On Time

by Paul Kozerski

  The son dared meet his father’s gaze.

  “Why the cross-examination? What was the harm?”

  “There can be plenty of harm about the way things look.”

  Jim recalled the older women’s mentality from the midway.

  “Look, how?”

  “Look wrong,” clarified Joe. “That’s Mike’s family.”

  Jim drew a tempered breath.

  “Was, Pa. Past tense. But now, one still is also your daughter-in-law and the other, your granddaughter. If I was somehow out of line in treating both of them to a night out, I apologize. But you know, you might try seeing them yourself, once in a while.”

  Joe went taut to the intrusion.

  “Don’t go telling me how I should behave, mister. Just worry about yourself.”

  “I’m not telling anyone anything,” Jim defended. “I’m just suggesting . . .”

  Joe cut him off.

  “Minding your own business might be a lot better.”

  Jim dropped his gaze.

  “Okay. Then why don’t you just tell me what my business is.”

  “Getting on a road crew, for starters,” said Joe. “I know you passed that test. But I still haven’t seen your name posted on the fireman trainee roster. When do you intend to get it there?”

  For the first time on any topic ever, Jim Graczyk met his father’s tone, head-on.

  “You know, now, I think, maybe never.”

  Joe leaned forward.

  “How’s that?”

  Jim was adamant.

  “You heard right, Pa. You don’t want me to be a yard brakeman? Okay, I won’t. You want me to stay away from Lorraine and Geri? Okay, I will. But, I won’t be going on the student fireman board, either. I’ve had a different job offer and I think I’m going to take it.”

  Joe squinted.

  “Make sense. What’re you talking about? Running off to ‘Lectric Engine?”

  “Nope, staying on the road. There’s a new freight clerk job opening in the yard office; a salaried one that’s been offered to me.”

  Joe recalled Boots’ mention of the same.

  “Offered? Who by?”

  “DeLynne Leplak.”

  The name crashed between father and son like a bolt of lightning.

  “You’d go to work for that guy?”

  “No, Pa.” Jim corrected. “I’d continue to work for the road, like I am, or you are, right now. Sure, maybe he’s tough. But like you’ve always said, a man who follows the rules has nothing to worry about, from anyone.”

  Joe rocked in a ponderous nod.

  “Okay. You do whatever, as far as the road. But just stay away from the Siwickis. Understand?”

  Like all fathers and sons, Joe and Jim’d had their share of petty differences. In respect and to keep the peace, Jim had always given in. Today though, the young man felt his risen blood surge even further, abruptly soaring to a radical new place of daring equality.

  “And if I don’t?”

  His knee-jerk defiance startled even Jim. For the first time, father and son regarded each other in the cold and brittle silence of true opponents. Neither said another word. But, both knew that a hard line had been carved in the sand between.

  CHAPTER 20

  Ulees McCall paused in his firewood gathering to study the day’s failing light. Its afterglow lay spent and deflated on the horizon, like a cooling wash of purple-pink embers; ones that drew the vitality not only from his world, but his spirit, as well.

  Lately, it was beginning to chill a bit with the dusk, a true sign that autumn was on its way. Though still warm enough to do without an evening blaze, the hunks of split pallet wood he now collected were more hoped to brighten his heart and drive off insect-like fingers of premonition seeking him out.

  Men like Ulees were transient railroad workers. They were the industry’s wandering gypsies and it wasn’t uncommon for them to not be officially hired by any road at all, simply being paid in daily cash for their toil. Their kind were usually slack in formal education. But, with strong and willing backs, they comprised a necessary, if revolving workforce of itinerants.

  Once the need in a given district was done most of their kind moved on, shuffling off to some other road or warmer climate. Ulees however, did not. He’d remained in Mayhew, doing the same road gang and mainline maintenance work for the last several years.

