The Train Jumper

PROLOGUE Wabash, Indiana When Jake Jackson's dad pulled into his driveway in a Ford Crestline Sunliner convertible one July afternoon back in 1952, people streamed out of their houses so fast you would have thought they were giving away free corn dogs at the Indiana State Fair. It was a veritable Hoosier stampede. The vehicle was such a bright yellow that it announced its arrival while still a block away. A few neighbors grumbled about the effect of such a "loud" color in a small, quiet Indiana town like ours (no doubt the paint awakened a few denizens of the local cemetery), but to quote Mr. Jackson, the Ford Sunliner was like "Marilyn Monroe in a yellow negligee … and she purrs just as pretty." Jake's dad promptly instructed his rapt audience to touch the car with eyeballs only. "No fingerprints please. This here's a Larado Da Vinci paint job." (Mr. Jackson was famous for screwing up words.) I was transfixed by her shiny chrome trim and whipped cream white leather seats. Jake and I walked around the car, looking at every angle of her sleek chassis. Jake was my best friend. I had a closer sensibility with Jake than with any of the girls in the neighborhood. Everyone called me a tomboy, and I guess I was. I preferred the nickname "Kat" rather than my given name of Kathleen Marie Caswell, a label which may have sounded more feminine but seemed foreign to me. My dark hair with cropped bangs was too short, and my sartorial choice of loose trousers and dirty sneakers often made me a target for derogatory comments. But I didn't care - all I required was comfort. And Jake claimed I looked like a young Audrey Hepburn which was good enough for me. My closeness to Jake was about more than my disinterest in dresses and lipstick. He and I enjoyed doing the same things - trainspotting, listening to Yankee games on the radio, wading in the nearby creek, or watching trains speed overhead from beneath the river railroad bridge. We knew the entire Yankees roster and all the numbers of the Wabash trains that traversed our town - as familiar to us as every bend in the creek. I loved Jake's family too. My world was full of endings, but to me, Jake and his family represented a world of sunshine-bright possibilities. During that memorable July, not many days passed before Mr. Jackson honored Jake and me with the task of washing the magnificent Ford convertible for him. "Wash her real gentle - like you're washing a baby's ass." The accompanying circular hand motion - like a man trying to find his way through the fog – was hypnotic. “And take some toothpaste to those white walls. They should be whiter than Wonder Bread.” Just one sign of bird droppings on the windshield would send Mr. Jackson into a spasmodic gait as he raced across the yard to the crime scene. If a flock of well-fed, hapless birds flew overhead, he would charge out with his BB gun aimed at the sky while indignant neighbors screamed out their windows, "Shut the hell up, Jackson!" Quite often, "you jackass" was added to the admonitions for both emphasis and assessment. For us, the entertainment never ended. On rare occasions, George Jackson even let us fire the BB gun into the elm trees, much to the dismay of Jake's mom, Gladys, who always cowered behind the door with one fist clutched to her apron and the other hand pressed to her face as though her efforts might somehow stifle the sound and make her invisible. Of course, every time we fired a shot, the nervous birds reacted by emptying themselves again, but the abundant discharge just added to the excitement and the justification to keep the gunfire going. Just for fun, Jake frequently yelled out in warning even if there were no birds in sight. “Hey Dad, I see a well-fed flock circling. They look like monster crappers!” I think George Jackson sometimes knew Jake was pulling his leg, but he always came running anyway, if only to entertain us. Gladys put a stop to it when he ran outside wearing only his boxer shorts - to our enthusiastic applause. Most summers, Jake and I loved to spend our idle days on the outskirts of town where we could lie in the warm, grassy field watching the Wabash Cannonball speed down the tracks in all her majesty as she transported goods and mail from one end of the country to the other, linking with tendrils of other railways along the way. The Cannonball was a constant flow of energy. Whenever the Cannonball came our way, we ran alongside her in hopes of garnering the attention of the travelers. To our great delight, woefully misdirected cattle sometimes required the Cannonball to slow down almost to a stop. On those occasions, passengers often opened windows to wave and shout greetings to us as we sidled up to the train. Jake always wanted to know where the passengers were going. Sometimes he fell deep into conversation with any passengers who would engage with him long enough for him to rattle off details about destinations of interest along the line. He was an encyclopedia of facts. As the train started to speed up again, he would yell things like, “Send me a postcard from Kansas City,” or “Tell St. Louis that Jake Jackson is coming!” We attached a lot of rituals to that pastime, including sharing our dreams of where our lives would take us - always together, fearless, and hell-bent on a good time. The summer of 1952 and that bright yellow Ford convertible proved to upend our usual routines, as we were content to stick around the neighborhood more often in hopes of an opportunity to wash the Crestline Sunliner and to "Start 'er up." We were so obsessed that we even went to the library to learn everything we could about Fords. Our car services involved no pay, but Jake and I agreed it was the ultimate privilege to be near an object of such workmanship and beauty. Periodically Mr. Jackson hosted a joy ride around the neighborhood, the three of us nestled happily into her cushy seats. We didn't go far - just across the railroad tracks and back. I had never ridden in a convertible, so it was thrilling to experience the wind in my hair and to have a chance to yell to the neighbors as we drove by. In my mind, I was Princess Grace Kelly parading through the streets of Wabash-Monaco. Sometimes we had to wait for trains to pass by. It was