Glasgow,
Montana: January 18th,1953
Bong! Bong! Bong! Bong! Bong! Bong! Bong!
Bong!
It was
eight o’clock, according to the grandfather clock in the green frame house on 5th
Avenue. Lights burned brightly in the
windows, as the Montana sky was always dark this time of year. A roaring fire blazed in the living room,
doing its best to keep the biting northern chill out of the air inside.
In the
living room, Marilyn Dawson (12) dropped the Nancy Drew book she was reading
and glanced out the front window into the empty street. The light from the living room ceiling framed
a slender figure of medium height for her age, with a narrow face, a nose with
a slight point to it, and hair that would’ve looked like yellow steel wool if
there was such a thing.
Staring
out at the falling snow, the girl tapped her foot impatiently. She glanced at the grandfather clock, as if
trying to decide something. Apparently
making up her mind, she darted into the front hall and called up the staircase.
“Mavis! Oh, Mavis!”
The
door at the top of the stairs opened, revealing Marilyn’s older sister, who’d
just turned 15. Marilyn didn’t have any
other older siblings, but she had quite a few younger ones—five, in fact.
“Shh! Not so loud!” Mavis hissed. “Mother just went to sleep!”
“How is
she?” Marilyn asked, a look of concern crossing her face.
Mavis
shrugged. “About as well as to be
expected, I guess.”
“Oh. Well, I’m going down to the train station to
wait for Father,” Marilyn called in a stage whisper. “He’s due any moment. Can you manage without me?”
Mavis sighed. “I suppose so. It’s not like you could get into any trouble
down there. Watch out for ice on your
way!”
“Oh, I
will!” Marilyn assured her sister. “Get
some rest! You look like you could use
it.”
Mavis shook her head. “There’s too much to do here. If Mother’s not better soon…” she let her
sentence trail off. “I’ll tell her where
you went, if she wakes up.”
“Hopefully, I’ll be back
before then,” Marilyn laughed. “See you
later!”
Quickly, the girl bundled
into her oversized parka, her thick woolen mittens, and her tall
snowboots. Residents of Montana were
used to zero-degree temperatures, biting wind, and driving snow, but that
didn’t mean they went outdoors unprepared.
Marilyn took the time to tighten her knitted scarf around her neck
before she left.
Once outside, though, she
took a deep breath of the freezing night air.
The walk to the train station always exhilarated her. It wasn’t far from the Dawson residence—just
about four blocks. After all, that’s
where Jim Dawson went to work whenever he was in town. He was an engineer for the Great Northern
Railway, James J. Hill’s magnificent creation that soared just under the
northern border of the United States.
Pressing through the falling
snow, Marilyn glanced quickly around at her surroundings. The main streets had been plowed, but only in
town. Glasgow itself was cut off from
the rest of the world as far as auto traffic went. Thick layers of snow also covered the runways
at the airport, keeping planes from going anywhere. The only way into town right now was by the
railroad, and trains hadn’t run the last few days.
However, the worst of the
blizzard was over, and Jim Dawson would be returning home tonight. Of all his children, Marilyn was undoubtedly
the most fascinated with his work. She
was a regular at Glasgow’s little train depot, spending hours chatting with
whoever happened to be around as she waited for her father’s train to roll in. The railroad employees all knew her, and they
always looked forward to her presence.
Less than five minutes
had elapsed before Marilyn glimpsed the station up ahead. She spotted it from the glow of the windows
at its side, not from the station building itself. The white paint blended easily into the snow,
even at night.
Though the white color
suggested a wooden building, Glasgow station was made of brick, and quite
substantial. The long building sat on
the south side of the town’s railyard, diagonally across from a large grain
elevator. Several freight cars stood
around the railyard, as well as a few engines—two steam engines and two diesels. That’s
funny, Marilyn thought to herself. There’s only supposed to be one diesel.
One or two, it was an
otherwise peaceful night. Marilyn’s
boots left footprints in the thin scattering of snow which had covered the
platform since it was last shoveled. She
grabbed the doorknob with both hands, gripped it as tightly as she could, and
turned the sticky latch to the right.
The door swung open,
revealing a large waiting room, stretching from side to side about the length
of three boxcars and as long as one.
Waxed about a week ago, the hardwood floor glimmered in the light of a
roaring fire on the east side of the room.
Three lights at the top as well as a couple lamps on the other end
provided the rest of the room’s light.
