Smokey Mountain Breakdown

Carolina Special ~ Part Three

The whistle blew mournfully as the train chugged around a curve on the track nearly drowning out the voices of the spectral chain gang that still played in Floyd’s head. He felt sure he would hear their mournful voices toiling for many years. The miles flew by as they cross the North Carolina / Tennessee border, winding through the Smoky Mountains.

The moon faded in and out of violet clouds that were moving so fast it seemed like the glowing sphere was itself traveling through the sky. Though there was only a slight breeze, the sky above seemed to be driven with fast moving air, herding the clouds ever westward.

Floyd watched the mountains roll by and the surface of the French Broad was glassy like a ballroom floor. The train was slowing to move past the market town of Newport and Dusty pointed his finger up to one of the cliffs that rose above the town.

“Look up there, boy,” he said, “This might be good for you to see.”

Floyd followed the line of Dusty’s pointing finger up to the cliffs above. There, illuminated by the moonlight, and giving off its own gentle glow was a white cross.

“What’s that for?” He asked.

“Well, you’ll see in a minute, but it’s there so all trainmen can say a prayer for the little girl who died on these tracks some years past. Her daddy put it up there.”

“All the way up there? You’d need some serious ropes to get up there.”

“Yes, that would have been the safe thing to do.” Said Dusty, “But just watch…”

As the train drew abreast of the town, Floyd looked down at the tracks below and saw to his amazement a young girl emerge from under the train. It shocked him so much he jumped back.

The child was dressed in a frilly old fashioned dress with lots of frills and bows. Her hair was arranged into cascades of curls on either side of her head. She cut a glance back at the train and waved at Floyd and flashed him a wide snaggletooth grin. Floyd waved back in astonishment. Then she ran off to the center of the river, floating above it as if it were solid. About the same time, he looked up to the glowing cross and saw a man emerge from behind it. He was dressed in an engineer’s garb of striped overalls and he had an impressive handlebar mustache. As Floyd was watching, he spread his arms out and floated down to the surface of the water where the little girl in the party dress waited. He landed gently and held a hand out to the child.

Then the two ghosts bowed at each other and began to waltz over the slick surface of the river. It was one of the most beautiful sights that Floyd had ever seen. And in his mind’s ear he could just barely hear the sound of the band playing the waltz.

“Who are they?” Asked Floyd in a half-whisper, not wanting to interrupt the ghostly dance that was taking place over the glassy water.

“That’s the little girl who died in this spot. And that’s her daddy with her. You see, he didn’t use no ropes to erect that cross on the cliff. He fell to his death while he was trying to climb back down. So he haunts the cross and makes it glow to remind other trainmen to pray for her, and she comes out from the tracks on nights when the moon is full and they dance a waltz. The love they shared for each other is what haunts this place.”

Dusty pulled his bandanna out of his side pocket and blew noisily into it and dabbed his eyes.

Floyd gave him a searching look.

“What? Cinder got in my eye is all.” Dust said gruffly.

The train emerged out of the mountains on that clear autumn night and picked up steam across the plateau as it got closer and closer to Knoxville. Floyd felt he’d learned so much from Dusty and felt he’s soon be able to take a train on this run by himself. But he was wondering if with his new ability to see the shades around him if this would be the best thing for him. He thought perhaps he’d give it a few more runs and see what happened. As long as he could do as Dusty advised and keep his mind on the engine and the track,

It seemed like the rest of the journey was going off without a hitch. Once in a while he’d hear something or see something out of the corner of his eye and Dusty would look at him and shake his head. Floyd had learned it was best to do as Dusty said.

The miles clattered by and soon they were approaching New Market which was just 20 or so miles from their final destination. The train started gradually slowing down so it could take on water at New Market. When it finally drew to a grinding and reluctant halt, Floyd realized Dusty was getting his kit bag together.

“That’s a good idea.” He said, “I’ll start getting my stuff ready to go, too.”

“No hurry, boy.” The old man said. “This is where I get off, I’m afraid. It’s been right nice traveling with you.”

“Hey, old man, you can’t get off here! There ain’t nothing here but the water tower. ‘Sides…you have to sign off in K-town for me.”

