The Train Jumper

Chapter 2

CHAPTER TWO

I had tried to forget the chicken incident, but it became a fresh wound the day my dad showed up to see Mr. Jackson's Ford. However, the embarrassment was something I was able to swallow just to see the light return to my father’s eyes, if only momentarily.

July dripped into early August, and Jake and I were dreading the start of school which was looming ahead. The Indiana summer days were long, hot, and humid, but I could sense autumn sneaking around the bend.

One morning, I was sitting at the table eating bacon when Jake walked through the front door. We never needed to knock at each other's houses. Jake was like a brother to me, although Dad referred to him as "a bland fixture who was easy to trip over." Jake wasn't bland - he was just pale and unremarkable in his appearance. His hair was the color of cornflakes, and his face had been seasoned with paprika freckles. I liked Jake’s appearance - he reminded me of the rural Indiana corn fields. He was small in stature, so I towered over him by four inches. I was stronger too, although I sometimes let him win at arm wrestling because he claimed that the humiliation of always losing was stunting his growth.

Jake was not into sports as I was. I had a good arm for baseball and could pass and catch as well as any of the boys at school. Jake did not excel in any physical activities, but he never missed one of my games. His dad and mom didn't either. They often sat in the stands to cheer me on. I knew they were attempting in some way to make up for my nonexistent family life, although they never talked about it. Their presence filled me with a confidence that I wish Jake had. However, even though sports were of no interest to Jake, when it came to knowledge about things like railroads and the stars, architecture, wildlife, and cooking, he was chock full of interesting, random facts.

That morning I shoved a piece of bacon under his nose, but he shook his head to refuse it. "No thanks – bad for the heart.”

“That’s a rumor that was started by pigs.”

“Proof enough they’re too smart to eat. Com'on Kat, we're gettin' outta here."

Bacon in hand, I silently got up and followed. I never asked questions because Jake always had a day of untold adventures planned for us. We wandered through the field behind my house, navigating the tall grass and inhaling the delicious aroma of Indiana corn ripening for harvest.

Jake and I always carried long sticks in case an ill-mannered snake might cross our paths. He refused to walk with me unless I also carried a stick. "Did you really fend off a rattlesnake last summer, Jake?" I asked as we traversed through the rows of corn. “Or was it more like a little earthworm on crutches?”

"Yes, it was a man-eating snake, and I was quite heroic. But I may have screamed the whole time … and I may have also soiled my trousers. I'm not sure because I went home and promptly passed out."

Jake had a way of embellishing that always entertained me. He once complained of diarrhea that was so bad it was shooting out of his butt like bottle rockets to the tune of ‘The Star-Spangled Banner.’ I'm not sure anyone appreciated his humor as much as I did.

On that August morning, Jake stopped to stare at me, as he often did. When we were younger, he had poked fun of my pale green eyes, claiming the unusual color indicated I was possessed by the Devil of Lettuce, and nicknamed me ‘Lettuce-stopheles.’ I named him ‘Saltine’ like the cracker and told him to stick out his tongue more often so people could see him. I knew he thought I was pretty, and his opinion was the only one I cared about.

“You’ve got bacon in your teeth, Lettuce-stopheles,” Jake abruptly announced, “but your teeth are perfect.” He shoved back my lip with his thumb for a better look.

“Get your dirty thumb out of my mouth!”

“I have a slow tooth.” Jake pointed to one front tooth that slightly overlapped the other. “I think it’s slowly ruining my James Dean looks.” Jake distorted his face, knowing he could get my attention with just a curl of his lip. He raised one eyebrow and made it walk around his forehead, a move he had perfected just to delight me. When I tried to mimic him, I only succeeded in looking like a lunatic. Words were never necessary between us - we could entertain each other with our faces.

After cutting through the cornfields, we settled in our favorite spot to wait for the Wabash Cannonball. No matter how many times we waited for her, it was always thrilling when she streamed into view. Others took her for granted, but we understood the power and the promise of that exalted locomotive.