A long, double-bench
stretched along the center of the room, with seats facing the east and west
walls. The ticket window faced the
tracks on the north side, and the ticket agent’s desk and chair occupied this
alcove. Another desk on Marilyn’s side
of the room made up the dispatcher’s workspace.
These were the sources of two of the lamps; the third sat on a wooden
table at the west end of the depot, surrounded by four chairs. Jazz blared over a large, cabinet-style radio
right next to the table.
Decorating the walls of
the structure were a portrait of James J. Hill, a painting of the exterior of
the depot, a map of the railroad, and a painting of a steam engine at a generic,
unnamed station. The only other items
inside were a filing cabinet behind the dispatcher’s desk, a hatrack to the
right of the door Marilyn had just come through, and a Japanese screen diagonally
between the door and the dispatcher’s desk.
And, of course, there were a few people in the room.
“Marilyn!” A young engineer happened to be standing in
the center of the room when he saw the door open.
The man at the ticket
window, a thick-mustached individual with wispy gray hair sticking out from
under his cap, swiveled in his chair.
“Why, Miss Dawson! I was
wondering when you’d show up.”
“Hello Neil, Steve,”
Marilyn nodded at her friends. Neil
Simms was a young engineer who’d only been working for the Great Northern
Railway about two years. Steve Brown had
been selling tickets at least five times as long. Marilyn came by the station so often, she was
on a first-name basis both of them.
“Is Dad’s train almost
here?”
The man at the
dispatcher’s desk, slightly older than Neil and with brown hair instead of
black, shook his head. “No, it’s gonna
be about an hour late,” answered Howard Wise.
“Switch problem in Havre, had to clear the track. The Empire
Builder will be by before he shows up—headed for Seattle and Portland.”
“The Empire Builder ?” There was
a note of surprise in Marilyn’s voice. “I
thought it wasn’t running.”
“Hasn’t been, but it
finally stopped snowing in the Dakotas.
They got the line plowed between Fargo and Williston, and they wanted to
reopen it as soon as possible. Course,
they’re a half day behind, but they’d rather not wait another half day.”
Marilyn shrugged and
carefully removed her parka. “That’s
fine; I don’t usually get to see it come by at night. When’s the last time it was that late? Two years ago?”
Steve nodded. “Winter of ’51. At the time, I thought it couldn’t get any
worse.” He glanced out the window
towards the road and shook his head.
“Boy, was I wrong.”
“I see,” said
Marilyn. A cheery smile flickered across
her face. “An hour’s not so long to
wait. I guess I’ll stick around.”
“As if you had to
choose!” The young engineer
laughed. “The day Marilyn Dawson doesn’t
find an excuse to hang around the station will be the day Bob Hightower stops
cheating at cards.
“Ace!” came a shout from
the west end of the room. Two old
railroad employees were playing cards.
Both had thick beards which were varying shades of white or gray. The one on the south side of the table wore
suspenders; the one on the north side had a pipe sticking out of his
mouth. Playing cards were scattered
across the table between them.
“Ace!” gasped the one on
the north side, almost dropping his pipe in his beard. “T’aint no ace!”
“’Tis too an ace!”
chortled the one with suspenders.
“Lookee here. A, spade, A. That’s an ace!”
The one with the pipe
pulled down his spectacles and studied it.
“Lemme see, lemme see now,” he said.
“Ah-hah!” he yelled suddenly, flipping the deck over. “What’s that on the back?”
“A red and white
striped-design, Bob,” Suspenders yelled.
“Just like all the other cards in the deck.”
“Which means it’s not
from this deck!” yelled Bob, grasping the card between two yellow-stained
fingers and holding it up to the lamp.
“This card went missing last week!
We put a blue-backed one in to substitute, remember?”
“I don’t remember
anything about a blue-backed one being in this game when we started,” Suspenders
protested. “You been seein’ things that
ain’t there since 1932.”
“Oh, yeah?” Bob pointed angrily at his companion’s
deck. “What’s that card on top, Ed?”
Ed looked down, then
grimaced. “Why, it’s blue!”
“That’s cause it’s the
ace!” Bob glared at his friend. “You subbed it in when I wasn’t looking!”
Ed smiled weakly. “Guess this means I’m lucky?”
“Guess it means we’re
starting over!” Bob flicked away the blue ace, grabbed the cards, and started
to shuffle. “I ain’t playin’ with no
cheaters.”
