Near death and lost love on the rails...

I am Jack's broken heart.

Melissa and her mom dropped us off at the Bayview yard in the Rosedale area of east Baltimore, an industrial strip of factories and junkyards forgotten by all except those that spent their days working there. The six of us walked to the tracks only to see the hotshot we hoped to ride sitting there waiting for us. I wasn't sure if it was our train. It was about an hour and fifteen minutes ahead of schedule but after a bit of deliberation I decided we should go for it. I had never hopped on a piggyback before, and we were having a hard time getting even one person to fit underneath the wheels of the semi truck trailers with their pack much less two people with packs, as I was told we could do.

After getting only the first two people in our group on the train, it started to move. I knew we couldn't possibly get the other four of us on the train in time so I told the other two they should get off the train. We stared at the train from the side of the tracks as the last car sped into the distance. It was disappointing, because I knew the next train wouldn't arrive until sometime around 10:30 am the next day. After the train had left us behind, we could see three people walking down the tracks towards us in the distance. It was Nick. This was no surprise, as we had seen him and his two friends getting dropped off about a half a mile outside the yard. Uncle Betz and I walked up the tracks to see who he was with.

Brooke and Dave were two kids from New Jersey that Nick had met a few days before and together with Nick's influence, decided to would be a great idea to hop trains down to the regional Rainbow Gathering in Ocala, Florida. This upset me slightly becasue I felt Nick was a completely incompetent trainhopper that could get these kids hurt. I gave them a quick look over.

Dave was a terribly sterotypical hippie with his courdory pants, dirty white t-shirt, taped glasses, and long brown hair that matched his short beard. Brooke on the other hand was the cleaner hippie girl that greeted me with a glowing smile I couldn't help but like. She had a funny thick green coat that I could only imagine a lepracaun wearing, but her brown eyes were what captured my attention the most. The seemed to have a spark behind them...

"You guys are way too far out of the yard to catch a train." I said. "Come back to our camp." We took them back to where our group sat waiting for us. We built a new camp that night in a more hidden area where we could build a bonfire and gathered up what little furniture we could find laying around. After an hour of scavenging we had set up a few benches and a couch to sit on and were lounging comfortably cooking that night's meal of ramen noodles. Brooke and I hung out with each other most the night, connecting on such a deep level so quickly it was scary.

I freely shared secrets with her that I would have never told some of my friends, much less a stranger... and she did the same. I wiped away her tears while I did my best to hold back mine. We held each other in our arms, unable to explain the connection between us.

"Kiss me Matt," ...I didn't hesitate. We slept next to the fire that night, feeling my heart beat against her back and the smell of her hair in my nose...

The new light of the morning had just begun to break the sky when our train screeched to a hault a few yards away. We hurriedly gathered all our gear and ran to the tracks. The train stopped, and as we all ran up to the train, I realized that we couldn't fit more than one person per piggyback, and I now had eight people with me. None of which had ever hopped a train before. I hesitated, and after getting only two people on the train, I realized this wouldn't work. As if to confirm my suspicion, the train started moving forward. We were fucked.

So once again the train left us behind, and we had been defeated a second time. I honestly didn't mind much though, I was content with sharing another night with Brooke. We stayed near the campfire while the rest of our group went to dumpster a local food distrobution wherehouse, and we spent the day talking, kissing, and well... being completely emo!

Everyone returned later that night from the food distro with a whopping 50 cans of beans and 10 large cans of pineapples! A hobo feast if I ever heard of one! We stuffed ourselves stupid and lounged around the fire until another hotshot train pulled into the yard. We hurriedly packed our gear and ran to the front of the train to see where it was going. Fodi and I walked up to the unit to talk to the conductors while everyone else hid out under the bridge nearby. As we got up to the front of the train, we noticed there was no unit attached to the train. Odd. We found the unit two tracks over after walking around the front of the train, but there were no conductors in it. The train with no unit attached sat to the right of us as Fodi and I stood on the tracks next to it trying to figure out where the conductors went. Suddenly I felt the hair stand up on the back of my neck, and I looked down the tracks that curved off to the right. I couldn't see very far to the right because of the 48 car blocking my view. Suddenly I had a very bad feeling. Fodi turned to look at me and said, "What's wrong?"

"Wait," I said, raising my hand, I still couldn't hear anything. Suddenly a train barreled around the curve blazing straight at us! "Go!" I said, it was the only thing I could get out of my mouth.

"Huh?" Fodi said, still facing towards me, not seeing the train's bajillion watt headlight getting bigger behind him.

"Go!" I said again, grabbing him and throwing him off the tracks along with myself as the train barreled by, barely missing us. "Holy shit!" I said as the train blared by blowing it's horn almost as an afterthought.

