I hurried to catch up with her, and she turned and we walked together again.
“So the nearest I can figure is that this was road access to the railway for some reason, or it went to a door or something so that workers could come out and load things on cars and then link them to railcars.”
I looked at the tracks above me; it sounded absurd, and I said so.
“Oh sweetie, the intermodal shipping we are used to only started in the 1960s, so before that everything was loaded and unloaded by hand. This railroad goes back to the 1890s, at least, so for sixty years they had people to load things on and off of cars. That’s why the access was built.” We were almost to the top of the stairs, and every time she took a step little clouds of rust dust puffed out. As soon as I got to the top I saw weeds, and black gravel, and rails. At the other end of the tracks was a jumble of switches, and old lights that had been shattered long ago; I saw that the rails on our side were set up to allow a single car to stop and then join the main rail again. She must have been right.
“See over there?” She pointed across the bridge to where we were going. There was the same jumble of switches, but the warehouse was older, and I saw giant doors.
“So we’re going…” I pointed.
“Yep,” she said. “So stay close to the center, because it’s less likely someone will see your head from the street.”
I crouched down and followed her. There were holes between the railroad ties, but it was surprisingly easy to walk from rail to tie to rail to tie at a pace that felt like a limp – quickslow, quickslow. The cars passed below us in bursts, and I thought of trying to spit in one, maybe through a sunroof, but didn’t.
Andrew Samtoy
emilyjeanh
trcontributor