Marilyn wandered over and
grabbed the deck from Bob. “Here, let me
shuffle for you,” she said. “Aren’t you
two ever going to play a game without cheating?”
“I always play honest!”
Bob protested.
“That’s a lie, and you
know it!” yelled Ed. “You cheat as much
as I do!”
“If I didn’t know you two
better, I’d say you didn’t like each other,” laughed Marilyn as she
shuffled. “Though I guess if you didn’t,
you wouldn’t play cards together every night.”
“’ts only because none of
them kids knows how to make a decent game of it these days,” Bob said, with
mock sadness. “They have all these
newfangled rules we never played by in my day.
Ed’s the only one who follows them.”
“You mean doesn’t follow
them!” quipped Neil, trying not to laugh (and failing miserably). “That’s why you play so well together—some of
the time.”
Marilyn plopped the deck
down. “Play nicely this time,” she
cautioned, before wandering over to the dispatcher’s desk. “I think this is from your deck,” she said,
handing him the blue card.
The dispatcher took it
and pulled open a drawer, revealing an open box of cards. Carefully, he slid the ace into the
middle. “Ed Morris and Bob
Hightower. Loyal employees of the Great
Northern for over thirty years. Good
thing they don’t drive trains the way they play cards.”
“Heh?” Ed stuck up his
head. “Just what do you mean by that, Sonny?”
“I mean you follow the
rules,” the dispatcher called back.
Hightower laughed. “He obviously didn’t see you on that freight
in ’27, Ed. You musta broken every rule
in the book.”
Marilyn grimaced. “Is this the story about the fish in the
water tank?”
Ed laughed. “No, that’s another one. Bob’s talking about the time we beat the
passenger train to Havre.”
The dispatcher looked up
from his desk. “What’s wrong with that?”
he asked. “If you were scheduled to get
there first—”
“Sure, we were,” said
Ed. “We were making great time,
too. We musta had at least a
twenty-minute advantage on them passengers, enough to keep us from having to
pull over and let them by. Things were
going great until we went through Malta—”
The station agent
groaned. “Not that one, again.”
“Say, can’t you ever keep
your trap shut long enough for me to finish?
What was I sayin’? Oh, yes. Just as we were pullin’ in at Malta, the
whistle broke.”
“The whistle broke!” said
Marilyn. “What happened?”
“Eh, number 278 was
pretty old. The thing musta been gettin’
loose. Anyway, we were supposed to fix
it before pulling out, but that would’ve meant letting the other train pass
us…and neither of us wanted to let that happen.
So, we kept right on goin’—”
“Kept on going?”
Marilyn’s brows rose a couple inches.
“Without a whistle?”
Bob nearly doubled over
with laughter. “No, we had a whistle
alright. We didn’t have any trouble
getting any sound to come out of that thing.
It was stopping it that was the trouble—”
“Good thing it was a day
freight, or we’d have woken half the countryside,” laughed Ed. “To this day, I wonder how ol’ Bob didn’t
lose his hearing.”
“Heh, what’s that?” A mischievous grin crossed Bob’s beard—he
knew exactly what had been said.
“Discussing hearing loss now, are you?”
“Shut up and deal!”
snapped Ed. “And none of your tricks
this time, or I’ll call your wife and tell her what you were really doing the
night of the Firemen’s Dinner.”
A spooked look crossed
Bob’s face. “You wouldn’t dare!”
“Try me,” grinned
Ed. “I’m sure she’d be interested in
exactly where that coon—er, mink stole came from. The next time you want to borrow my hounds…”
Grinning, Marilyn
wandered over to the station agent’s desk.
She peered over his shoulder at the neat piles of tickets waiting to be
sold. “Anyone riding tonight?” she
asked.
“One that I know of,” Brown
said, consulting his list. “Let’s see
now…Horace Peckinpaugh.”
“Never heard of him,”
said Marilyn.
“Neither have I,” said
the agent. “Must be nearly as old as
those two [he jerked his head towards Ed and Bob], from how his voice sounded
over the phone. Keeps callin’ to make
sure he knows when the train’ll be in. I
told him show up around 8:30.”
“Dad’s usually in by
then,” Marilyn reflected. “All this snow
must be wreaking havoc with the rails.”
Neil, the young engineer,
wandered over to the girl and patted her on the shoulder. “Maybe it is, but I wouldn’t worry about your
dad. Jim Dawson’s a fine man. They don’t make many like him. He taught me everything I know about
railroading, and that’s hardly half of what he knows. And when it comes to watching the tracks,
there isn’t a man more observant than he is.
