the train, for the old man. He didn’t know exactly why, but he was lonely.
Leaving two vehicles parked by the bar, Frank and Ronnie unloaded Ronnie’s gear and got into Frank’s truck. Bill and Riley got into the other. Pulling the horse trailers behind, they started off in the dark, headlights reflecting off the trees and barbed wire fences that bordered the highway. Frank stared into the dark. It seemed so distant — the trees, the dark — so solid and impersonal, uncaring, filled with eons of time. And he was with it all, so small and tiny and vulnerable. They drove into the mountains, and stopped at the trail head to sleep. Around them the crickets chirped and the mountains waited.
CHAPTER 3
Matthew Crane rose before the alarm went off. He walked through the hall to the kitchen, lit the gas stove, and placed the already prepared coffee pot on the burner. Outside, it was still pitch black; but, within an hour, the sun would touch the trees by the river, turning their dark forms crimson.
He walked to the bathroom and washed his face. It was not a bad face for seventy-two years, what you could see of it. All one could really make out were the piercing, captivating blue eyes that looked out upon the world from a circle of white curly hair and an out-of-control white beard. People called him Santa when he wasn’t around. He washed his face, put his teeth from the jar by the sink in his mouth, and thanked God for another day. Back in the bedroom, he pulled on his grey-blue striped bib overalls and set the matching engineer’s cap on his head. Walking back to the kitchen, he sat down, rolled a Bull Durham cigarette, and drank his coffee.
The sun began to turn the horizon red, and the chorus of morning dogs started across town. Matthew stood and began to move his large frame toward the door. Outside, the morning was chilly but comfortable. Matthew walked slowly, dragging his oil-stained boots. At the restaurant across the street, Grace would have his lunch ready. His life beat the hell out of sitting in the old folk’s home back in Albuquerque. Matthew had a lot to be thankful for, and he treated people around him in that manner. He was friendly, helpful, and quiet in an old man sort of way.
Two years earlier, it had been another day at the home for Matthew. Another boring, starched, and clean antiseptic day. He had eaten his gruel, swallowed his toast, taken his pill, and drunk his juice, just like the young nurse with the nice round ass had told him to. He had then walked like the prisoner he was to the sun room and started to read the paper. It was the same very day except the days he didn’t eat his gruel, or take his pill, or pinch the nurse’s ass. It was the same until he saw the want ads:
“Wanted. Man with experience with narrow gauge steam engines.”
An address was given with a time, “Apply in person.” Matthew cut the ad out of the paper and the next day walked away from the home, or the pen, as he called it. It had been easy from there. There had been nobody else qualified for the job. The young man doing the hiring looked worried until Matthew smiled at him and spoke, “Don’t worry, I won’t die driving the train. Put a young man on with me and I’ll train him.”
Two days later, Matthew was on the bus headed for Chama as chief engineer of the Narrow Gauge Railroad. It was a dream, a new world, a coming out, a rebirth. For Matthew, a railroad man for his entire life, it was the completion of a circle.
He was everywhere around the train, checking, looking, feeling, touching the black engine. In time, the engine became his, not a large cast iron hunk of steel, but his. His outdated, antique old engine, made to run by love and caring.
Matthew would stand and watch the people board the small passenger cars, the cars with their straight-backed red wooden seats. And then he would climb into the open engine and lay on the steam. The engine would shake and bounce and groan and ever so slowly it would start, one inch, two inches, groaning, proving it could continue. One-tenth the size of a modern locomotive, but full of guts. And it would climb and wheeze up the treacherous 14,000 foot mountain with its switchbacks and upgrades and downgrades. All the time Matthew would talk to the engine. His old hands would be the steel wheels, his heart the steam boiler.
Soon, he was as famous as the train itself. His face was on postcards mailed around the world. Children asked him questions and sat in his chair, looking at the gauges and firebox. From early May until the last run in the winter, Matthew had not missed a day in two years. He was never sick. “Had all those fuckin’ diseases,” he would say, and didn’t drink more than one beer a night. In time, the town grew to love him. It was forgotten that he hadn’t been born there.
Matthew opened the door of the restaurant and looked at the short, thin, Mexican lady behind the counter. It was early, before the people and the rush; nice. There was time for a smile. Grace handed Matthew his lunch, courtesy of the railroad.
“Nice day,” Matthew spoke.
“Nice day,” Grace answered as she busied herself behind the counter. Through the months, they had become good friends. Both were alone, both felt a bond.
“Trees will start to change before long,” Matthew spoke. “Thought I saw a few yellow aspen leaves yesterday.”
Grace smiled, “Another year, they go fast.”
Matthew looked at the lady and could think of nothing to say. “Well, time to get going.”
The bell on the door clanged behind him. In the early light, he could see several men moving about the train. By ten, everything would be ready and the passengers would be boarding. He walked across the street and up to the engine. The engine was small, twenty feet long, its large cattle bumper reaching over the track. Behind the large, round, steam boiler, one had a few feet to stand or sit in front of the coal bin. All around the engine, one could smell the mixture of coal and steam and grease. Matthew loved this engine. There would be no world without it. With this train he could look back in time to see the mountains before the tourist, before the paved highway, to a time when the train was shiny and new. To a time when it was the only vehicle that climbed the mountain, carrying gold and silver out of the high passes. At times, Matthew could see the old-timers, the drummers and miners, the explorers and bad men. Sitting in the engine he could look back and see, standing by the passenger cars, men in leather and furs with large, well-oiled guns hanging from their hips and shoulders. There would be sheriffs hopping a ride to the top with their horses to hunt down bandits trying to hide in the vast, untamed wilderness. At times, he could see piles of hides and meat waiting for markets back East, and an occasional woman, all perfumed up with feathers in her hat, leaving a sordid past behind with the mountains.
Matthew knew the little train, the creaks and groans. He knew when it needed coal or water, knew when it needed grease and oil. The train talked to him and he listened. Both were in tune with time, and space, and dreams. Both were old and tired, but pertinent to a world that moved onward too quickly, too fast to enjoy or see unless moments were grabbed by cameras as one ran frantically through life. He stepped up into the engine, nodding to the apprentice engineer, touched the throttle, and laughed out loud, “Today, won’t neither of us die.” And he pulled the whistle that woke up the town.
CHAPTER 4
If one were to fly north from Chama, New Mexico, one would start at 7,000 feet and fly over the mountains looming up to 14,000. It is a green, lush land in the summer, dotted by fir and spruce and aspen stands. The high peaks and meadows pasture for sheep and cattle in the summer. In the winter it is white with snow. The land around the foothills of the mountains is divided, for the most part, into private ranches; big spreads boasting of times in the past when they made a living. Now ghosts of what they were, most are owned by oil men and sheiks who use them for tax write-offs and hunting. They run a few cows to help them feel like cowboys. The ranches are worked by young men, men with large drooping western hats, boots with their Levis tucked in the top, and spurs that ring when they walk.