"Holy fuck, that thing nearly flattened us..." Fodi said. "If you had been facing the same direction I was..." He didn't have to finish. We both would have been dead. Neither of us heard it, niether of us could have seen it coming. We wouldn't have had a chance. We both walked back to the bridge having given up on finding the conductors after what had just happened. My adrenaline was pumping so bad I was shaking.

Back under the bridge I demanded a cigarette. Everyone asked what had happened. I was pretty speachless. After a minute of puffing away at my cigarette, I told them what happened. Ironically, everyone watched the train blaze by while we were gone, and hoped we weren't in it's way. I was still shaking a little as Brooke held my hand and we walked back to our camp. I started laughing. It was nothing but sheer luck that I was facing the right way to see that train coming. I should be dead right now. I laughed harder.

We got back to the camp and laid out our gear. I was definitely done for the night. Just as I was getting comfortable next to the fire, a long junk train pulled into the yard, blowing it's horn at us as it passed by. The train was going south, and Uncle Betz volunteered to take a look, taking one of our radios and walking down to the unit with Fodi to talk to the conductors. After being here for the past two days, I was ready to take any train going south, and I knew a boxcar or gondola was probably the only way I'd be able to get all these kids on the train together. Just in case this train was going where we wanted to go, I suggested we all pack up our gear, and waited for Uncle B and Fodi to radio in.

As we got the last of our gear together, Uncle Betz's voice came in over the radio. "Dude! This train is going straight to Savannah! But ya got three minutes to get everyone on! Don't worry about us, we're gonna be in the unit until the next stop. Go!"

Fuck! We all rushed to the tracks running up the length of the train trying to find a car we could ride. "The conductor says ya got like thirty seconds left man!" Uncle B said over the radio. I spotted an open boxcar, climbed in and started pulling everone in while radioing back, "Yeah man, we're getting in right now!" With the last person in the car, I radioed back with a "Okay we're in!" and the train shoved forward seconds later.

The train stopped again just outside Baltimore for a crew change and we all got out of the boxcar as Fodi and Uncle B radioed that they were leaving the unit and coming back to meet up with us. After a few minutes we saw them running towards us. By an interesting coincidence the conductors that we had talked to the first day we were in the yard were the same ones that were driving this train south. At that time they were driving a train north, and they were surprised to see us still camped out next to the yard two days later. The conductors wrote down all the numbers of what cars we should be behind at certain points so we wouldn't get disconnected from the train and even went so far as to give us their cell phone numbers to call if we had any problems. What great guys! (CSX conductors are the bomb!) We all got back into the boxcar and the train took off again a few minutes later.

Josh had brought along his GPS system (man, talk about traveling high-tech!) so the next time the train stopped, we knew we were just outside the Richmond, VA yard. Acording to the information the conductors had written down, they were going to break up parts of the train here, so we needed to get behind a certain car a few cars back. So we all got out of the boxcar and walked back along the train looking for the serial number of the car we needed to get behind. After finding it, we kept walking back trying to find a boxcar or gondola we could all get in. We were nearing the end of the train with no luck, and suddenly the train started to take off. Shit. We watched the train leave us behind, and to add insult to injury, the very last car on the train was an open boxcar! Goddammit! If we had just run a little faster...

The sun was rising while we walked down the tracks towards the yard hoping we could find another train to ride. After a walking down the tracks for about a mile or so, we were bitching about the missed train until I noticed a train coming up behind us. "Everyone hide!" I said, and everyone ran to the side of the tracks to hide in the cover of the bushes, but Nick, Dave, and Brooke had darted to the other side of the tracks. We hid in the bushes as I tried to figure out where Brooke was, and the train pulled up and stopped right in front of us. I walked over to the unit and asked the conductor where the train was going. He said he was just going into the yard, and everyone agreed it would be a good idea to hop in the gondola we saw a few cars back to save us the walk. I kinda felt responsible for everyone there because this was their first trip for all of them. I couldn't leave them behind to find Brooke, so all I could do was hope Nick was smart enough to get Dave and Brooke on this train. We all climbed into the gondola, and I frantically looked around trying to find Brooke so I could tell her to hop on the train. After a few minutes the train shuddered forward to the yard. Just outside the yard we saw Nick, Dave and Brooke walking along the tracks. We waved as we passed by, but I don't think they saw us. My heart sank as I watched Brooke's imaged get smaller in the distance, and finally dissappear. Tasha could see the pained look in my face as I sat down, defeated. "Are you sad?" she asked.

"Yeah," was all I could say. I was crushed actually. I had lost her.