glare Johnny saw a small diesel engine painted a dull red, but he couldn’t make out any other markings, not even a number. Behind it, boxcars trailed away into the darkness. He followed the two trainmen up the ladder and into the cab. Diesel horsepower throbbed through the stark gray interior. It was warm, and smelled of oil and hot metal. The big man sat down at the control stand and the small man took the opposite seat, beckoning Johnny onto a jump seat behind him. The big man tugged gently on a hemp lanyard, drawing a low moan from the air horn, shoved the brake handle home with a resonant hiss, and eased the throttle back. With a rising roar and a slight shudder, the train crept forward.

Johnny took a deep breath and gazed into the shining bore of the headlight. The rails stretched—where? The fog made it hard to see. Johnny had no idea whether the train was going back in the direction he came from or the other way, toward the poplar trees and the hills beyond.

The two crewmen seemed like good guys, and it was exciting being on an engine, even under these circumstances. But Johnny knew that his presence in the cab could bring him and the crew a whole lot of grief—hell, even just setting foot on railroad property nowadays was a serious trespassing offense. What if a supervisor was hiding out somewhere along the way, checking up on the crews, watching for rule violations? They did that. “You sure you want me here?” he asked. “I don’t want to get you in trouble.”

“Sure, we’re sure,” said the big man, smiling and nodding vigorously.

“You bet, friend,” said the small man. “There’s no trouble to be getting into on our line. Just enjoy the ride. Name’s Irish, by the way.” He pointed to the big man at the throttle. “That there’s Chief.”

Chief spoke up: “Name’s Jonah, but Irish there calls me ‘Chief’. I ain’t a chief, but if he wants to think so, that’s okay by me.”

“Hardin,” said Johnny, “Johnny Hardin.”

“Very good to know you, Johnny Hardin,” said Irish, turning back toward the front window and fixing his gaze on the track. His face was ruddy, he wore gray work clothes under a well-worn suit coat and a tweed snap-brim cap. The engineer’s face was wide and dark and deeply lined, and a shock of thick black hair stuck out from under a gray engineer’s cap. He wore blue bib overalls, a striped work shirt, and a bright red bandanna high around his neck and safety-pinned neatly into his collar. The costume of an old-time steam engineer.

But what railroad was this? And where were they going? The track straggled into the darkness beyond the headlight beam. Johnny spoke above the engine roar: “What outfit are you?”

“My friend,” said Irish, “this here’s the valley line.”

“Yes sir,” Chief shouted, “the valley line.”

“Where are you headed?”

“Why,” smiled Irish, “down the valley, naturally.”

“What valley is this?”

Irish looked puzzled. “Why—I don’t rightly know now what they call it. Chief, what do they call this valley of ours, anyway?”

The engineer shrugged. “Well, now, I’m not sure there is a name for it.” He shot a glance at Johnny. “We’ve always just called her ‘the valley’ and left it at that.”

Johnny nodded. “What’s your next stop?”

“The next stop would be—.” Irish extracted a large, tarnished brass pocket watch from his jacket, peered out the side window, and said, “Willow. Willow’s next, I should think in, oh, ten minutes’ time.”

“Willow,” said Johnny. “Willow, in the valley.” He nodded again, digesting the meager bits of information like a hungry man chewing crumbs. “What do you haul?” he asked. “What kind of business do you do?”

“Business?” replied Irish, “Well, I guess ye’d say our business is catch-as-catch-can.”

“Catch as catch can,” echoed Chief. “If we catch ‘em, we can ‘em!”

Irish chuckled dryly. “You said it right, Chief.”

Johnny frowned. Were these guys goofy or…?

“Well, sir,” said Irish, suddenly serious, “our traffic varies. Sometimes it’s more, sometimes less. I guess you might say it all evens out in time.”

In time. What if you were out of time? His best time was age eight, discovering the railroad yard near the house and sitting on his bike watching the local freight switch cars into the feed mill and the furniture warehouse: the crewmen making their hand signals to the engineer, riding boxcars into the sidings, then piling onto the caboose and highballing out of town. What did they do in those cabooses, and what was their next stop? Then, a passenger train roared through in a rush of silver, horns blaring, leaving Johnny’s heart pounding, his eyes popping.

