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  “No, no. Sometimes I just need to step outside of the rut I get in, being around the house alone so much. With mom and dad both gone all day, the routine can get long and awfully boring. A nice change of clothes seems to help brighten things up.”

  Jim offered an agreeing nod as Lorraine spoke. But, absorbing her words, he couldn’t help in also being distracted by her beauty. The faint start of character lines were attractively bracketing her soft, full mouth and those eyes were drowning pools of liquid blue.

  A cordial breeze toyed with the curbside elms as they talked, an errant gust suddenly dipping low. It rustled a wispy hair strand provocatively about Lorraine’s face, at the same time, making her aware of his scrutiny. She swept both the loose twist and her eyes, aside, forcing him to a quick knee beside the child’s parked stroller.

  Using it as a hurried barrier, he focused on the little girl, while she fingered a row of colored beads.

  “Hiya Geri. How are you, sweetie?”

  The youngster squinted happily from deep in the crinkled folds of her sunbonnet. Her eyes were an indigo equaling her mother’s and as he knelt, Jim found himself searching for something of her lost father in the child. But, try as he might, she seemed to be every bit, part and parcel of Lorraine, alone.

  “Somebody’s going to be a real heart breaker one day,” he declared, finally daring to look back up. “She sure is growing,”

  “Nineteen months.”

  “Already.”

  His observation gave voice to the poignant loss that they shared as family and Lorraine graciously changed subjects.

  “Unusual to see you out and about on a weekday, Jim.”

  He tapped a jaw.

  “Checkup. No cavities.”

  “Ah. Good.”

  “Yeah. Never my favorite place.”

  He grinned, chancing a return to some lighter talk.

  “So, how have you two been? You’re both looking great.”

  “Good. You?”

  “Passable.”

  “Your folks?”

  He cocked his head in some generational humor.

  “As usual, Mom’s always easy to get along with. Pa, on the other hand, can be a little ouchy. Yours?”

  Lorraine shared in a coy grin.

  Pretty much the same. Except, maybe with their roles reversed. Dad’s the angel and Mom’s the drill sergeant.”

  “That’s life, I guess.”

  “Isn’t it, though?”

  Their eyes touched for another lingering moment and Lorraine again deferred, gazing skyward.

  “Beautiful day.”

  “Sure is,” he answered. “And I’m all for some cooler weather. This summer was a rough one. I finally took to sleeping in the basement on Dad’s old surplus army cot. Heading up to that attic bedroom after second trick was like climbing in an oven some nights. Even with the windows open, hardly any air would move.”

  “Yes, I . . . remember.”

  Lorraine trailed off, rebounding from another inadvertent stray into awkward territory.

  “So - you’re still at home, then?”

  Jim looked past her misstep.

  “Yeah. Guess I’m overdue to move out. Probably should’ve gotten my own flat by now. Guys my age are all either getting married, or at least living on their own, while I’m still hanging around home like some castoff. But, it helps me save a little money. Mom doesn’t mind me being around and I sure don’t mind her cooking - or laundry.”

  Lorraine’s brow arched.

  “No steady girl to speed things along?”

  Jim felt his ears warm.

  “You know the road. Hardly time for anything else. Besides, like the old saying goes, ‘all the good ones are already taken.’”

  The proverb was merely a hasty bid at levity. But, it plopped facedown and failed, between them.

  With it, Lorraine’s hands shifted. A spear of sunlight flashed in subtle trespass from the diamond of her wedding band. It stalled Jim completely and he said no more, until she retook command of their talk.

  “Still working the yards?”

  “Yep. Still a nighttime switch jockey. I could get a shot at road crewing easily enough with dad’s perfect record backing me. And by most folks thinking, I suppose I’m way overdue to move on - especially him.”

  “That’s good, though.” Lorraine encouraged. “Right?”

  He hiked a shoulder.

