7. Incident at the Tower
As the engineer eased the throttle out, I tried to keep the firing valve in proportion to what he was doing - one notch on the oil for each notch on the throttle. I clamped my teeth together as the first burst of exhausted steam shot out the stack and the pressure gauge quivered, and kept the valve in a vise grip as cars shivered and clanked behind me and the engine crawled up the grade.
My hands jumped from valve to valve, spinning them like the wheels on a wheat thresher - dampers open - atomizer open - water all right - we crested the grade and the needle stayed where it was supposed to be - or at least close enough.
Glancing back at the engineer, I met his eyes for a split second before they flickered back to the tracks ahead. More cars were cresting the grade, and the train began picking up speed, pushed by the tonnage lashed together behind us. I eased off on the fuel as he eased off on the throttle; on a downgrade the challenge was the opposite of an upgrade: keep steam down. If the safety valve opens, he'd told me, that's five cents of fuel and three cents of water wasted. Don't know who calculated that out, but I wasn't going to argue.
Miles upon miles of desert rolled by, land that had gone stale, dried out and been pushed out of the way of civilization. About every half-mile or so I'd be caught off-guard by the engineer's eyes trained on me, and I'd take the hint and put water in the boiler or adjust the firing valve so the stack wouldn't put out so much smoke or do something so he'd take those piercing eagle-eyes off me. Sometime when the sun glared down in its early afternoon fury and my shirt was sodden with sweat, I heard the air brakes hiss and couplers clatter together as the train was brought to a halt. The shadow of some gaunt structure passed over the cab just before the wheels stopped turning. "Water stop," the old man intoned, pointing over his shoulder with his thumb.
I began setting the fire as best I could for being stopped, but the engineer interrupted me. "Leave that alone! Get back there so we can keep to schedule." Flustered and shaking just a bit, I hopped down from the fireman's seat and gracelessly made my way back along the side of the tender.
The water tower looked like a giant wooden barrel on a network of stilts straining to support it. A windmill stood motionless in the stolid, hot air, and a rusty pipe half-buried in sand and gravel ran from the tower back to a thin line of growth that defined a ditch. Climbing up onto the tender, I took a second to get my bearings atop the wooden deck. I could see right down the line of gondola cars, all empty, and clear over the top of the engine, half-obscured by smoke. Trying to remember from the few pages in the rulebook about how to take water, I moved forward and flipped open the manhole-sized hatch.
"That's the oil hatch!" The engineer's barking voice made me drop the hatch shut with a nerve-twanging bang! and I stumbled over the rear hatch, throwing that one open. Liquid glimmered at least four feet beneath the opening, and I looked up at the weather-greyed water tower. There was a metal spout drawn up vertically against it and lashed there by a network of rust-streaked steel cables; I had to pull that spout down and get the end over the water hatch. I grabbed the cable and pulled.
It didn't budge. Just creaked a bit. I pulled harder. It moved a few inches. I put my full weight on it for several seconds before figuring out I was swinging in the air, my feet six inches above the tender deck
A deep-throated chuckle drifted by my ears, and I looked down toward the cars to see conductor Blackstone standing by the tracks, grinning ear-to-ear. "Looks like you're a little light for this work, kid!"
My gloved hands gripped the cable all the harder, and I hooked my legs under the guardrail around the tender deck. Straining all the muscles in my legs, arms, belly, and back, I forced the spout down, the rusted pulleys clacking and clanking. I plunked one of my boots down on the spout to keep it in the hatch, clutched the guardrail with one hand and stretched my arms as far as they'd go to reach the valve chain. Pulling it, I heard water roar down from the tower and into the tank, causing the spout to jump around like a living thing and my boot to slip off of it. Lunging to keep the spout in place, I banged my shin against it and finally got the thing to hold still underneath my knee.
The spout was down, the water flowing, I was standing firmly atop the tender . . . all was as it should be, aside from the harsh bruise I could feel developing on my shin. I looked back down at Blackstone, who was no longer laughing but leaning against one of the water tower's support columns, watching me intently. Taking off one of my gloves, I held my hand against the water-cooled spout, sweet relief from the heat of the cab. I was about to take off my cap and cool it on the spout as well, then decided it was better to keep a hat on while the conductor was watching.
My reprieve didn't last long, as the water reached the level of the hatch and came blasting out like a geyser. The valve chain flew up out of my hand and I wound up with both feet back on the tender deck and both hands struggling to keep the spout under control. The water was draining out of it, and the counterweights on its cables were inexorably pulling it upward out of my grasp. I had one arm around it and was trying to let it up easy when it came back at me with a vengeance. My feet left the tender deck and I realized I was being dragged up into the air, stopping when the spout gently clacked into position against the tower.
