Storymania - Metrolink708: Getting The Right One by Shelley J Alongi

Metrolink708: Getting The Right One
Shelley J Alongi

The right One

“Goodbye my number one engineer! Good luck!” Glen pulls his train away on Friday April 16, almost six months to the day after he confidently uttered those words from his locomotive cab: “She likes trains!” She likes trains alright. And she likes this engineer, more than she wants to admit, or maybe she’s already admitted it. If I say that the FP59 is the right engine, then it’s true and this locomotive engineer, my first one, is the right one. He teaches, comforts, reprimands, explains, pulls away, talks to me, and now is leaving. It’s okay. When all is said and don and all my tears are shed, it all works out the same: I’ve gotten the right one.

Today has been a hard day, though not as hard as the last time glen left the 608. At least this time, two weeks ago, Glen told me he was leaving. He didn’t leave me to find it out for myself. I don’t know why he told me this time.

“I’m going to Lancaster,” he says on a Wednesday two weeks ago, the first day I’ve been able to make the Fullerton train meet for two weeks. Disney has once again offered over time and maybe this time it was appropriate that I take it given the engineer drama that had just happened. Never mind all that, the fact remains that Glen is now changing to the route he originally bidded.

“What?” I ask him to repeat it.

“How did you pull that?”

“You can bid for a route every six months you can bid on whatever route you want,” Glen my favorite locomotive engineer explains. Yes, my love, I know that; I only cried over the last route change because of your significance to me after Chatsworth. I know you can bid on whatever route you want, especially since you’re the number one engineer in the fleet with forty years of experience under your belt. Finally, the new kid on the block, the one who has only been exposed painfully and traumatically to the railroad over the last year and a half knows that; realizes the fact that someone can get bumped, unless you’re the number one engineer. Then you get the best job. That’s what Glen tells us on New Year’s Eve. He’s the number one engineer, he gets the best job.

“More money,” he says. Glen, a man with two houses, a wife with twenty-two cats, two sons and a daughter who apparently all reside on his property, needs more money. I need more money, too.

“Oh,” I say. “When?”

“Two weeks.”

In two weeks he will be leaving this route, the 91 line, a route which serves thirteen stations in Riverside and Orange Counties. It was the route he originally bidded on back in January or whenever it was, the route that one of the engineers told me he might go to in the first place. Lancaster, the starting and ending point is hundreds of miles from where Glen calls home. A man will do anything for more money I suppose, especially if he is a man instilled with an unshakeable work ethic. Come to think of it, over the last six months I’ve not ever seen Cary miss a day except when he was on vacation. Cary has two train meets now, me and another lady and Cary might be leaving, too, though he seems to be confident that he will be on this route. But two weeks ago when Glen says he’s going to change routes, I do not stand by his locomotive in tears. “it is,” says Dave Norris, “The vagaries of the railroad life.” Yeah, I suppose it is and I’ll just have to get used to the fact that I’m losing my number one engineer, again.

“You have to feed the cats and the birds,” I now say when Glen informs me he’s moving for more money.

It seems the last Time I talked to Glen on the phone, maybe four or five days ago now, and only for a minute or two, that he was arguing with his wife, again. In the background I hear this woman’s voice, kind of shrill, medium range, a woman I know nothing about, except that she has twenty-two cats.

“She’s insane,” says a friend of mine when I tell him that she has twenty-two cats.

Yeah I think that might be a general consensus but I don’t technically know that do I? I don’t know anything about it.

“It was pressure,” someone informs me. “Her father wanted her married off. She comes from a railroad family.” Yeah well so do I, technically since my great grandfather was an engineer. The Gregory, Riley side had sense to abandon the railroad I suppose, and now here I am embracing it though I hardly understand it. “I don’t’ know why Glen stays with her,” someone tells me. “She’s a real ding bat.”

I don’t know either. I never judge a man till I’ve walked in his shoes and I have not walked in Glen’s shoes and really don’t want to. I may admire him for his engineering skills and think he’s an incredibly nice man even if he has trouble saying no, but I will not judge him. I only know that he’s leaving me.

“Last night we got into an argument about the birds,” he says.

“Who makes the rules?” I want to know. A man who gets up at 3:20 in the morning to run the 608, an undetermined time to run the 708, and now a new time to run a different train in the morning should make the rules. That’s what I think.

“I don’t,” my engineer says in that dramatically inflected voice, holding frustration or maybe just drama, “that’s obvious!”

