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The Lady and the Diesel Engineer

Tom Sheehan

    Sweeping 1600 miles on each trip, rushing past the glories and the neglected, past station crowds and hitch-hikers bound for whenever or wherever, until a singular individual, made him think back on her every time gone past a lone cottage at one Iowa wayside, Harlan Clover, Engineer First Class, saw that one woman for mere minutes in a lonely stretch of Iowa, and kept her singular wave to himself, never mentioning it to his cohort in the diesel cab of how she must have carved their schedule on her open palm, her there waving at them every time they passed by, bound for the end of the run before they started the return trip, and caught another timely wave, an unknown but lovely beauty of a woman, tall, voluptuous, blonde as they come, and steady and timely as a clock., never missing them, his engine, him.
    Waving at him, he knew, boss man on the train, no other engineer at the controls, ever. Ten years now, and nothing slowing him down. No stop or station ever produced a single woman waiting his arrival at the wheel of the giant engine, 2A6B and usually a following blurred code of identification for the knowledgeable, but not for a lone woman in a lonely spot in all of Iowa as if it was the end of the world.
    Nothing else on the whole run, east to west to east, ever appeared trackside with a friendly wave for them, simplest of salutes, loaded with the unknown, their daylight mystery. Such mysteries foster their own growth, spread their own word, with curiosity assisting. Regular passengers with repetitive work trips began their own talks about the lone waving woman who graced the trackside in wide-open Iowa, like a risen statute fixed in place, one arm usable as if sworn to duty’s salute.
    As often as they passed by her, Harlan kept looking for the man of the house, each time checking the cottage, the small dwelling on a wide piece of land beside the train tracks near Kennelton, Iowa; a faithful waver was she and never a man in sight; no man, no husband, no comrade for long, lonely hours on the open plains.
    Once he wondered if he, a train driver, was her lone connection with the whole world as he knew it from the tracks, and her from the simple door of her cottage, and never a vehicle standing still in the driveway of sorts. As a result, her loneliness hurt him, as though he shared the sense of it, the same ache of loneliness hitting him broadside despite his speed at times, the tracks clear of traffic for miles on end, and not a syllable known of her name, not a whisper of one.
    The crew mut have wondered if her mind somehow accompanied the train to destination and all the stations met en route, her own solitary adventure on the railroad wherever it went, though the engineer believed her waves were meant for him, big man of the rig; who else could it be, not an odd crewman or a strange passenger on a special trip, on vacation, as a new hire, or a wedding trip all the way to see a chunk of California, a piece of the Pacific; one guess as good as another.
    With those ideas in mind, Harlan began fitting names to her, suggesting one at a time and then tearing it away as not fit for this loneliest angel of the Iowa prairie, almost in arms reach from the cab of the diesel. Certainly, he thought, some of the names, other women he had known, the Myrtles and the Louises and the sweet blonde Korean still trying edgewise to slip into the fit of an on-going-relationship, as her mind saw it.
    His cabin mate, cohort, step-in-if-there-is-trouble, never once waved back at the Iowa woman presumably waving at the train crew or passengers as they went past. Regular passengers, repeaters, had to have their own ideas about the Iowa woman, but if they came up in a cross-aisle conversation, they too would go like the wind, be forgotten in split seconds, no curiosity of who or why or how often she attracted attention in the middle of nowhere to start with; something to be said of Iowa at the edge of train tracks bidding hello and a swift goodbye all in a matter of seconds.
    Harlan, dexterous, having been around trains more than half his life, ran both freight and passenger trains, and the crews were similar but not their services, making them different to needs. Harlan, though, loved the differences he ran into, disturbed from sleep or slumber, or seasonal rests; he found the beauty of spreading snows, the green envelopes of spring, the roses of June, July’s and August’s dry stretches, as he swept by them, but the lady was beheld as a supreme signal, as near to touching as possible without once knowing her aroma or how she might shiver at acceptance, the sound of her voice, the tone of her words.
    These elements were the parts of his passing connection, known but unknown, life’s secrets for the time being, he might add with a spurt of hope mixed in his minute daydreams, his momentary acknowledgments of an unknown woman who obeyed her calling, kept at a promise, showed up with each passing, without failure.
    Once in a while, his merry heart in the mix with his wants, he would toot the engine’s whistle, and all passengers would note the bystander obviously being saluted, recognized in fashion only employed by train engineers across the land. Each one of us, at sundry points in life, have heard such salutes, think they are special and are called for.
    One day, in spite of all things, in the risk of all things, Harlan leaped at chance, made a grab. Once, he remembered, she had cupped a breast as if to keep it alive, to wait out Time, as he reacted to it, as it was meant for him, and him alone.
    Harlan, as it was, was a widower, his Alice taken by the horror of cancer, the hole in his life only filled by life on the tracks, the diesel power under his command, the black enormity of it. And what it brought to him in replacement, the seasons, the roses, the single waver in all those continuous miles, seen like punctuation in reading, understood what they were for, how to employ them, to dream of them as the train rushed on ahead of him, and the possible her, the waver, keeping her place in Iowa.
    The moves became their own power, the wave and the cupped breast, like offerings from the wayside, and never a personal touch in a bunch. He was a big man in a hurry all the time and she was a stock-still trackside commodity; the twain shall never meet.
    But Harlan began to think sly moments of vacation chance, of pulling into her driveway one day in a snazzy rental, the top down, roses in the air, and escaping with her. It gave him pleasant hours of thought, the miraculous becoming the ordinary, him waving at her, cupping her breast, reincarnation.
    It was embraced by the roses, swooped up by their essence, time, tide and the telling, the inhalation of created aromas more beautiful than reality; it had to be, overpowering him the way it did, filling up hours, sleep beset with dreams as real as rocks standing in their same place and position practically since Time began its hurry through the stars.
    In the back of Harlan’s mind were images flashing into being and disappearing, such as stopping the train at high speed, rushing to that Iowa angel, taking her by the hand and whisking her aboard his knight’s ship. his Viking cruiser, his harbor-freed Old Ironsides itself once snuggly in place in the Boston Navy Yard, directly across from the end of Bunker Hill Avenue.
    The last image did the trick for Engineer First Class Harlan Clover, for sitting on a ledge right in his diesel cab, on a steel beam was a pair of book ends made from a beam replaced on the Old Ironsides, and slipped into his pocket by a craftsman seeking a worthy recipient, Harlan above all sailors on deck that day. Longevity came from the book ends, still at work in the world, marking Time.
    On his next pass-through Iowa, he brought his engine to a stand-still, rushed to the woman of Iowa and brought her aboard his craft without a sign of resistance.
    There was a hue and cry and much cheering from the regular riders and the working crew who knew all about the woman, and it was time to put her in her very own place, away from the middle of nothing.

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