There Are Masons In The Hills

Al, Chet, and the old hobo left the riverbank.  They walked around the foundation of the bridge and started to climb the bank.  The old hobo stopped and looked back at Curt who had remained flat on his back beside the fire, his knees up, his legs crossed in that long ungainly Abe Lincoln pose and still sipping his blackberry brandy.  The old man turned and said, “Ain’t you gonna come up to lay beside the track with your chums?” 

“No, I’ll appreciate it just as much from here.”

“Well, thanks for sharing your grub and brandy .....‘twas good of ya.  Maybe I’ll see ya someday on down the line.”  The old hobo genially offered this traditional farewell.

Curt turned his head, smiled at the old timer and said, “That’s possible, stranger things than that have happened. You take care of yourself, you hear?”

Instead of a wave, the old hobo straightened his stance and gave Curt a short military salute, then adjusted the rope of his worn back pack, turned and climbed the bank.  He said his good-byes to the other three and walked down the track where the path no longer banked.  He then hid behind a bush where he would wait for the engine and its crew to pass before he hopped the freight.

Al, Larry, and Chet found a comfortable place to lay down perpendicular to the track.  Each laid with his head about three feet from the end of the ties, so close they could smell the creosote that permeated the massive chunks of wood.  Although it was still a football field away, there was that unmistakable roar of the two mighty diesel engines hooked in tandem and the screeching of metal on metal as the steel wheels of fifty cars were pulled against the two steel rails.

The three young men pressed their bodies so flat they were part of the very ground that held the ties. On it came, and louder it roared, until the ground trembled.

It was beside them, huge, black, and roaring like a tempest, screeching like banshees, deafening like God’s own thunder.  It shook the ground as if the world  would open and swallow them!

Then it was gone! .....as gone as the old hobo.  The three sat up and smiled at each other with that same smile they had when their fathers first brought them here ten years earlier.  Those first few years, when they were just boys, were the last of the glorious steam engines, but the mighty diesels of this day didn’t disappoint.