Crossing Tracks

By Terry R Cooper

In Crossing Tracks, set in 1971, 18-year-old Tink embarks on a transformative journey riding freight trains across America to attend a prestigious NASA seminar in Missoula, Montana. Haunted by her father's tragic f

• Language: English
• Publisher: Nine Story Press
• Release date: Sep 15, 2023
• ISBN: 9798987913956

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Crossing Tracks

A Tale of Rails and Resilience

Terry R Cooper

This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2023 by Terry R Cooper.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems without permission in writing from the author, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.

Visit our website at www.terryrcooper.com for more information.

Printed in the United States of America.

ISBN 979-8-9879139-4-9

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Cotter pins are wire-formed pins with two prongs that separate during installation. They are used as a locking device to hold pins or castle nuts in place. These low-cost and highly versatile fasteners are used extensively on construction and farm equipment.

Chapter 1

April 18, 1971, Sardinia, Ohio

I’d watched the Friday morning freight train for the last seven weeks. There’d only been one day when it didn’t have a boxcar with an open door. The odds were in my favor. At least for that.

By 5:30 a.m. I crouched among the budding bushes between the south pasture fence and the short gravel slope to the train track. Crickets that had quieted when I climbed over the fence now chirped around me. The eastern sky painted whisps of faint pink. A mosquito buzzed around my head. I shifted the backpack on my shoulders and swatted the biting insect on my neck, feeling satisfaction at the tiny defensive victory. The morning was still cool, but my armpits were sweating. I wondered if black snakes were hunting yet. It was still dark enough that I wouldn’t see the creepy Cretaceous survivors if they slithered across my shoes. That wouldn’t bother me, but their prey—mice—freaked me out.

Before I had time to worry about that, a train whistle blew in the distance. Dah-dah-dit-dah. The signal for crossing an unmarked highway. Main Street just outside of Sardinia. Two minutes. My mouth was suddenly dry. I reached for my canteen but convinced myself there wasn’t enough time. Poking my head around a bush, I could see the locomotive’s headlight in the distance across the fields. It had to negotiate two turns before it got to me, so it would be slowed to about twenty mph. Slow for a train but top speed for our farm tractors. Those parameters had played in my head for the last few years, calculating if I could leap into a moving train at that speed.

I stood and looked down the line of the approaching train cars. In the glow of approaching sunrise, there were two open boxcars near the middle and one near the end. I checked the stake I’d driven into the ground ninety feet up the track. The aluminum foil I’d wrapped around the top shone like a star.

Shoving through the bushes, I slid behind my makeshift ramp built from scrap wood. Version three. Over the last year I’d practiced this part. Version one ended up under the crushing wheels of the train, a pile of splinters I later swept away. Version two worked better but slid right back down the slope after I pushed it into place. Two weeks ago, my version-three trial seemed to be a success, at least for the dry-run.

I swallowed and squatted at the base of the ramp. The ground began to tremble. My knees quivered. The locomotive roared by. I grabbed the ramp handles and shoved it up the slope into position next to the track. Two feet between the ramp and whishing train cars. I could jump that easily. Even with thirty pounds on my back. If there was an open door to jump through. If I timed it right. If I didn’t slip. If the ramp held.

Backing up against the fence, I looked up the track at the approaching cars. I ran the calculation in my head again. Twenty miles per hour was thirty feet per second. It took me three seconds from my start position to my jump. That meant I should start my run when the door was ninety feet away. Ninety feet was where I’d set my stake four weeks ago. I was good. Unless someone moved my stake. Or the train was going a different speed. Or…I forced myself to stop.

The first car with an open door passed my stake. One-one thousand, two-one thousand, three-one thousand. I twitched. It rumbled by. I looked up the track again. The next car with an open door was already at my stake. Too late. I had to pee. Dad flashed into my mind, his severed head staring up at me. It’s been six years and I still try to explain how sorry I am every day.

I squeezed my eyes shut, took a deep breath, and cleared my thoughts. I willed calm and confidence to tamp panic. Here came the last boxcar with an open door. When it got to my stake, I took off, running hard, but not overly hard. It had to be three seconds. Adrenaline could affect my timing. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see the black doorway approaching. Focus. One more step, then jump. I hit the edge of the ramp and jumped hard. The ramp shifted under my weight. If this failed now, there would be no version four of the ramp. I would be bloody splinters. I’d thought a lot about that, too. Maybe I was unfixable, and a swift end was my only relief. But the stars called to me like the trains. There were things I wanted to do. Needed to do. Not just for me, but for…

My foot hit the worn floorboard of the boxcar. Sir Isaac Newton’s first law of physics was upon me. I collapsed and rolled, absorbing the force of the train’s movement with my roll. Still, a moment later I was in a heap against the far wall of the boxcar. But I was on the train. Moving at twenty mph. No need for ramp version four.

