The Junk Yard Solution: Adventures Among the Boxcars and Other Lost Causes

By Peter Kelton

The Junk Yard Solution

Adventures Among the Boxcars and Other Lost Causes

As the rest of the world goes wild over smart phones, an odd assortment of eclectic characters hunkers down near Lebanon, Kansas, geographic center of the lower 48, at the middle of a square-mile junk yard where railroads dump old boxc

• Language: English
• Publisher: Peter Kelton DBA as Edit Ink
• Release date: Mar 12, 2019
• ISBN: 9780692171400

Peter Kelton

Peter Kelton writes fiction when he's between news jobs and has written for some of the world's largest news organizations. Most of his work has been in New York. He has critiqued more than 450 novels in a national column and has written six novels of his own in a unique erudite literary fiction style of adventure, mystery, suspense and satire. He grew up in Texas, served overseas in the US Army and returned to Europe as a foreign correspondent. He currently divides his time between his homes in East St. Louis, IL and Querétaro, Mexico. He has ghost written for more than 100 clients and is a top-rated writer for the Upwork free-lance agency.

Book preview

Chapter One

Lovely Loretta hung from the tower through the night until dawn lit her up like a surrendering flag, flapping white and dead and alone above our village.

Likeable lass, we talk about her a lot. You know, she used too much mascara, flamboyant and flighty, auburn tresses curled in the wind, a girl on the go, intense and kind to a fault.

I recall skinny old Arthur hauled her down, put the body in a wheel barrel, and brought her around where we could all get a good look. She wore a white flimsy night gown and no panties. He placed his straw hat over her dark scraggly pubis.

That tower has been a contentious thing ever since the phone folks put it up in the middle of our village. It’s the only thing that rises above the rusting freight cars. With Loretta hanging out you got a sort of Frances Scott Key twinge, but that seeped away as Arthur lowered her. All that was left were those cell tower antennae. Like ancient-armor shields they blink electronically in the light of our new day, said Loretta, and only a few days earlier. She often spoke metaphorically, our poet-in-residence, that’s what Arthur called her.

Our village covers more than a square mile near Lebanon, Kansas, said to be the geographical center of the lower 48 states. With 19 different railroads crossing the amber waves of grain, our village began to take shape in the late 1800s as newer trains made the early engines and cars obsolete. They’ve rusted together here in this giant metal graveyard; for the most part Pullman and boxcars left undisturbed look evenly brown, a uniform rusty brown. The first inhabitants of these abandoned cars were Cheyenne who hid out after slaying a Buffalo Soldier, ducking between early worn-out engines, those Stourbridge Lions and broken black coal cars. Not much to hide behind then, but today we’ve known kids lost for weeks in this labyrinth of discards.

Loretta lived in a caboose out on the eastern fringes of the village. She had been a health nut, a cleanliness freak, a Yogini of the first order. Her caboose perched over the eastern reaches of the great Ogallala Aquifer and sat neighborly like across a weed patch from Kohler, one of the village’s great pacifiers. Kohler plumbing had abandoned a complete home show trailer after a fair in Dodge City. Arthur’s friend Oswald from Pittsburgh, a plumber by trade, tapped the aquifer and a natural gas line to boot. The entire village bathed and warmed ourselves in the huge Kohler trailer. Showers could be heard running at all hours. And somehow Oswald connected toilets to a long-lost sewer that emptied no one knew where, possibly White Rock Creek.

Oswald rarely stayed. The two had performed at the National Shakespeare Repertory Company in Washington for 18 months and 21 days when their grants expired.

Doesn’t he have a first name?

Don’t know. He’s always just been Oswald. They called him that. Didn’t matter he was Hotspur or Othello or carrying a spear, we all know him as Oswald. Fucking good actor, I’ll say that.

He never went back? Not on stage?

No, his father died, left him the plumbing business. He’d worked summers, knew it all.

Yes, well he’s done well by us, by the village.

He’s that kind of guy.

Yes, he is.

Arthur sauntered off to his abode, a 1932 Blackwell Northern Boxcar. It had climbed north out of Oklahoma, been misdirected in switching, and dumped in fairly good condition during World War II. Being a good neighbor, Loretta had helped decorate. The people who keep track of such things list Kansas railroads by miles of track. Blackwell Northern ran 18 miles.

Art’s boxcar squatted in a low draw out behind Loretta’s caboose. She’d hung baskets of petunias off the back-iron filigree and when she traveled Art would water her flowers. Most boxcars look pretty much the same from the outside; dusty rusting orange or yellows or browns and grays. Inside Art’s boxcar Loretta had helped recreate his memories. He’d grown up through the Great Depression and World War II.

