bottle of Bailey’s Irish Cream. It was good, they were alive. The government had not sold off the mountain to Exxon and for a week the world would go on without them.
Lying in their sleeping bags, the Coleman out, each man held his own thoughts in the reflection of the fire from the stove. Ronnie thought about his kids and how maybe they would never see something like this; never see the woods free, never be able to go back far enough to leave people behind. His kids living in their world of video games and cars. Kids of LA, space kids.
Riley lay and thought of the first time they had come here. A phone call, a sadness for distant friends, people to mark time and lives with, people to fight the loneliness with.
Frank exhaled deeply. There were no thoughts in his mind. Just the sound of the fire and the quiet of the night that surrounded the tent.
Bill lay, and in his mind’s eye he saw the old shuffling train engineer sitting in his house, the walls cracked and dirty, the windows caked with coal dust and grime. The old man was sitting, sipping coffee, smoking, uncaring, unfeeling, unremembering his past. “His past lives,” Bill mumbled to himself. He rolled on his side, and he saw the train pulling up the hill, trailing dark clouds of smoke and steam. He saw people leaning out the window snapping pictures and pointing to the scenery. He saw little kids holding onto their mothers, saying they had to go to the bathroom. He saw fathers looking out, running through their minds younger days of reading books about the Rocky Mountains. In front, giving the engine steam, he saw Matthew Crane smiling, talking to the engine, coaxing her over the mountains one more time. As sleep overcame him, he saw the engineer as a young man, standing with a young blonde-haired lady beside him as he told her about the train, showing her the large pistons that drew power from the boiler and pushed the wheels forward.
In the morning, after a quick cup of coffee, the men walked towards the lake with their fishing poles in hand. Frank looked at the water, saw a trout jump, looked at his friends, and then turned and looked back down the trail.
“Cocksuckers,” he yelled at the sky, “all of you kiss-ass, mother-fuckers, you can’t get me here.”
CHAPTER 6
Matthew Crane took a deep breath and opened the refrigerator door. Nothing had changed during the last thirty minutes when he had last opened the door. He shut the door, turned, walked, and sat down at the small wooden table. He hated nights like this, nights when sleep did not come alone in a house that held no memories or warmth. He looked at his watch. It was still hours before it was time to be with the train. The bars were closed, Grace would not be at the restaurant for several hours. Nobody to talk to or smile to. Old age was hell at times. He stood, walked, and looked out the window that faced directly towards the railroad tracks. His house stood not fifty feet from the tracks. The red caboose sat even with his door, then the seven passenger cars, then the engine. He stopped them this way every evening. Matthew looked at the darkened caboose, old and outdated, but fresh with its coat of new paint.
Wish somebody could paint me, he thought as he turned and walked slowly back to the bedroom to lay back down. There was a time, he thought, shutting his eyes but knowing that sleep would not come. At times like these, his thoughts drifted to when he was a boy.
When Matthew was a boy in Kansas, he would still be asleep when his father went off to work. But, he would hear the cry of the locomotive that took his dad from Tribune to Topeka and back. His father didn’t have a glorious run, cattle and pigs, but it was still a train. From the day he was born, Matthew was taught trains. He knew the names of the engineers and firemen, the brakemen. He knew the routes, and the speeds at which the trains ran. When it was time for him to find work, it was natural for Matthew to join the railroad. When both his mother and father were killed in a fire, Matthew left Kansas, moved to Durango, Colorado, and became the chief engineer for the narrow gauge railroad that ran up and over the passes to Silverton and Ouray hauling out the gold and silver. It was different coming from the plains of western Kansas to the mountains of Colorado, and coming from the large engines of the long trains to the small narrow engines of the mountains. But, he loved the line. It was the most beautiful run in the country.
In Durango, he married a Colorado girl and had two children: Bill, who was killed in Vietnam, and James, who died in a car wreck in California, trying his best not to work for the railroad. Three weeks after James’ death, his wife died in bed, without suffering, a lost and bewildered look on her face. A year later, the narrow gauge shut down and Matthew finished his railroad work in Texas. After retirement, he moved to New Mexico with its sun and warmth, and he grew old and lonely. Erasing the sound of the engines and the flashes of his family that appeared before his eyes, he was tough, not asking for anything, sitting, growing older, waiting to die.
With his retirement fund, he moved into an old folk’s home and began to remember about life. This led to his job with the Chama train. When this happened, he discovered that he was the last narrow gauge man in the country. Matthew was
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