Tucker’s Grove (31 page)

But it gives me an excuse to come back home to Tucker
’
s Grove. To see for myself if that awful train has returned for one last run.

Alan and I were kids togethe
r. We ran across the fields, hid between the rows of corn, dared each other to climb to the top of old man Pickman
’
s silo.

Alan collected wheat pennies; I collected silver Mercury dimes. I
’
ve still got my ceramic mug half-full of those dimes up in my room
at home somewhere. We used to spend hours and hours each summer on our bikes, riding down the country roads to the bank in town, where we
’
d exchange one roll of coins for another and then scavenge in the new rolls for our individual treasures: my dimes, h
i
s pennies.

We watched cartoons together on Saturday mornings, usually at my house because we had a big color TV; my parents would get crabby when we
’
d wake them up so early in the morning. Then it was outside in the snow or the sun, talking about how much
we preferred
Lost in Space
and “
Voyage to See What
’
s on the Bottom”
to
Star Trek
because those shows had better mo
n
sters (though we both got
heavily
into
Star Trek
in high school).

There
’
s usually one day every summer, somewhere in the middle, when yo
u get so bored you
almost
wish it was time for school to start again. Of course, I never said anything like that to Alan because he probably would have punched me in the sto
m
ach even for
saying
such a stupid thing. That was when we d
e
cided to head off for
the railroad tracks.

The tracks were about a mile away, but you could see them across the fields, riding high on their isolated embankment and cut off from the world by drooping barbed-wire fences. The fences didn
’
t prove to be any deterrent for us, aside
from the o
c
casional sissy fear of getting lockjaw if you scratched yourself on one of the rusty barbs.

Out on the tracks we were
away
from everything, kings of the mountain, just Alan and me. The twin steel railroad tracks stretched for the longest distanc
e before they curved sharply t
o
ward Bartonville, which we couldn
’
t even see on account of the low hills.

Aimlessly, I walked along, stretching my legs to step on one crosstie, then the next. Alan tried to balance on the thin steel rail, but he kept falling
off after four steps or so. Once, we placed a couple of Alan
’
s wheat pennies on the rails just before a train came, and afterward we looked in awe at the squashed shiny copper disk
—
you could barely see the ghost of Lincoln
’
s face smeared long and flat fr
o
m the thunderous passage of the train.

The spaces between the ties were filled with gravel, cinders, and other junk. Two tall, silver towers stood on either side of the tracks, one facing each way down the line, with dead green and red lights that would sh
ine a warning when trains came.

Off in the distance, in the opposite direction from Bartonville and the big curve of the tracks, we could see old man Pickman and his ancient tractor pulling the disks across the field and chewing up dirt. The firing of the
tractor sounded like toy gu
n
shots in the empty air; apart from that, we could hear only the wind and a couple of birds. Pickman pulled his muddy tractor up on Locust Road, trying to cross from one field to the next, but the tractor sounded as if it couldn
’
t go on with life anymore. It popped and backfired before it gave up completely, right near where the tracks crossed the road. We could barely hear the sound of Pickman
’
s shouts as he got off the tractor, jumped up and down, and kicked one of the machine
’
s
huge back tires. Alan and I both giggled and watched as he stomped off down the road to his big white farmhouse.

The old farmer got boring after a while, though, and Alan changed the subject. “
Where do you suppose all this
junk
comes from?”

He indicated t
he embankment by the tracks, and I noticed all the debris scattered up and down the fence line. A refrigerator door, a rusted plow, an automobile fender, some hubcaps, the top of a stove, and more
—
it was the oddest assortment of ruined things you could im
a
gine. I had never really paid much attention before, thinking it as natural as the long grass and the wild roses along the fence line. But Alan was right
—
there wasn
’
t a logical explanation for why that kind of junk would all be there, a mile from the near
e
st farmhouse.

I shrugged, but Alan kept thinking aloud. “
Do you suppose a
train
put it there?”

“
You mean hobos? Why would they want to throw junk like that?”

“
No, I mean a
train
! Like, a
live
train that com
es out after dark and attacks cars and things. What if there
’
s a big black l
o
comotive, you know, and it grabs stuff, tears it apart, and throws the pieces all up and down the tracks.”
Alan
’
s eyes were gliste
n
ing with his own imagination.

“
That
’
s dumb, Alan
.”
It was one of the only times I made fun of his ideas. “
Why would it do that?”

But he seemed emphatic, and I could see he wasn
’
t kidding. “
Maybe it
’
s angry,
really
angry because…
well, because it
’
s a
train
—
it
’
s stuck on the rails, and it can
’
t go anywhere
else. It
’
s trapped. A car can drive wherever it wants, and so can a tractor. But not a train.”