  “The yards are okay. But, I’m not sure that I really care to do any kind of railroading for the rest of my life. I like home cooked meals and sleeping in my own bed at day’s end, not all the gypsy years spent living out of a suitcase, here and there and everywhere.

  “Pa pushes pretty hard for it, though. He just can’t see why I’m satisfied to stay where I am. And when he gets something set in his mind, sooner or later, there’s just no way around it.”

  “Any ideas on what else you might want to try?”

  Jim puffed his lips.

  “Maybe a factory job. Work at the Electric Engine shops’re really flying high these days. But me going there of all places - making diesel locomotives - would really bring the roof down for a hardcore steam guy like my dad.”

  Lorraine looked on confidently.

  “I know you’ll be a success at whatever you try.”

  He shrugged in thanks.

  “So,” she continued. “Any big plans for the town centennial? Only a few weeks away.”

  “Haven’t thought about it much. I guess I might play in the softball tournament. Marty, Rich, and some old neighborhood guys are talking about getting up a team. Otherwise, maybe walk the midway some night. Of course, working the afternoon shift wouldn’t make that very easy. You planning to go?”

  “I’d like to.” Said Lorraine. “But, with most things these days, it depends on my folks’ schedule and how Geri might be acting. All the usual stuff for someone like me.”

  He was encouraging.

  “Maybe we’ll see each other there.”

  She gave a light tilt of her head.

  “You never know.”

  Getting back to his feet, Jim playfully tapped the baby’s sunbonnet.

  “Bye now, Geri. You be a good girl for your mommy.”

  Silent until then, the toddler offered a vigorous, flapping hand.

  “Bye-bye!”

  “Lorraine.”

  “Jim.”

  The couple exchanged a cursory nod and he continued on his way.

  CHAPTER 4

  Global snobbery had long graded elite nations by the depth of their passenger train service. And, as long as that prudish logic was combined with existing freight timetables, rail lines were put at no special handicap. But, in forcibly using the iron horse to bolster and tune their national image, governments only fostered burdensome costs and pointless competition, evolving passenger networks far exceeding both their need and value.

  America was no different. Having ridden the economic tides of its one hundred-plus year existence, a fatal erosion of U.S. passenger loyalty was now yielding to the convenience of mass-produced automobiles and a determined network of maturing air travel. A few roads were attempting to compete by way of long distance overnight traveler service. But, their results were mixed. Passenger train use was on an irreversible downhill slide. Still, a prevailing federal mentality offered little relief to its captives.

  The aggravation was no more evident than with Joe Graczyk as he sat fuming in the hot cab of his sidetracked engine. Joe’s profitable local was technically still only a second-class train and therefore low in traffic priority - even to the measly, ten rider, one-car-waltz inching toward him now. Stepping aside for hotshot, steam-powered freights was something the engineer could respect. But, being sidetracked for the likes of this money losing dirge made him bristle.

 
; Joe’s annoyance was heightened by the pristine diesel locomotive heading up today’s dawdling march. Plastered in a flamboyant violet and lime livery (colors bordering on the unmanly for this veteran smoke-maker) the new generation engine still carried a shop-fresh aroma of its nearby Electric Engine, birthplace.

  He well knew the manufacturer’s propaganda. Weather proof, quieter, cleaner, and easier to run, diesel locomotives were proclaimed as a sane man’s dream machine. But to apprenticed shovel-masters like him, those exact attributes were the same ones demonizing the oil burners.

  All sorts of steam power had come and gone during Joe’s career. Though, with each change, he always knew that others of their lineage would follow, maintaining the balance of a mechanical universe he’d matured in and understood. This whole diesel thing, though, was different, threatening the underpinnings of something utterly personal. Everything about them represented a basic notion of retreat and surrender that rode hard and deep in the man’s old-Corps, Marine craw. Worse, they were becoming pandemic, infecting all of the high iron about him.