#####

After I clambered through the open door, I lay panting on the floor for several minutes. Years of accumulated stress from planning, guilt, and apprehension evaporated. The clickety-clack of the wheels on the track and the gentle swaying drained my adrenaline away. I dozed off into dreamless sleep for twenty minutes. Then I got to work.

I broke open the seal on the six-pack of spiral-ringed notebooks. Choosing the blue one, I scrawled the number one on the cover and recorded what had happened in the last hour.

It was time to start testing the cathartic value of pouring the horrors of my life onto paper. Talking to a psychologist or psychiatrist might have worked as well. But I’d read a lot about treatment for depression and grief—locking me up, electroconvulsive therapy, or drugging me into catatonia. Not for me. But I had to do something. My life was ebbing away into a sea of nightmares. If I didn’t fix it now, I’d never be able to survive college and become who I could be.

Since I was a toddler, the yawning maw of open boxcars has called to me. Half-a-mile away, the rumbling freight trains rattled the house like a tap from God’s hand saying, Pay attention, Tink. Sometimes on moonlit nights I’d crawl out of bed and stand at the window, watching the train cars slide past our lower pasture like a wriggling woolly worm crawling fencepost to fencepost. I always knew that someday I’d be leaving our southern Ohio farm with a scramble and leap into a boxcar’s dark unknown.

I hadn’t set a departure date, though I’d been packing and re-packing my backpack since Daddy died. But now I was done with high school, had Bobby set up to manage the farm, and needed to turn the page in my life. Desperately. Before the gnawing nightmares and grief permanently wrecked my brain. It had already stolen my adolescence and my sleep. If I didn’t stop it, it would steal the rest of my life just like a skid row heroin addict.

The letter arrived in February. It had a NASA logo in the corner and was hand-addressed to me. It was from a female NASA engineer named Morgan who said she had heard about me and my interest in physics and space. She wanted to meet me and offer herself as a coach and mentor. Myself and five other women my age were invited to her ranch near Missoula, Montana, between May 31 and June 13 while she was vacationing from her NASA job. It was as if the combination on a bank vault had just been spun correctly. The gears and levers in my life aligned. The door opened. I had a plan and a timeline. I had to be in Missoula by Memorial Day.

#####

Last night after supper, as it was starting to get dark, Momma took my hand and said, Let’s go look at the cherry tree. We’d had our ups and downs over the last six years, but we carefully tiptoed around what was going on in my head. Our mother-daughter relationship had switched to partners in our farm operation. It was a no-touch kind of thing, too. When she took my hand, it was like a jolt of electricity shot up my arm.

We walked out onto the front porch, leaving my older brother Bobby watching TV. We stood there inhaling the sweet smell, admiring the glinty golden hue of the blossoms in the April setting sun. A train whistle blew in the distance, and in a few minutes we watched it roll by the lower pasture.

Momma put her arm around my waist. You can always come back, Tink. I’ll be here. And your brother. He’ll be here after me. It will always be home.

I turned to face her. What do you mean, Momma?

She hugged me. I’ve known for years, Tink. Ever since you packed that bag. One morning I’d wake up and you’d be gone. She waved towards the train. It calls you.

Tears filled my eyes. I gripped her in a tight hug. My Momma. She’d always known me, maybe better than I knew myself. At least ’til Daddy died and I shut down like a hibernating groundhog. The NASA letter I’d never shared with her felt warm in my pocket.

You’re a smart one, Tink. She tapped my forehead. You know up here that you didn’t cause your Daddy to die. She tapped my chest. But you gotta know it here, too. We ain’t got the money for them head doctors. Not sure they could fix your heart, anyhow. She looked into my eyes. "You gotta do that, Tink."

That’s why I have to leave, Momma.

You think runnin’ away will help?

It ain’t running away. Riding the train will let me think. I see it as a journey.

To where?

Montana. There’s a special NASA seminar for women there. I’ve been invited.

That an excuse?

No. It’s the catalyst.

The what?

Catalyst. The seminar invitation is what brought all the pieces together, made the whole thing work.

How’s that fix your troubles?