School was little more than a blur of yammering voices and stuff he didn’t care about

He tried to talk to other boys about the trains, and get them to ride to the railroad tracks with him. Two did come once, after school, but quickly grew impatient when no trains appeared. They retreated to the video arcade, Johnny stayed at the tracks, and after he brought an Amtrak timetable to show and tell he was marked, mockingly and forever, as “train boy.” Upon graduation he applied to the railroad and to Amtrak for work but was in for a crushing disappointment. “Sorry, not hiring now”… “We’re laying off, now…”. Quietly disgusted, he took a job as a stock boy in the True Value store, and listened to the trains as he fell asleep.

He was still at the hardware store, wearing his gray garbardine work shirt with “Johnny” stitched on it, when a woman walked in, smiled at him, and when he asked, gave him her phone number. They went out, they had sex, he moved into her small house. After several weeks of roseate blooming, she began to see that Johnny, whose name rang of barroom nights and rock and roll, was instead a man of long silences and thousand-mile stares, who hated bars and partying. “All you want to do is hang out by the train tracks,” she rapped. “You never want to have any fun.”

“I can’t get it up,” he told her. “I’m not doing what I want to do.”

“That’s just a ration of shit,” she said.

He pulled his backpack from under her bed and stuffed it full. “Maybe,” he said. “Anyway, I’m leaving.”

“Oh, fuck you!” she screamed as he walked out the door.

The track speared the night, the train clanked and lurched over the rickety jointed rail, moving about ten miles an hour by Johnny’s estimation. Distant lights appeared and vanished. Why were these guys being so vague? Maybe they were under orders not to talk about company business with outsiders. Maybe they were playing with him. Like the kids at school. Train boy. But he didn’t think so.

Chief looked across the cab and yelled, “Hey, Irish, how much time we got on Number One?”

Irish squinted at his watch. “Oh, we got a good forty minutes on Number One yet.”

Johnny straightened. “‘Number One’? A first-class train?”

Chief nodded. “First class, you bet.”

“A passenger train?”

“Yes, indeed,” said Irish, continuing to study his watch. “Number One, the Pacific Express, by name. She was a passenger train, a right grand one.”

“Sleepers, dinin’ car, the works,” nodded Chief.

“But doesn’t run anymore?” said Johnny, more baffled than ever.

“That’s correct,” said Irish.

“And you still keep tabs on it?”

“In a manner o’ speakin’, yes,” said Irish. “We’re running on a certain time, you see, and that time corresponds to the time where a plug like us would have to consider heading in for Number One. Granted, now, Number One ain’t been on the card a goodly while, but Chief and me, we like to keep in mind the proper way of doing things, even if, strictly speaking, some o’ them things don’t apply at the present time.”

The look on Johnny’s face must have been plain enough.

“Ah,” said Irish, “ye think we’re looney.”

Johnny stared at him. Running on a timetable decades out of date…monitoring the schedule times of a train long gone. What could you say to that?

“I am starting to wonder,” Johnny said, laughing.

“Well,” said Irish, “in time, all becomes clear. Or clearer, at any rate.” He chuckled, and Johnny could only chuckle with him. He leaned toward Irish and said, “I always wanted to work on the railroad.” His words, clean and unfettered, gave him a rush of exhilaration, of certainty. He asked, “Do you think there might be a job for me on your valley line?”

The little man pursed his lips and stroked his chin. “Well, now…it’s possible…possible.” Johnny prepared himself for another rejection. “Like I said,” said Irish, “our business is sort of catch-as-catch-can. For a young fellow like you, it might not be the best thing…”

“I got no place to live right now. Got no job. I can work wherever. Railroading’s all I’ve ever wanted.” Johnny wondered why he was saying this, something he’d never said aloud, to this odd couple rattling through the night on an unknown railroad that probably couldn’t afford to pay him.

Irish studied Johnny with hooded eyes. “D’ye know what a boomer is, Johnny?”