Dusty gave him one of those long looks with his eyes slightly narrowed, as if his old creased eyes were looking into the sun.

“ Oh really?” He said softy. “Look around you.”

Floyd ran a soot covered hand through his hair and then looked out into what should have been rolling hills of farmland. What he saw was like a punch to the gut.

All around the train were the ghostly remains of a dreadful train wreck. The real train, the one he was standing on was crossed and intersected by the ghostly twisted metal corpses of two steam engines. A cowcatcher, twisted into nothing was laid next to the stack of another. The carnage was dreadful. Specters walked up and down the remains of the train. One, an engineer, waved up a Dusty and Dusty waved back at him.

“Dusty, but…but…No!” Floyd said, looking desperately at the old guy.

“This is New Market, son. Site of the deadliest train wreck ever. Two trains going sixty miles an hour hitting dead-on with no warning. This is where I come from. See, I’m one of the lucky ones. I get to haunt this entire stretch of track from Spartanburg to here doin’ what I love best. Runnin’ trains. Can’t go to K-town. See, I never made it there on that run of the Carolina Special. Yessirree, my journey stopped right here.”

Dusty slapped Floyd on the back and grinned. “So you sign off for just yourself. Really, you’ve been doing it all on your own on this trip. I was just along for the ride.”

Floyd stood speechless as he watched the old man jump down from the cab. When he did so he assumed the same translucent, ghostly shape that the other apparitions held. The old guy went up to the engineer and shook his hand heartily and then turned and waved at Floyd as the train chugged forward towards Knoxville.

And in his mind’s ear he heard the old guy say to him, “Just remember, keep your eyes on your work…keep drivin’ the train and you won’t go wrong.”

But Floyd was severely shaken. The thought that he’d been traveling with a shade all this time was almost more than he could bear. And he’d grown genuinely fond of the old man and he would have liked to buy him a cup of coffee in the railroad diner. That Dusty was no more real than any of the spirits he’d seen that night was unthinkable. His cheek still stung where the old man had slapped it and he could still feel the imprint of his hand on his back. What was real anyway?

And Floyd wondered how he could run the train if he couldn’t trust his own senses. If the experience he had made it so that he couldn’t distinguish reality from the spirit world, perhaps it would be better not to work the rails. And it was then that Floyd decided to apprentice in the engineering department repairing the big engines back at the yard rather than being responsible for driving them.

When he disembarked at the K-town station, he walked to the local boarding house and slept deeply but restlessly. The next morning he came back to ride back to Carolina, this time in broad daylight. Blind Charlie Oates was already parked in his usual spot with his guitar and harmonica. His guitar case was open to hold his tips. He was singing “The New Market Crash”, one of his gorier train wreck songs, full of decapitated corpses and screaming metal.

And Floyd went up to Charlie and nudged him with his boot, interrupting him.

“Hey, Charlie. Here’s a dollar. I’ll give it to you if you’ll play something else.”

“What you want to hear?” he asked, his white eyes rolling up and around in their sockets as he rocked in the direction of Floyd’s voice.

“I don’t care, Charlie. Just don’t play that one.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

He started tapping out the cinders from his pipe once more. He tapped them and tapped them past the point that there could possibly be anything else in the bowl.

His eyes were watery and blue that day.

“And you know what? Every time I found myself in Knoxville after that day, I always would pay Blind Charlie Oates to not play that song. And you know what?” He cut his eyes up with a half-smile. “It was money well spent.”

And he reached for his tobacco pouch and began filling the pipe and tapping down the shreds of tobacco.

Carolina Special ~ Part Two

Floyd looked at Dusty then turned back to see where the hound raced beside the train, but the beast was gone when he turned back.

Dusty fiddled with the gauges and said, “Oh, they only has a certain territory they range in. Ghosts, I guess you’d call them. But they’re liable to be more active tonight. You won’t see them this solid any other night of the year.”

“How come? What’s so special about tonight?”

Dusty gave Floyd a hard look and pointed at him then nodded toward the firebox. Floyd took the hint and started shoveling coal into the heart of the engine.

Dusty laughed. “It’s Halloween, son! Day of the Dead, Feast of All Souls, the night when the veil between the worlds is thinnest. Didn’t you pay no mind to the day when we set out?”