After the war, when my uncles got home and got drunk a lot, seemed like all the new houses were being painted inside with a purplish color. Any new house had that color; and glass bricks; squares of glass bricks in a wall. They let the light in.

Loretta shrugged. It’s your house, boy. You want purple and glass brick, that’s what we’ll do.

Art cocked his head sideways. His nose hawked, maybe part Indian. To him Loretta looked artistic, in a smock with paint spots. Maybe it wasn’t exactly purple, huh?

"Of course not, Arty. Mauve is a pale purple color. It is similar to lavender and lilac. The name comes from French form of malva meaning the ‘mallow’ flower. Another name for this color is mallow. The first recorded use of mallow as a color name in English was in 1611."

Don’t reckon anybody knew that; they were just glad the war was over.

Yes, well I find the history of color useful. I think you are thinking of French Mauve, a Deep Mauve.

Could be, what do you think?

Mauve became very popular in the 1890s. This decade was sometimes referred to as the Mauve Decade, because William Henry Perkins’ aniline dye allowed the widespread use of that color in fashion.

Who? asked Arthur.

"Perkins was trying to make artificial quinine. An unexpected residue caught his eye. It turned out to be the first aniline dye, mauveine. But the color mauve became associated with homosexuality because well-known figures in the art world during the 1890s — a decade that was called the Mauve Decade — were gay; you know like Oscar Wilde and artist Aubrey Beardsley."

I’m gay, sure; but the color, that’s the end of the war to me.

Glass bricks, too?

They built a wall, floor to ceiling, a two-by-four frame at the edge of the sliding door. Oswald brought the lumber, helped tack up wallboard and put in a big square of glass bricks. Loretta painted the wall French Mauve. The space beyond Arthur’s wall they designated the bedroom.

Why do you want a bunk bed? Loretta didn’t think a bunk bed appropriate in a room she helped decorate. She hung a Metropolitan 18 Light Chandelier in Antique Brass from the ceiling. Does Oswald sleep upper or lower?

Don’t be nasty. He never stays over. On stage you should have seen him in tights. I fell in love with him. But he’s not . . . well, not physically responsive. So, we have this mutual agreed upon love. I suppose you could call it pure. He cares for his mother and we occasionally play Chess.

The widow McDougal lives about four boxcars down, lovely wiry lass; she converses mostly with her deceased husband, the historian. Arthur told Loretta that Ellen McDougal lived 54 years as Mrs. McDougal. She even wrote a book with him. He claimed she engaged him in discussions the intellectual light of which illuminated the darkest corner of his mind. That’s something, you know Loretta. He possessed one of the sharpest minds. For him to say his wife was sharper, that’s something.

The widow at 72 lives in the past and admits it, asking What else is there? We have discussions of the past, long talks whenever so moved. It’s comfort itself.

Loretta leans against the Mauve wall. Are you telling me he snatched her up at 18 and now she has no idea about who she really is?

I’m saying she’s what they grew to be; and she feels that way. She does sport one other peculiarity, though.

I’d think talking to her husband was enough. What’s she got, Arty?

Sometimes she wanders among the boxcars at night, kind of like an itinerant fundamentalist of a proselytizing faith, quoting The Elements of Style, The truth is . . . the fact is . . . a bad beginning for a sentence. If you feel you are possessed of the truth, or of the fact, simply state it. Do not give it advance billing."

Some character, huh?

Yes, I love her. We call her Miss Ellen.

The truth is that many boxcars came from the Union Pacific with 1535 miles of track in Kansas and from BNSF Railroad with 1237 miles of track. Arthur delights in World War II minutiae. A lot of track got pulled up and melted. They needed the steel.

That’s just because Blackwell Northern got screwed down to 18 miles of track.

You’re bragging because your caboose came off the Cimarron Valley Railway with all of 182 miles. You pride yourself on mileage.

Arty, you are an odd duck, that’s what. What does it matter how long a railroad is, or was?

I’m Cicero, although Miss Ellen calls me CVR.

Kansas lies fallow in the middle of the United Stated with thousands of miles of railroad track laced over it like a great grandmother’s corset. Sooner or later the Pullmans, the boxcars, the cabooses and all the worn-out dining cars find their way to Lebanon. In our village a few people have also found their way here and fortunately for me they form a variety of sorts. I say fortunately for me because my feelings about being here are simply that I got tired of automation. Here in The Junk Yard folks feel comfortable for their own reasons. Me, I just got tired of voice recognition telephones and all those other gadgets — tablets, smartphones. I mourn the rotary dial.