  No one knew much about the man, just that he appeared one day some time back and took root. Common knowledge held that he was from somewhere south, but little else. With railroaders being a breed who didn’t pry into each other’s affairs, no one pursued his background. As long as a man carried his part of the demanding workload, there were neither complaints, nor questions. And Ulees always proved to be among the hardest working. Whenever an extra set of hands were needed, no matter how menial or grueling the task, he was there to pitch in with his fullest effort.

  Ulees didn’t smoke, chew, or drink. Foul words never passed through his lips and he was truly a guy whose nature was best described as, easy going. When not working, he kept to himself and spent his time tending a garden patch, some berry arbors, and a variety of both winged and four-legged vagabond wildlife. Ulees’ simple existence, though, was much more storied.

  Ju-Ju boy.

  That’s what Great Aunt Marvella had dubbed the orphan, after taking both Ulees and a half-sister in, when their mother died of black water fever. Marvella had been a seer, an old-blood voodoo woman known as a Mambo. She was descended from a mix of west African stock and Creole lineage, rumored to have inherited her dark art skills from ancestor Maroon islanders, brought to the bayou by old-time slavers.

  There, she’d been born and grown up, eventually wandering upcountry with a common-law husband. But, he’d been dead as long as anyone could remember. Called the herb lady, Marvella lived in a hillside shack, existing on gardened yams and beans, some rabbits and free-range chickens.

  She publicly subsidized herself with sales of homemade medicinal goods; health teas, blood thinners, tonics. For certain clients though, there were also discretionary palm readings, séances, and sales of esoteric concoctions. All such were transacted only after dark, to a trusted few, who sought out her arcane understanding of sorcerous charms and elixirs.

  As youngsters, Ulees and sister Elicia had been called upon to help in Marvella’s craft. They’d navigated tricky slopes and waded through hip high bogs under her guiding scrutiny, seeking out those mystical harvests of special roots, shoots, and leaves that she could no longer pursue herself.

  Then, back at their shanty, between puffs off her ever-present corncob pipe, Marvella would prepare the harvest. And she would talk. Ghosts and goblins, spirits and stars, demons and angels, all were common subject matter. Her knowledge of the occult was taken as gospel thereabouts and never questioned. So, on that one particular night, when her eyes kept wandering over to touch on Ulees, he knew something telling would soon take place.

  Until then, the youngster had been helping to clean and peel their latest batch of curative plants. He’d just tied off another clutch of stems with twine, ready to join those bundles already drying in the cabin’s rafters - up among Marvella’s yellowed collection of ritual animal skulls, the ones that grinned perpetually down, silent and watching from their dark, eyeless sockets.

  But in handing over his new bundle, Marvella instead, grabbed one of the boy’s hands. She flipped it over and took stock of his palm. The smoldering pipe shifted to a far corner of her mouth. The woman’s brow warped with a touch of insight. Moments later, she nodded in a kind of spiritual acknowledgment and gently released Ulees. No explanation was offered as Marvella returned to her work.

  Left in the chilly shadow of such a stark and personal intrusion, the orphan dared to press her on it.

  “What, Auntie? What did you see on my hand?”


  The hefty woman considered his petition, then declared simply.

  “You are born a kin to water, good child. In it waits the chance for a second baptism and the forever cleansing of you. Before it, though, comes an Old Testament count, same as Noah on the flood, the wanderin’ tribes, or the Lord’s time in the desert. But, be it in time or tons, I don’t know.”

  He knew better than to challenge her words and soberly digested them.

  “Will it be good or bad?” He asked.

  “That’ll be left up to you.”

  “Will there be a sign - something for me to know by?”

  The woman looked to a pale saucer of distant moon.

  “Iff’n it does, it’ll start up a couple nights before, with old man moon dolled-up in a colored best, like all them big city folks, on Fat Tuesday. It’ll end with plain-as-day writin’ before your very eyes. Like in the Good Book’s old side, where it happened on the wall at bad King Belshazzar’s palace.”