Why, he could spot a lamp in a blizzard a mile away! He’ll get that freight through safely.”
“Oh, I’m sure he will,”
said Marilyn. “It’s just that…it’s
always nice to have a long evening with him.
Oh, well. Say, what’s that second
diesel switcher doing out in the yard? Aren’t
you just supposed to have one?”
“There might as well be one,”
muttered Wise from the dispatcher’s desk, a note of discontent in his
voice. “The one they sent us last month
is brand new, but it doesn’t work right.”
“Starts up fine, but
shuts straight down again after more than ten minutes. Your move, Bob!”
“Don’t know what causes
it.” Neil shook his head. “None of us can fix it, so we’re shipping it
back to Great Falls to get it worked on.
That’s 77 that’s out of shape.
Number 81 seems to be working just fine, and we’re hoping it stays that
way. Meanwhile, those steamers can be
counted on.”
Wise sighed. “Yep, but they’re not going to be around for
much longer. These diesels are a lot
more economical. They need less fuel,
and they can run longer. Soon, that’s
all you’ll see on the line.”
“Jim’s going to miss
3390,” Neil commented. “That’s the one
he’s driving tonight. He says that’s his
favorite engine.”
“I’ve never driven a more
dependable 2-8-2,” Ed called from the card game. “Does just what you tell it. Even nicer than driving a Cadillac.”
Bob fixed his friend with
a suspicious glare. “Since when have you
been behind the wheel of a Cadillac?”
“Since my niece got one
last summer.” Ed chuckled to
himself. “I’d tell you how it feels to
drive one, but you’d have to experience it for yourself. What a beauty!”
“…That was ‘I’ll Never Be
the Same,’ sung by Nat King Cole,” a deep-voiced announcer commented through
the static blaring out of the radio.
“And now, before our next song, a quick weather update. The blizzard’s over, but snow’s expected to
continue in Glasgow until well into tomorrow morning. Temperatures will remain below zero until
midday tomorrow. Bundle up, ‘cause it’s
cold outside…”
Bob snorted. “That ain’t cold! I remember the time the temperature dropped
down to minus forty. Now, that’d freeze
the toes right off you.”
“Do you always have to
bring up such pleasant things while we’re playing cards?” scoffed Ed. “Hey, no jokers. I thought I told you to get them out of the
deck.”
“It’s a joker, Ed. It plays tricks on you. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha!” Bob picked up the errant
card and flicked it towards the station agent, narrowly missing his ear. Brown kept on writing, pretending not to
notice.
He did turn around,
however, when a bright light shone through the south window. Headlights, from the parking lot. The outlines of the bars on the window crept
across Brown as he turned around, then vanished as the headlights switched off.
“A visitor,” said
Neil. “Wonder who that could be?”
“Our passenger, most
likely,” said Brown. “He wouldn’t want
to risk missing his train.”
The slamming of a car
door seemed to confirm his guess…that is, until another one slammed. Then another, then another. Altogether, five different doors must have
slammed from outside…unless one was a trunk.
Marilyn turned towards
the door. “That’s an awful lot of noise
for just one person,” she said. “Is he
bringing his whole family, or something?”
“I only sold one ticket,”
said Brown. “Course, the train ain’t
sold out. Maybe a bunch of people want
to buy tickets…”
A bunch of people want to
buy tickets. Ah, if only that had been
the case. But Glasgow wasn’t a big town. It was small, numbering only a few thousand
in population. Ordinarily, it was pretty
peaceful. That part of Montana didn’t
get too much of anything, except trains and snow. But trouble has a funny habit of popping up
where you least expect it, and the biggest disasters are often the most
unexpected ones. Abraham Lincoln
wouldn’t have gotten shot if he knew what John Wilkes Booth had in mind—he
never would have gone to Ford’s Theater in the first place. The Hindenburg
wouldn’t have been a tragedy if the people on board knew it would blow up—none
of them ever would have gotten on in the first place. Auschwitz
would not have been a gallery of horrors had the rest of the world known
what the Nazis had in mind—Hitler would’ve been removed before he had a chance
to start. The absence of warning
produces the direst of tragedies, and it was precisely that lack of warning
that set up the danger Marilyn and her friends were now about to face. Had they had any suspicion—any inkling—of
what was about to come through that door, they never would have let it open.
But they had no idea.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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