Chapter 8: Riding the Rails

There I was sitting on the front porch. Cars rattled down Walden street. A couple passed by holding hands speaking Japanese: “Utsukusii hi da.””. Danny was by my side tossing a baseball up and down into his mitt. I was wrtiing in the Revrend Mary's journal about the old Concord Railroad. The next thing I knew, we were both sitting in a railroad car traveling along a bumpy track.

Danny looked over at me. “Am I dreaming, Nathaniel. Weren’t we just sitting on your porch?”

“If you are dreaming, we’re both having the same dream.”

“How did we get on this train?” Danny asked.

“I don’t know. I was just writing in this journal the Reverend Anderson gave me. And the next thing I knew, we were here? The car was smaller than the train we usually rode into Boston. The seats were wooden and uncomfortable. There were only a few other passengers, mostly men, who didn’t pay much attention to us.

“Here. Let me see that journal.” Danny asked.

I passed it over to him. He skimmed through it. “Seems harmless enough.” he observed. “Wait a minute. You were writing a poem about the old Concord railroad. Now we are riding on an old railroad.”

“You can’t be serious. There can’t be a connection between that journal and this train..”

“Ok.” said Danny. You come up with a better explanation.”

Danny stammered, mumbled something about aliens and fell back into a strict silence.

I looked out the window. All I could see was farmland. Rich fertile fields. Any explanation I could think about flew out the window and got lost in the thick smole pouring out of the engine’s smokestack. There were farmers busy at work with teams of horses pulling plows cutting neat curving rows in the ground. When we roared by, they looked up and waved. It was strange to see the words I had imagined on paper a few moments ago come to life.

Just then, a man came into the car. He wore a blue uniform and a round cap with a tiny visor. “Concord,,, Concord Massachusetts he sang. Danny looked up. “Let's get off here. At least we can walk home and figure this out later.”

It seemed like a good idea. We could ask questions later. We rose from our seats when the train began to slow. There was a crowd of people waiting at the station as we stepped down from the car. We watched as they climbed aboard. The engineer blew the whistle, and the tiny train disappeared into the afternoon distances. We turned our backs to the rail and headed into town.