  Marvella’s words ended there, her thin explanation offering more dismay than comfort. Though, reading the boy’s confusion, she broke into a minimizing laugh and playfully ruffled his hair. Ulees accordingly, volunteered a compliant smile, wanting to believe that it was all just a minor something, which might come to pass with hardly a notice.

  Yet, her proclamation stayed with him and from that night on, a subtle change did begin creeping into his life. From time to time, there’d been what Marvella had called penny-dreads, assorted, smalltime forebodings and coincidences. One time Ulees might sense an event about to happen or the arrival of certain people, when none were expected. Yet, nothing overt was ever revealed, even on that fatal day with Thad.

  Here and now though, in this faraway place, Ulees felt a twinge of real premonition; an intermittent pulse of something truly ominous. Directed at him or the area, he couldn’t yet say. But, like a spot of gathering infection, it was definitely venomous and ripening. And tonight, he sensed the first inklings of a direction; outside the yard and down the main. Not far off and not far away.

  Time or Tons.

  A bible-count of forty. As so many times prior, Ulees again pondered Marvella’s analogy to the old scripture number. And again, he came up empty. Nothing in his life measured anywhere near that sum.

  He raised his eyes toward the familiar face of earth’s distant neighbor. Marvella’s connection of it to the Passion-tide, also left him clueless. Ulees did know that long ago, the official Mardi Gras colors had been formally ordained as purple, green, and gold; standing for justice, power, and faith. But he could never remember having seen old man moon wear any such an array and their assigned moral values only deepened the mystery.

  Every fall the planet took on a cloak of familiar harvest time orange, or less often, wore one of blood red. Occasionally, an icy halo courted it. Sometimes it was referred to as being blue, or a hunter’s moon. Yet, most evenings it simply glowed anemic and dumb, in the same pale, chalky shade as what looked down on him now.

  Clutching an armload of his night’s firewood, Ulees purposely called to it.

  “Don’t say much, do ya’? Well, that’s okay. But, anything real bad comes along that needs my fixin’, you do like Auntie said and be sure to give me plenty of notice, huh?”

  The spare hand heaped his stove with kindling, then set a match to the pile. Squatting at its open door, he pensively tracked a single flame that struggled upward, inched across the roughhewn tinder, birthing others. Slowly, the cottage was bathed in a growing light and warmth. But neither did the man any good.

  Normally content with his solitude, tonight Ulees felt wretchedly alone and in need of fellowship. But this evening there was no one to keep him company. His birds were tight in their nests and his most recent four-legged lodgers had moved on, leaving no burr-speckled fur to be stroked.

  He recalled his open invitation to the Graczyk home and for the first time, nearly took it up. Yet, as always, he didn’t want to accidentally drag any bad luck along in the bargain. So he instead, grabbed the tattered wool army blanket off his bunk and draped it shawl-like, about him. Knees drawn to his chest, the man sat alone, gazing into his fire for a long while after.

  CHAPTER 21

  “Your kid looks good in there.”

  Spike’s words caught Joe off guard. He’d been observing his distant son and the comment made him feel like some lowly Peeping Tom. Joe didn’t reply as the brakeman came alongside.

  “I mean it. No one faults Jimmy for trying on a different hat. Been there only a couple weeks and I already hear that he’s doing a bang-up job. The guys say the way he works up switch lists and shipping papers, it’s almost like having Alex back.

  Spike affirmed his statement with a curt nod ahead.

  “Mark my word, your boy keeps on going and he could wind up being another local yard guy to make the big time. Like old Ches Phinessey - gandy dancer to head of motive power. Yeah. I could see it happening.”

  Spike considered Joe.

  “Didn’t you and old E.P. himself, started out together right here after the Great War?”

  Graczyk hiked a shoulder.

  “Yeah. So?”

  “You don’t hold leaving train service against him, do you?”

  The engineer sighed.

  “No.”

  “There you have it. Sure, the kid might work for a jerk right now. But, it can’t last forever. Jerks always move on and good guys need to replace them. Heard you say so, yourself. More than once.