Laughter wafted up from beneath me. I didn't need to look to know who that was. Looking down to where my legs were swaying the breeze like a pair of giant windchimes, I saw a fifteen-foot drop to the rocky ground below. I started feeling sick again - a drop from here would mean a broken ankle, broken leg, who knows what else. Trying to shift my weight to bring the spout down, I swung myself from side to side and grappled to get up toward the end. My ungloved hand slipped on the water-slicked metal and I sank further down, flailing to grab something, anything, and seized one of the cables. I winced as my skin collected steel splinters.
I suddenly felt myself dropping like a rock and, fearing the spout was about to come loose from the tower altogether, flailed around for something for the other hand to grab. Something powerful clutched the back straps of my overalls, and I was bodily swung through the air and thrown down onto the tender deck, crashing into the guardrail as I fell over like a marionette whose strings had been cut.
Engineer Alexander let the spout back up, then reached down and dragged me back onto my feet. "Get back to the cab." I shakily clambered down the side of the tender and was making my way to the engine when I heard the conductor shout, "Walt, let him off at Keeler, I'll call for a real fireman."
"No call for that, he isn't hurt."
"This is getting ridiculous, train's already forty minutes behind and I don't want it blown up in the bargain!"
"You call off the kid, you can fire this beast back to Owenyo!"
I didn't catch the rest, having reached the cab, where their words were drowned out by the pervasive, dull roar of the firebox. My shin smarted and ached each time I moved, and my bare hand stung each time I clenched it, right along a rusty streak embedded in my palm. Wooden splinters were nasty enough - I'd had plenty of those - but I didn't know a thing about steel ones. I hoped that they'd be nicer than their wooden cousins. Turning back to the controls, I realized I'd left one of my gloves back on the tender deck. I couldn't go back to get it, I knew I couldn't keep my chin up in front of the rest of the crew, so I worked the valves with my other hand, sometimes shaking the injured one when it turned painful.
At some point, the engineer came back to the cab. "You all right?"
I nodded.
"You sure?"
I wasn't. I nodded anyway.
That old man didn't believe me for a minute, but he turned back to the throttle anyway, his eyes lingering on me.
We rolled into Keeler when the sun was just beginning to relax its mid-afternoon ferociousness. It looked a lot like Owenyo, but larger, and the depot was closer to the size of the one back home. There were three tracks laid out in the yard and we went down the middle, flanked on either side by wooden boxcars and gondolas and a fancy baggage car labeled "U.S. Mail" that looked like it had been plucked from a Civil War picture. Electric power lines stretched over the yard to reach the houses beyond, and a lake glimmered somewhere down the valley. Cars buzzed along a nearby road, people walked in the streets and they looked up to see the train go by.
Coming to the end of the yard, a familiar shadow passed over the cab: a water tower. The brakes hissed and the train stopped. I looked to the engineer, whose face said "Get back there, we don't have all day."
Scrambling atop the tender, I grabbed the glove I'd dropped earlier, opened the hatch (the right one) and gave the spout a nervous pull. To my amazement, it seemed to come right down, and I had the water tumbling into the tank a few seconds later.
I hadn't been up there long when I heard the engineer shout. Thinking he was shouting at me, I almost let go of the valve chain: "What do you want?"
"Conductor sent me forward to get the water." There was a younger man standing next to the tender, preparing to climb onto it. He was older than me, about thirty, and built like a baggage hauler. He sure wouldn't have any trouble handling the spout.
The engineer barked back, "Tell the conductor I'm not waiting for a brakeman to come forward each time we need water!"
"Mr. Blackstone said the kid couldn't handle it."
"Well, he's handling it now." I had a feeling this tower was counterweighted differently. The brakeman took a few steps back before walking toward the caboose.
I let the valve chain up just a few minutes later, when the tank threatened to overflow, and carefully let the spout up, keeping one hand around the guardrail. It didn't jerk me off my feet, but instead it docilely fell into position against the tower. Whew.
As soon as I was back in the cab the train moved forward again and wound its way through what looked like a spur track, wooden shacks scattered around it, sometimes with something that looked like it might pass for a house. We pulled up after passing a huge wooden structure looming up over the tracks, and when I leaned out the cab window and looked back I saw it was some kind of bin, like the grain bin in the barn only on an enormous scale. Men were running around it and eventually stopped as if they were in position for something, then a chute opened up and what looked like gravel came crashing out of the bin into the first car.
The noise was earsplitting, but not half as incredible as the vibrations that jarred the cab. While I clung to the window to keep myself from putting my hands over my ears, the engineer casually took a dented and scratched steel lunchbox from beneath his seat. "This is as close as we'll get to a dinner break on this schedule." He was somehow throwing his voice over the thunder of the chute. Taking something wrapped in brown paper from the box, he tossed it to me. "Have a sandwich. You could use it."
We were on the spur for what seemed like hours, with the engineer pausing between bites of his ham-on-rye to move the train forward so the next car could be filled. Sometimes clouds of dust drifted through the cab, forcing me to hastily wrap the brown paper back around my sandwich so I wouldn't end up eating dirt. When the sky to the west was starting to show hints of evening, the engineer hitched the reversing lever all the back and the cars groaned together as we pushed them back toward the yard.
