by John Jakes
George felt nervous about leaving the business for eight weeks. He had prepared pages and pages of instructions for his supervisors and foremen, and he planned on at least one return trip to Lehigh Station during the summer. Still, the family needed him more than Hazard Iron did. Something had to be done to restore peace and keep Virgilia from disrupting it for the next month or so.
Isabel constantly sniped at Virgilia behind her back. The object of this attention acted as if nothing had happened. Virgilia chattered about the passing scenery, the weather—everything but the subject that had precipitated the argument. She was blithely, even arrogantly, cheerful.
During their one-night layover in Philadelphia, she disappeared all night with no explanation. That evening Maude took to her bed before the sun went down. But next morning she seemed better, as if she were determined to accept the situation, deplorable as it was. She went on a shopping trip with toddling William, who was feeling fine again.
They boarded the private car at four in the afternoon.
On each side of the car, five-inch-high gilt letters spelled out Pride of Hazard. Above the legend a gilt eagle spread its wings. The interior was equally opulent. Everyone exclaimed over the etched-glass window borders, the gleaming brass fixtures, the wainscoting of rosewood inlay with deep red damask covering the walls above.
Stanley had spared no expense. The upholstery was the finest plush, the washbasins the finest marble. George had to admit the car was beautiful, but he didn’t dare ask the final cost. He wanted to be at home, seated and slightly drunk, when he saw the bill.
A Negro chef had been hired for the summer. He was already in the galley, preparing sole for supper. Virgilia conversed with the chef for a good ten minutes. “As if he’s her equal,” Isabel sneered to Constance behind her hand. “Something must be done.”
Constance ignored her. Virgilia emerged from the galley and disappeared into her sleeping compartment with a copy of The Liberator.
The boys, William, Laban, and Levi, ran up and down the car, climbing over the furniture, rattling compartment door handles, and creating a cacophony on the pump organ tucked against the bulkhead at one end of the sleeping section. At a quarter to five the car was switched onto the New York fast express, which pulled out a few minutes later.
The family dined on filet of sole and drank expensive French wine while the express rushed north through the dreary New Jersey flatlands. Virgilia was not present; she had taken a tray into her compartment.
“She’ll probably invite her dusky friend to Newport,” Isabel said in a thickened voice. She had consumed a good deal of claret, disdaining the white wine served to all the others. “We should take action.”
George noticed a flare in his wife’s eyes. But Constance kept her temper, saying, “Perhaps we should just have patience. If she’s involved herself with Johnson merely to assert her independence, it won’t last.”
Unsatisfied, Isabel whined, “What do we do in the meantime? Suffer humiliation? Social ostracism? I tell you we must take action.”
“You keep saying that,” Maude snapped. “What do you suggest?”
Isabel opened her mouth, closed it, stood up with nervous movements.
“Excuse me, I believe I heard the children.”
She rushed off to their compartment. George reached under the fine linen tablecloth, found his wife’s hand, and, giving her a resigned look, squeezed it. Then he poured another glass of Chardonnay and drank it in several long gulps.
Around midnight in the New York rail yards, the Pride of Hazard was uncoupled from the Philadelphia train and put on another bound for Providence. The car was coupled immediately behind those containing freight and baggage, and just ahead of the public coaches. This placed it at the midpoint of the train.
About that same time, along the Connecticut shore near the hamlet of West Haven, a switchman who had earlier had a big fight with his lady friend resorted to a bottle to drown his anger. He drank so much so fast he forgot to reset a switch after a local headed for New York came off a siding parallel to the main line. The local had backed onto the siding and waited there until a Boston-bound express went by.
The switchman walked unsteadily in the direction of New Haven. Had he been a reliable man and sober, he would have worried about the switch’s being out of position. Any train approaching from New York and traveling faster than five miles an hour would shunt onto the siding, which was short, and crash through a barricade at the end. Beyond the barricade lay a wide, dark gully.