Her soothing sounds forced the cacophony of my own life into the background as we worshiped her from afar. She anchored me to the land, and her consistency gave me the comfort I never had at home.

Jake was on his feet immediately when he heard her bellowing from way around the bend. "Here she comes, the 10:10 - right on schedule heading west from Lafayette to Logansport!" He called out the same thing every time we saw her, but each time it filled me with excitement. I jumped up to join him as we both ran closer to the tracks, gathering discarded glass bottles as we made our way.

Soon I spotted her shiny blue dome approaching, her prominent cowcatcher jutting forward like a finely waxed silver mustache. Her face was adorned with a red flag with a dark blue rectangular inset bearing big yellow letters that identified her majestic arrival - WABASH. "Follow the flag!" we yelled the second we were able to see the train. That was her slogan - and a mighty good one we thought, because in our imaginations, we followed her everywhere.

On the last bend before the Wabash Cannonball reached us, the engineer sounded her whistle again, which was our signal to move in. As the train crawled closer, we started firing the empty soda bottles at her embossed flag. Of course, the object was to hit our target, but we seldom ever got close enough to make contact. I had managed a few times, but Jake could never land one. It didn't matter because it was all part of the greeting process. No disrespect was ever intended. To us, it was exactly the opposite - we wanted her to know we were there for her as her faithful following.

Jake saw a man in the window of the passenger car as the mighty Cannonball streamed by. He immediately launched into a wild tale because we loved to create a story for every face.

"Look! That man with the mustache is meeting his long-lost wife in San Francisco, where they plan to stay at the exclusive Fairmont Hotel.”

"Why was she lost?"

"She took the wrong train," he explained, rolling his eyes in hyperbolic exasperation, as though I was expected to know the plot to his story. “The poor thing has been wandering around Salt Lake City for over a year. The husband doesn’t know she has been Mormon-ized.”

“‘Mormonized,’ huh?” I took my turn next. "See that lady in the blue hat? She’s going to have tea with her friend in the Grand Hall of Union Station in St. Louis. Afterward, they plan to visit the Missouri Botanical gardens-"

“Where her hand gets stuck in a mutant Venus Flytrap!”

"Hey, whose story is this? But you're right. Her friend has to chew the lady's hand off to free her from the ravenous plant."

"So they take the hand home in her matching blue handbag.”

Delighted with our own humor, we followed with a round of slapping and shoving each other.

Based on the mood we were in, our conjectures were either funny or dramatic. But Jake always made everything colorful and added a happy ending.

After counting the cars and gathering a few more bottles to return for money for Popsicles at the IGA grocery, we both lay down in the warm grass and focused on the iridescent blue sky. As if on cue, we began singing the first and last verses of the song “The Wabash Cannonball” - made popular by a singer named Roy Acuff, according to Jake's research. We only sang two verses (the only ones we knew, and the only two we cared to know) because the lyrics expressed it all for us:

‘Listen to the jingle, The rumble and the roar, as she glides along the woodland through the hills and by the shore.’

We always sang the last line with gusto, belting out the words, “On the Wabash Cannonball.”

We had learned the tune while hanging out at the Chop-n-Bleed Barbershop. A lot of the old timers in there enjoyed singing, and four of the men were part of a – you guessed it – barbershop quartet. They sang at all the local functions, but they always practiced at the barbershop.

I couldn't afford our local beauty shop, so I usually cut my own hair over the kitchen sink, but once in a while I saved up enough babysitting money to get my hair cut at the barbershop with Jake. It was cheaper than the beauty salon, and the big draw was the singing.

Jake referred to us as the "barbershop duet." Singing was simply another way to honor the rails. After a second chorus of “The Wabash Cannonball,” we launched into another Hoosier favorite, “On the Banks of the Wabash”:

“Oh, the moonlight's fair tonight along the Wabash …”

The song’s sonorous notes blended into the balmy air with ease. "Do you know a guy named Paul Dresser wrote that tune?"

