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The Night Train Passes
- University of South Carolina Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
0000 According to the Albany Evening Times, when the last of April comes, railroad men on the right-of-way of the New York Central claim they see a phantom train with flags and long black streamers traveling slowly through the night. Its brass fittings gleam with a strange phosphorescence in the moonlight, and the shades are drawn. It is the annual reappearance of Lincoln's funeral train. The route of the impressive, bedraped train covered seventeen hundred miles from Washington, D.C., north and then across the plains to Springfield, Illinois. Three hundred mourners rode in the Pullman cars, and at every stop crowds of grieving Americans thronged the train. 000 THE NIGHT TRAIN PASSES Near Albany, New York Normally he would have been with his wife on their wedding anniversary. Tonight was different. When Carter Strothers saw the blonde-haired little girl, her flushed face lying against the pillow, he knew immediately that he had been wise to make a house call. Under most circumstances he would have advised her mother to bring her to his office in the morning. The girl's home was a thirty-minute drive for the doctor, but something the mother said-he wasn't even sure exactly what-touched off a warning in his brain: danger. Lisa's face and body were feverish, and the thermometer he had pulled from his worn black bag, then shaken down energetically before placing it under her tongue, registered 105 degrees. He remembered his first years of practice realizing that she might have died then but not 165 166 Near Albany, New York voicing such thoughts. She had a full-blown case ofpneumonia , and he felt for his hypodermic and penicillin. He had been the first of the doctors in his small town near Albany, New York, to begin using it. A short time later he was backing his pale blue Buick out ofthe drive and was on his way home. It was the last week of April, 1965. Tonight he and Anne, whom he had met just after she had graduated from New York University , would be married three decades-exceptionally happy years. Some of his friends' wives had pushed their husbands to leave these little towns between New York and Albany and develop practices in New York City. He would have hated that sort of impersonality and pressure. His son went to West Point, and they saw him often. A daughter followed in her mother's footsteps and attended NYU. Even when she was a senior her father worried about her living in the city. He saw the lights of East Albany in the distance, checked his watch, and wondered if Anne had fallen asleep waiting for him. It was about 10:30. He heard the sound of a train not far away and was surprised to see how slowly it was going. It couldn't be traveling over twenty miles an hour. There was the toll of a bell. He didn't believe he had heard a train bell in years! He pulled up close to the tracks to see it, and he lowered the window. Overhead stars were visible. The train was only seconds away now, and he noticed two railroad men who stood a few feet away watching. "Look at the engine. Doesn't that look like the old Union?" "You've got to be crazy!" [3.230.1.23] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 16:48 GMT) 167 The Night Train Passes "Take a gander at the train and the cars behind it. Ever see anything going so slow?" Narrowing his eyes, the younger man shook his head. "No. Looks like something out of an old picture in a railroad station-or maybe a book." In the car, Doc Strothers turned his head. The moon was out now, and he could see the train approaching on an open stretch of track. The engine was heavily draped in black with a cowcatcher jutting out in front of it. The stack blew silvery smoke puffs up into the air from its wide mouth. He couldn't see the engineer, but behind the cab he caught a glimpse of logs for refueling. He stared at the wheels which had an almost hypnotic effect upon him as the train crept toward him, its speed not exceeding twenty miles an hour. The engine was pulling only nine cars. The fittings of the coaches were polished until what must have been brass gleamed like bright silver...