Constance wriggled in her husband’s arms. There really wasn’t room for two, but she hated the discomfort and confinement of her own berth and had moved down to lie with him for a little while.
“Before I become a regular traveler on overnight trains, some genius will have to invent a better sleeping arrangement,” she murmured against his neck.
“Cozy, though, isn’t it?” The moment he said it there was an abrupt lurch. “Did you notice that? Felt like we switched onto another track.”
The driver of the eight-wheel Winans locomotive was terrified. He had seen the position of the switch arm a few seconds too late. The engine had been unexpectedly slewed onto the siding, and even as he pulled the cord to signal for help, he knew the brakemen would be unable to turn their wheels and halt the train in time.
In the spill of light from the oil-fired headlamp, he saw the barricade looming. “Jump, Fred,” he screamed at his foreman, who was already stepping off the foot plate into the dark.
So this was how it would end for him, the driver thought. A name in a newspaper account of another accident. So many of them were happening that preachers and politicians said no more railroads should be built.
He yanked the signal cord again. It broke in his hand. By the light of the firebox he saw the frayed end, and that was all he saw. The locomotive burst through the barricade at thirty miles an hour and shot up a slight incline and out over the gully like an immense projectile, dragging the rest of the train behind it.
24
“CONSTANCE, GET THE CHILDREN. Something’s—”
George never finished the unnecessary warning. She knew something was wrong because of the way the car jerked, then began a slow roll onto its left side.
There was a strange sensation of floating. She fought her way up the suddenly inclined floor toward the door separating the compartment from that of the children. The locomotive fell toward the far edge of the gully. Seconds before the shattering crash, she realized the private car and possibly the whole train had left the rails.
She tore the connecting door open. The first thing she saw was the sooty chimney of a lamp she had left burning. The car was all wood and lacquer. They would be roasted to death if they weren’t crushed.
It seemed to last forever, that slow, lazy rollover through space. Iron howled as couplings tore apart. The freight car directly ahead landed in the gully, and the Hazard car came crashing down on top of it, roof first. On the rim of the gully the locomotive’s boiler burst, the explosion creating a huge cloud of fiery steam and shredded metal. The cloud bloomed upward and outward like some flower from a madman’s garden.
Human screams counterpointed the shriek of iron. The Hazard car collapsed onto its inverted roof. The second-class coach immediately behind glanced off the side and sagged into the gully next to the pile of cars on which the Hazards’ was resting. Below her, Constance heard injured men cry out in the dark: employees of the line working in the baggage cars had been trapped down at the very bottom.
“William? Patricia? Stay with Mother. Hold onto me. We’ll be all right.”
The children were sobbing. So were dozens of other passengers, in every car—a whole choir of the terrified trying to be heard above the breaking of wood, the shattering of glass, the swift crackle of flames. Where was George? In her terror she had lost track of him. She thought he had left their compartment through the door leading to the corridor.
The lamps were out in the Hazard car, but there was light. Fireli
ght. She saw it bathing George’s face as he reentered their compartment, walking on the ceiling which had become the floor. He rushed to the connecting door.
“Give me one of the children.” He held out his arms. Behind him she glimpsed Stanley struggling along the corridor. He was pushing Maude and dragging Isabel, who had a twin in each arm.
Constance passed William to George. Carrying Patricia, she stepped over the high sill created when the car inverted. She dared not listen to the cries or the sounds of the spreading fire. It ate into the wall behind her, its heat scorching.
“Go on, George. I’m all right.” With her free hand she lifted the hem of her nightgown so that she wouldn’t fall. She began coughing; the smoke was thickening rapidly.
She followed her husband out of the compartment. The corridor was blocked by wreckage in one direction and by Isabel in the other. Isabel had suddenly lost control. She dropped the twins at her feet and surrendered to hysterical screaming.
The smoke reddened as fire consumed the car. The three-year-old twins wept and tore at their mother’s legs, hoping she’d notice them. She didn’t.
