Train Dreams Read Free

toothpick—lay them on a stump, and proceed into the darkness of his tunnel without looking back. When he came out and turned his screws again and the dynamite blew with a whomp, the men cheered and a cloud of dust rushed from the tunnel and powdered rock came raining down over everyone.
    It looked certain Arn Peeples would exit this world in a puff of smoke with a monstrous noise, but he went out quite differently, hit across the back of his head by a dead branch falling off a tall larch—the kind of snag called a “widowmaker” with just this kind of misfortune in mind. The blow knocked him silly, but he soon came around and seemed fine, complaining only that his spine felt “knotty amongst the knuckles” and “I want to walk suchways—crooked.” He had a number of dizzy spells and grew dreamy and forgetful over the course of the next few days, lay up all day Sunday racked with chills and fever, and on Monday morning was found in his bed deceased, with the covers up under his chin and “such a sight of comfort,” as the captain said, “that you’d just as soon not disturb him—just lower him down into a great long wide grave, bed and all.” Arn Peeples had said a standing tree might be a friend, but it was from just such a tree that his death had descended.
    Arn’s best friend, Billy, also an old man, but generally wordless, mustered a couple of remarks by the grave mound: “Arn Peeples never cheated a man in his life,” he said. “He never stole, not even a stick of candy when he was a small, small boy, and he lived to be pretty old. I guess there’s a lesson in there for all of us to be square, and we’ll all get along. In Jesus’ name, amen.” The others said, “Amen.” “I wish I could let us all lay off a day,” the captain said. “But it’s the company, and it’s the war.” The war in Europe had created a great demand for spruce. An armistice had actually been signed eighteen months before, but the captain believed an armistice to be only a temporary thing until the battles resumed and one side massacred the other to the last man.
    That night the men discussed Arn’s assets and failings and went over the details of his final hours. Had the injuries to his brain addled him, or was it the fever he’d suddenly come down with? In his delirium he’d shouted mad words—“right reverend rising rockies!” he’d shouted; “forerunner grub holdup feller! Caution! Caution!”—and called out to the spirits from his past, and said he’d been paid a visit by his sister and his sister’s husband, though both, as Billy said he knew for certain, had been many years dead.
    Billy’s jobs were to keep the double drum’s engine watered and lubricated and to watch the cables for wear. This was easy work, old man’s work. The outfit’s real grease monkey was a boy, twelve-year-old Harold, the captain’s son, who moved along before the teams of horses with a bucket of dogfish oil, slathering it across the skids with a swab of burlap to keep the huge logs sliding. One morning, Wednesday morning, just two days after Arn Peeples’s death and burial, young Harold himself took a dizzy spell and fell over onto his work, and the horses shied and nearly overturned the load, trying to keep from trampling him. The boy was saved from a mutilated death by the lucky presence of Grainier himself, who happened to be standing aside waiting to cross the skid road and hauled the boy out of the way by the leg of his pants. The captain watched over his son all afternoon, bathing his forehead with spring water. The youth was feverish and crazy, and it was this malady that had laid him out in front of the big animals.
    That night old Billy also took a chill and lay pitching from side to side on his cot and steadily raving until well past midnight. Except for his remarks at his friend’s graveside, Billy probably hadn’t let go of two or three words the whole time the men had known him, but now he kept the nearest