  “Jimmy’s got a level head on his shoulders. And we both know that he’s the kind of guy who does things right. Now, he’s got his foot in the door with management and if he ever gets a downtown job, you know he’d keep things fair and square for us guys in the trenches. Not like that new bunch, who’ve never have gotten their hands dirty out here. Yes sir. He’s the kind of guy I’d like to see running the whole show.”

  Joe’s reply was sober.

  “We all thought the same when Stosh Dombeck made regional union boss.”

  The brakeman speared his longtime friend with a hard glance.

  “Not the same and you know it. For me, I’ll say it again. I’m proud of that kid. Even if you’re not.”

  Spike punctuated his claim with another lordly nod. He blew out his watery old tobacco plug, took a fresh bite of new cigar and hiked off.

  Joe’s ears were left echoing with a glowing endorsement that he just didn’t feel part of and he chased a look after Spike. In the face of this new company mindset maybe some of what the man said did have merit. The old rank and file business looked to be splintering, forming a barrier between the upcoming bevy of downtown gentry and the old heads. That could only isolate the groups, bringing nothing but harm to both the company and profession that he loved.

  Joe tried being honest with himself. He couldn’t - wouldn’t - deny his feelings about how a guy should work his way up in train service. Did that make him wrong? Down deep inside, didn’t every man hope for some kind of shared legacy, one to be carried step by step, on the shoulders of his lineage? Something more than a forgotten headstone or a surname hung on a bunch of indifferent progeny? Something that justified a man’s passage in life?

  To Joe Graczyk the transfer of a family herald was a blood-sanctioned endorsement. It was an imprimatur not given to shortcuts, but a route of long hours, work-blistered skin, and heat-seared flesh; a hallmark of pride under which a son proved his mettle by a purposeful, dues-paying, rise through the ranks.

  Though, watching that son now, Joe did admit to seeing something different. Sitting in there, Jim didn’t look at all like a turncoat or future enemy taskmaster, just a young man, somehow burdened and forlorn. As Joe observed, Jim slid from behind his desk and walked outside. He paused there in survey of the freight yard, slowly scanning left to right, sharing in the common manner of its monitoring, exactly like Joe
always did.

  For the first time ever, the man felt a benevolent chord strike within himself and began walking toward his boy.

  Jim Graczyk stood outside the empty yard office, taking silent stock of the rail yard. Its sultry breeze embraced and licked at him in eager greeting, the warm caress of a loyal old pet, one which now teetered on the verge of betrayal and extinction.

  He watched a line of coal filled gondolas grind through the yard’s westbound main, while a hotshot load of fresh Windy City meat gathered steam to the east. A southbound merch-run awaited the signals to clear for its nighttime passage and a slowing livestock train was sounding its approach station whistle. Every freight car entering or leaving this yard carried with it part of a long and noble history, a history that today assailed Jim Graczyk with an ache.

  From its 1857 chartering, the Chicago, Cahokia, and Southern had often been referred to as, Chicago’s Railroad. It was developed strictly for transport of Illinois resources to the lowly lakeshore community that had been christened after the Chicagoua, a regional tribe of the Algonquian nation, whose name was rumored to loosely translate as, the Onion Eaters.

  Through its hauling of quarry stone, livestock, produce, and grain, this road aided in the creation and endorsement of the first Midwestern metropolitan superpower and developed the necessary support base of innumerable contributing towns and industries along its route.

  Unlike so many of its counterparts, the CC&S never coveted any vain cravings to span the nation, satisfied in remaining a loyal, local performer. Naturally blessed with a glacier-scoured and dead level right of way, it took serious care of its roadbeds and bridges. And while the transported freight might be varied, every single piece of cargo was considered a priority.

  That logic rewarded the company with an unending stream of business and of the many freight yards contributing to the road’s overall success, few better personified its tough Middle American reliability, than the rails anchored in this place called Mayhew.