“We’ve got to get her out of the way,” Constance shouted, thrusting Patricia at her husband. He maneuvered William into one arm and with a grunt hefted the girl onto his shoulder. Constance slipped around him, seized Isabel by the shoulders, and shook her. When that did no good. Constance slapped her. Isabel staggered against Stanley, who seized her wrists and dragged her away into the ruddy smoke.
“Laban—Levi,” Constance gasped, crouching by the twins as George squeezed past and struggled along the corridor. She had only seconds now; the compartment behind her was aflame. Tongues of fire shot from the doorway. The pudgy-faced twins huddled against her as she fought to keep her nerves from betraying her.
She gave them her hands. “Hold onto me, boys.” She led them down the corridor the way George had gone. He had disappeared in the smoke. So had everyone else.
The wooden wall on her right felt blistering. Three feet ahead the wall abruptly split and buckled outward, dissolving in fire. No exit that way. There was a barrier of fire behind her, too.
The windows, then. She kicked one with her bare heel. It shivered but didn’t break. She kicked it again. A crash; glass tore her heel and lacerated the sole of her foot.
The air rushing in fanned the flames. What was out there? How far was the ground? Was there only dangerous wreckage below? She couldn’t see, but she had no other escape route. She tore a piece of wood from the buckling wall and enlarged the ragged opening by smashing out more glass. She had no recollection of cutting herself, but by the time she finished, her wrists bled from a dozen wounds. She dropped the wood and lifted Laban.
She flung him outward through the opening, and his brother after him. Then she jumped, a moment before the car disappeared in a Niagara of fire that ran toward the sky.
She hit a slope covered with sharp rocks just seven or eight feet below the car. She rolled a short distance, stunned. Above her, the burning wreckage lost its brilliance as her vision dimmed. She gasped for air, powerless to move, close to losing consciousness.
Everywhere, screaming. Drifting smoke. The roar of the fire and the shrill hiss of steam still escaping from some valve in the ruined locomotive.
Hurt and dazed as she was, Constance still managed to separate one sound from the others: the sound of Laban and his brother weeping in fright as they wandered the hillside. They needed someone.
She willed herself back from the darkness that had nearly taken her. She flung red hair off her forehead with red hands and tottered along the sloping side of the gully until finally she reached the twins. She made queer gurgling sounds as she picked them up; it was the closest she could come to laughter.
“Boys, we’ll be fine now.” She held one under each arm and climbed the slope. The rocks bruised and cut her already bleeding feet. “Just fine. We’ll find your mother. We’ll find her right away.”
If she weren’t dead.
Would the little boys remember the shrieks of those victims buried at the bottom of the pile of cars? Would they remember the strident, choking cry of someone trapped in a burning car and roasting alive? She would. God above, she would.
The death toll in the wreck, which the penny press later dubbed the West Haven Catastrophe, was twenty. Fourteen passengers and six employees of the line, including the engineer. None of the casualties turned out to be a Hazard, although the family’s Negro chef had died with a broken timber driven like a spear through the bosom of his nightshirt. The center of the train proved to have been the safest spot; all the deaths had occurred at the forward end or in the last two passenger coaches.
One by one Constance found the others. Billy first. Then Maude; she sat on the ground, dazed and unable to rise. George and their children. And Stanley, trying to comfort and quiet Isabel, who alternately sobbed and ranted.
Last of all she spied Virgilia, over on the far side of the wreckage. George’s sister had torn up her dress to make bandages. In her undergarments and filthy dirty, she ran up and down hills of teetering rubble like a mountain goat, hunting for survivors and helping to free them. As for the Pride of Hazard, it no longer existed.
Constance rubbed her eyes. She saw Stanley kneeling by his sons, examining their bloodied feet.
“How are they?” she asked.
“I don’t know. How did their feet get cut so badly?”
Constance didn’t answer. She was only able to shake her head. The fool was angry with her. Incredible.
“Who’s cut? Are my children hurt? Let me see.”
