Walter Bergen
Oregon, March 2019
Eight days after his sixty-third birthday, when Walter Bergen arrived at the yard office, where he had arrived so many mornings over the course of thirty-one years, he walked past the vending machines to the bulletin board and paused to read the notes out of habit, as though they had any bearing on his future-they did not. For today was Walter Bergen's last day at Amtrak, a milestone that had been steadily and inevitably approaching for months, and a reality he still could not quite allow himself to accept.
As a senior operator, Walter had been offered relocation before the cutbacks, but he took the buyout instead and decided to pull the pin. He'd been a stranger to his family for three decades, and he figured it was time to start making up for lost time. But what would he do with himself beyond write checks for Wendy's endless wedding arrangements?
His wife, Annie, had no shortage of plans for Walter, and truth be told Walter was none too excited about most of them. She'd been haranguing him for months to join her gym. She'd probably make him take art classes down at the co-op studio, or, God forbid, dance classes. Hell, she'd probably try to make a vegan out of him eventually. And he was 99 percent positive she had some kind of surprise retirement party planned for him that night after work, a possibility he dreaded.
With the clock creeping closer to seven a.m., the reality started to sink in a bit. This was it, the last trip through the office. No more track bulletins. No more wiseass repartee with Nate, or Bill, or Sharon, or Monty, or whoever happened to be on shift. No more tepid coffee, no more faxes, no more bowl of Almond Joys. All of these little rituals and habits that had become the window dressing of his life for the past three decades would be gone tomorrow. Walter still hadn't cleaned out his locker.
It was a point of pride to Walter that no less than four generations of Bergens had given themselves to the rails at some point, beginning with his great-great-grandfather Finnegan, one of those intrepid and criminally underpaid souls who drove spikes halfway across the prairie and blasted through the mountains all the way to Promontory Point for that historic joining of the Union and Central Pacific lines. On his heels came Walter's grandfather Emmet, fifteen years a brakeman on the O & CRR. Then there was Walter's own father, Pete, first a brakeman, then a hostler, and finally an engineer for BNSF. Walter's love affair with trains had begun before he could even walk. According to his mother, his first utterance, even before "Mama," had been "Too-too."
Walter had stopped holding out hope for Wendy by the time she was out of high school. She had no interest in the railroad or diesel engines, which was sort of ironic, all things considered. Walter had taken Wendy on countless ride-alongs since the time she was a toddler. He'd dressed her in overalls and a striped conductor's cap; bought her wooden trains, electric trains; and, the summer after her junior year in high school, tried to bribe her to do an internship at Amtrak. All of these attempts had been fruitless.
For the Bergens it seemed that the railroad, more than anything else, had delivered on the promise of America. The railroad had meant freedom and opportunity and mobility. And there was no getting around the fact that Walter's retirement spelled the end of the railroad line for the Bergen name.
It had never been Walter's idea to retire at sixty-three. He'd figured he'd be running this line for another five years, at least. Walter loved the railroad life; it was practically all he knew. Of course, the job had its drawbacks. The hours could be brutal and the shifts unpredictable. Then there was the fact that management culture had not changed since the Civil War. Hell, most of his superiors didn't know a train from a horse's ass. But every job had its drawbacks. The satisfaction that came with a job well done, the tangible result of piloting a train safely and smoothly from point A to point B, far outweighed the shortcomings.
"Wally," came a familiar voice.
Walter spun his head around to see Nate, clutching a Garfield coffee mug, cap pulled low over his forehead.
"What are you doing here? I thought you were dead," Nate said, pleased with himself.
"Get out of here," said Walter.
But he couldn't help feeling a little pang of nostalgia watching Nate go. Good old Nate; affable, familiar, consistent as hell. Pretty serious case of halitosis, but Walter had learned over the years how to keep just enough distance between the two of them to avoid breathing it in. It was hard to fathom that he'd smelled Nate's breath for the last time. Walter leaned against a folding table in the rear of the office (for the last time) and checked his forms, sipping his tepid coffee.
