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Carolina Special by Rosanne Griffeth
If you don't drive the train, the train will surely drive you.
He peered though bifocals and fingered the photograph, turning and bending it in his hands. His hair still started low on his forehead as it had in the photo, though now it was white.
The nervous tic he indulged in at such times--times when he wanted to talk but were not sure he should--involved his pipe. He tapped the corncob against the palm of his hand. Tap, tap, tap. He could empty the world of cinders if he only kept tapping his pipe.
“Yep, that were me. I never talked about that night. Never wanted to,” he said, ice blue eyes watering and bloodshot from the pipe smoke filling the room.
“It's like the war, you know? Most fellas don't want to talk about the war, or if they do, they don't talk about the real stories. The blood, the pain--what you went through.”
He rubbed a hand against the flannel of his shirt, wiping the pipe soot off and reached for the bag of Prince Albert.
“We saw a gang of things running those steam engines. Things we weren't meant to see. Hideouts of criminals, moonshiners, rumrunners--we saw it all. We saw people die and couldn't stop--and that's not counting the fools who got in the way of the trains.”
He stared into the bowl of his pipe for a moment, then tapped the tobacco down with a stained forefinger.
“But that night,” he said, “that night was the night I figured I'd stay back at the yard and fix trains ‘stead of running them.”
***
The Carolina Special debarked from the Spartanburg train station for the red-eye run to Knoxville in October of 1919. Young and jaunty, Floyd wore his rail cap askew. He shoveled coal into the maw of a steam engine to learn his trade and one day, he would be at the helm of a steamer.
He pulled the step out from the locomotive and climbed up to the train cab, adjusting his cap. Dressed in the striped overalls trainmen wore stood a relic of a fireman going through a checklist. He cocked a wry, bushy eyebrow at Floyd.
Floyd wiped a hand on his overalls and extended it. "I'm Floyd Simmons. Looks like I'll be helping you out tonight."
The old man squinted up at Floyd and spat a stream of chaw juice out the window, ignoring the outstretched hand. "They calls me Dusty, so I reckon you can call me that too. Get to shovelin' then."
Floyd gave a mock salute and bent his back to feeding the locomotive. The train lurched from the depot heading north toward Asheville clattering along as it approached Saluda Mountain.
“Alrighty, then, Floyd--that'll do her.” Dusty fiddled with the oil gauge and checked the steam valve, before sitting back on the bench and cocking his head at Floyd. “Tell me boy, have you ever hear tell of the Brown Mountain lights?”
“Can't say that I have, Dusty.”
“You just might see them tonight when we climb up Saluda.”
“What are they?”
“Some say they're the wandering spirits of dead Injuns. Some say they are the spirits of runaway slaves lost in the mountains.”
Floyd grinned. “Sure it ain't just some of those old boys firing up stills up there in the hills?”
The light faded and the full moon cast blue light over the mountains. In the west, the sometimes rounded, sometimes jagged peaks of the Smoky Mountains pierced the sky. Mist floated like marshmallow cream in the valleys. The stars dimmed in comparison to the moon but the Milky Way still spiraled like a chalk smudge on the sky.
“We won't have much of a break now, son. Here comes Saluda--get yourself a' shoveling!”
When the rails were forged up Saluda Mountain, they took them straight up. The most treacherous stretch of rail in the nation, the Saluda Grade, killed dozens during runaway train incidents. They said if you didn't drive the train on the Saluda, the train would drive you.
“Shovel, son, shovel!”
Floyd loaded the coal into the firebox, supplying the steam needed for the ascent up the Saluda. Dusty adjusted the oil and steam flow valves on the boiler. The engine chuffed harder and faster as they used more steam to power the climb.
At the peak, they paused while the air monkeys worked the brakes for the trip down the Saluda grade. Dusty pointed to the horizon.
“Do you see them?”
Floyd saw the place where the mountains met the night sky. Lights twinkled in the mist shrouding the horizon. The tracks disappeared into a solid wall of fog glowing in the darkness. The train ploughed through that veil, that doorway, like a knife in the darkness. Lights danced through the fog like fireflies on the mountain.
The train creaked on its axis on the top of Saluda Mountain. The brakemen waved the go-ahead and they started the descent, brakes screeching like banshees. The train gathered speed; the howling brakes its only restraint. The train lurched and Dusty lost his balance, slamming his head against the engine with a thud, and crumpling to the floor.
“Dusty!” Floyd shouted over the brakes, “You all right, old man?”
Floyd edged to Dusty across the juddering cab and lifted his head. A smear of blood stained his hand. He placed two fingers on Dusty's neck, but could not feel a pulse. The old man was dead.