Alan didn
’
t pull my leg often, and I found my mind wande
r
ing, imagining, seriously considering the idea
—
and it was just exotic enough to capture my imagination.
While lying in bed, trying to sleep at nights, I
did
hear trains all the time, some of them with odd whistles, and it seemed to me I often heard cras
h
ing and rattling sounds that couldn
’
t be explained by the clatter of a simple passing train. On hot summe
r nights when the sheets were sticky from the humidity, I slept in my underwear and left my window open to listen to the crickets and the grassho
p
pers…
but just when I was finally dozing off, I could sometimes hear that one special train, the vengeful locom
otive that was a
n
gry because it could never get off the tracks.

It was a spooky idea, just the type of thing we needed to i
m
prove a boring summer day. “
But where does it come from?”
I asked.

Solemnly, Alan turned to point at where the curve of the tracks
swung behind the hills and vanished from our sight. “
There.”

“
Where? In Bartonville?”

“
No, stupid. See where the tracks disappear? It doesn
’
t just go around the curve to Bartonville
—
maybe
sometimes that curve is something else. A doorway into another dime
nsion. You know, like the Twilight Zone.”
Alan said this with great seriousness, and to us
—
after years of watching fantastic TV shows
—
the idea was eminently reasonable.

I couldn
’
t argue with that. Enchanted, I stared down the tracks and then slowly, trying
to appear nonchalant, I stepped off the crossties and onto the cinder bed at the edge of the embankment. I didn
’
t want Alan to think I was chicken. But I saw that he was anxious to get away from the rails, too.

Of course, we had to see if it was all true
. We do
u
ble-promised to come back that night, sneaking out long after our parents had gone to sleep. My mom and dad both went to bed by 10:30, so I set my alarm clock for 11:15 and put it under my pi
l
low.

I didn
’
t plan to go to sleep, but with two hours of
lying there in the humid summer heat, I ended up having the most vivid nightmare: the giant black locomotive, murderous and wanting to destroy machines and people, waiting for me, burning not coal but human bones. Luckily, the muffled alarm brought me ou
t
of it before I could wake up yelling for my parents. I was shaking in the darkness, and I almost didn
’
t dare to get up. I lay there loo
k
ing up at the ceiling. The sluggish breeze moved the curtains so that they sounded like slithering ghosts against the w
indowsill. But I knew what Alan would think if I didn
’
t show up, so I got dressed and sneaked out of the quiet house, being careful not to let the screen door slam shut.

Alan was waiting for me at the end of our driveway, and we walked down Locust Road wit
hout saying anything until we were out of earshot of the houses. The road stood out plain in the moonlight, but we didn
’
t want to cut across the fields in the dark. Raccoons and skunks and possums come out into the fields at night, and other things you do
n
’
t even want to imagine. The moon was full and high up in the sky, and we would get to the tracks around midnight
—
it was going to be so perfect.

“
I dreamed of the train,”
I told Alan.

“
So did I.”
We didn
’
t say anything else until we reached the railroad c
rossing. Old man Pickman
’
s tractor looked like a sick mechanical cow standing half in the ditch and half on the road where it had stalled.

“
Let
’
s walk down a ways.”

I followed Alan out onto the tracks, stepping from crosstie to crosstie, as we walked fart
her from the road. The bugs in the grass seemed very loud that night, and the noise hung in the air. We kept walking, oddly silent but neither of us willing to admit we were scared.

The insect buzzing stopped abruptly, as if someone had switched off a radi
o. We heard a grating sound as one of the tall signal towers swung its colored glass lens into place. A red light stabbed at us like a bloodshot eye. A train was coming! Then, a moment later, the
other
signal tower, the one facing the opposite direction, s
wung its light into place and shone the red light the other way
—
warning off all railway traffic from either direction.

I couldn
’
t say anything. Alan gasped, “
This is it! This is it!”

We heard a sound like a muffled roar, and then, emerging from around th
e Bartonville curve, crawling out of another d
i
mension where it could brood on its vengeance day after day, we both saw a gleaming yellow headlight. The light was like a spear pointing at us, charging down at us, and all we could do was stand there hypnoti
zed.

I jerked on Alan
’
s arm. “
Come on! Get off the tracks!”

We tumbled down the embankment and scrambled for cover in the thick wild rose bushes. We would have a bad time e
x
plaining all our scratches to our moms the next day, but I was too frightened to
care right then.

The black locomotive came on, charging down the tracks that chained it to its never-changing route. Dark smoke belched from its smokestack, blocking out the stars. The locomotive
’
s one-eyed headlight, a searchlight, poked ahead, looking f
or vi
c
tims. The thing wasn
’
t a passenger train, or even a freight train, but something out of a cowboy movie, an old coal-burning l
o
comotive
—
exactly the way I had pictured it. Two large wheels under the empty engineer
’
s compartment clattered powerfully, he
aving a gleaming brass piston back and forth that drove the entire train. The wide triangular cow-catcher in the front of the locomotive looked like a guillotine blade. Seven cars, all black, trailed behind the locomotive
—
it reminded me of a giant metal c
a
terpillar, with each black car one of its segments.