Chapter One
The train charged forward in the shimmering afternoon sunlight,
autumn's vibrant colors forming a natural lane for the raised
bed of chipped rock and the few hundred tons of steel and wood.
The rails stretched out before the locomotive, light glinting off their
polished surfaces, tricked by the eye into joining together a half mile
in the distance, the illusion always moving forward at the speed of
the train, as if those rails spread open just in time to carry her.
For the driver of that freight, it was another day in paradise.
Alone with his thoughts, he and his brakeman, pulling lumber and
fuel oil, cotton and cedar, sixteen shipping containers, and seven
empty flatbeds. Paradise was that sound in your ears and that rumble
up your legs. It was the blue sky meeting the silver swipe of tracks
far off on the horizon. It was a peaceful job. The best work there
was. It was lights and radios and doing something good for people—getting
stuff from one place to another. The driver packed another
pinch of chewing tobacco deep between his cheeks and gum, his
mind partly distracted by a bum air conditioner in the bedroom of a
mobile home still miles away, wondering where the hell he'd get the
three ... read full excerpt from: Parallel Lies ebook