No flags, no holdups, no obstacles. A little snow in the forecast, but surely not enough to foul up the schedule. Swilling the last of his coffee, Walter walked out the back door, tossing his paper cup in the garbage pail. Hopping off the platform and crossing the yard, Walter paused to watch the goat clatter slowly up and over the hump. God, the beautiful racket of it all: the sighing and hissing, the rattle and clack of the cars over the rails. These were the sounds that had made America the greatest country on earth. More than any other sound, Walter would miss the deafening but plaintive cry of the horns, which no matter their proximity always managed to sound far away. For this was the very sound that had captured Walter's imagination as a child, the sound of possibility, the sound of faraway places, the sound of American ingenuity.
Walter looked up at the sky just in time for the first wet snowflake to hit his face before he continued on across the yard.
Bill Boyce was waiting in the roundhouse, clipboard in hand.
"Wally," he said. "I heard you died."
"Eat me," said Walter.
They began their walk around, inspecting the running gear back to front, as Bill checked the boxes. There was a little water leakage under the engine, but nothing excessive. Bill had checked the seals and the head gasket as recently as last week and found everything in order.
"So, when's the big wedding?" said Bill.
"July," said Walter.
"Bet that's gonna clean you out."
"Pshh. You're not kidding. You have any idea what a caterer costs?" said Walter. "A dance floor? Twenty-five blown-glass votives? Damn flower arrangements?"
"I don't wanna know. Should have had a boy, Wally."
"Don't make much difference anymore," Walter said.
"Suppose not. Riggings look good," said Bill, checking the box.
"Hell, Wendy thinks she's a man, as far as I can tell. I guess I'm okay with that. You just figure she might have some interest in trains, considering."
"What's her partner's name again?"
"Kit."
"Like Kitty?"
"Just Kit."
"What kind of name is that?"
Walter sighed, "I dunno, Bill. There's a lot I don't know anymore."
Bill set a supportive hand on Walter's shoulder and gave him a clap on the back.
"Let's go ahead and check the cab," he said.
Before he mounted the cab, Walter took a deep breath and savored the familiar smell of the yard one more time. It had taken him a few years, but he'd grown to love the smell of diesel. It clung to every stitch of his clothing and even his skin, according to Annie. Wasn't a laundry detergent in the world that could get rid of the smell, but it meant a paycheck. And it meant a lot more: It meant speed, and power, and passenger satisfaction. It was a noble fuel, diesel; it burned slowly and efficiently.
"She still getting shaky at seventy-nine?" said Bill.
"Little bit," Walter said. "Not so bad as she used to. About threw me out of my seat a couple years back."
"How about acceleration?"
"Full of oats."
Bill paused in his box checking to scratch his neck and peer out the cab window as the snow began falling harder, splatting in fat drops against the windshield.
"So, what are you gonna do with yourself, Wally? You gonna start doing crosswords? Model trains?"
"Thinking about a second career," said Walter.
"Porno, huh?"
"Haven't got the necessary equipment, I'm afraid. Always did want to play center field for the Mariners, though."
"I'd say you're strictly DH material with that gut," said Bill.
"Look who's talking," said Walter.
After Bill checked the last box, he gave Walter another pat on the shoulder that nearly morphed into an awkward hug but came up mercifully short.
"Well," said Bill.
"Get out of here," said Walter.
Once Bill was clear of the ladder, Walter turned on the wipers and began activating the switchboard with robotic precision. He ducked down the corridor to the engine room and primed the engine, then, returning to the cab, he set the brakes. He could have done it all in his sleep.
Wishing he had another cup of coffee, Walter walked the length of the corridor past the passengers, nodding to the occasional soul who looked up to engage him. Once he released the hand brake, he walked past them again in the other direction. If Walter did his job right, some of those folks would be napping by the time he delivered them. That was the real sign of a good engineer: sleeping passengers.
Once the train was prepped and ready to roll, Monty assigned Walter a clear track, and Walter eased the throttle forward a notch and began crawling out of the yard, right on schedule.
