Page 46 of Whistle

Christina had chosen well. When her husband saw what she’d brought home from Choo-Choo’s Trains, he argued they should open it up immediately, set it up, see if it worked, rather than wait two more days until Auden’s actual birthday. “You know, to find out whether it’s defective, in case we need to return it.”

“Maybe I should have bought this for you,” Christina said. “Boys and their toys. They never grow out of them, do they?”

So they waited until late afternoon Friday. Darryl left work early, and when Auden came through the door, tossing his backpack onto the bench in the front hall, his parents were standing there below ahappy birthdaybanner they’d strung across the archway into the living room. And, still in its packaging, sitting upright, was the Chesapeake & Ohio train set.

Auden and his father set it up right then and there.

“Now we can’t leave it here,” Darryl said. “But I can get a four-by-eight sheet of plywood, or maybe an old door or something, set it up on some sawhorses, and put it down in the basement. How does that sound?”

Well, that sounded just fine to Auden. But that would mean a trip to the lumber store, and probably the better part of a weekend for his dad to get the set up and running, so for now, at least, he could have fun with his new gift right there.

“We’ve done this all backwards,” Darryl said as his wife cut thin slices of cake for each of them and placed them on Happy Birthday paper plates. “I haven’t even got the hot dogs on the barbecue yet.”

“I don’t think it matters what order we eat it all in,” said Christina. “Eat a little bit of cake, and then a little later we’ll have dinner.”

Auden shoveled the chocolate cake frosted with white icing into his mouth in record time, then bolted from the table to check on his train.

“He loves it,” Darryl said. “Good choice.”

“I knew he would,” Christina said.

Auden, back in the dining room, had his hand on the throttle of the transformer, slowly scaling back the train’s speed until it came to a stop. Even at a standstill, it gave off a low-level hum, the electric smell of ozone hanging in the air.

A train set had never been on Auden’s wish list. He’d been hoping for a football or a new catcher’s mitt or a more up-to-date videogame system. Every few months there was a better one with greater speed and more amazing graphics and infinitely morebits, whatever those were. But the moment he put his hands on this Chesapeake & Ohio steam engine, he realized that he cared little for the latest adventures of Mario or Zelda or Sonic. This was what he’d always wanted, even if he hadn’t known it.

Before the singing of “Happy Birthday” and the blowing out of candles, while holding the engine in his hand as his father had put the lengths of track together, he could sense a... a what? It reminded Auden of putting his hand on the fabric covering of a speaker when the stereo’s volume was cranked up, except in this case there was no sound. Only a slight trembling. It went up Auden’s fingers and into his hands and traveled all the way to his elbow before ebbing.

He almost didn’t want to have to let go of it to set it on the track. Before doing so, he’d looked deeply into the working headlight, putting his eye right up to it, as though he were peering into a telescope. He expected it to light up once it sat on the rails and the throttle was turned up, but was surprised to see a slight glimmer there already, almost as though the engine were looking back at him, winking.

What Auden needed now was a proper depot. A destination for his train. Where it could stop, pick up and unload cargo. Maybe an engine house, too, and a water tower.

His father, at the far end of the kitchen and about to step out onto the deck to fire up the barbecue, called out loud enough to be heard through the entire house, “How many hot dogs you want, kiddo?”

Auden, transfixed by his splendid gift, seemed not to hear his father.

“Auden!”

The boy blinked, as though awakened from a trance-like state, and shouted his reply: “Two!”

He gave the throttle a nudge, wanting to start the train at a crawl, the way it would begin moving in the real world.

The locomotive made a clicking sound, but failed to move.

Outside, his father opened the lid of the barbecue with his left hand, and clicked the wand lighter he held firmly in his right. A small flame appeared at the end.

Gripping the engine, Auden moved the train back and forth an inch, in case the electrical connection between the wheels and the track had momentarily been lost. He turned the throttle again. The train moved half an inch, and stopped.

There were four dials on the barbecue panel, one for each burner that sat below the grills. Darryl gave the one on the far left a quarter turn. There was a hissing sound of escaping propane. Darryl pointed the lit end of the wand down between the grills.

“What’s your problem?” Auden said aloud to the train. He turned the throttle back and forth several times, trying to get the freight train to move. Each time it jerked slightly, but refused to maintain any forward motion.

The wand flame flickered and died. The burner failed to erupt in blue flame. “Damn it,” Darryl said under his breath. He clicked it again as propane continued to hiss from the jets of the first burner. The wand did not light. He clicked again. And again. “This fucking thing,” he said. The problem, it seemed, was not so much the barbecue itself as this useless lighter.

Auden turned the throttle as far as it would go. The transformer hummed, but the engine stubbornly refused to move. Leaving the throttle set to max, he put his hand on the engine and once again moved it back and forth, hoping that would somehow snap it back into action.

It did.

The train suddenly shot forward, like a stone from a slingshot, soquickly in fact that, as it reached the first turn only a couple of feet away, the Chesapeake & Ohio loco left the tracks and was airborne, flying off the end of the table, plummeting to the floor with the various freight cars trailing after it. As spectacular a railway disaster as the Pidgeon family’s dining room had ever been witness to.

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