Once in front of the station, we waited a few minutes until the brakeman stood up on the back of the tender, giving the hand signal to move forward. We did, and only then did I realize he'd uncoupled the engine from the cars. We rumbled slowly through a network of switches, turnbacks and sidetracks, the brakeman running from the cowcatcher to the tender deck to throw one switch, then another. The whole thing ended with number nine pointed back in direction she came from, and we coupled onto the opposite end of our train (another bone-rattling experience that made both my shin and my hand smart again).Leaning back in from the window, the engineer sounded the whistle twice. "Hold on, kid. Gonna see if we can get this hog back into Owenyo before dark."
Heading north we almost pounded the rails to pieces, the engine working like a demon to get the cars back up the same grade we'd coasted down hours before. The sun sat low over the Sierras when it came time to stop at the treacherous water tower again; I clenched my jaw, kept a grip on both the spout and the guardrail, and when I was done I let the spout spring up against the tower without any resistance from me.
By the time the familiar shape of the Owenyo depot rolled into sight, the mountains were orange and red, like they'd been at the start of the day, and the town was awash in drab browns and yellows. We rolled through a switch and stopped on a siding. While I was adjusting the fire the conductor suddenly climbed into the cab, and I instantly sat up straight. "Ross says to park her here and button her up for the night, the ore will get transferred tomorrow morning."
Engineer Alexander looked over the flimsy yard order the conductor handed him, then said "All right. Need us to bleed the air?"
"Brakeman will do that. You and your protege there can go home."
"See you later, Blackstone." The engineer had on odd way of saying that, as if he were spitting. His next words were directed at me. "Shut her down, kid."
I closed the firing valve, and the ear-numbing roar of the fire ceased. Five minutes later all the valves were closed and she sat dark and silent, the only hint of life being the high reading on the steam pressure gauge.
Lionel was standing on the platform, and I stopped in front of him. "How'd it go?" he asked.
I don't know why I waited such a long time to answer him. He suddenly grabbed my upper arm like he was trying to support me. "Woah, easy there, keep on your feet." The rest of the crew had filed into the depot. Lionel looked back toward the station door. I muttered "What's the matter . . ."
"Just stay standing," Lionel muttered back. I felt like I was in a daze, as if the fire was still roaring in my ears but without the heat. Mr. Ross, engineer Alexander, conductor Blackstone and a few other men came out of the depot, jawing and yapping. Lionel kept a grip on my arm and towed me down to the station door. "Keep your chin up, just to the door," he whispered.
Once inside he grabbed me under the arms and propelled me into the chair in front of his typewriter, where I went as limp as a sack of grain. The inside of the station was dark, except where there was window and the shapeless blue light of the evening shone in. I heard water trickling into a cup, and then Lionel was holding something under my chin. "Come on, drink this, you're dried out, you've dehydrated yourself." His voice was so strained with alarm I took the cup and drank from it more to assure him I wasn't about to keel over than out of thirst.
"Come on, Charlie, Mr. Ross is coming back . . . quick, get up, you don't want him to see you like this!" Somehow he dragged me up and over to the crew register, where he put a pen in my hand and then backed away. I just had to get the time and my signature into my slot - my eyes tightened to focus on the Regulator clock aggressively ticking away on the depot wall - 8:05, got it . . . a scrawl would do for the signature . . .
"Military time, Rusk."
"Eh?" I jerked my head up when I heard Mr. Ross' voice. He stood in front of me, sliding his jacket on.
"Military time. Twenty-four-hour clock."
I still didn't understand. Mr. Ross stopped adjusting his jacket and looked at me. Lionel plucked the pen from my hand and I heard him scratch out what I'd entered. "20:05," he whispered.
Mr. Ross was leaning closer. Lionel nudged me around the counter. "Our train's ready. Good night, Mr. Ross."
"Good night," the manager called, but by then Lionel was pushing me out the door.
We stumbled through the yard. "Charlie, for Pete's sake, stay on your feet or you'll never get another call." A line of glowing yellow windows drew closer, and I could hear the wheezing of an engine somewhere in the semi-darkness of the evening. "Your pass," Lionel implored, and I reached into my chest pocket for it. I hardly had it out when I slammed my shin into the lowest of the car steps.
The pain jerked me back into awareness long enough to get up the narrow stairs, and inside the coach the electric lights glowed warmly, drowning out the dusky, depressing evening light of Owenyo. There was no one else in the car, and my knees suddenly went limp. Lionel caught me and dragged me into one of the seats, where my head rolled over against the window frame. I murmured "Is this the train?"
It was a few seconds before Lionel came back around the corner of the seat, holding a paper cup. "It's the train, don't worry, now drink this before you really get yourself parched." I sat up and managed to sip from it as the whistle sounded, deeper and mellower and farther away than the one on number nine. The coaches jolted and began their familiar rhythm of rattling and swaying, and I felt the side of my head lean into the smooth, cold metal of the wall.