“Sure.” Johnny had read of the old-time itinerant railroaders who roamed the land riding the boom times and moving on when times went bust.

“I’m an old boomer, me’self. And as ye know, we boomers work here and there and everywhere, catch-as-catch-can. Oh, the boomin’ life has its good points and bad.” Irish paused, took off his cap and brushed his slick, gray hair thoughtfully. “But after a while, ye find yourself wantin’ to head in and settle down. Me, I come in off the big roads and fetched up on this here valley line. Been here dog’s years, now, heh-heh—dog’s years and then some.”

“He’s been here longer’n me,” said Chief, pointing his thumb at his friend. “Irish, he knows this line inside out, every inch, every tie and spike.”

Why won’t he tell me about it, then? thought Johnny. But he said nothing. What should he say? World was full of too much fool talk as it was. Let the rails and the night and these two queer souls carry him wherever the hell they were carrying him. He thought briefly of her, stewing alone in her little house. For an instant, seeing a distant light, he missed her.

A weedy country road appeared in the headlight beam. Chief pulled the lanyard, sounding a shrill musical chord.

“Your horn seems to change its tone,” Johnny said, ready for any explanation.

“Aye,” said Irish, “it does that. I suppose you might say it’s a reflection of the old gal’s moods.”

“Moods—the engine?”

“Sure,” said Chief, “just like any of us. This old gal has her good days and bad.”

“What’s she having now?”

“I’d say she’s havin’ a good day. Runnin’ real smooth.” Chief winked. “I think she likes you, Johnny.”

“Glad to hear it. But where’s she taking us?”

“Down the valley,” said Chief and Irish in perfect unison.

“Well, then, down the valley we go.” He turned toward the open window. Cool night air wafted in, carrying the scent of pine and creosote. With a metallic clickety-clack the wheels turned, and with each turn, Johnny knew, things could only become clearer. The dim lights of homes winked far in the distance, and Johnny felt like he was peeking into one dimension from another. The other dimension was comfort, warmth, light, love; this dimension was work, duty, separation, loneliness. The separation and loneliness of all those long-gone trainmen, men peering down the tunnel of night at the lights of home and hope and hints of other, more settled lives, forging on while others ate and loved and slept. Johnny felt a shiver; those long-gone trainmen: he was in their place, now.

He leaned back toward Irish and said, “So, you’re kind of a mystery train, aren’t you?”

“Oh, I don’t know about that,” said Irish, chuckling. “Four loads and a caboose. Not much mystery to that.”

Johnny raised his eyebrows. “You have a caboose? Brakeman back there?”

“No,” said Irish, “no one back there. The caboose is what you might call insurance.”

“Insurance?”

“In case of needin’ a lie-down. We run into some long hours out here on the line, a man needs his rest. So old Red—that’s what we call the caboose—is right handy for havin’ a kip and a bite to eat. Nice cushions, a stove. Red, he’s what ye might call home. Handy, too, when we meet someone in need of transportation.” He shot Johnny a glance. “Like yourself, for an example.”

“You carry passengers in your caboose?”

“Sometimes, yes,” said Irish, “though not so very often these days.”

“The Halfhide boys!” said Chief with a big grin. “Used to carry them all the time, them an’ their jugs. Now they was somethin’!”

“They was that,” Irish replied, chuckling. “Indian fellas,” he said to Johnny, “old-timers here in the valley. I think their people probably lived here longer than time itself. Always had a nice sip o’ somethin’ for us, they did.”

“How long’s it been since we seen the Halfhide boys, Irish?”

“Been a right while, now. Ten year or more, I reckon, innit?”

“Guess so,” said Chief. “I miss those boys—and their jugs!”

“Ten years,” said Johnny.

“Approximate, of course.”

Johnny nodded. “Of course.” How long had these guys been out here?

Chief blew another blast for a crossing, this one marked by a leaning white crossbuck. Johnny peered up the country lane, but saw only darkness. Freeways, cars, warehouses—all of modern America seemed to have been left behind. Even the few house lights had petered out. All was primeval darkness pierced only by the headlight. The rails narrowed and vanished in the murky distance.