"I do now. You're going to wear out those encyclopedias of yours. Hey, wait a minute! Did you go to the library without me, dang it?" He knew I loved to go to the library with him. It was our magical clubhouse. "So did you go there solo, Jake, you traitor?"

"Guilty. Dad was lecturing me again about sports, so I ducked out. He still somehow thinks signing me up for baseball will give me abilities that are just not in my genes. In spite of my dazzling good looks, I will never be Mickey Mantle."

"More like Mickey Mouse."

"Hilarious."

"Com’on - we both know you're a world-class klutz, but you make up for it in smarts."

"He definitely does not agree with your evaluation of my acumen. Just because my grades last year were spectacularly inadequate, he thinks I'm mentally deficient."

"No way, Jake. He does not."

"I keep trying to explain how I'm just a painfully slow reader, but that at least I remember most everything I read. I told him I could recite the entire back of the Cheerios box for him, but he wasn’t impressed.”

“The only thing ‘slow’ about you is that tooth of yours.”

“You’re a riot today. I was just concerned because I always feel like I let him down.”

“Did he say that?”

“No. But you know how his face does all the talking. It’s like a silent movie. Anyway, it was too early to wake you, so I slipped out."

"It's okay. We can go later.”

We trudged through the grass a bit longer, but my irritation was growing because the gnats were attacking my legs as if they were breakfast sausages. “It's already getting hot,” I groused as I slapped another hungry carnivore off my leg.

“Yeah, I’m getting eaten alive too.”

“Let’s get out of here. You wanna walk to the creek or go hang out under the river railroad bridge?"

"Maybe a little later. Right now, I have something else in mind."

"Oh yeah - what?"

"Let's wait for the next train and hop it."

“Yeah. Right”

“I mean it. Let’s hitch a ride.”

I looked at Jake in disbelief. I couldn't believe what I was hearing. "You better be joking.”

“No, I’m more serious than a five-foot hole in a six-foot boat.”

“Have you lost your marbles? Hell no, we are NOT jumping a train! You know train hopping is incredibly dangerous!"

"I’m gonna try, Kat."

"Shut up, Jake. People die hitching rides on trains! What's wrong with you today?"

“You always play it so safe, but being safe won’t get you anywhere. Risk has its rewards. Let’s live a little.”

“Yes, that’s my point - let’s LIVE, not die!”

"I’m not going to die. If you don't want to jump, it's okay by me. You can stay here."

"Please stop talking, Jake." I covered my ears and started walking ahead of him.

"Kat, don't you think I can do it?"

"I don't care if you can do it! Where is this coming from? Have you gone brain-dead? If you're trying to prove something, just forget it. I'm not going to listen to this ridiculous nonsense!"

"I think it'll be easy. I’ll board where the grass is high, so if I fall, I’ll have a cushion. We've watched other train jumpers do it. It can't be that hard. That hobo guy Joe only has one arm, and old Doc comes and goes all the time."

"Joe's arm is really strong, and Doc may be old, but he has experience."

"He had to start somewhere."

I could see Jake was revving himself up. I always knew when he was talking himself into something he really didn't believe in. "Jake, you could get maimed - or even paralyzed! Just drop it, dammit!”

He paused for a moment and stared down the rails to some unknown destination. I didn’t know what was going through his mind, but when I heard a distant steam whistle, I knew we had to get out of there.

“Com’on, Jake. We’re leaving.”

As I was turning back toward the pathway to the street, Jake suddenly shouted, "I've gotta do it, Kat! Here she comes!"

My jaw dropped open in shock when Jake started racing toward the tracks. For a split second, I watched him in disbelief. I was stunned and scared and frozen in place. Then without hesitation, I ran after him. My heart pounded against my chest, but my legs kept moving. He had already closed the distance between where I was and the tracks. I was terrified, but I couldn’t let him do it alone. I knew Jake needed my strength, just as I always needed his willpower. As with all things, Jake and I were in it together.