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Chapter 71
With two-a-days now under way, it was getting harder for Josh to fit work in around football practice. The practices where held in the mornings and evenings, to get around the peak of the August heat. Even so, it could get awfully uncomfortable in the mornings.
When Coach Hekkinan finally called, "Showers!" Josh was glad to have the practice over with. He hurried to the shower; he was going to have to hustle to make it over to the C&SL office on time. He knew that Bruce was bringing a load down from Pit, and Bud
had promised to wait for him to take it on to Camden. Still, if Josh were late, it would cut into the time available for maintaining the diesels scheduled for after their return.
Even so, the shower felt cool and refreshing this morning. Out of the shower, Josh got dressed next to Danny, but for some reason, there wasn't much to say. As Josh pulled his shoes on, he said to Danny, "You got a run today?"
"Night run, after practice, with Diane," Danny said. "Going to go home and try to get some sleep. See you later."
Josh finished up dressing, and walked out to the Chevette. What with practice, and work, he had only seen Amy a couple of times this week, although one of the dates was pretty good. He'd managed to arrange a cab ride for Amy up to Warsaw and back, when he'd
made a run up there with his dad. Amy had seemed to like riding in the engine, but she'd said it was awfully noisy. Afterwards, they'd gone together down to Albany River, so he'd finally actually had a solo date with Amy, not that anything else had happened except for a rather
chaste goodnight kiss, nothing like the passion of their night at the lake a couple weeks before. Still, it had been all right, without quite the unstated tension of the recent double dates.
Things had indeed changed.
Josh parked his car at the C&SL office. He was walking toward the door when Bud came out. "You ready to go, Josh?" he called.
"Am I late?" Josh asked, picking up his lunch bucket.
"Just in time," Bud said. "I was just getting ready to go."
The train was out on the passing track beyond the wye. Josh drove Bud and himself out to where the engines waited, with no one around. He parked the car again, and the two climbed aboard the lead GP-9, one of a pair that Bud had leased for the summer from a
company in Illinois.
It was not going to be a day that Josh worked hard. There'd be a little switching to do at Camden, but that might take fifteen minutes. With a maximum load for the two Geeps, there was no way Bud was going to have him running the motors on the way down, but he
might get a little throttle time on the way back.
With a full load, it took Bud a long time to get the train up to speed. They were passing California cut, halfway to Albany River, when Bud finally throttled back a notch, to see if the speed would hold. It seemed like it would, and Bud visibly relaxed. Josh took the
opportunity to thank Bud for allowing Amy to take the cab ride earlier in the week.
"No problem," Bud replied. "I know how it is when you're young. Anything you can do to impressed the ladies. Hope it was worth it."
"She seemed to enjoy it," Josh replied.
"Well, good," Bud said. "I know your dad gave her a good ride. You've been running with him a lot lately, haven't you? It seems like a week since we've made a run together."
Josh counted days. "More than that, I guess," he said.
"It always gets crazy, this time of year," Bud said. "With only five engineers and three road engine sets, it seems like we're either running `em or working on `em. Thank God Bill Lee can help us out over in Kremmling, or we'd really be in trouble."
Bill Lee, Diane Page's father, owned part of the Lordston Northern Scenic railroad -- the C&SL owned the other part -- which ran from Lordston up to Kremmling. Ever since the bridge over the river in Camden went out, traffic on and off of the C&SL came over
the Lordston Northern and through Kremmling. Sometimes, the C&SL ran clear to Lordston, but usually they swapped loads with Lee at Kremmling.
"They ever going to get that bridge fixed?" Josh asked, making conversation.
"Six years ago, they promised me they'd have it done in a week or ten days," Bud said. "I'm still waiting, and I expect I'll still be waiting six years from now. Anyway, I'm glad you've been willing to work as much as you have. The brakeman situation is as bad as the
engineer situation. I've even had to call on Frank Matson to brake for me a couple of times.
"Well, I'm willing to help where I can," Josh said. "Did you ever get a chance to talk to Coach Hekkinan?"
"I talked to him over breakfast, one day last week," Bud said. "He said he'd let you go if I really needed you some time, but he'd really rather you didn't miss practice."
Typical coach, Josh thought. Nothing's as important as football. "Well, let me know," he said. "I don't mind."
"Hey, it's not bad news," Bud said. "I got the impression he wants you at practice since he wants to play you."
"I sure haven't been picking up on that," Josh said.
"He probably doesn't want you to," Bud said. "Keeping you up in the air makes you want to try harder. As far as work goes, we can fiddle around, and you probably don't miss much. If you want, I'll try to give you runs on weekends, after school gets going. That'll
help the schedule some."
"Sure, any time," Josh said as Bud blew for a crossing. That was something! He might get to play! Maybe not start, but the starting lineups hadn't been announced, yet. He'd started in the scrimmage with Warsaw the night before, but that didn't count for much.
They rumbled on for a couple of miles with the GP-9s bellowing before Bud spoke again. "Hey, you remember the last time we were out," he said over the roar of the motors, "We were talking about whether you were going to go to college. You think about that any more?"
"I've tried to think about it," Josh said. "I know I ought to, but the more I think about it, the more I'm not sure."
"Well, you got a while to think about it," Bud said. "But I got sort of an offer I want to make to you. You got a couple years before you have to make up your mind, but I'd like you to think about it."
Josh's ears perked up, pushing thoughts of football aside. "What's that?" he asked.
"Well, having Ed laid up all summer got me to thinking," Bud said. "Ed's getting to an age where he's going to want to be thinking about taking it easier. He's about the best diesel maintainer there ever was, and he's managed to keep these old engines running. But, I
keep thinking that one GP-38 can do the job of two of these GP-9s. I've been thinking about getting rid of a couple of the older Geeps and getting a couple of GP-38s."
"That's awful heavy for these rails," Josh commented.
"We'd have to take some ballast out of `em," Bud agreed. "With lighter engines, maybe get SD-38s. The six axles would make up for some of the lost traction, but it's still something I'm just kicking around."
"So what does that have to do with me?" Josh asked.
"Well, these newer engines have got computerized traction control, and a bunch of goofball high-tech stuff, and I'm just not too sure how bad Ed is going to want to go back to school and learn how to fix it, and then maybe not use what he's learned much. I keep
thinking the way to deal with that situation is to send someone else to school, instead. It's not anything we have to deal with right away, but what I'm thinking is that after you get out of high school, you'd like to work for us in the summer, and in the winter go to diesel maintainers
school, and some of the special tech schools, then come back and work for us. Wouldn't be all diesel maintenance; you'd get some train service, too, like me. Probably be a lot of routine maintenance, and Ed'll probably be around for years to work part-time on the tricky stuff."
"Yeah," Josh said, his eyes lighting up with the possibilities. "I might like to do something like that. How much do those schools cost?"
"Well, what I was thinking about doing is sort of loaning you the money to go to those schools," Bud said. "Then, each year you work for us, I'd write off part of the loan. Spread it over six or eight years, maybe. If you quit and went somewhere else, you'd owe me
the balance."
"That's a heck of a deal," Josh said.
"I think it is," Bud said. "It solves me a bunch of problems, right from the beginning. For you, well, I wish someone had offered me a deal like that when I was your age. Like I said, I don't need an answer from you right now, or even this time next year. I know your
dad would like you to go to college, like your brother, but if you're not going to college, well, this might be something to think about."
"I sure will think about it," Josh said.