Floyd thought about this for a moment. He’d never been a superstitious man or given to fancies of ghosts and haunts, but he was now changing his mind.

“So, Dusty…do you remember her…I mean…do you remember when you saw them?”

“It was a long time ago, son. A long time ago. I was a much younger man. And like I said, it’s best to put it out of your mind. By the end of this journey to Knoxville you’ll know what I mean.”

Floyd tried to put his mind to the tasks at hand. He tried to think about the sound of the steam chuffing out of the engine and the color of the smoke coming out of the stack. But he just couldn’t get the beautiful woman of light out of his head. It never occurred to him that such a being existed.

The train chugged on through the night, gradually approaching Asheville. Floyd looked out into the night sky and the trail of white steam snaking behind them. When he looked out to the western mountains, those strange lights seemed brighter than the first time he saw them. There was something both beautiful and menacing about them. He couldn’t quite put his finger on it, but it was as if they were watching him and he felt the hair on the back of his neck stand.

His eyes gazed down the track and he saw there a trestle looming in the distance. The train reduced its speed since they were drawing close to the city. Soon they seemed to be inching towards the trestle and Floyd saw a dark emptiness there under the bridge. It was a gaping hole of space that sparkled with misery. Swinging from a hangman’s noose from the trestle was a woman’s corpse. Her garments were white and glowing and seemed to float around her as if moved by some phantom wind.

Floyd was frozen in horror. He wanted to look away but couldn’t seem to. As they came closer and closer, the corpse raised her head. Her eyes were bugged from hanging and the noose had cut into her neck. Dark blood dripped down the front of her garments.

Out of her swollen distended mouth she screamed, “My baby…where’s my baby?”

By now they came abreast of the trestle and dark, misshapen figures began to emerge from the tree roots that lay exposed on the banks. They were a miserable lot and moaned and howled with agony.

Floyd recoiled as the seemed to swarm the train as they went under the bridge.

“Dusty…we got to go faster!” He screamed as the shades of the night seemed intent on overtaking the train. He hadn’t felt this way since he was a young boy, hiding his face under the covers to escape the sounds of the night.

“Don’t look at them, boy! We can’t go any faster through here.”

Skeletal hands with broken fingers raised in supplication to Floyd who looked on horrified as they passed this cursed spot. The hung woman continued to scream and keen for her baby and the things coming out from the tree roots moaned. Their fleshless bones made a dreadful clattering as they banged against each other. Their fleshless skulls with their gaping eyes bored into Floyd.

Soon, it was over and they were through the overhanging trestle. Floyd glanced behind him and saw the spirits attempting to follow, their bony joints stopping them short at some invisible line. They hit that point and jerked backwards like vicious dogs on chains. Some of them collapsed with the force of that correction into piles of quivering bones that tried in vain to reform themselves.

Floyd threw up out of the side of the cab. Shakily he looked at Dusty. Dusty looked like nothing at all had happened the old fireman busied himself with his firebox and looked out to see the color of the steam.

Floyd wiped his mouth on his handkerchief. Then he grabbed Dusty by the shoulders, shaking him and said, “What in the hell was that?"

Floyd’s voice squeaked as it hadn’t since he was a teenager.

Dusty pushed him off and said, crossly, “I told ya not to look. That’s Suicide Bridge. It’s where the most unquiet spirits of suicides in these parts go when they die. Spooked ya, didn’t they?”

Dusty fished a bag of chewing tobacco out of the pocket of his overalls and stuck a good-sized plug in his cheek.

“Now, maybe you’ll listen, boy. Don’t look at them. Ignore them. Eventually, all of that will just be blurs on the edge of your vision. Just like other people see them.”

“Other people see them?”

“Well of course, son, didn’t you ever wonder about all the times you saw something out of the corner of your eye? Thought it was a bird or something, maybe? A piece of paper tumbling in the wind? That’s what they all think. Yessiree…that’s what they all think. Because the truth would be too terrible to believe. And folks believe what they want to believe, don’t they?”