I gotta do something, Momma. I don’t sleep because when I do it’s filled with nightmares of Daddy. Nobody talks to me at school. But I don’t care. I care about less and less each day. It’s just you and Bobby now. It feels like I’m slipping away, draining into the ground like a leaky rain barrel.

Chapter 2

I leaned back against the wall of the boxcar. The open door opposite me was a moving window to the passing world. The ride wasn’t as smooth as I’d expected. It was more like a high-gear tractor running across a pasture field. Except I was sitting on a solid wooden floor. I pulled a gray sweatshirt out of my pack and folded it under my butt. A few days on this train and I’d have butt bruises.

The train was slowing. I listened for the whistle to tell me why. Nothing. A faint ding-ding-ding of a crossing sounded somewhere up ahead. I was afraid I’d be spotted if I stuck my head out. The laws about hitching a train ride varied a lot, depending on which state or county you were in. The train workers were unpredictable. Some could care less. Others reported you or tried to chase you off on their own. I intended to avoid them all.

At eighteen, I’d already built a mental encyclopedia of train travel. There’s a hobo camp about twenty miles east, near Peebles in Adams County. Hobo camps were common during the 1930’s Depression. But during the late 1960’s the sights and sounds of the Vietnam War and related protests on TVs in every home demoted hobos to background noise. Drugs, long hair, and burning flags were the hot topics. Hobos become invisible and, to most, didn’t exist. But they were still there in the shadows, moving around on the trains as they had for decades.

Ten years ago, as Dad drove us to buy a calf in Adams County, I’d spotted several men in tattered clothes squatted around a campfire. Who are those men in the woods, Dad?

He glanced out the window where I pointed. Probably hobos. Not many left. Train track runs right by there.

I’ve read about them. They ride the trains. It’s called ‘train hopping.’

Well, they’re dangerous. Lot of drugs and crazies in that group.

Know how to tell the difference between a hobo, a tramp, and a bum?

Dad glanced at me. Where’d you hear those names?

They were in a history book about World War I. Said the hobos were migrant workers; a tramp travels but doesn’t work; and a bum does neither. I gazed out the window as the camp disappeared around a bend. I bet the bums are the ones doing drugs.

You left out hippies. They hang out with that group, too.

I wasn’t sure I believed that. According to what I’d read, the politics of the hobos was nothing like the left-wing ideals of the hippies.

That camp stuck in my mind. Every chance I got I’d checked to see if they were still there. When I turned sixteen and got my license, it was one of my first solo drives. I came to think of it as Trainhop University.

I spent a lot of summer Sundays there the last couple of years. They didn’t trust me at first, but the smell of fried chicken in my basket loosened tongues after a few weeks. Pretty soon they were nodding and grunting a greeting when I arrived.

Bobby warned me about going to the camp alone. He said it was dangerous. Sheriff cars cruised by frequently. One time, before I’d won over the more onery hobos, a new guy showed up. He sat on a dirty Army blanket under an oak tree and stared at me for a while. He finally got up from his blanket and came over to the picnic table where four of the guys and I were sitting. He grabbed my chicken basket and turned, carrying it off.

Hey, I said as I jumped up. That’s not yours.

He turned and smirked at me. It is now, mutt.

I started to grab him but one of the guys at the table snagged my sleeve. When I turned to look at him, he shook his head and pulled me back to the table. Confused and fuming, I watched the new guy sit down facing us with his back against the tree trunk. He pawed through the basket and started gnawing a drumstick.

Look at me, said Herb, the hobo across the table from me.

What?

Look at me.

Why?

You don’t want to see nothin’.

What do you mean?

He grabbed my sleeve across the table, pulled me towards him, and hissed, Even if it don’t turn your stomach, it’ll turn your dreams. Forever.

I was perplexed. Some of these guys talked gibberish, but Herb was always coherent and pleasant, even if he did smell like a wet dog.

He released my arm. I leaned back on the bench and glanced at the other three men down the table. They were all looking the other way. It made me think of what Momma said many times. Mostly in the kitchen. It usually included her pointing at me with a wooden spoon or spatula. Tink, you always swim upstream. Gonna bring trouble if you’re not careful.

Herb said, You best git on home.

Why?

’Cause you don’t wanna be here when the cops come through.

I didn’t know what he was talking about, but I was on his turf. I stood and turned to retrieve my chicken basket.

Shit! I told you not to look. Git outta here now, boy.

The guy who’d stolen the chicken still sat with his back to the tree. His head lolled to one side. A huge red gash splayed under his chin. His shirt was covered in red. Someone had slit his throat.

