I seen somethin’ strange once. It was out west, and it was a little differnt than anything you ever heard of. I was a little bit kinda down on my luck a few years back and was ridin the rails, thought maybe I could get me some timber work out by Vancouver, or maybe the salmon fleets were hirin’ out of La Push. One drizzly night me an some other tramps was floppin’ under a cliff next to a rail bridge on the St. Joe river up near the Kootenai valley, waitin for the 3:05 Union Pacific out a’ Coeur d’Alene. We useta set up a little jungle by the trestle, where the 3:05 had to slow way down on the straightaway just before the bridge took a hard curve across the river gorge. The engineer was a friendly, an didn’ much care what kinda boardin’ passes we had, or didn’t.
This particlar night, this little eye-talian feller name of Goosheppy had clumb all the way down the gorge and speared hisself a chinook salmon and diced it into a big pot of mulligan over a fire he made by the slagheap from the old tapped out copper mine. He passed around a mason jar a’ shine and we was all hunkered down under a big lean-to a’ tin siding, outta the rain. The rain thrummed on the corrugated tin, soundin’ like a endless round a’ polite applause, as we squatted there talkin, lyin’ about the places we’d been, spittin Mail Pouch into the mud, and usin’ fishribs as toothpicks. Scared Eddie was regalin’ us with stories about his days on a bomber crew in the Eighth Air Force. Me, I mainly left things out a my stories, but told some, too.
The engineer on the 3:05 usually seen us an’ just waved, ’cause he knew we knew the bulls only patrolled the city yards, an’ never made it out here to the mountains. Sometimes though he’d wave us off if he weren’t pullin no deadhead boxcars, or if the switchyard bulls was out to meet a quota by roustin’ some bums off their turf. His shift ended up at Bonner’s Ferry so this was his milk run. Sometimes the milk runs sour though for some fellers, I’ll get to that.
Gotta tell you now ’bout Towser, a old three-legged one-eyed stray mutt that kinda adopted me a couple years before, back in East St. Louis. Ol’ Towser had this uncanny knack for knowin about stuff that’s gonna happen, kinda like the gift a’ seein’ that them brujos has, down in New Mexico. One time back in West Virginia, I had just helped some ol’ boys clear out a seam of anthracite from a family mine back in some unnamed holler, an’ was camped out by a little crick, when Towser just up an’ lit out, flyin’ up to the top of the ridge, then runnin’ back to yip at me an’ drag my pants cuff to move me along. He done that back an’ forth a few times, gettin’ more ‘n more wound up each time. Well not fifteen minutes later, just as I crested the ridge and was wonderin’ what all his commotion was about, a flash flood filled that holler and warshed that campsight right down the gulley, leavin’ nothing but mud an’ trees, all broke up like kindlin’. That was the first time I seen Towser act up like that before somethin’ big broke loose, but it weren’t the last, I’ll tell you what.
Anyhow, ol’ Towser was our freight train alarm clock, an would usually start yappin’ and run over to the track an get in a kinda half crouch, half point, and then–you could measure it on a clock–we would hear the train comin 5 minutes later. We’d douse the fire, take down the jungle and wrap up our swag just in time for the trainwhistle to get into earshot. Towser would clamber right on up onto a flatbed or a box car only after he was sure I was aboard.
Well, I remember this partic’lar night clear as a bell. After the rain let up the hunters moon showed through in places. But the sky was still holdin’ water, kinda misty low and cloudy high, with clear spots driftin’ through. Around 5 til 3, Towser started actin a little peculiar. He simpered and whimpered and slunk off all bellycrawlin’, ’til he was fast up against the rock cliff on the far side of camp. He parked his hind end an’ sat there quiet, with his good eye starin up the tracks all furtive an shifty an worried like. We all heard the whistle about the same time, only this time, instead of a low occasional moan, it was steady an’ shrill, an’ getting too loud too fast. Just about the time the clouds broke an the moonlight put everything around in a sort of ghostly pale glow, we all seen the train’s headlight crestin’ the cutout that’d been blasted through the last mountain pass before the river. Towser looked scared, like if he’d been wearin’ pants he’d a wet ‘em, like he wanted to crawl right inside the escarpment. The train came down the last straightaway, only instead a’ slowin’ like it always did, this time it was pickin’ up speed. And this time, instead a’ the engineer wavin’ and noddin’ like he usually did, he was starin’ straight ahead with his face pulled back into the grimace of a dead man who found out just at the last minute what was coming. Well the dead man’s pedal hadn’t got the message yet, ’cause that diesel was ballin’ the jack, just like to flyin’ down that last straight section a’ track. Last time I seen a face like that feller’s was when I was a young’un, the day a air bubble got in my uncle Willis’ heart an’ it blew up. Well the doc said he was deader’n James Dean before he ever got dragged under the combine. That combine made a perfect circle in the winter wheat that day, till it run outta gas. I know Uncle Willis ain’t never been to England, an’ didn’t make them crop circles over there nohow, but that never stopped his inlaws from castin’ aspersions about him ever’ chance they got, god rest his soul an’ ta hell with theirs.
Anyways, back to this one night. Where the track turns sharp and goes over the river, the train kept goin’ straight that night. The bridge timbers groaned and creaked and finally snapped, and the train arc’ed out over the river and fell straight down, lookin just like a giant slow-motion rolly-coaster. Just about the time we seen the red light of the last car blinkin’ kind of calm and lazy into the mist, we all noticed the same thing, the strangest thing of all, that night. Kind of a eerie hush fell over the river gorge, all’s we could hear was the river an’ the wind, an’ a loon, real far off. No explosion, no sound of metal crashing into rock, no sparks, no nothin’. Goosheppy climbed down the gorge an’ came back an’ said there was no train, no wreck, no dead engineer, just the river an’ the rocks ‘an the pale white glow of the moon and the sound of the wind whistlin’ down the gorge through the broken trestle. He stood there shiverin’ like he was colder’n a well-digger’s ass, an struck dumb to boot. Me an’ Towser lit out down the tracks in the direction a’ Coeur d’Alene an’ turned south on the first road we got to, where I stuck out my thumb. Just about the time the sky turned the color of Velveeta, we was gettin’ settled in the back of a Roadmaster wagon driven by a feller who was headin’ toward Amarillo to do some roughneckin’. Me an’ Towser got work as rodeo clowns the next spring outside a’ Las Cruces. Me an’ Towser hasn’t been on a freight train ever since…