A sagging gray frame building swam out of the mist. “Here’s Willow!” Chief yelled. “Clear board!”

“Willow it is,” said Irish. “Clear board. Nothing on the platform.”

There was nothing on the platform at Willow. There was no platform, no depot. Johnny smiled to himself. He was sure an explanation of some kind lay ahead. After all, his whole life he’d been waiting like a train on a siding on the far side of midnight, waiting for another train to either show up or not. He was used to waiting, he was used to “not.” Now, he had left the siding and he was riding a train that was taking him somewhere.

But where? Johnny felt he had a right to know. “I didn’t see a depot there,” he said, “but there used to be one, right?”

“Right enough, Johnny,” replied Irish. “I believe you’re getting’ the picture. Out here in the valley, there are things within seein’ and there are things beyond seein.’ In this case, there hasn’t been a depot at Willow in years, but all the same, we like to call ‘er out. Makes for a better job of railroadin’, ye might say.”

Johnny got that. Got it and approved. “Understood,” he nodded. “So, where are we, anyway? I mean, where is Willow in relation to—to your terminal yard or town or office or whatever?”

 Irish pulled out his watch. “Well sir, that was Willow…Next is—well, let’s see now… accordin’ to the trusty Hamilton, we should be about to….Well, now, Chief, where d’ye reckon we’ve gotten to?”

Chief scowled. “Don’t reckon much, Irishman. I don’t carry a watch, remember?”

Christ, Johnny thought, they really werecrazy.

Irish winked. “Yes, Chief, I do remember, now ye mention it.” Irish nudged Johnny and said, “The Chief, here, he’s a damn fine hoghead, and I don’t ‘grudge him if he don’t care to carry a timepiece.” He leaned toward Johnny and whispered in a confidential tone, “He’s sensitive over the many wrongs done to his people, don’t you know. Can’t say as I ‘grudge him that, either, no, sir. Just leave him be awhile and he’s right as rain.”

A large white bird whisked ghostlike through the headlight beam and into the trees.

“There’s ol’ snaggy!” yelled Chief.

“Aye,” replied Irish. “A great bloomin’ owl, lives in an old snag tree back in there. We look upon him as something of a mascot.”

“An owl mascot?”

“Symbolizin’ the valley line and our fly-by-night railroad.”

The fog swirled, opening brief windows into a forest of patriarchal firs and alders, hinting at secret places where large things flapped and small things skittered.

To hell with it, thought Johnny. Who cared where they were going? They were here. “Beautiful woods.”

“Aye,” said Irish, “they are that.”

“Old.”

“Beyond old. Ancient.”

Chief nodded. “Yessir,” he said, his black mood forgotten. “This valley goes back to the dawn o’ time—kinda like Irish, here.”

Irish chuckled softly. “Ye hit her right again, Chief.”

Chief gestured expansively toward the woods and said, “Everything meets up here in the valley: rails, critters, birds, trees, humans. All living things. All of what makes for a world.”

Far ahead, a coyote trotted across the track. Chief blew the horn in salute and said again, “Yep, everything meets up in the valley.”

Everything? Railroads ran on trust, trust in the other person to do his job and do it right. No setting yourself adrift, no vagueness, no doubt. Doubt killed. Trust was implicit; trust and faith, certain unchanging things. Now, though, out here—where?—Johnny wondered: was there any such thing?

Irish grinned. “You know, on the old Spine Line we had a rum hard-driver as a foreman. All push, push, push.”

“Drill ye terriers drill,” Johnny said.

“Aye,” Irish said. “I wasn’t a drillin’ man, I was a trainman. But after a spell o’ that foreman ridin’ everybody, yours truly included, I told him where he could head in and hit the breeze.”

“Hah!” yelled Chief. “Me, I told the whole U.S. army where they could head in!”

Irish winked again. “You see, Johnny, they come after ‘im, they did.”

“Come after me, you’re damn right. Didn’t git me, though. Ain’t got me yet, an’ it’s been two hunderd years!” Chief laughed raucously.

