That Unseen Train

By M. K. Dreysen

Cinders. Diesel. Steam.
Darkness, and a little quiet time to think.

The platform is empty. You stand on it and you wonder, don't you?
Where to go next? Is there anywhere left to go at all?

Don't worry.

You've always got a seat on this train. And we will definitely take you to the place you need to go.

• Language: English
• Publisher: M. K. Dreysen
• Release date: Sep 25, 2020
• ISBN: 9780463341285

Book preview

That Unseen Train

By M. K. Dreysen

Copyright © 2020 M. K. Dreysen

Base Cover Image courtesy of Willgard Krause from Pixabay

Graphic Design Via Gimp by M. K. Dreysen and Aimward Drift Publications

Published By Aimward Drift Publications. Visit aimwarddrift.blogspot.com for news, updates, and upcoming stories.

Dedication

This story is in memory of, in response to. It's for Sam Cooke, Chuck Berry, Robert Bloch. It's for all who've ever set their ear against the rail just to listen. I write this one for the moment when you're standing on the platform, wondering what comes next.

Chapter: Cool Cold Prologue

You wander the tracks, not for one reason. Not for a thousand.

Whatever those things are, at the bottom, it's because around midnight, in the fog and the ice, the rocks and the rails call. In their quiet way. There's the pipeyard and the railhead that leads to it. The bigger yard's up ahead, where they put the big trains together, the ones that stretch for miles when you're sitting in the car watching the lights blink, listening to the horn and the wheels and the impatient in the line of cars behind you.

There's something different tonight. There're the barrel cars, the liquid haulers, oil, sulfur, a bunch of other things that your chemistry teacher could identify if you had the patience to ask her. Box cars and cattle cars, they're scattered around the main yard, like someone took the train set they got for Christmas and just turned the box over. Everything's quiet right now, wait a couple hours and the guys will be out, using the half-engine to push the cars into the right order.

Those silver cars don't fit, do they? Two of them, connected to the back of the big diesel, even without imagining things they look out of place, toys on the tail end of the monster engine. They're passenger cars. This is a freight line, what are they doing here?

There's a guy standing on the steps, smoking a cigarrette. That can't be right, he says.

You wonder what he means.

He pulls a schedule out of his pocket, uses a cell phone light to illuminate it. Huh. Well, if you're on the list, you're on the list.

List? It's rarely a good thing, being on a list.

Maybe you should be home in bed, getting ready for school, kid. Wandering around like you are, someone's going to blame you for things you don't have anything to do with. The guy puts the schedule away, and the light too, in favor of the butt adding to the haze. Don't ask me how I know.

There's kindred spirit there, right? Just a little. Maybe he used to wander the tracks like this, maybe that's how you end up with a job on the railroad.

He smiles, a slow ugly thing with no assurance of anything but that he's no friend. This job isn't something you get by accident, young one. Maybe you really do need to run along, somewhere imagination might be a useful thing.

Sounds like a warning, doesn't it? You don't heed warnings, right here and now. Not when the diesel fumes curl through your mind, the silver sides of the cars glint, just a little, under the one working street lamp. You want to walk to the engine and trail your hand along the cars as you go. They vibrate under your fingers.

He gets down and follows along behind. Not talking, he's just keeping company. Or making sure you don't hide out, go for a ride without paying. What'd they call 'em, once upon a time, do you remember? Rail dicks? He's not arguing with you, there's no running patter. He's just letting you feel the edges of the sheet metal, the rivets, the smooth sections where the company name's painted on.

There's no graffiti. Something else a little weird, like, how many graffiti artists would pass that much clean metal without their fingers itching and the paint cans appearing out of nowhere? You wait for the comment, here's where there should be some kind of implied threat, right? Something like Well, the conductor doesn't appreciate that, or maybe I make sure our passengers don't have their travels interrupted by such things.

Like, who else is going to be travelling like this, two passenger cars on their own diesel, ready to pull out and hit the tracks for somewhere without any other encumbrances trailing along behind. The three car train is getting ready to leave, maybe as soon as you walk away, they've gotta be important. Rich, at least.

The guy doesn't say anything like that. It's all in your head, all your own stories you're telling yourself. The only thing that's real is the metal in front of you, the chug of the diesel, hidden now by the fog coming in even closer. And the smell of burning tobacco.

Could be, this is an accident of timing. Empty cars, and all the guy's doing is yanking your chain while they move them somewhere else, like those airplane boneyards out in the desert. There's some open space somewhere, then, where old train cars go to die, and he's just yanking your chain.

If he is, the guy's letting you do it to yourself. He doesn't say, You know better than that.

But. But.