I’m staying out of that one. The engineer whines and then gets the highball and I still admire this man Can he do no wrong? He has never told me to go away. I try to be discrete but I can’t help thinking how important he has been to me over the last six months. I’m going to miss him, crazy wife and all, petulant, magical Glen. I already miss you and you’re not even gone.

“Glen is going to Lancaster,” I say, crossing the bridge and taking a spot outside on the patio. Once again the weather has warmed to the point where the patio faithful congregate in their little corner watching trains, and teasing me about meeting engineers.

“How many engineers have you gotten now?” someone asks me.

Well, there’s carry, bobby, Paul, and Glen. Let’s not forget the engineer sitting next to me right here on the patio, Norm the freight engineer who is undergoing radiation treatment for a tumor on his neck and who has it seemed had several strokes. They seem to have been mild ones. He is slowly returning to his old self though sometimes he walks with a cane now. Norm, the man I couldn’t talk to for a year because I was so nervous, tries to answer questions, but Glen Is still the best. Glen should be a teacher. Glen is still the best. You know that.

This conversation occurs on a nice day with a slight breeze four days before Easter. I make my engineer rounds and talk to Cary. Then there’s bobby, or do I miss him that day? I don’t remember now. Since working over time, fighting a cool stiff breeze on some nights and going straight home to go to bed and get up and do it all again. I talk to Cary, tell him that I didn’t make the Toastmasters contest that same day I talked to Glen and ask if I can pick his brain.

“I’ll have to call you later, Glen says.

“The last time you said that you didn’t.”

“I’ll talk to you later,” he says gently.

It’s really okay if Glen doesn’t call me I never expect it. It’s the way Glen is. I’ll do all the work in this relationship, I’m the one who is curious. Curiosity killed the cat, they say. I may learn more about my engineer than I want to know in the process, but if he’ll answer questions, I’ll take it. Right now standing by Cary’s train I wish him a happy Easter. Easter is in four days. Cary pulls his train away, I wave and then return across the tracks to socialize with people sitting, standing, eating, talking.

Half an hour after I talk to Bobby I decide to go home and then on the bus realize that I didn’t wish Glen a happy Easter. I was so distracted by his defection to Lancaster and his argument about birds that I forgot. I pull out my phone. “Glen, you and yours have a nice Easter” I text painfully. Haste makes waste my WordPerfect teacher told me years ago and it is true. When I text Glen I try to never make a mistake. Slipping my phone back into my bag I suddenly realize that it is singing to me. I’ve gotten a text message. Pulling out my phone I retrieve it. “Happy Easter to you” it says simply. Can it be? Has glen responded to a text message? Oh my Lord! So my engineer does know how to text! Yes, he does, or someone swiped his phone. I am in sweet stunned shock! I got a text from Glen! It makes my day; it makes my life!

And time passes. I work, trains come and go, bands go to Fullerton, people congregate on the patio, life is good. I reappear at Glen’s train a week later, finding my spot, crowds milling, people warning me off the tracks, babies and toddlers and teenagers standing on the bridge snapping pictures of locomotives. It’s a bit of a rush today I think. But I’ve made it.

“What’s up?”

I’m going to miss that greeting. It’s typical I’m in a good mood, Glen.

“Hey.”

“did you work today?”

Oh no, my sweet Glen is asking that age-old question, keeping me accountable to him, being friendly, making conversation.

“Yes,” I say.

“So Disneyland is jupon?”

“They’d like to think they are.”

“Yeah?”

“We’re doing well. I booked a lot of revenue today.”

Work is slow but steady. They haven’t taken away the over time though they have offered early release. I am bound and determined not to early release. My number one engineer wouldn’t like that.

“She’ll take off to see Glen,” Janice says one day. We’ve all congregated on the platform, by the tracks, on the patio, wherever we can to enjoy the once again pleasant evenings or eat. Lately I haven’t been eating meals at the café. I’m trying to make my money go further so I haven’t ordered any hot dogs or double cheeseburgers, any Diet Peach tea, or anything like that. My blue bag is stuffed with almonds, raisins, apples, chips, diet soda, sometimes sausage, bread, cheese. I am a peasant at the railroad depot chasing four engineers who happens to be a responsible middle-aged adolescent railfan.

“A hog foamer,” David Norris tells me.

Maybe. I want to talk to the engineers about how to run the trains though lately it doesn’t seem that we’re talking much about trains.

“I don’t’ know anyone who is paying full price at the hotels,” I tell Glen.

“You have the three hotels?”