Floyd’s experience with Suicide Bridge had shaken him considerably. He took Dusty’s advice to keep his eyes firmly focused in the cab of the engine. The night train rattled and clanked its way past Asheville with it’s payload of coal through the crisp autumn night. It winded its way along the banks of the French Broad River, sometimes on tracks laid into sheer cliffs blasted into the mountains. The water of the river glinted and danced in the bright moonlight below where the train ran on the shining tracks.

Floyd might have been sleepy from the quiet pacing had it not been for the hard work involved in keeping the fire stoked. While he was now calm, he assiduously avoided looking out into the surrounding night.

As they were perched on a particularly perilous rock face, he began to hear something. It was soft and he really thought he was imagining it. The rhythm of the train on the track seemed to keep time with the voices he thought he heard and it was easy to just believe that his mind was filling in the blanks of the timing of the train. At least, that was what he tried desperately to believe. But the voices got progressively louder and louder and he realized they were singing..

There was also the gradually louder sound of metal striking rock in a relentless beat. He finally could make out the words. He heard one clear distinct voice that would shout out the first line of the song and then a chorus of others that would answer. All the while, the endless sound of the hammers beat against the rocks.

I’m goin’ back to the Swannanoa Tunnel
That’s my home, baby, that’s my home…

Cap’n, Cap’n can’t you see?
Linin’ this track is killing po’ me!

Asheville Junction, Swannanoa Tunnel…
All caved in, baby, all caved in…

Cap’n, Cap’n can’t you see?
Linin’ this track is killing po’ me!

Hammer fallin’ from my shoulder…
All day long, baby, all day long…

Cap’n, Cap’n can’t you see?
Linin’ this track is killing po’ me!

Take this hammer, throw it in the river…
It rings right on, baby, it shines right on…

Ten thousand biscuits in my hand,
Gonna sop my way to th’ Promised Land…

Floyd felt himself slipping away. He was mesmerized by the sound of the work song. The verses went on and on and on. He was soon rocking to the rhythm of the voices that seemed to rise from the river itself. He felt himself somehow rising above his body, as if he were looking down on himself there in the cab of the engine. It was odd, but he couldn’t see Dusty there in the train cab with him and he wondered why he could see himself but not the old fireman. The pull of the song was irresistible. He felt if only he could jump off the train into the swirling black and silver waters of the French Broad, that all would be right somehow. He watched his body move to the door of the cab.

And he saw himself reach for the latch of the door. And he felt a surge of joy that he would soon be plummeting to the water below.

About that time, just before he was allowed the blessed freedom of jumping from the train, he was jolted back to reality by several hard slaps to his face. He opened his eyes and looked into Dusty’s lined and concerned face.

Dusty spat a stream of tobacco juice out of the cab.

“Sorry, boy, my fault. Shoulda told you to close your ears as well. Chain gang perished in the river down there when they were laying this track. They’s buried under these rails. Looks like they just invited you to join ‘em.”

Floyd felt oddly sad. He had really wanted to know how the song ended.

He couldn’t know that the song had no end.

Carolina Special ~ Conclusion

Carolina Special ~ Part One


The train creaked on it’s axis on the top of Saluda Mountain. The sounds were comforting in a way. The brakemen gave the go-ahead and they started down the mountain. The brakes screeched like a banshee in the night drowning all. The train gathered speed at an alarming rate, only held back by the howling brakes. Suddenly, the train gave a lurch. Dusty slammed his head against the engine and crumpled to the floor.

“Dusty! Dusty!” Floyd shouted over the brakes. “You all right, old man?”

Floyd eased over to him and a smear of blood came away on his hand from the back of Dusty’s head. He put a hand on the old man’s neck and couldn’t feel any pulse. The old man was dead. Floyd started to panic then looked up at the gauges and the firebox…looked like he was on his own in this nightmare.

He stood and looked out down the track, just in time to see the bank of fog drawing steadily and swiftly closer. It felt to him like they were going much faster than they should and then he heard it weakly over the scream of the brakes.

“Runaway Train!”

They were approaching Slaughter’s Cut at a dangerous rate. The brakes screamed in outrage. The clacking of the train against the tracks fused into one seamless roar. Floyd adjusted the steam input and held on for dear life as the train crashed down the mountain.

