She snorted. “No, it means they’re the same in how they act. They shared the same life experiences.” Before she knew it was happening, she dwelled for a bit on her own family. Her parents each had their strengths and weakness, though Mom seemed to have more issues than Dad. She was the worrier. Dad was the doer. No one would have ever said they were cut from the same cloth.
“You all right?” Asher said, tapping her elbow.
She snapped to attention. “The train is coming.”
Everyone watched as the orange engine arrived at the train yard. Robert went the quarter of a mile to the opposite end before stopping. She put the truck in gear, then drove off the highway and into the railyard. There were no fences or trees, and most of the land was flat, making such maneuvers possible. Trees and houses of the town lined the sides of the long switching yard, but there were few people around.
Grace parked the truck on a service road next to the yard. The three of them gathered their rifles, she and Asher put on their hats, and then they walked together over several empty sets of tracks until they reached Robert. He was messing with a switch to get a junction to change.
“Do they let you do that?” she asked, looking around the train yard.
“Sure,” Robert replied. “These remote yards don’t have the manpower to micromanage everyone. They assume we engineers know what we’re doing.” He looked around with concern, as if maybe he didn’t believe what he was saying.
They watched as Robert got the tracks changed, moved his engine in reverse, then linked up with a row of about ten coal hoppers. The man was obviously an expert at what he did.
A horn signaled the arrival of another train from the east.
“We have company,” Robert called out from his position behind the engine.
“Do you need any help?” she asked. They remained next to the switching boxes at the track junction, but she had no clue what anything did.
“No, I’m good. We’ll be up and rolling by the time the traffic goes by.”
She and Asher stood closer to Robert’s engine. The arriving train grew louder, a deep resonance echoing in her chest. Whatever it was, it sounded powerful.
Robert joined them. “It’s a big one. Multiple engines.”
“How can you tell?” she asked.
He shrugged. “It’s an acquired skill.”
Many of the adjacent residential backyards were lined by tall wooden privacy fences, as if they didn’t want to see the train yard, but one only had a low chain-link fence. Three little kids stood up against the barrier as horns blared, announcing the train’s entrance to the yard.
“She’s not stopping,” Robert called out over the growing excitement and noise.
He wasn’t lying. There were more than a few engines at the front, each pumping horsepower down to the tracks. However, there were two extra cars at the head of the train, in front of all the engines.
“They ran into our lost cars,” Grace said with amazement. The boxcar was at the very front, burned down to its metal frame, but still rolling along. The flatcar was behind it. Both were pushed by the first engine in the line, suggesting the train wasn’t stopping for anything.
The engineer sat on the horn as the two cars and the front engine whizzed by Grace and the others. She imagined he’d done it to be a jerk, or to warn people up ahead, but she saw the kids jumping for joy in the gaps between the cars. The engineer blew the ungodly loud airhorns for the youngsters.
There were eight engines daisy-chained together at the front of a long procession of uniform-colored coal hoppers. Each car seemed to rattle and squeak as they rolled by. The thunderous shaking had to be rattling walls in the houses set next to the tracks. There was no way she’d consider living so close to a rail line, though she’d never thought about it until that moment.
“How long is this thing?” she asked the wind.
It went on and on. She figured there were hundreds of cars. At some point as she watched, Robert came over and tapped her on the shoulder. “I’m ready when you are!”
She flashed the thumbs-up sign. As soon as the train cleared out, she would cross the tracks to get back to the truck. They’d be on their way again.
However, the train wouldn’t end.
To her imagination, it took an hour for the train to travel through the town. When she finally saw a flash of red and orange signifying more engines, she figured the end was near. “Jeez, five more engines!” she shouted to Asher as the noisy diesels approached.
As before, the engineers up in the cabins must have noticed the children. The horns went off for a good ten seconds right as it passed Grace and her friends. She had to cover her ears.
The powerful motors shook the rocks beneath her feet. When the last one rumbled through, she confirmed those children were there, still cranking their arms up and down to get the engineer to let go of one more horn blast.
However, her attention went to a strange person standing by a tree next to the children’s house. A dark-haired woman had something black and shiny sitting on a low branch. It took Grace a couple of seconds to recognize the threat and decide what to do. Asher and Misha waved to the children, thinking they were waving at them. Unaware of what was coming.
She launched herself at the pair.
“Down!”
Kansas City, MO
“Sorry about your boat, E-Z,” Butch said, once he was sure he was awake.
“Don’t worry about it. I’m glad we got off before it sank. Thanks belong to Haley for being your swimming instructor.” He looked over