I swallowed, feeling my stomach rumble. A thousand thoughts raced through my head. I’d seen death before. Gruesome death. Bloody. Haunting. But Herb was right. I didn’t want to be connected to this murder. I needed to erase any evidence that I was here.

Rushing towards the guy, I grabbed my basket and pulled it away. It smelled like the rusty steel fenceposts around the chicken coop. It was obvious how he died. They wouldn’t waste taxpayers’ money on an autopsy, so no one would discover my chicken in his belly. I dumped the pool of blood in the basket on the ground between his legs where it joined the rest of his life ebbing back into the dirt.

On the way home, I stopped at the end of our lane and filled the basket with rocks. Then I tossed the whole thing into the pond next to the lane. It didn’t float. There were some bubbles at first. The blood swirled around in the green water, but in a couple of minutes, it disappeared altogether.

I don’t think the hobos thought I’d be back. But they didn’t know me yet. The next Sunday, I brought more fried chicken and some candy bars. Seven of them crowded around the table in silence while they chowed on chicken. I dumped the bag of candy bars on the table. They quickly disappeared into pockets without a word. No grumbling about who got how many, and no one tried to take more than their share. These guys were counting on each other in a weird cross between friends and brothers.

In the ensuing weeks, I asked a lot of questions and wrote the answers in my black spiral-ringed notebook. In trip preparation, I read through that tattered notebook every month since then. It’s committed to memory now. I learned the train signals, how to snag food and water, and how to stay hidden. They also taught me what to do if I get caught. I don’t plan to need that information.

#####

The train jolted to a stop. Out my open door, I saw farmland. I glanced at my watch. We’d been rolling along for about ninety minutes. Maybe sixty miles.

I stood up and stretched, creeping carefully towards the door. When the sun was bright, like it was now, the dimness of the boxcar made it impossible to see anyone inside. The hobos understood this well. But I looked it up in the library anyhow. It’s the way the eyeball protects itself and manages the light exposure to the retina. In bright light, the pupil shrinks so the retina doesn’t get burned by too much bright light. As a result, it doesn’t let in enough light to see inside the gloom of a dark space. Like a boxcar. But after a few seconds in dimmer light, the pupil opens, and you can see inside. The same book said it’s not related to photokeratitis, which is snow blind, or sunburning your eyeball. But years of eyeball exposure like that will probably cause you to have cataracts. That’s why I have sunglasses in an outer pocket of my backpack.

Anyhow, I looked out the door. Another track ran right next to us. The boxcar floor began to vibrate with a growing rumble. I realized we’d pulled over to a passing siding to let another train go by. The blast of air knocked me down as the locomotive rushed by. It must have been doing sixty mph. It was a passenger train with less than a dozen cars. The silhouettes of people on the train were like the black cutouts of Bobby and me that Momma had hanging in the hallway.

We began to move again, slowly picking up speed, and in a minute I felt us clank over the switch connecting us to the main track. It wouldn’t be long until we were in the suburbs of Cincinnati, then to the Queensgate railyard along Mill Creek. Before we got to the yard, I’d have to get off. Even if they didn’t inspect this car, I had no idea where it was going. I needed to find a train headed north towards Chicago. My hobo buddies said track nine usually went that way.

I stared aimlessly out the door for a while before we got to the suburban towns and buildings began dominating the landscape. I saw a sign that said Batavia something or other, so I knew we were on the east side, twenty miles or so from the yard. The train would slow through the city. As it got to the yard, it would slow more so it could traverse the multiple switches to get on the correct arrival track. Being back this far in the train from the locomotive when it navigated those switches would give me a good combination of slowest speed and safe distance not to be noticed. That’s when I’d jump.

I’d practiced this with Bobby driving the tractor and me standing on a flatbed wagon. He thought I was crazy, but I told him it was for a school project. I borrowed a stopwatch from Mr. Pitzer, the science teacher at school. Bobby drove by a stake I set up in the pasture. I timed how long it took us to pass the stake from the front of the wagon to the end, twenty feet. From there I could calculate our speed accurately. Jumping off the wagon always took the same time to hit the ground, regardless of the speed. Two point one seconds. That was from a height of thirty-two inches. The box car was forty-eight inches from the ground. I used my physics book and more of Mr. Newton’s laws to arrive at a jump time of two point eight seconds from the boxcar. I built a curve where I plotted the distance I’d travel during my jump time for a given train speed. It was linear so I only needed two points. I plotted four to be sure.

#####

Six years ago, on a frozen Saturday morning in February, my alarm clock clanged. It was 6:30 a.m. I clubbed the clock into quiet