He felt the wind whip by like a tornado. His eyes seemed to lose focus and his ears roared. He lost consciousness the moment they hit the fog bank.

The next thing he knew, he was floating in the fog. He opened his eyes to the mist. The world was going by in slow motion. The silence was deafening, like being in the middle of a snow storm. It was as if the fog had absorbed the momentum of the train, suspending it. The tiny lights he’d seen earlier were floating around him like fireflies. The machinery in the cab glowed and shimmered. He heard voices as if in a tunnel. They were like the whispering voices you sometimes heard on the edge of your consciousness just before sleeping. The ones you strained to hear but never could.

Floyd slowly reached a coal dust begrimed hand out and cupped one of the tiny lights. It flickered and tickled in his hand giving off a tiny bit of heat. The lights swarmed around him like moths to lantern light. They pulsed and swarmed around Dusty’s head and the old fireman’s head raised off the floor as if the lights were gently raising him. Floyd heard the tinkling sound of the voices.

Sleep…sleep…sleep…

Be well…be well…be well…

Floyd looked on as the lights seemed to form into one large mass of brilliance. He felt as though he were moving through molasses . The lights formed into a face and shoulders. The brightness of the image blinded him for a moment and when he blinked and looked back at it, he saw that it was the face of a beautiful woman with long flowing hair. She had a long narrow face with kind eyes. Her shoulders emerged from the mist and were white and glowing.

“You see us, don’t you?” She asked, looking at him curiously.

“Who are you? What’s happening?” Floyd asked with a quiver in his voice.

“We are the ones who came before and the ones who have come after. We are the Nunne-hi or the sidhe or the ghosts of time.” She said cryptically. “We guard this pass.”

Floyd had no idea what she was talking about. He reached a hand out to try to touch her and she drew back in alarm.

“No, it is enough that you see me. If you touch me, you will not be able to return from this place.”

“This place? This place?…As far as I know I’m in the train cab in a fog bank.”

Floyd blinked hard. He wanted to believe this, but even in the glowing of the cab and the strange roaring silence, he could see nothing beyond the window. No movement, no sensation of movement was felt. He just saw the whiteness of the fog and the lights.

“You are between the worlds with us.” The apparition said. “And when you go back to your world, you shouldn’t remember any of this. But you may see other things because of this… Now sleep….sleep…sleep...”

And then, the sound was roaring in his ears again. It was as if a door had suddenly opened and he had fallen through it. He stood there in the dimness of the rocking train that now sounded completely as it should. No squealing brakes, no howling wind…they seemed to be chugging away at a normal rate.

Dusty was sitting peering at the gauges as if nothing had happened.

“Dusty! Are you alright?!” Floyd called over the din of the engine.

Dusty turned and looked at Floyd and frowned.

“Of course I am, you daft boy. Why shouldn’t I be?”

“Where are we?” Floyd asked. He realized they were not hurtling down the Saluda anymore and seemed to be winding around the foothills on the other side of the mountain.

Floyd hung out the side of the cab and drank in the cinder-flecked wind. He turned back and grinned at Dusty.

The old man paused and took a hard look at him.

“You saw them, didn’t you?” He asked. “You saw the lights on the mountain. You saw the people there.”

“Yes! Yes, I saw them and I remember it all! She said wouldn’t but I remember.”

Dusty gave a heavy sigh.

“You best put them out of your mind, son. I saw them once too. They saved us that time and I s’pose they just saved us again. But just forget them, boy. You’ll be better off. And maybe you won’t see the things that only folks who see the lights see.”

And Floyd looked out into the night and he could swear he saw a spectral hound running beside the train and keeping pace with it. It seemed to float over the land and solid tree trunks passed through its body. Flecks of glowing drool and blood streamed from its mouth.

Floyd gawked and pointed. Dusty looked out into the night.

"Eh, yep. That would be what I'm talkin' about. "

Carolina Special ~ Part Three

He peered though his bifocals and fingered the photograph, turning it nervously in his hands. His now snow-white hair still started low on his forehead as it had on the young man in the photo.

He had a nervous tic involving his pipe he indulged in at such times. Times when he wanted to talk but wasn’t sure he should. He tapped the corncob pipe against the palm of his hand. Tap, tap, tap. It was as though he thought he could empty the world of cinders if he could only keep tapping that pipe.