Down the track, the bank of fog drew closer. As the train plummeted down the mountain, Floyd heard the cry over the scream of the brakes.
“Runaway Train!”
They approached Slaughter's Cut gaining speed, the brakes squealing in outrage. The clackety-clack of the train on the tracks fused into one seamless roar. Floyd adjusted the steam input and held on as the train crashed down the mountain.
The wind whipped by and Floyd's eyes lost focus. The sound of the wind and the rails faded as he lost consciousness.
Floyd floated in the fog, his body light. He opened his eyes to the mist and the silence that settled over everything, like the quiet of a snowstorm. The fog absorbed the momentum of the train, suspending it, cushioning it and the world tripped along. The tiny lights floated around him like fireflies. The machinery in the cab shimmered and glowed. He heard voices in a tunnel, like the whispering voices on the edge of consciousness before dreaming--the ones you strained to hear but never could.
Floyd reached a hand, grimy with coal dust and cupped one of the tiny lights. It flickered in his hand, giving off heat. The lights swarmed like moths to lantern light. They pulsed and swarmed around Dusty's head and the old fireman rose off the floor of the cab, suspended in the mist. Floyd heard the tinkling sound of the voices.
“Sleep--sleep--sleep--”
The lights formed one brilliant, pulsing mass. A glowing face coalesced and Floyd felt a sweetness in his heart. A woman's face floated in the lights, blinding him.
“You see us, don't you?” She looked at him with her gleaming eyes.
“Who are you?” Floyd's voice quivered.
“We are the ones who came before and the ones who have come after. We are the Nunne-hi or the sidhe or the ghosts of time,” she said. “We guard this pass.”
Floyd reached a hand to touch her, but she drew back, folding inside herself.
“No, it is enough that you see me. If you touch me, you will not be able to return from this place.”
“This place? As far as I know I'm in the train cab in a fog bank.” Floyd wanted to believe this, but in the glowing of the cab and the strange roaring silence, he saw nothing beyond the window except the white fog and the lights.
“You are between the worlds with us,” she said. “And when you go back to your world, you shouldn't remember any of this. But you may see other things because of this--Now you must sleep—sleep…”
Floyd heard roaring in his ears and, somehow, a door opened and he fell back into reality. He stood in the dim light of the rocking train, placidly running on the tracks. No squealing brakes, no rushing wind--they chugged away at a normal pace.
Dusty sat peering at the gauges as though nothing happened.
“Dusty! Are you alright?”
Dusty turned and looked at Floyd and frowned.
“Of course I am, you daft boy. Why shouldn't I be?”
Floyd realized they no longer hurtled down the Saluda, but winding through the foothills on the other side of the mountain.
He leaned out and drank in the cinder-flecked wind, before turning back and grinning at Dusty.
The old man looked hard at Floyd.
“You saw them, didn't you? You saw her.”
“Yes! Yes, I saw them and I remember it all! She said I wouldn't, but I remember.”
Dusty fiddled with the gauges.
“You best put them out of your mind, son. I saw them once too. They saved us that time and I s'pose they just saved us again. Just forget them, boy and maybe you won't see them things.”
Floyd looked into the night. A spectral hound ran beside the train and keeping pace with it. Its jaws slathered glowing green drool behind it, flicking its flanks with specks of ghost dog slobber. The hound rolled its head back, howled and turned, meeting Floyd's eyes.
Floyd turned away with a strangled noise.
“Yep, that's what I'm talkin' about,” the old man said.
When Floyd turned back, the beast had vanished in the darkness.
Dusty released some steam and said, “Oh, they only has a certain territory they range in. They're liable to be more active tonight. You won't see them this solid any other night of the year.”
“How come? What's so special about tonight?”
Dusty pointed and nodded toward the firebox. Floyd took the hint and shoveled coal into the heart of the engine.
“It's Halloween, son. Day of the Dead, Feast of All Souls, the night when the veil between worlds is thinnest. Didn't you pay no mind to the day when we set out?”
“So, Dusty, when did you see her?”
“It was a long time ago, son. A long time ago. I was a much younger man. And like I said, it's best to put it out of your mind. By the end of this journey to K-town you'll know what I mean.”
Floyd tried to concentrate on the sound of the steam chuffing and the color of the smoke puffing from the stack. The train chugged on through the night, making its way toward Asheville. A trail of white steam snaked behind them, smudging the night sky. The lights shined brighter than the first time he saw them, radiating beautiful menace.