“Yes and we work with other hotels in the area.”

“Disney should be a place everyone can afford,” says my engineer who is moving to a different route because he needs more money.

“I want to ask Glen a question,” I tell a friend of mine on Easter over steak, chicken and burgers. “I want to ask him train questions.”

“what do you want to ask him?” Gary questions, biting into his burger with no cheese. He is adamant about not putting cheese on the burger.

“I want to ask him how much would he pay for hotel room?”

“That’s not a train question,” Gary says. I erupt into laughter. I’m not trying to get him to, to, I just want to know if he’ll pay full price for Disney. I guess he won’t if he’s moving to Lancaster to get more money. See, even locomotive engineers aren’t paying full price for Disney.

Glen gets the highball and our conversation about Disney is ended. I wave, he rings his gentle bell, our engineer conversation is ended.

Somehow that week ends. I work and perhaps visit the station once or twice, learning that Ray has been arrested for climbing the clock tower, that he is out of jail, that Bolder another man, the Platform Monkey someone calls him, is here, and people are trying to avoid him. Andy the Metrolink agent makes his appearances when I’m not there so I don’t talk t him. Overall I miss the place. I know I’m family there because when I show up carrying my blue bag and black cooler Curt sees me and catches me up on all the business. Tom the golfer, a new character in our station drama, shows up, smoking cigars, talking about his trips he’s going to make soon, sharing that he worked for Hughes aircraft designing torpedoes.

“Now you have to kill me,” I say. He has just shared top secret information.

The hustle and bustle of the station goes on around me, and Glen is leaving for Lancaster.

I stand waiting for his train. A man talks to a woman on the benches, someone else speaks into a cell phone, cars pull up in the parking lot disgorging harried passengers. A group of men knot somewhere talking about a sales proposal, carrying black brief cases, lap tops, all wait for the train. The sound of that lovely engine comes to us from down the track, the bell letting us know Glen is on his way. This morning I’ve texted him a question. I’m going to ask him how to start the engine. This is one of the questions I’ve had for him since I first met him. I remember that third conversation I had with him, I wanted to ask him how to start engines.

“DO you start these engines in the morning? I asked over the band’s sound check.

“Yes,” I remember him yelling over the clatter of his MPI. Now today, six months later, with four days remaining on the clock, I have to know.

“Did you work today?”

didn’t he get the text? Is he teasing me?

“What?”

I approach the train, holding on to the railing, jumping up and down.

“OF course I did.”

“did you leave early?”

“What?” Okay now Glen you’re wasting my two minutes.

“No, silly! I got off. I already did my shift.”

“Oh,” breathes my engineer, he has that way, that Glen way. Glen is so expressive and sometimes it’s hard to read him. He’s the only person in the world whose face I’ve ever wanted to see; not that I could read his expressions. I’ll deal with what God has given me to use; vocal expressions and silences. Today is one of those days.

“How do you start the engine?” I now ask, wasting no time. I’ve never wasted time with Glen. I haven’t had the luxury of time with a locomotive engineer who sits and waits for two minutes for the highball.

“How do I start it?”

“Yes. That’s what I asked you this morning.”

My engineer pauses.

“There’s a primer switch on the starter switch.”

Okay he’s taking me seriously. That’s what I like about glen, he does take my train questions seriously. HE does tease me but when it comes right down to answering railroad questions he does it. How did I get so lucky?

Glen stops his explanations as a woman approaches.

“Hey,” he says.

“Hi.”

“How are you doing?” Glen wants to know.

“I’m doing fin!,” she says excitedly.

“So many girls,” I tease. She laughs. “So many girls.”
She walks away.

“Aloha.”

“She’s Hawaiian,” he says.

“I was wondering.”

“Anyway,” my engineer continues. “You hold the primer switch in for twenty seconds. The engine is dead and it’s a Diesel. No spark plugs.”

“yeah,” I say.

“then you crank it.”

Simple as pie I suppose. But I never knew how to start a train engine. It’s cool. I finally asked him the question. I only have four days left.

Tuesday the bell approaches and passes. I run to catch it.

“Two engines,” says Glen.

“Two,” I say holding up my thumb and fourth finger.

“That was a surprise,” he says as I curl up beside his cab under his window.

“It’s alright. I’m used to following the bell.”

I stand, the conversation is short and he is gone, leaving me with three more days.