Johnny laughed along with them. Two hundred years, a figure of speech, of course. The whole, sorry history of the Indians and the white man.

Irish squinted ahead and pulled out his watch. “According to the trusty Hamilton, we are approaching McMillan. Er—excuse me one minute, if ye will.” Irish stood and went out to stand on the front deck.

“Just between you and me,” Chief said to Johnny, “I haven’t had the heart to tell ol’ Irish that his watch stopped workin’ years ago.”

“He’s got no timepiece?”

“Nope. Deader’n dust. But here’s where he likes to have a little time to himself. Had a bad accident here years ago, and bein’s as he’s a sensitive soul, Irish likes to pay his respects.”

Johnny stared into the void. Snags and rushgrass and blackberry drifted by. The mist was closing in, the world was shrinking, the rails converged in the far distance. The vanishing point. Johnny wondered if they might actually be stuck inside the vanishing point, to remain suspended neither here nor there. Johnny wondered about the accident; had Irish been in it, or was he merely paying respects to those who had? For this particular train crew, time seemed to resemble water. Something to float in.

Irish came in and resumed his seat. “Well, then,” he said, quietly.

Hardin raised his voice and asked once more, “So, what line are you, exactly? What’s your official name?”

Chief looked at Irish and Irish looked at Chief. Irish cleared his throat. “Well, now, in one manner o’ speakin’, you might put us in the same category as your big roads, the Northern Pacific, Great Northern, Milwaukee, if you take my point…”

Johnny did take the point. “They don’t exist anymore.”

“Quite right,” said Irish.

“They should exist, dammit!” exclaimed Chief. “They was darn good roads.”

“So you’re saying, then, if the valley line is in the same category as them, then…”

Irish nodded.

Johnny heaved a sigh. “So, what am I doing here?”

Irish smiled. “Well, now, Johnny, have you got some better place to be just now?”

Hardin had no answer.Certainty had fled, the world was reduced to two rails and some ghostly tree branches. Johnny was reasonably certain that he was riding a train, and that the train was going somewhere. Nevertheless, if he was riding into another dimension, he wanted to hear it from them. “Look, guys, we’ve been on the road for—what? Two hours? More? Maybe much more…We haven’t made any stops, haven’t set any cars out, haven’t picked any up. I guess I’m a little confused. How far do you guys go, anyway? Where’s your terminal point?”

Irish pursed his lips. Chief stared into the far distance. Johnny felt a chill.

“What’s your traffic?”

“Well, Johnny, as far as traffic goes—actually, that would be you.”

“Me.”

“Yes. You see, not to put too fine a point upon it, we pick up certain strangers. Wayward souls, ye might say.”

“You’re shitting me.”

“Ahh—no. We’re quite real. You see, if you stop and think for a while, you’ll see from our point of view that the valley line has its job to do in the scheme of things, and does it right and proper.”

Johnny’s exasperation boiled over: “Oh, Christ, are you guys for real or what?”

Irish and Chief looked down. “Because,” Hardin continued, “I’m thinking maybe you guys aren’t real at all. I think maybe I’ve gotten myself into some kind of dream. I mean, look at you: the Irish built the railroads, and the Indians fought the railroads. You guys are supposed to be enemies, right? And now, here you are, running this ‘valley line,’ or whatever the hell it really is…”

“Right perspicacious, Johnny,” said Irish. “What you say has a certain truth to it.”

Chief nodded. “A certain truth.”

“Well, okay,” said Johnny. “Certain truth or whatever—what about me coming to work on your railroad? Maybe relieve you when you want a break. See, I don’t care if you’re real or not. I want to railroad.”

“It’s a good life, the railroad,” said Irish. “If ye’ve got the patience.”

“Patience,” affirmed Chief. “Patience to cross the valley, ford the swamp, and reach the hills.”

“And I do.”

The Chief clapped his hands happily. “I knew it! I knew it when we saved—I mean, picked you up back there. I said to myself, ‘Chief, this here’s a man with a destination. I’m bettin’ you’d make a damn fine railroader, Johnny.”