He scanned the track ahead and saw a trestle looming in the distance. The train reduced its speed as they drew closer and Floyd saw a dark emptiness under the bridge--a gaping hole sparkling with misery. Swinging from a hangman's noose, a woman's corpse dangled from the trestle, her garments white, glowing and floating around her--stirred by some phantom wind.
Floyd froze and his knuckles gripped the coarse metal of the window. He wanted to look away but could not. The corpse raised her head--her eyes bugging from strangulation and the noose cutting her neck, nearly decapitating her. Dark blood clotted the front of her garments.
From her swollen, distended mouth she screamed, “My baby--where's my baby?”
They pulled abreast of the trestle and dark, misshapen figures emerged from the tree roots on the banks. They were a miserable lot, moaning and howling in agony. Tibias and femurs connected with rib bones and skulls in no particular order, but still they moved forward with malevolent purpose.
Floyd recoiled as they swarmed the locomotive.
“Dusty--we got to go faster!” he screamed. The shades overtook the train, rattling their parched bones.
“Don't look at them, boy! We can't go any faster through here.”
Skeletal hands with broken fingers rose in supplication to Floyd and he grabbed the shovel to beat them off. The hung woman screamed and keened for her baby and the things emerging from the roots moaned. Their fleshless bones made a dreadful clattering as they banged against each other.
The engine cleared the trestle and Floyd looked at the tracks behind them. The mass of bone monsters bounded forward like a pack of rabid dogs, snarling and snapping. They leapt as one creature, only to be jerked back like dogs on a chain, collapsing in a rattling heap.
Floyd threw up out of the side of the cab. He wiped his mouth on a bandana and whirled around. He grabbed Dusty by the shoulders and shook him. “What in the hell was that?"
Dusty pushed him off. “I told you not to look. That's Suicide Bridge. It's where the unquiet spirits of suicides in these parts go when they die.”
Dusty fished a bag of chaw from his overalls and stuck a plug in his cheek.
“Now, maybe you'll listen, boy. Don't look at them. Eventually, all of that will just be blurs on the edge of your vision. Just like other people see them.”
“Other people see them?”
“Well of course, son, didn't you ever wonder about all the times you saw something out the corner of your eye? Thought it was a bird or something, maybe? A piece of paper tumbling in the wind? That's what they all think. Yessiree--that's what they all think. Because the truth would be too terrible to believe. And folks believe what they want to believe, don't they?”
The night train rattled past Asheville through the autumn night, winding along the banks of the French Broad River on rails blasted into the rock of the cliffs. The river glinted and danced in the moonlight.
High above the river, Floyd heard voices chanting in a singsong manner. The rhythm of the train kept time with the voices and the sound of metal striking rock in a relentless beat hammered between the verses. One clear voice shouted the first line of the song, and a chorus of others answered.
I'm goin' back to the Swannanoa Tunnel That's my home, baby, that's my home--
Cap'n, Cap'n can't you see? Linin' this track is killing po' me!
Asheville Junction, Swannanoa Tunnel-- All caved in, baby, all caved in--
Cap'n, Cap'n can't you see? Linin' this track is killing po' me!
Hammer fallin' from my shoulder-- All day long, baby, all day long--
Cap'n, Cap'n can't you see? Linin' this track is killing po' me!
Take this hammer, throw it in the river-- It rings right on, baby, it shines right on--
Ten thousand biscuits in my hand, Gonna sop my way to th' Promised Land--
Floyd lost himself in the singing, the sound of the work song mesmerizing him. He rocked to the cadence of the voices rising from the river, then Floyd rose above his body and looked down at himself. The song sucked him down like a whirlpool, and suddenly he wanted to leap from the train into the black and silver water of the French Broad, drawn by an invisible thread. He could not see Dusty in the train cab. He saw himself move to the door and reach for the latch, feeling a surge of joy at the thought of plummeting to the water.
His hands gripped the cutting metal of the door and he leaned into the wind, but rough hands grabbed Floyd and threw him across the cab before he could jump from the train. Hard slaps jolted him and he opened his eyes to Dusty's craggy face. Dusty spat a stream of tobacco juice from the cab.
“Sorry, boy, my fault. Shoulda told you to close your ears as well. Chain gang perished in the river down there when they were laying this track. They's buried under these rails. Looks like they just invited you to join ‘em.”
Floyd yearned to know how the song ended. The voices toiling in the darkness still sang on the edge of his hearing. The whistle drowned their song and the train rattled onward.
Clouds dashed across the night sky, covering the moon for a moment before racing away. The French Broad reflected the moon on its surface, looking like a ballroom floor. The train slowed at the town of Harvest Hill and Dusty pointed to the cliffs rising above the town by the river.
“Look up there, boy,” he said, “This might be something good for you to see.”