“Yep, that were me. I never talked about that night. Never wanted to.” He said, his ice blue eyes watering slightly and bloodshot from the pipe smoke that still filled the room.

“It’s like the war, you know? Most fella’s don’t want to talk about the war, or if they do, they don’t talk about the real stories. The blood, the pain…what you went through.”

He rubbed his hand against the flannel of his shirt, wiping the pipe soot off and reached for his bag of Prince Albert.

“We saw a gang of things running those steam engines. Things we weren’t meant to see. Hideouts of criminals, moonshiners, rum runners….we saw it all. We saw people die and couldn’t stop…and that’s not counting the fools who got in the way of the trains.”

He gave all of his concentration to the filling of his pipe for a moment. He filled the bowl and tapped it down with a tobacco stained forefinger. He kept tapping it as he had tapped the ash out of the pipe moments before. He seemed to know exactly how firm to get the shredded tobacco but he kept tapping.

“But that night,” he said, “that night was the night I figured I’d stay back at the yard and fix trains ‘stead of running them.”

He was just 20 years old that fall evening in 1919 when the Carolina Special took off from the Spartanburg train station for a red-eye run to Knoxville. He was young and jaunty and wore his rail cap slightly askew. The fall leaves were ablaze in the sunset as he bent his young strong back to the task of shoveling coal into the firebox.

“Alrighty, then, Floyd…that’ll do her.” Said Dusty, the senior fireman he was working with. He shut the grate to the big firebox and tuned his ear to the sound of the engine chuffing.

Dusty poked his head out of the window and waved at the engineer to let him know the box was stoked.

They had a little time before they needed to start seriously stoking the fire for the tortuous climb up Saluda Mountain. Dusty fiddled with the oil gage a bit and checked the steam guage.

The old fireman sat back on the bench and cocked his head at Floyd.

“Well, it’s up Saluda mountain we go, son. It’s the trip down that’ll kill ya. Tell me boy, have you ever hear tell of the Brown Mountain lights?”

Floyd looked at the old fireman.

“Can’t say that I have, Dusty.” He said.

“You just might see them tonight when we climb up Saluda. Just look out there to the west and you might see them lights.”

“What are they?”

“Some say they are the wandering spirits of dead Injuns. Some say they are the spirits of runaway slaves lost in the mountains.”

Floyd grinned. “Sure it ain’t just some of those old boys firing up stills up there in the hills?”

Floyd looked up into the darkening sky. The light was mostly gone now, but the full moon cast an otherworldly light over the mountains. You could just see the rising peaks out to the west where the Smokies pierced the sky. The stars were dimmed slightly by the moonlight but you could just make out the Milky Way spiraling in the night sky. If not for the blazing heat of the firebox, you would be able to feel the chill of the autumn night.

“We won’t have much of a break now, son. Here comes Saluda Mountain…get yourself a’ shoveling!”

When they forged the rails up the Mountain, they took them straight up the Saluda. It was the most treacherous stretch of rail in the nation and had killed dozens during runaway train incidents. It was often said that if you didn’t drive the train on the Saluda, the train would drive you.

“Shovel, son, shovel!”

Floyd loaded the coal into the firebox, the heat supplying the steam needing for the long steep climb up the Saluda. Dusty adjusted the oil and steam flow valves on the boiler. The train began building speed and they started climbing the mountain. The engine went chuff, chuff, chuff as they used more and more steam to power the climb.

They made it up the mountain without incident then balanced the train on the peak while the air monkeys went to work on the brakes for the trip down the mountain. Dusty pointed out into the night sky.

“Do you see them?”

Floyd looked out to the place where the mountains met the night sky. Twinkling there in the mist were little twinkling lights that danced on the horizon. Below them the track disappeared into a solid wall of fog that seemed to glow in the darkness. It was like a veil... a doorway they would soon plunge the train right through like a knife into the darkness.

And Floyd thought he could see those little lights twinkling through the fog. Maybe it was his imagination, or maybe he really did see them. At any rate, it was the last moment of rationality Floyd would have that night.

Carolina Special ~ Part Two