The Waste Lands

He didn’t trust that smile.

He turned to his Final Essay and scanned down the lines. I’m pretty sure Blame is dangerous, he read, and that is the truth. He closed the folder, tapped his fingers on it thoughtfully for a few moments, then returned to Charlie the Choo-Choo.

Engineer Bob and Charlie spent many happy days together and talked of many things. Engineer Bob lived alone, and Charlie was the first real friend he’d had since his wife died, long ago, in New York. Then one day, when Charlie and Engineer Bob returned to the roundhouse in St. Louis, they found a new diesel locomotive in Charlie’s berth. And what a diesel locomotive it was! 5,000 horsepower! Stainless steel cou-plers! Traction motors from the Utica Engine Works in Utica, New York! And sitting on top, behind the genera-tor, were three bright yellow radiator cooling fans. “What is this?” Engineer Bob asked in a worried voice, but Charlie only sang his song in his smallest, gruffest voice:

Don’t ask me silly questions,

I won’t play silly games.

I’m just a simple choo-choo train

And I’ll always be the same.

I only want to race along

Beneath the bright blue sky,

And be a happy choo-choo train

Until the day I die.

Mr. Briggs, the Roundhouse Manager, came over. “That is a beautiful diesel locomotive,” said Engineer Bob, “but you will have to move it out of Charlie’s berth, Mr. Briggs. Charlie needs a lube job this very afternoon.”

“Charlie won’t be needing any more lube jobs, Engi-neer Bob,” said Mr. Briggs sadly. “This is his replace-ment—a brand-new Burlington Zephyr diesel loco. Once, Charlie was the best locomotive in the world, but now he is old and his boiler leaks. I am afraid the time has come for Charlie to retire.” “Nonsense!” Engineer Bob was mad! “Charlie is still full of zip and zowie! I will telegraph the head office of The Mid-World Railway Company! I will telegraph the President, Mr. Raymond Martin, myself! I know him, because he once gave me a Good Service Award, and afterwards Charlie and I took his little daughter for a ride. I let her pull the lanyard, and Charlie whistled his loudest for her!”

“I am sorry, Bob,” said Mr. Briggs, ‘Taut it was Mr. Martin himself who ordered the new diesel loco.”

It was true. And so Charlie the Choo-Choo was shunted off to a siding in the furthest corner of Mid-World’s St. Louis yard to rust in the weeds. Now the HONNNK! HONNNK! of the Burlington Zephyr was heard on the St. Louis to Topeka run, and Charlie’s blew no more. A family of mice nested in the seat where Engi-neer Bob once sat so proudly, watching the countryside speed past; a family of swallows nested in his smoke-stack. Charlie was lonely and very sad. He missed the steel tracks and bright blue skies and wide open spaces. Sometimes, late at night, he thought of these things and cried dark, oily tears. This rusted his fine Stratham head-light, but he didn’t care, because now the Stratham head-light was old, and it was always dark. Mr. Martin, the President of The Mid-World Railway Company, wrote and offered to put Engineer Bob in the peak-seat of the new Burlington Zephyr. “It is a fine loco, Engineer Bob,” said Mr. Martin, “chock-full of zip and zowie, and you should be the one to pilot it! Of all the Engineers who work for Mid-World, you are the best. And my daughter Susannah has never forgotten that you let her pull old Charlie’s whistle.”

But Engineer Bob said that if he couldn’t pilot Char-lie, his days as a trainman were done. “I wouldn’t under-stand such a fine new diesel loco,” said Engineer Bob, “and it wouldn’t understand me.”

He was given a job cleaning the engines in the St. Louis yards, and Engineer Bob became Wiper Bob. Some-times the other engineers who drove the fine new diesels

would laugh at him. “Look at that old fool!” they said. “He cannot understand that the world has moved on!”

Sometimes, late at night, Engineer Bob would go to the far side of the rail yard, where Charlie the Choo-Choo stood on the rusty rails of the lonely siding which had become his home. Weeds had twined in his wheels; his headlight was rusty and dark. Engineer Bob always talked to Charlie, but Charlie replied less and less. Many nights he would not talk at all. One night, a terrible idea came into Engineer Bob’s head. “Charlie, are you dying?” he asked, and in his smallest, gruffest voice, Charlie replied: Don’t ask me silly questions,

I won’t play silly games,

I’m just a simple choo-choo train

And I’ll always be the same.

Now that I can’t race along

Beneath the bright blue sky

I guess that I’ll just sit right here

Until I finally die.

Jake looked at the picture accompanying this not-exactly-unexpected turn of events for a long time. Rough drawing it might be, but it was still definitely a three-handkerchief job. Charlie looked old, beaten, and forgotten. Engineer Bob looked like he had lost his last friend . . . which, according to the story, he had. Jake could imagine children all over America blatting their heads off at this point, and it occurred to him that there were a lot of stories for lads with stuff like this in them, stuff that threw acid all over your emotions. Hansel and Gretel being turned out into the forest, Bambi’s mother getting scragged by a hunter, the death of Old Yeller. It was easy to hurt little kids, easy to make them cry, and this seemed to bring out a strangely sadistic streak in many story-tellers . . . including, it seemed, Beryl Evans. But, Jake found, he was not saddened by Charlie’s relegation to the weedy wastelands at the outer edge of the Mid-World trainyards in St. Louis. Quite the opposite. Good, he thought. That’s the place for him. That’s the place, because he’s dangerous. Let him rot there, and don’t trust that tear in his eye—they say crocodiles cry, too.