Ghost of a Chance

Chapter 5

The year was 1920. The warm, early-fall day was a pleasant surprise. The first frost had already killed the year's crop of ticks, along with most of the more delicate flowers, so the people of Amosville took advantage of the weather to finish up the last few garden and yard tasks before cold weather arrived in earnest. It always did. Warm days in autumn were paid for in winter.

Timothy Peach wiped sweat from his forehead and leaned back from his work to relax for a moment, resting without getting up from his knees. Since his return from the battlefields of war-torn Europe, he appreciated the little things in life more, and he had spent the morning working on the rose beds around his mother's home. He rubbed the small of his back; his strong fingers pushing the discomfort out. Timothy knelt and examined the stems, his bright eyes alert to any sign of rot or fungus.

A loud crash startled him. The violence and force of the sound filled his head; it sounded as though his mother's entire house had just collapsed. He glanced up, almost expecting it to be a great pile of splinters. The house looked fine.

Timothy hesitated only a second; his service in France had conditioned him to respond without thinking. He ran from the front yard, his long legs dashing toward the noise before he had time to consider what he was doing, or what he could do when he got there. The crash had been an ear-breaking scream of metal on metal ending in a piercing smash. Timothy knew a sound of that magnitude could only come from the railroad.  

He ran across the street, dodging an oncoming Model T. Cars were new, and they were required to move at a snail’s pace in town. “Come on,” he shouted to the driver.  Duncan McKinnesy waved back, and Timothy snorted as he saw the young driver clutch back on the steering bar.  Model Ts were simple compared to the biplanes Timothy had flown in France, but he understood Duncan’s apprehension.  Guiding giant machines through the world took a lot of skill, learning, and plain old guts. He didn't wait to see if Duncan was following him or not.

Timothy sprinted through the front yard of the Lawsen homestead and around the side of the house. Now he could smell the accident; a burnt taste of cinders and hot steam, and he heard the cries of injured people.  Some cried for help, others were moaning without words. Some of them aren't going to make it, he thought grimly.

“Come on!” Timothy shouted to Jacob Lawsen.  The older man stood on his back porch, a forgotten pipe in one hand and the morning paper in the other.  At Timothy’s call, he lurched into motion.

“Sounds bad,” he said, catching up to Timothy.  

Timothy nodded. “It always is,” he answered. He crossed the dirt and gravel alley and plunged into the thicket of briers and weeds separating the railroad’s property from the town. The two men pushed toward the railroad tracks. The cries for help were louder. Timothy wished he could stuff his ears so he couldn't hear them; sometimes the sounds of the wounded were worse than the sight.

The railroads ran everywhere, omnipresent twin ribbons of steel binding the nation together like yarn wrapped around a ball. The major lines connected the major cities, and thousands of smaller, feeder lines existed, channeling men, women, children and goods from the villages and the farms upward, toward the great cities. There the goods, and sometimes the people, were consumed.  The railroads pulsed with the lifeblood of their connected cities and towns, but they were also the death of many individuals. The locomotives were wild animals, monsters barely held in check, and apt to rebel. Every year, thousands were injured, crushed, maimed and killed.