I’m emotional this week but not as emotional as the last time this happened. Tears come in waves, short waves. Sometimes they are intense waves. But they’re not always tears of sadness. I keep thinking how amazing things have been for six months. Half a year I’ve talked to one locomotive engineer. I laughed and cried, teased, and been comforted by him, apologized, been informed and reprimanded. Glen’s reprimands are gentle ones. Sometimes if I think about his family situation I always wish things were better for him. I have to remember I don’t know everything but most of what I’ve seen is very good. Glen deals in reality. I deal in how things should be. He’s a hands-on kind of a guy I think, likes to get things done. I’ve only heard him complain once about working for the railroad. He might complain more often but if he does I don’t know it. If there’s on thing I’ve learned from him it’s to just move on from here. Every time I’ve thought I said something wrong he’ always talked to me. Maybe this is why I like him so much; he deals in reality; he gets things done; maybe he leaves home to get respite or maybe he just loves being out there. Maybe he has bills. Whatever it is I’m staying. I can’t go away. I want this man on my friend list. He’s the best locomotive engineer I’ve met and if he were something else and I met him somewhere I’d like him. If he told me to stay off the railroad tracks I would, I usually do, but if he wasn’t an engineer an told me that I’d probably yell at him. No matter, I like him anyway. It has been a long time since I’ve had such strong feelings about one person. There are people that you meet in life that profoundly affect you. He’s on my list. Yes I got the right one. And by the end of the week I’m apologizing, again.

Wednesday I’m in a rush. I get out late and just make it over to the tracks with ten minutes to spare. Everyone teases me.

“You don’t have time. You better hurry.”

“Remember when I used to wait a half hour?” I say to the patio faithful Dave Norris is in our group.

“He’s worth waiting for” I say. “I’m not sure why. There’s a word I can’t describe it.”

Dave Norris wants to give it a try. Wonder what he’s thinking. Not sure I want to know.

I stand by the platform, the three car marker.

“I just got here,” I gush, waving.

“yeah? Busy day?”

it’s Glen talking to his daughter.

“I worked twelve minutes over time and then I take the bus here. I barely made it.”

“Oh,” he says. Then he says something about over time I should be working it.

“They aren’t offering any,” I say.

Honestly Glen you should try this job for a week and see if you’d want over time. Sometimes it’s a trial, but then my sweet train engineer maybe yours is a trial, too. And we both have bills and we both need more money but maybe you need it worse than I do and maybe I need it worse. I’m the kind of person who tries to fix things, make the money go further, work over time when I’m tired, and even try to get a second job, heck I’ve even got a room mate to help now. There’s always something more we can do and maybe that’s why I like him. He does what he can; I have a feeling without knowing much that Glen does his very best. And the best part is, I think anyway, is that he’s just himself. He just does his job; and he talks to me. It sounds like he talks to everyone.

I cross the tracks and Andy is here. He explains to us the Lancaster route.

“I miss you. Glen really is going to Lancaster.”

“Does he start in L.A. or Lancaster?” someone asks.

“I don’t’ know I’ll have to ask him.”

Andy has to tease me.

“I found my song,” I say. “It says hey baby what you doing later this evening meet me down by the railroad track.”

“Shelley’s driving all the engineers out of Fullerton,” someone else says.

These people are ruthless. I eat my almonds, raisins and apples. And I love it. I love the stories, I love the engineer drama, I love the information. Yeah, I’ve got the right one.

Thursday comes. The weather can’t make up its mind. Sometimes the evenings are gently cool, no breeze and sometimes they are stiff and cold and uncomfortable. Has there ever been an April so confusing? I don’t know. Twice I’ve gone home early because I had work to do for a speech on Saturday or I’ve been too tired. But I can’t get any work done. I keep thinking about losing glen though I do manage to do some good research. Tonight is the second to the last night. It is an eventful night. Earlier this week I’ve texted Glen. “Plz tell me your b day if you don’t’ mind.” If someone is important to me I want to know their birthday. Sometimes I try to guess what it might be. Is it July? September? Maybe Glen is a September baby. What if he shares my birthday? That would be cool! But I haven’t asked him yet from the train. I keep forgetting. Not tonight. Tonight I’m going to ask him when his birthday is. Let’s see, I get the physical characteristics; glasses, moustashe, beard, redish gray hair, brown eyes. I haven’t gottn the height or weight I really can’t tell, not even from the meeting at Union Station. He is a kind moody man, very human, very likeable and right here. I approach the cab.

“Hey what’s up!”

“I’m here. I made it.”

“Yeah.”

