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Chapter 73
It was too difficult to want to talk too much in the cab of the GP-9, so after a while, the conversation died off. Josh slumped in the fireman's seat and stared out the window, thinking about the offer Bud had made to him.
The question of college had been coming up all summer, and Josh had been kicking it around. Amy had something to do with it, of course; Josh had known from the first that she'd planned to go to Athens University, and it had helped him focus his thinking, a little.
But, did he really want to go to college, or was that just running with the herd?
He'd known for some time that it was not going to be easy for his parents to send him to college. Johnny, now, that was a different story. He had been an all-A student, clearly headed for big things. Josh had mostly gotten Bs and Cs, and school wasn't all that
thrilling, considering that he had six more years of it to face if he went to college.
Even when he'd been little, Josh had enjoyed it when his father had taken him out in one of the engines. "I want to grow up to be a railroad engineer, like my dad," Josh had said in grade school, and Walt had never really encouraged it or opposed it. "Whatever you
want to do," he'd said.
But this summer had been different. Really working on the railroad had been a lot of fun. He'd learned a lot, and had learned enough to see that there was much more that he needed to learn if he really wanted to make a life of being a railroader. It was something he'd
never really held out much thought about, since he'd known that with railroads shrinking, there were not a lot of job openings. But, this would be different; the C&SL had a solid traffic base that would probably be good for many years. It was expanding, not shrinking.
Besides, Josh thought, to get right down to it, he did like living in Spearfish Lake. Even if he did go to college, there weren't a lot of job opportunities that would keep him in town. The odds were that he'd have to move to a city somewhere, and he didn't really like the
idea of living in the city. Living in Camden might be all right for Amy and Marsha; they grew up there. But, he liked the woods and the fields and the clear blue skies. Ever since he'd started working with Mark and Mike and their dog teams, he'd been sort of hoping that there
would be some way he could have a dog team of his own some day, and there was no way he could do that if he lived in a city.
And, if he stayed in Spearfish Lake, he could join the fire department, maybe become an EMT. That had been one of the most satisfying things of an eventful summer; it would be something else he couldn't do if he moved to a city. In his mind's eye, he could see Amy
giving Mr. Sloat rescue breathing, while he gave the chest compressions that saved his life.
Would Amy like being the wife of a railroader?
Josh sat up with a start. "What the hell are you doing, thinking about that?" he said to himself, in a voice so low that Bud couldn't have heard him across the cab of the GP-9.
No, he thought, it was a legitimate question, of a sort. If Amy was going to college, then it was probably six years before they could get married, and there was plenty of time to think about whether he wanted to marry Amy or not. Six years was a long time, no matter
how you cut it. Amy had been a lot of fun to be with this summer, but now that he actually confronted the question, he wasn't so sure he liked the answer. While Amy and Marsha and Danny had gone out of their way, time and time again this summer, to keep him from feeling
like an outsider, he still was on the outside. He would have liked to have been able to go out to the club this weekend, to cheer them on in the tournament, but it was out of the question. There was Josh, on the outside, again. If he didn't go to college, and Amy and Marsha and
Danny did -- well, the net result would be that he would still be on the outside, looking in.
Six years was a heck of a long time; things could change a lot in six years. Things hadn't been going as well with Amy as they had before the night they went parking out at West Turtle Lake; while she was still sweet and nice to him, he could feel the change. What
change would this winter bring, much less six years?
Realistically, the thing to do about Amy was to have what fun he could have with her in what little was left of the summer, and call it good enough. If it got picked up again the next summer, the summer after that, then maybe it was time to reopen the question. Now
was much too early to even be considering it.
That was a heck of a thing to say, but he'd better be saying it, he realized. There were only a couple of weeks of summer left, and then she'd be gone. They might see each other now and then over the winter, but there was no need to tear his heart out over it.
After all, it wasn't like he had to give Bud an answer today. He had a year, maybe a year and a half. A lot could happen in that time, but even from here, in the fireman's seat of the chopnose GP-9, he could see that Amy probably wouldn't figure in his decision much.
Jeez, what would it be like to be running a set of GP-38s up these tracks. One GP-38 could just about handle this train by itself; with two units, that would be a heck of a lot of power! Josh could see himself in the engineer's seat of one of them. Boy, would those babies
ever shake the leaves when they were working a load with the throttle set to Run-8! It was quite a vision.
"Hey, Bud," he called across the cab. "Assuming I take you up on that offer, how soon would I be doing engine service?"
"Hard to say," Bud said. "I don't want to make promises, but there's no way the insurance would let you do it before you're 18. I had a bad enough time getting a rider so you could brake for us, but you've been worth it. Some of the time, on the easier trips, it might
not be long after that, though, at least when we're busy in the summer."
"That soon?" Josh was amazed. His father had been in his thirties before he'd begun engine service, back with D&O.
"Like I said, hard to say. A lot depends on seniority, but Bill Lee figures into it, too. It's damn hard to juggle Bruce and Diane between us and him now. Some one of these days, they're going to have to start putting most of their time into the Lordston Northern. Your dad
is getting set to retire, some one of these years, and I really put in more time in the cab than I should be, now. On the other hand, with bigger engines, we might not need as many engineers. You figure it out; I can't give you an answer."
"I don't believe it," Josh said.
"Well, a lot depends on how much you learn, and how well you learn it, too," Bud replied. "Since we're non-union, what it comes down to is that you don't start engine service until I think you're ready. But, the downside to that is that for a few years, at least, you're
not going to be working a lot in the winter, at least on the road. Probably be a few unemployment checks along in there, but that's a good time to take a vacation, anyway."
"Funny," Josh said. "I'd never really believed I could even be a railroader."
"Well, like your dad says, sometimes it's not all fun," Bud said. "You've got to try running a plow train through a snowstorm in the dead of night when you're dead tired and have to press on, anyway, before you realize that, maybe. You ain't lived till you've walked a
quarter-mile train in a driving snowstorm checking brake lines. Maybe I'll have to give you a few calls this winter, just to show you the downside."
"Do that," Josh said. "I'd like to try it."
