House: A Brett Mccarley Locomotive Engineer Story
Shelley J Alongi

 

A well manicured front lawn and a vinyl fence, a stone front porch with lights discretely placed so that anyone who came there was never completely in darkness. The awnings that protected guests from driving rain or hot, crushing sun welcomed Laurie Hensen to Brett McCarley’s house. the wooden carved door with swirls and circles spoke her name. Even the cool frosty morning welcomed her as Brett slid his key into the door and swung it inward to reveal the high ceiling entry hall way.

“A steam locomotive?” Laurie mused in her transfixed state. “You have a picture of a steam locomotive on your entry wall?”

She laughed with delight. What a strange thing to have welcoming a guest, but it was characteristic of him, being a locomotive engineer with an interest in old steam engines. This one wasn’t so old, she stopped, looking at it, reading the number on it, 3751.

“I took that picture when it came through our local station,” he explained, remembering the crowds, the anticipation, the profusion of other cameras looking for the same best spot to snap a picture of the engine built in 1929 for the Santa Fe. His lips curved into a smile of delight, delight in her enjoyment, his heart swelling with pleasure. It had been a long time since anyone took any kind of enjoyment from the picture welcoming a rare guest to this house. “I promise the whole house isn’t done in locomotives. I’m not that much of an artist, or that dedicated.”

“I don’t believe that,” she said turning and hugging him. “I just like that picture; those brass stacks. It’s perfect.”

“Honey,” he rubbed her shoulder, “I’m afraid you’ve been a bit transfixed since I met you at Union station this morning. I don’t think it’s the picture on the wall.”

“Maybe not,” she conceded.

Brett, standing five feet eight inches, his right hand on the handle, holding the door for her, dressed in his casual blue jeans and flannel shirt, watched the woman who had finally gotten to him, though perhaps that was never her real intension. Laurie would be the first woman brought to this house, one he and his wife of thirty years, Carol, had shared till her death last year from a fast moving unrelenting cancer. This place was his castle, when he was here; quiet, secluded in the forested property he had bought thirty years earlier at the midpoint of a budding railroad career. A refuge, sending him off each early morning long before sunrise in most cases or in the velvet shimmering darkness of winter to run the massive powered freight trains and now the more sedate if still impressive passenger units, would now welcome someone else to it. Brett watched her take it all in, his eyes drawn to her black curls, the comfortable way she stood here in her light blue top and blue jeans, his heart stirring within him. She took his hand and brought him along with her into the entrance, stopped and looked into his kindd, brown eyes, eyes she swore saw into her very soul.

“What’s up?” she breathed with tranquility. “You look like you’re making a million dollars in your head!”

He laughed a rich, warm basy sound in the spacious room. He tousled her hair.

“Okay,” he said. “Okay let’s show you the rest of the place.”

The living room with the grandfather clock with the moon and stars in their cycles displayed on the ornate cabinetry, the wide velvet cushioned sofa with its carved arms, the two deep recliners, the deep piled carpet, and in the middle of all this luxury, on each wall, large landscapes of mountains, glistening with snow, a copse of trees shimmering like glass covered in ice, frosty elegance. Brett moved beside her. Laurie’s face shine with delight. Soundlessly he left her and slid behind the sofa to a sound system tucked behind a sliding door that looked like a wall. Suddenly, the muted strains of solo choral music wafted through the air, echoing as if sung in a mountainous cavern, the notes blending in with the landscapes on the walls. Laurie looked up as the notes resonated through the room, notes laying gently on her ear, notes she could not explain in her experiences, but that caught her attention.

Brett stood back still watching, patiently, as if he awaited a signal for his next move. Laurie turned to him, he drew her to his warm, strong body as the music softened around them. She gently removed his glasses, caressed his reddish gray beard letting her fingers linger on his warm skin for a moment. Their kiss came as the harmonizing voices faded away, leaving the room in quiescence. Now the ticking of the grandfather clock’s pendulum moving back and firth became the dominant sound in the room. Lost for a moment in the kiss and the colors and the silence, Brett’s house embraced Laurie, and yet, distant voices from the past echoed here, shrill cries of displeasure or accusation. Held by arms that perhaps longed for security, finding it in this woman’s pleasure, Brett pulled back, feasting on this happiness with quiet eyes. “It’s been a pleasure,” he remembered saying the first time she met him outside his locomotive cab at Union Station, and now, surrounded by serenity, and the promise of warmth, here was the blending of memories and the making of their future. She held to him, responding to his touch, and then gently disengaged herself as she realized that to stay here would mean crossing a boundary line. She held his hands and stepped back.