“Glen,” I rarely use his name, but today I do. “Are you going to tel me your birth day?” Why do I ask it like that?

“August 27.”

“Really?”

“Yeah.”

Three days after my sister. She’s married and has two kids.”

“How old is she?”

for some reason I think that is a funny question. I don’t laugh I just think it’s interesting. I stand there, counting backwards. I sigh. I cant’ remember or is it that I don’t believe it.

“39. Four years younger than me.”

“You don’t have kids?” Glen asks me.

“No.”

“What’s up with that?”

“I turned three people down.”

“Are you taking this train?”

Suddenly someone is standing beside me. It has to be the conductor.

“Do I look lik I’m taking the train?”

My conversation with Glen is being interrupted. The advantage which I didn’t think about is that as long as the conductor is here he can’t give Glen the highball. But I’m so shocked that a conductor from Glen’s train is now asking me if I need the train.

“I don’t’ know that’s why I’m asking.”

“No<” I say.

“Step back for me.”

I’m on the safety line, the train is right in front of us I can reach out and touch it. I can’t believe he is saying this with the engineer sitting right here. The engineer doesn’t seem to mind me standing right here.

“I’m talking to him!”

I can’t remember what he says. Glen sits there. He doesn’t defend me. He doesn’t have to. I’m sure he knows I can do it myself. Once before he rescued me from a helpful passenger. Today he’s not rescuing me from anyone. I step back half an inch. Technically I don’t have to stand so close but I do.

“You have to listen to the conductor,” Glen says meekly.

“No I don’t!”

Now I’m mad. Okay so the engineer wants to get in on it does he? Forget he’s my romance with the rails I’m so annoyed at this point that I’m about to bite hishead off and I do it spectacularly! Oh the drama! He bit mine off once. But I’m not thinking that right now. Wonder if Glen is thinking that he gets this at home he doesn’t need it here. Does he sit meekly there waiting?

“You do,” I say. “That’s why they pay you the big bucks to listen to the conductor.”

“Is that it?”

I don’t’ think he sounds hurt, maybe surprised. Cocky littlerailfan yelling at her most favorite engineer and it’s not even his fault.

Somehow we get through the moment, right here right now it doesn’t seem so bad. Besides everyone wants to know if Glen is starting in Lancaster or L.A.

“Lancaster,” he says. Then it’s time to go.

Train 784 is running late it will arrive right before Cary I think. I should know better. I’m a little frustrated so I just go across the bridge, and miss Cary.

“I wish I could see Glen’s face right now,” I told the patio faithful and explained what just happened.

“The conductor runs the train,” bob says. Oh here we are with that argument again. Well apparently I’ve just bought into it because I’ve just told my favorite engineer he’s only good for listening to the conductor. And it’s not really what I think. I go home early that night and get nothing done.

Friday comes. This is the last night. I’m determined to work to the last minute of my shift but if I get on a call that goes too long I won’t see my engineer my last night. Part of me is okay with that because I do have his phone number. But I really want to see him so I put my name on the early release list. I keep busy and book quite a bit for the company, have lunch and at 2:18 I’m out the door and back to the station. I take a seat on the patio. The weather is gorgeous, one of those perfect April days, a gentle breeze, a warm sun, making me take out my sunblock and apply it. I haven’t used that bottle for several months and I don’t want to get sunburned so I use it. I eat chips and whatever is in my bag. Pat is there and Herald, Wes, Tom and Skipper the little dog. Not much has changed here, the rhythm of the station is not interrupted.

“Hey Andy!” Someone greets the Metrolink agent.

“What are you doing back here?” I tease.

Andy and his wife are having a baby in July. His wife works for one of the hotels we book through Disney. They don’t’ know what the baby is; they want to keep it a surprise.

“What are you doing back here?” he asks.

“I didn’t want to play Russian Roulet with the bus and train schedule.”

He doesn’t understand.

“I don’t want to miss that 5-59 train.”

“Glen marked out today,” Andy says.

“I wouldn’t blame him after last night,” I say. Early this morning my conscience nags me. At 6:00 I’m on the phone leaving Glen a message.

“Glen it’s Shelley I wanted to call you because I feel like I owe you an apology.” I explain that the conductor is another issue but I didn’t have to say what I said to him having to listen to the conductor and getting the big bucks to do so. Why is it that I’m always apologizing to him? What do I do? “That wasn’t a very nice thin to say to someone I admire and it’s not what I think; you have this cool skill set and I’m just sorry. It’s not even how I feel bout running the train. I thought wow that was not very nice to say to someone I admire. It’s going to be one of those cut it to the wire days and I didn’t want to compete with he MPI if you got one. Please accept my apology.”