“So, then, how ‘bout on the valley line?”

Irish frowned. “You ask if there might be a place for you here. Well, I have to tell ye, Johnny Hardin, that there might be yet, one day. But not now.”

“Not now.”

“No. You’re not ready for this life. There’s more to what we do than mere railroadin’, see: more by a long sight. And you, you’re young, yet. You got life, curiosity, beans, and spunk.”

“Beans and spunk, no mistake!” yelled Chief. You want to get on a real pike, Johnny. An outfit that goes places. Hotshot freights! Passengers! That’s what you need.”

“But…”

“Aye,” nodded Irish, “ye want to go railroadin’, and I favor that very thing. But do your railroadin’ on a line that goes somewhere certain.”

“They didn’t want me.”

“Try ‘em again!” exclaimed Chief, smiling.

Irish nodded. “Aye, Johnny, try ‘em again. I’m thinkin’ you’ll get a more positive response this time around.”

“What makes you so sure?”

“Determination. I can see it in your eye. A rail’s determination, Johnny: ye got it. Now go give it to ‘em. Give it to the front office and the superintendent and anyone else ye meet. Let ‘em see it. They see that determination in your eye, they’ll hire you on the spot. Take it from an old boomer: ye’ll make a rail, yet.”

Something dark yet shiny appeared to the right of the track. A river. Not wide, more a stream. Was this the same brook he had lain down beside, miles back?

Irish smiled wistfully. “Well, now, Johnny, here comes the sticky part. Here’s where we say goodbye.”

Oh? Where was he? Did it matter?

Chief thrust his left hand out the window. “See them lights over yonder? You just steer for them lights and you’ll be fine.”

“But, what—“

Irish stood. “Ta, ta, ta! Trust us, my boy, you will be fine. Ye come through this night in fine style, ye did, and I’m convinced you’ll make as good a railroad man as anyone. But now, see, the long and the short of it is, we got to go on by ourselves. You see, that far point, where the rails come together? Well, sir, that point is the end of it. The end of the line.”

“But, it never…”

“You see it, Johnny, you see it clear.”

Johnny was baffled, and faintly relieved. He knew he had gone as far as he could as a rider. It was time to take the controls. “Well—thanks for picking me up,” he said, smiling at the little Irishman and the big Indian at the throttle. “I guess I’ve gotten someplace.”

“Oh, you’re right about that, Johnny Hardin.”

Chief grinned. “Right as rain, Johnny. Good luck to ya. Oh!” He fished in his overalls and pulled out a piece of paper. “Maybe you’d like to have this as a souvenir. We got a lot of these, might’s well pass ‘em on to someone who appreciates ‘em.” Chief handed him the paper, thin and worn and barely legible. Hardin smiled. It was an old-fashioned train-order “flimsy,” recording the passage of trains at stations. He did not read it, but said, “Thanks, Chief. Thanks, Irish. I’ve enjoyed riding with you. Enjoyed it a lot.”

Johnny swung the cab door open and carefully climbed down. A suggestion of dawn was coloring the eastern sky, bringing low hills into vague relief. Irish followed him to the ground and peered at the distant hills. “Looks like a fine day dawning, Johnny, a fine day. Remember what we said: You’re a natural-born rail. Best of luck to ye!” They shook hands, then Hardin turned and began walking toward the distant lights. He didn’t dare look back, but he heard the engine rev and gather speed, the tramp of the wheels grow louder, then softer, till at last they were heard no more. A moment later he heard a faint, low moan echo in the far distance, sounding once, twice, four times. Then, the valley was still.

Sometime later, two men found him lying on the tracks talking softly to himself. He spoke of a new awakening, a bright midnight, a shining plain, a train.

“Been on the train, huh?” one of the two said.

“Yep.”

The two men—brothers, short, wizened, and dark-skinned—nodded to each other. One of them reached in his pocket and pulled out a small bottle. “Like a drink?” Johnny looked at the brothers and took the bottle. He needed it.

As they walked, Johnny put his hand in his pocket and felt the thin, flimsy paper. He had his orders and clear track ahead.