  In Joe’s world, diesel-electrics lacked a fundamental umbilicus that truly connected a man and his power plant. They had none of the orbiting wheel accoutrements to proclaim a true and noble locomotion; no conglomeration of sounds that comprised a steamer’s pure mantra to the gods of harmonics, and no majestic headdress, proudly churning skyward, alerting all the world of their noble presence.

  Instead, everything the diesel locomotive did was hidden - stuck behind sneaky streamlined panels and low hung fender skirts. Stuff that concealed their innards and denied the machine a soul, as if locomotion were something to be ashamed of.

  Gazing again at the creeping approach of glittering stainless steel and gaudy enamel, Joe was at least thankful that it wasn’t a CC&S train.

  He leaned back and cast another vexed eye toward his head-end brakeman.

  “How long’ve we been sitting here?”

  “About five minutes more, since you asked me last time,” replied Spike. “You know, you’ve got your own watch, Joe. And it’s not like we’ve exactly got a hot manifest in tow. What’s the hurry?”

  Graczyk flung his cigarette butt out the cab window, muttering as much to himself, as anyone.

  “Damn varnish, that’s what. One lousy pass-car hauling nothing but air and they still get priority rights. Freight does the real work and yet we kowtow to them. And interline service, to boot. Not even from our own road. Yet here we sit, while they block our main, waiting for their own track to clear, somewhere-the-hell-else.”

  Spike offered a reasoning hike of his shoulder.

  “They do pay us trackage rights. But, is it really the varnish that gets under your skin? Or the diesels hauling them?”

  Graczyk settled back in declaration.

  “One and the same.”

  From his downwind spot, rear brakeman Ziggy tucked a pinch of snuff deep in his lower lip and tossed out a random topic.

  “Anyone heard-tell ‘bout the new yard office guy?”

  Vint raised an eye from the weekend’s horse racing schedule and checked his boiler gauges.

  “That red-headed dude?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What about him?”

  “Been hearing bad scuttlebutt from some of the southern crews passing through.”

  “Like?”

  “Like he’s some kind of hatchet man, going around, looking to cut costs at rail yards. They said a name for his job, but I forget what it is.”

  Spike ventured a guess.

  “Efficiency expert?”

  “Yeah, that’s it!”

  Joe drew back in mock wonder.

  “And just look at Mister Crossword Puzzle, will you!”

  “Anyway,” Ziggy continued, “downstate crews said to keep an eye on him, ‘cause he’s also got big time front office connections back home and uses the rulebook like a Billy club. Gets his kicks from writing people up.”

  Vint agreed.

  “Now that you mention it, he kinda’ does have that, big buck at the lick, air about him.”

  Spike added a personal observation.

  “Sure didn’t take long making himself at home in Alex’s old office. Already had some decorators painting new letters on the door glass.”

  Joe squinted.

  “Saying what?”

  Spike drew each word out with a spread hand.

  “CHIEF OPERATIONS OFFICER AND RESOURCE APPLI­CATIONS AUDITOR.”

  Baffled gazes made their way about the cab.

  “The hell’s that mean?”

  “Like I said, an efficiency expert.”

  “And stationed at little old Mayhew? Golly, maybe we should be honored.”

  Joe took another irritated glance at the stationary passenger train.

  “This new guy got a name?”

  “The door said, ‘DeLynne Leplak’ - Liplock - something like that.”

  A gush of chuckles took flight, committing the unfavorable nickname to group memory as Ziggy went on.

  “Barely been there a week and old Boots already says he’s a royal pain. Nosey, too. Going through all the expense and maintenance files. Looking up everybody’s personal records. What’s this? Who’s that? And hinting at changes in the yard.”

  “What changes?”

  “For starters, Boots says the guy’s talking of cutting sand house heaters way back and even downgrading engine stoker coal. Also wants to save on water treatment cost by having crews and hostlers dump chemicals right in the engine tenders themselves and not keep payroll chemists manning the storage tanks.

  Joe huffed.