But you're starting to think, maybe you do know better. You're between the engine and the front of the first passenger car, now. You could walk up farther. Where the steam rolls off the hot manifold, that interface between the ice and the fire. That's where, if you were younger, the fascination would lead you. Kid coming along to see how the train runs.

There's something there that wants you to be ten again. Wants you to go Choo, choo and Chugga chugga whew. Could you walk up there?

Sure you could. And the guy would say something like, You might want to hold off on meeting our engineer until you're older, little one. Only he still doesn't. Give you the warnings, the way they come out in your head.

He doesn't need to, does he? Same way with the dealers at school, you see them coming, they're no mystery the ones who need you hooked, need you smoking and huffing along their own version of this train.

There's really only one question, isn't there? The only one that matters.

This trip? It's a short trip this time, kid. Florida. There's a carnival making the circuit down there, old friends. We've a fair few riders to pick up.

And the next time you see him? Oh, he doesn't even have to say it, does he? But he does, anyway. In your head or out loud, the answer's there, when you climb up into the passenger space, and you pass through the club car looking for a place to crash, what he says is always there.

Next time, the trip's a little longer, kid. When you get aboard this train, when you ride it all the way to the end? He ditched the smoke, burned to nothing but a pinch of ash. Next time we see you, you'll be grateful to take this hellbound train.

Chapter: Hellbent

He didn't want to be here. Waiting, just outside the pulp mill for the freight to pull through in the dark. There were two stops in town, the sawmill and the pulp mill. And he wasn't about to hop a ride on the log cars.

Later, when people talked about the Depression, that morning was what he'd always return to. Standing there, waiting for an empty box car, heading out to meet Woody, his brother. Mother'd said he was as likely to end up spending his life in an opium den as he was to make money, but what choice was there? The pulp mill, the sawmill, neither one of them had jobs for a kid not even quite out of high school. So here he was, out to a logging camp in California.

It was a three day trip. The train could have made it in a day or so, but they had to stop, drop off cars, pick up new ones. Just about when he'd drift off, they'd slow down. The horn blew, warning everyone in the way.

Warning him it was time to jump down, before they entered whichever yard was coming up. Jump down, hope he didn't break anything, then walk around to the other side and wait for the freight to roll on again. By the time they pulled into the sawmill in the Sierras, the one that Woody'd told him about in the telegram, he was pretty good at judging the speed, coming and going.

Ray said a prayer that last morning. The first one he remembered saying since he'd started the ride. The only thing he asked was that the next stop was the right one.

He guessed it didn't matter, really. If he found a job in one of the logging camps, like he did, walked in and met the man running the camp, well, he found a job.

It was Woody's camp, it was the right stop. So the job part was easier than it would have been. There's a lot more guys coming out here than when I showed up, Ray. Which was kind of funny, the CCC was out there, giving guys work whether they could see lightning or not. Why would they all run out here, if they didn't have to?

Just a little better pay. And, Woody said, We don't run our camp like you'd just joined the Army. Oh, they were all up before dawn, to eat, shit, shave, shower. But there weren't any jumping jacks, pushups. And if he wanted to, he could jump in a truck and go with some of the other guys down the mountain to the juke joint and whorehouse waiting in the valley.

Oh, Ray went down to the little town. If he wanted to wire money home, he had to. Once a week, payday, they'd all climb onto the half-empty last truck of the day, roll down to the bottom. Shower under warm water, get a meal that wasn't much different than up the hill but it was different at least, sleep in clean sheets. Get up in the morning, wire the money. He and Woody would go to the church, listen to the pastor, who always seemed a little surprised that any of the loggers showed up to hear what he had to say, and then they'd walk back up the mountain and start the week all over again.

Woody's only vice, and the one that Ray picked up as soon as he realized he wasn't going to be yelled at, was the carton of cigarettes he bought every trip. Well, the only vice Woody admitted to, those first few weeks.

Ray had been in the camp about six weeks. It was a Saturday evening, he came back into camp, sore and cussing, under his breath where no one else would hear him, he'd been de-limbing. The redwoods weren't so bad, but the spruce trees left his hands covered in sap. His callouses were coming in, which was funny because he and Woody were farm people, grew up splitting wood for the stove, he'd come to find out it didn't matter how hard he'd thought he'd worked before, here it was harder. The sap covered his hands, which was bad enough, but it got into the cracks in the skin, down deep where he'd be peeling it loose even after scrubbing with the hard brush and the lye soap.

His brother was there already, sitting on the cabin porch with a smoke and a month-old copy of one of the San Francisco newspapers. Ray, Woody said, nodding his greeting. Saturday payday, ain't it?

Ray pulled up an empty chair. Nights, guys worked on things like chairs, tables. All the pole wood, limbs and scraps, and time on their hands with nothing else to do. Willard, one of the other guys, called it his penance, "For not reading the Bible every night like our