A white cross, illuminated by moonlight, glowed from a high place on the cliff face.
“What's that for?”
“Well, you'll see in a minute, but it's there so all trainmen can say a prayer for the girl who died on these tracks some years past. Her daddy put it up there.”
“All the way up there? You'd need some serious ropes to get up there,” Floyd said.
“Yes, that would have been the safe thing to do,” said Dusty.
Floyd looked down at the tracks below and saw a young girl emerge from under the train. She dashed away to the river dressed in an old-fashioned party dress with frills and bows. She glanced back, waved at Floyd and flashed him a snaggletooth grin. She ran to the center of the river, hovering there, waiting. A man, dressed like a trainman, emerged from behind the glowing cross. He spread his arms and floated to the surface of the water where the child waited. He offered a hand to her in a courtly fashion.
The two ghosts waltzed over the slick surface of the river, twirling and dipping gracefully. Floyd heard the band playing somewhere on the wind.
“Who are they?” Floyd lowered his voice, not wanting to interrupt the ghost dance.
“That's the little girl who died in this spot. And that's her daddy with her. You see, he didn't use no ropes to erect that cross on the cliff. He fell to his death while he was trying to climb back down. The love they shared for each other is what haunts this place.”
Dusty pulled a bandana from his pocket, blew his nose and dabbed his eyes.
Floyd looked hard at him.
“What? Cinder got in my eye is all.” The old man turned away, scrutinizing the control panel.
The train emerged from the mountains and picked up steam across the plateau. Floyd kept his eyes on the engine as Dusty advised. If he heard or saw a shadow or flash of light from the corner of his eye, Dusty would look at him and shake his head.
The miles clattered by and they approached New Market, forty miles from Knoxville. The train slowed to take on water. As they drew to a squealing halt, Dusty started packing his gear.
“That's a good idea,” he said, “I'll start getting my stuff ready to go, too.”
“No hurry, boy,” the old man said. “This is where I get off, I'm afraid. It's been right nice traveling with you.”
“Hey, old man, you can't get off here! There ain't nothing here but the water tower. ‘Sides--you have to sign off in K-town for me.”
Dusty gave him a long narrow look, the blue peeking from his creased eyelids.
“Oh really?” he said, his voice dropping. “Look around you.”
Floyd ran a soot-covered hand through his hair and looked toward what should have been rolling hills and farmland.
All around the train, the remains of a dreadful train wreck lay in shambles. The real train, the one he stood on, crossed and intersected shards of twisted metal. A cowcatcher, twisted into shrapnel, lay next to a mangled stack. Passengers walked up and down the remains of the train, some arm in arm, some with horrible injuries. One, an engineer, waved at Dusty and Dusty waved back.
“Dusty, but--but--No!” Floyd said.
“This is New Market, son. Site of the deadliest train wreck ever. Two trains going sixty miles an hour hitting dead-on with no warning. This is where I come from. See, I'm one of the lucky ones. I get to haunt this entire stretch of track from Spartanburg to here doin' what I love best.” Dusty gestured down the tracks. "Runnin' trains. Can't go to K-town. See, I never made it there on that run of the Carolina Special. Yessirree, my journey stopped right here.”
Dusty slapped Floyd on the back. “So you sign off for just yourself. Really, you've been doing it all on your own on this trip. I was just along for the ride.”
Floyd watched the old man jump down from the cab. Dusty assumed the same translucent form of the other apparitions. The old guy turned and waved Floyd onward as the train chugged its way to Knoxville.
Floyd heard the old guy say, “Just remember, keep your eyes on your work--keep drivin' the train and you won't go wrong. If'n you don't drive the train--train's surely gonna drive you.”
Floyd waved back as the old fireman shimmered away in the night. He still felt the imprint of Dusty's hand on his back.
He disembarked at the K-town station and walked to the boarding house. In the morning, he came back to the Carolina, this time in broad daylight, to ride back home. Blind Charlie Oates parked in his usual spot with his guitar and harmonica. The guitar case gaped open to double as a tip jar. He sang The New Market Crash in a wavering voice, his head and body rocking.
Floyd interrupted him, “Hey, Charlie. Here's a dollar. I'll give it to you if you'll play something else.”
“What you want to hear?” he asked, his white eyes rolling up and around in their sockets as he rocked in the direction of Floyd's voice.
“I don't care, Charlie. Just don't play that one.”
***
He tapped the cinders from his pipe once more. He tapped past the point anything remained.
His eyes were watery and blue in the smoky room.
He reached for his tobacco pouch and began filling the pipe and tapping down the shreds of tobacco. He tapped and he tapped some more.
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