  “He might get away with it this far north until about Thanksgiving time. Then, when engines start stalling to wet sand and clogged feed water pumps - ‘specially those finicky, Nescos - then we’ll see how long that crap lasts.”

  Ziggy injected a dour personal note.

  “New guy says the horseshoe pits gotta go, too.”

  Everyone took pause at that.

  “Huh?”

  “No way!”

  Ziggy offered a grave nod.

  “Overheard that one, myself.”

  “Why?”

  “He said it encourages, ‘malingering on company grounds.’”

  Now Spike moaned.

  “Oh, for Pete’s sake. Tossing a couple shoes between tricks isn’t like we’re forgetting to run the damn trains. If anything, it gets the guys there early.”

  “Well, that’s what I heard.”

  Joe ignored the annoying passenger train to become a brief voice of reason.

  “Whatever this new guy might be, we’ve seen his kind before. They walk in, flex their muscles and show everyone how tough they are. And so what? Before long, they’re promoted on and off they go, to be someone else’s problem. Bottom line, we’re supposed to follow the book, anyway. I say just do our jobs and we won’t have any trouble.”

  His logic took root and the cab lapsed into silence as he looked again to his brakeman.

  “What time, Spike?”

  The other man snorted.

  “Five minutes, since last time.”

  Ziggy glanced about, tired of shop talk.

  “Hey, that new western TV show starts this Saturday night, don’t it?”

  “Gunsmoke?”

  “Yeah. That ought to be something - finally seeing what old Marshall Matt Dillon looks like.”

  Joe offered a tedious correction.

  “Gunsmoke is a radio show.”

  “Not any more. It’s going to TV, like lots of other radio stuff. Burns and Allen, Jack Benny.”

  “You can still hear ‘em all on the radio,” challenged Joe.

  “Not for long.”

  “No? So, what’ll happen to all the radio stations then? Just
shut down and go out of business?”

  “Suppose they’ll still be around.”

  “Doing what?”

  “Playing music, maybe.”

  Joe tossed his head.

  “All the time? Who’d want that?”

  “That’s why people need TVs, Joe. To get with the times.”

  Ziggy spared a moment’s study of the man.

  “As much as you love baseball, I can’t believe that you haven’t got yourself one yet. ‘Specially since the Cubs home games are broadcast.”

  “He doesn’t like to jump into anything too quickly,” teased Spike. “And sets have only been around for a few years.”

  Joe’s defense was blunt.

  “If you ask me, your sets are overpriced and still have plenty of bugs to work out.”

  “Everybody’s getting one.” Declared Ziggy. “Small ones aren’t that expensive. And the stores have all got those long-term payment plans now.”

  Joe sought an ally.

  “Everybody? Hey, Vintski? You got a set?”

  The fireman cocked back from his racing form.

  “No. But I have been thinking on it.”

  Ziggy grinned.

  “Depends on Friday night’s last race, Hawthorne Park, right Vint?”

  “Well, I’m not everybody,” argued Joe. “Besides, squinting at that little gray fish bowl hurts my eyes.”

  Spike offered a veteran correction.

  “Your fishbowl is called a picture tube. And the colors are black and white, not gray.”

  Joe gave an exaggerated bow to Spike’s self-appointed authority.

  “Please excuse me, Mister Tell-EEEE-Vision expert. But Jack Quinlan and the boys can call a Cubs game, play for play, just fine, over the old parlor Motorola.”

  The devoted White Sox fan, Spike drew a friendly battle line.

  “Yeah, either TV or radio, I s’pose it doesn’t really matter, anyway, when it comes to the Wrigley crew.”

  “Say what you want.” Graczyk vowed. “Next year. All the way. World Series champs, you wait and see.”

  Spike squinted as he mentally ran the numbers.

  “That’d be what, 48 years? Nice time for a dry spell to end.”

  “Make book on it.” Declared Joe.

  Spike gazed about the crew.