The Bergens
Atlantic Ocean, 1851
Alma and the twins huddled atop their tiny pallet in the darkness, all that was left of the Bergens of Cork. Their throats scorched, they cloaked their faces against the fetid air. It was the only way. Stomach clenched, head throbbing, blood running thick as sap, Alma was slow to apprehend her thoughts. But two words saved her, two words she kept upon her ravaged lips, two words that buoyed her against starvation and infirmity, and fear for her children's lives, two words she clung to amid the relentless chorus of crying infants and moaning women, as the chamber pots sloshed and the great hull creaked and tossed on the open sea. They were the same two words emblazoned upon the stern of that cruel maritime enterprise tasked with delivering the Bergens like flotsam upon the distant shore. They were a prayer for the future, these two words: Golden Door.
The New World; not like the Old World. Not like the windowless, thatch-hoveled, mud-hutted torment they'd left behind in the festering, fallow remains of Magh Eala, Cork, no longer the rebel county, no longer sacred soil, but a diseased and forsaken shell of itself. The New World was a world of promise, a world of opportunity, a world where with any luck the Bergens, and the Callahans, and the Cullens would not starve. And for this promise Alma had left her dead behind: a husband who'd given all he had, and a child who'd never had a chance.
Even as her ragged breaths sawed at the putrid air, Alma was determined to thwart death. She would surrender no more. She would not allow Finnegan to give up.
"Why won't he eat?" she said to Nora in the darkness.
"He doesn't like the biscuits," said Nora.
"And how would you know? Did he say as much?"
"No, Mummy."
"Of course he didn't," said Alma.
The boy had not spoken since the baby had died last fall, just two weeks after his father had succumbed to the fever. The appearance of a single magpie that morning on the eave of the hut had portended the death of the baby. It was Finn who'd discovered the infant in her crib, eyes glassed over, mouth agape, tiny fists clutched to her chest. Her name had been Aileen, and she was neither the first nor the last to perish from starvation. But Aileen had been a Bergen, and she'd been a blue-eyed ray of hope, and her big brother had adored her. That God should take his father was bewilderment enough for the nine-year-old boy. That he should take his infant sister was apparently too much for him to bear. That was the day he retreated into himself. Strike his thumb with a hammer, and he would not cry out in pain. No matter how his mother had tried to coax him out as the weeks and the months progressed, he remained unreachable.
Were it not for his twin sister, Finn might have disappeared altogether. For it was Nora who spoke for Finn, and only Nora who seemed to understand his needs or comprehend his grief. Only Nora could read his thoughts. That they could be so intimately connected by thought and by birth, and yet look nothing alike, was difficult for Alma to comprehend. Nora was brown eyed, with her father's dark hair and features, his broad nose and thin lips. Finn, meanwhile, was fair and redheaded, with high cheekbones, full lips, and blue eyes.
"Child, nobody likes the biscuits," said Alma. "But he must eat them."
To label them biscuits at all was a misnomer. They were practically inedible, with their charred black crust and gooey middle. Their only flavor was that of smoke, pure and unadulterated. All the water in the world could not wash them down comfortably, though six pints was their daily ration between them.
But the Bergens were stuck with biscuits, for they had nothing more to cook, neither pork, nor mutton, nor so much as a mush of oats. When they were permitted to escape steerage for the open air of the deck, upon those rare occasions when fair weather allowed for it, it was not to prepare food, but only to draw a breath of fresh air. Stretching their limbs, they watched as the others bickered and squabbled around the cooking grates.
The last of the pigs had been slaughtered days ago. With a pang of bottomless longing, Alma had smelled the fatty meat as it was seared upon the grates, though the bounty did not stretch so far as steerage, but was consumed in the relative comfort of cabins by those who could afford such luxuries. Those down below, if they had any oats left, were not apt to distribute them freely. And possessing but a few sovereigns reserved for their transportation to Chicago, which Alma had sewn into the lining of Nora's skirt, the Bergens had little to bargain with.
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