Shrill, but evidently herself again, Isabel rushed past Maude and dropped to her knees beside the twins, who were trying to hold back tears. “Laban—Levi—oh, my poor dears. Look at that blood. Those terrible gashes. What did she do to you?”
She gathered the boys into her arms and peered between them, her eyes brimming with hostility. “Constance, if either of them is permanently injured, I’ll never forgive you.”
“Permanently—?”
Constance found it so ludicrous she couldn’t go on. She threw her head back and laughed, raw, hysterical laughter that brought a scowl to Stanley’s face, and George’s too. “My God, Isabel,” she gasped finally. “Do you have the slightest idea of what you’re saying?”
Isabel released the boys and lurched to her feet. Strings of hair fell across her forehead as she stumbled toward her sister-in-law. “I certainly do. Look at them. Look at their feet.”
“I’m sorry you don’t approve of what I did, Isabel. But then you never do. I was trying to save the twins. No one else was helping them. Certainly not you. You were screaming, hysterical. You had abandoned your children to a horrible fate.”
George spoke softly to her. “I don’t think you need to say any more.”
Constance knew he was asking her to end it there; not demanding that she do so, but asking, so that trouble wouldn’t keep piling on trouble. She heard that clearly and understood. Yet it made no difference. Her brush with death had unleashed feelings long suppressed.
With her eyes on Isabel, she said, “Oh, yes, there’s a lot that needs saying. You should be horsewhipped for being so ungrateful. I’d do it if you weren’t such a pitiable creature—”
“See here—” Stanley began, but Isabel’s cry drowned him out:
“You Irish bitch!”
She scooped a jagged rock from the ground and ran at Constance. George jumped in front of his wife, tore the rock away from Isabel, and hurled it toward the blazing pyre of the train.
Isabel whipped up her fist to strike him. George seized her forearm in his left hand and gradually but firmly forced her hand down. His voice shook.
“She’s right, you’re ungrateful. You’ve done nothing but heap unkindness on Constance ever since she came to Lehigh Station. She’s looked the other way—tried to forgive you—and so have I. But this is the end. She saved the twins, and instead of thanking her—”
&nb
sp; “George, you’ve overstepped,” Stanley rumbled behind him.
George didn’t look at his brother. “Keep out of this. Isabel, I will always insist that my family be civil to you, but that’s all. Henceforward I don’t want to see you at Belvedere. Don’t ever set foot in my house.”
“You will not speak to my wife that way,” Stanley exclaimed, grabbing George’s shoulder. Stanley’s impulsive act was a match touched to an emotional fuse. George spun, slammed Stanley’s hand away by striking his forearm, then stepped back to set his stance just right.
Stanley was spluttering. Steady on his feet, George ignored the last faint plea of reason and did what he had long dreamed about. With all his might he hit Stanley in the stomach.
Isabel shrieked. Stanley gasped and so did George; he had struck so hard he thought his hand was broken.
“Papa,” one of the twins howled, and burst out crying. Stanley attempted to stay on his feet, but the blow had knocked him off balance. His arms windmilling, he staggered backward, then collapsed on his rump. The light of the burning cars made his cheeks glisten red. As he gazed up at his younger brother, a forlorn comprehension crept into his eyes. He struggled for breath. He was paunchy, soft-looking, as he sat there. Old, suddenly. Impotent.
God, I wish I hadn’t done that, George thought. But the blow could never be called back. It would exist in memory forever, an embarrassment to him and to all of them. It was odd that he could regret what he’d done and at the same time feel relief and a sense of pride.
He walked forward and held out his hand to his brother. “Let me help you up.”
Stanley grasped George’s forearm and pulled himself to his feet. He acknowledged the assistance with a flicker of his eyelids, but there was no gratitude in the glance—not that George expected any. There was, however, something else. An emotion George had seen, or at least suspected, before. Now it was unmistakable.
He’s afraid of me. He’s always been afraid of me.
If George had recognized that fear in the past, he had never recognized the power it gave him; not until now.