This makes the third time I’ve apologized to Glen in six months. The first time I didn’t know what he was saying to me and figured it out later, the second time I called him when he was just climbing into the engine, and now this time. It seems this may havbe been the most significant of my apologies. Now he has seen me at my almost worse. I’ve yelled at my cool locomotive engineer friend. His response was an inigma to me. Maybe I did hurt him. I need to swallow my pride and apologize. NO wonder I want to get off work early. I don’t’ want to miss my last chance to talk to him in person for a long time. He’s a busy man. I have to do this even if it means losing two hours pay. It’s only money even if we both need more of it. I don’t need it so badly that I can’t show up at my friend’s train and make sure he got my message and say goodbye.

“You got the right one!”

Glen has the FP59. I am beside myself with delight. I’ll be able to hear him. Standing at his train just before he arrives I feel myself tearing up. Clarita is sympathetic. Remember the days when he wasn’t talking to me? Now this is goodbye.

“I don’t’ want to see this,” says Howard and disappears. I think I’m going to be okay but I don’t’ know. I approach the train.

“What’s up.”

“You’ve got the right one.”

“We’re in on a red I have to talk to dispatch hold on a second.”

If they’re here on a red that means we’ve got more time. A moment passes. Glen pulls that engine to a quieter idle. There is a lot of freight traffic tonight.

“Oh my goodness!” I’m excited now. I think I’ll live.

“We have to wait for a freight,” he says.

“That means I get an extra minute with you.”

“yeah.”

“Hey,” Glen yells out his window to someone who looks confused. “Where are you going?”

A confused lady approaches the cab.

“Is this the train to ocean Side?”

Riverside,” he says.

“next train,” I say. “It’s the next train.”

“Shelley! I haven’t seen you in years!”

Oh no, not tonight guys! Not tonight. I have this last reprieve, these last moments with someone who has taught me about trains a little bit and here I am, people I haven’t seen in years are stopping me. Okay I know what I’ll do.

“What have you been up to?” she wants to know.

“Working, talking to this guy,” she laughs, “amusing cats, cleaning up after them.”

“Glen,” I say, “she hasn’t seen me since her wedding twelve years ago. I went to Cal state Fullerton. I was a music major.”

“that’s good,” Glensays. “What do you play? Drums?”

“Piano,” I say. Drums I never thought of that one. I wouldn’t want to play the drums; too much work.

I decide to stop her conversation. I think she’s staying anyway she has to catch the next train to Ocean Side.

“Glen.” His name is a gentle one; a name easy on the lips, easy to inflect with impatience, attention-grabbing force, gentle insistance; anyway you want to say it, it works. It just works. It’s not in the baby name books this year but it’s perfect. “what time do you have to get up now?”

“Five o’clock,” he says. “I’m staying at the super8.” So Glen has to pay money to make more money. Or does metrolink pay? I don’t know. I only know that the freight comes and we’re waiting. I stand there drawing solace.

“Glen, did you get my message?”

“Yes,” he says.

“Okay.”

I don’t wan to talk about it. It’s enough that he heard it.

“It’s the conductr’s job to help,” he says.

“I know. I’ll tell you the story some time.”

He says nothing.

“They do it for safety reasons,” Janice says on Thursday. No matter. Tonight at least he heard my message. He doesn’t have to tell me what he thinks. Just keep talking to me.

The freight leaves, changes blocks, Glen’s signal goes green.

“Alright,” he says and rings the bell.

“I’ll call you,” I promise. I’m sure he knows that. I said on my message I’d call in six weeks.

“Are you going to wait that long?” Clarita asks. I don’t answer. I probably won’t wait that long but I have a lot of projects going on and I can’t justify talking to him before they get done.
“Goodbye my number one engineer! Good luck!” This is it. I haven’t broken down, I’ve been distracted by Roslyn. Glen pulls his train away on Friday April 16, almost six months to the day after he confidently uttered those words from his locomotive cab: “She likes trains!” She likes trains alright. And she likes this engineer, more than she wants to admit, or maybe she’s already admitted it. If I say that the FP59 is the right engine, then it’s true and this locomotive engineer, my first one, is the right one. He teaches, comforts, reprimands, explains, pulls away, talks to me, and now is leaving. It’s okay. When all is said and don and all my tears are shed, it all works out the same: I’ve gotten the right one.