always a big thrill when the duly impressed travelers waved from the windows at the three of us traveling in a vehicle almost as wondrous as the Wabash Cannonball. Our status in our little world was elevated to new heights in that car. Although the seats were luxurious, we really couldn't feel them. They were smothered with clear plastic seat covers that Mr. Jackson had ordered from the same seat cover maker who had designed all the plastic protectors for Mrs. Jackson's living room furniture. She said he was a true artisan. (The guy had turned the couch into a water impermeable floating device.) The man’s name was Freddy Ashton, but Jake and I nicknamed him “Furniture Assassin,” because his covers were painfully uncomfortable and remarkably hideous. (We also determined that he must be a commie from Russia. After all, the Cold War was in full swing.) When we scooted across the Assassin-designed convertible seat covers, the friction on the plastic made farting sounds, so we entertained ourselves by making as many rude noises as possible. "The joker who made these is a real Fartisan-artisan," I whispered. Jake loved the new nickname. During one of our joy rides, Jake and Mr. Jackson were dressed in long pants, but I was wearing summer shorts, so my bare legs stuck to the sun baked seat covers like adhesive bandages. When Jake saw me wince, he tapped his dad on the shoulder. "Kat is stuck to the backseat, Dad.” Jake rolled his eyes and popped his Juicy Fruit gum as punctuation. “I think we’re gonna have to surgically remove her." Mr. Jackson was unflappable. "Oh here, honey, try this." He reached under his seat and then tossed a towel to me. It took me several minutes to gingerly un-stick myself from the seat that held me captive. “I think I left half my thigh on Fartisan’s evil seat wrap,” I groused. “Dead skin will only enhance the beauty. Don’t worry. The Fartisan-artisan can cover anything.” “Do you think Fartisan can design plastic skin grafts?" My snide remark somehow struck Jake's funny bone, and with a loud guffaw, he spewed forth his chewing gum. I gasped when I saw Jake’s expression and realized he had no clue where the gum had landed. In total panic, we began searching the backseat, convinced the gum had fallen somewhere inside the car. "What's going on back there, kids?" Mr. Jackson stared in the rear view mirror in an attempt to check out our suspicious activity. "Um, nothing, Dad. Kat just dropped her, uh, her comb." “No way! Kat has a comb?” “Very funny, Mr. Jackson.” My voice was overly animated as I tried to disguise my consternation. The gum was nowhere to be found on the seat or on Jake. For a minute, we thought we had avoided disaster, but then Jake's eyes grew wide as he silently pointed toward his feet. The chewing gum was on the floor mat. Well, not exactly on it, but in it – thanks to Jake's foot. I moaned when I saw the rubbery mess clinging to Jake’s shoe. "We're deader than dead, Jake." Without hesitation, Jake picked up the mat and nonchalantly tossed it out of the convertible. For a brief moment, I forgot how to breathe. I was so horrified that I was ready to bail out over the side of the car myself, but Jake was calmer than a day-old corpse. When we were at least a block from the scene of the crime, Jake called out to his father, "Hey Dad, did you know you're missing a floor mat back here?" "That's impossible!" "I'm sorry to say, but it's true." "Well I'll be a son of a-" "It's pretty easy for things like that to happen. The prep guys were probably making sure your car was extra clean and forgot to put all the mats back. You can get another one though, can't you?" "I'll have to go back to the dealership and try to locate it. Or I can just get Freddy Ashton to make up some clear plastic protectors for those nice carpet mats. You remember him, Jake – he made those terrific seat covers you’re sitting on." Jake and I started laughing so hard that I had to squeeze my legs together so as not to baptize the Fartisan’s seats. We were silly, care-free thirteen-year-olds with the freedom to act like hyenas, so we didn’t even attempt to restrain our boisterous amusement. We had such a great time that day – even those tortuous seat covers did not damper our spirits. Everything about that Ford made us happy. Eventually Mr. Jackson allowed Jake to start the car just for thrills, and the response of the engine seemed to excite Mr. Jackson as much as it did Jake. "Gas it, buddy!" Mr. Jackson would yell as he surreptitiously glanced about to assess the ongoing admiration of the locals. "That's it - good job. Now let Kat give it a try." That was the moment I found religion. When I jumped into the driver's seat and depressed the gas pedal, the roar of the V-8 engine excited me more than the time Lee Engstrom kissed me behind the art easel in the third grade. Both events were transformative. Even though my dad was usually drunk, and my mom had died, those were idyllic days. I had a lot of chores to do at home, but at Jake’s house, life was my idea of normal. Mrs. Jackson baked pies and yelled at Jake to clean his room. Mr. Jackson sneaked cigarettes in the garage and hung fake owls on the trees to fend off “those damnable woodpeckers.” And Jake and I walked to Charley Creek on weekends when Mr. Jackson was off somewhere cruising in the Ford. One night I asked my dad why we couldn't replace our own beat-up old Chevy pickup truck with an automobile like the Ford. "For God's sake, Kat, we could if you would just steal the damn keys from Jackson. He won’t miss it. He’s got more convertibles down at the dealership." That was the way my dad looked at life - the world owes a break to its humble masses just for sticking around this dismal place, so you better grab what you need before somebody else does … larceny notwithstanding. I was an idealistic, optimistic kid, so I didn't agree with Dad's philosophy about life. At least back then I didn't. In my imagination, I was a Ford Crestline Sunliner convertible streaming down a highway of Technicolor vistas, heading for exotic destinations - places where moms weren't dead, dads weren't drunks, and the world pulsated with promise. But soon I discovered a world that was not black and white, much less Sunliner yellow. BOOK I INDIANA