That’s a peculiar thing. The phone folks came in a few years ago and put up that cell tower in the middle of the village. They didn’t say squat, just put up the tower and left. Loretta took exceptional offense and for years had been what she called negotiating to have the cell tower removed. She’d hooked up with a slick talking Indian named Wihio who trouble-shoots for the phone company. I shouldn’t say that. Today they call their selves a communications company. But they’re the people who automated phones and they are not in good favor with me. She brought Wihio around to meet me. She wore a frilly white dress that showed off everything she had to offer and then some. He had slick black Indian hair and a white-teeth smile that made you count your fingers after shaking hands.

Wihio’s gonna help us, she said. He’s with the phone company.

She led him off toward her caboose and he trotted along like a coon dog sensing prey. Pretty soon he became a frequent visitor, but Arthur seemed annoyed. He stood down there in that draw below Loretta’s place and gazed up at the full moon with the tower silhouetted in black. Then he let out a howl like a lonesome wolf in the mountains. Shakespearian actors can do that real good.

Next day Loretta damn near kicked his skinny ass. But they stayed friends until somebody did her in.

Chapter Two

I’ve lived here the longest. Folks come to me with their problems and if I can, I tell ’em what to do. It’s not that I know more than anyone else — shucks, Miss Ellen knows everything, at least about the past — I’m sort of the unelected source of all misinformation. Occasionally, I get things right. I can see me in a full-length mirror in my boxcar. I try to look authoritarian, sometimes wear a brown monk’s robe; brown dangling wood beads, my white hair and trim beard convey a hint of wisdom. I have hazel eyes that turn blue with the sky. They sparkle and make me a lousy poker player.

Last evening Miss Ellen walked by around sunset reading aloud from The Elements of Style. I sat here on the wooden front porch Oswald built for my Cimarron Valley Railroad boxcar and caught what she was reading.

"Linking verb — A verb that joins the subject of a sentence to its compliment; ‘They were ecstatic.’"

Who were ecstatic? I called down to her.

CVR, is that you? She glanced up from The Elements of Style. Her face shown in the soft sun-setting orange glow with luminous lightheartedness; she calls me CVR after my boxcar’s origin. Yes, I called down. Who were ecstatic?

The verbs, silly; put two verbs together, rub ’em together, they’re ecstatic.

But ungrammatical, right?

CVR, she said brightly, grammar isn’t the only thing that counts, salt and pepper curls ringing her uplifted face, a grandmotherly angel. It’s style, baby, style — who can confidently say what ignites a certain combination of words, causing them to explode in the mind?

Miss Ellen, you have a good stroll now, I said, and she flipped a feathery "a tout a l’heure at me, shuffling off. I think that’s French for toodle-oo." I do not detain her from her walking reads lest that old secret lust return. We met in Spain, she in tow of her husband, my friend Forestall McDougal. The three of us have remained friends for 54 years. I would not imperil the quality of that friendship. Let’s just say I’ve always lusted in my heart after Miss Ellen.

Loretta spent much time with Miss Ellen in a consultory sense. That’s an archaic usage but Miss Ellen’s toodle-oo-ing on her rounds and has strolled on beyond ear shot. Although Miss Ellen converses in a serious sense only with the late Forestall, she does lower her standards to exchange barbs with me and Arthur and actually tries to give some guidance to Loretta. She may know things about Loretta that we do not know. Loretta had a way of seeking advice from everyone and then doing the opposite of the consensus.

She came to me even, of course after consulting with Arthur and Miss Ellen, I suppose last on her list of advisers. Loretta sat on my porch in a rocking chair, pulling nervously on her long strands of tangled auburn brown hair that she fished out from her chuni, a light, silky covering on her head and shoulders. She wore all white Kundalini yoga clothing with baggy Bagdad pants billowing at her ankles. It seems like every time Loretta tried a different form of yoga, she changed costumes. We’ve watched her run the gamut from bikini to Yoga Nidra where Arthur found her in our community garden resting between rows of okra in the fetal position. Kundalini translates as coiled female serpent.

Wihio brought me to my first session, she said, pulling on her hair. He says it’s done wonders for his confidence. He sold more than 100 cell phones last week; has his own stall at Ladow’s Supermarket in Lebanon.

"But how’s your confidence?"

"Oh, much improved, Cicero; but I wanted to ask you as Don Quixote, what do you think about Diversity in