“You like it?” he asked needlessly. Her smile answered his question.

“You have so many memories here.”

“Yes.”

Brett couldn’t share all those memories with her today. Some of them were painful; the arguments, the sadness, the revelation of Carol’s infidelity, the choice she had to make years earlier before they first got married. Would she marry him or someone else? If Carol’s family was steeped in the railroading business, the world of politics and the constant quest for federal or private funding, rules, right of way wars, one railroad buying out another, and odd schedules, long hours, sometimes no work, sometimes too much work, never seeing him, it was the decision she made. She stayed in that world, she married Brett, and the journey had not always been easy. He had told Laurie of a few of Carol’s infidelities; her schizophrenic moments, her time spent in psychiatric hospitals. Here in this forested place, Brett the locomotive engineer could escape Carol’s confused world.

“Whose pictures?” Laurie wanted to know now. “Yours? Carol’s pictures?”

“Mime,” Brett said into the quiet space, feeling its emptiness, its memories, her simple question leading him away from the precipice of his own unhappy thoughts. He looked up at two photographs, one of a small church nestled in some snow-covered mountains and one of a tree spreading its branches skyward, some rocky cliff in the background.

“My pictures. Pictures from places I’ve been on my commuter train journeys. Those mountains have railroads. I took the pictures and had them framed so I never bought a single one. I just had them enlarged and matted and framed.”

“Beautiful! Beautiful.”

Beautiful seemed to be the only word Laurie had to describe the rest of Brett’s dwelling. The kitchen even if its appliances were older, was cheerful, plenty of light came through the windows, the breakfast nook intimate, the dining room large and welcoming, casual or formal, its sideboards, its comfortable chairs. Carol, when she was well, gave parties for the railroad wives, younger women married to overworked conductors and engineers, some who became friends, some who left their husbands for more secure or stable lives, or simply because they were unhappy. A few like Carol stayed with their men of the railroad, and sometimes she entertained them. Most of the time, Brett ate at the breakfast nook, coffee in the morning before driving half an hour or an hour to his latest point of origin, and then making the journey back again.

Laurie could see people lining these walls, sitting in these easy, velvet and intricately carved chairs, talking, laughing. If the living room had presented her with more personal memories, the dining room spoke of lighter moments, and holiday meals enjoyed.

But it was Brett’s master bedroom that held the biggest surprise. The large simply furnished room was a personal glimpse into where and how he spent his quiet hours. Carol, he told her, slept in another room across the house. They had not shared sleeping quarters. He had to be up too early, she said. His early morning movements disturbed her. He preferred it that way, especially when he was up at 3:20 in the morning, showering, grabbing coffee, keys and his engineer’s bag and slipping quietly into frosty mornings to make his commute. It was possible that Laurie fell in love with this room much like she had fallen in love with the man who slept in it, perhaps before she met him, before she knew his name, and before she saw the room.

Rich cool blue carpet, light maple furniture with carved brass handles, a chest of deep drawers, a long dresser that matched the nightstands and the bed, the long top home to all of Brett’s personal items: keys, spare change, a pair of tweezers, small picket knife, a railroad watch bought by his late wife. Now her already over stimulated senses took in cool blue backgrounds comforting to tired eyes, soft light played on the dresser from the lamp that hung on a hook from the ceiling.

“This can be yours,” he put his arms about her gently, looking down into her shining face. He hugged her to him, feeling her heart beat, her soft curves comforting something he had not known he missed; so used to Carol, her distance, her sometimes shrill nagging, her quarrelsome rages. It had been the way it had been, he supposed, too settled in his ways to shuck her off like so many of his colleagues had done, coolly, without respect. A man running trains so many years, caught up in his work he did not bring others to his rooms at night. Brett Richard McCarley, despite Carol’s infidelity, did not feel comfortable doing that. Carol was willing, she had been pleasant when she could be and maybe if he was gone so much of the time it was easier for both of them to interact. Laurie was an entirely different story and he wasn’t sure he always knew how to respond. Responding to her, deciding to love her after years of casual meetings at the side of locomotive cabs and conversations that hadn’t always been technical. Now he stood there watching her face light up like a child’s, pleased by the simple, tasteful furniture that graced this large room. “It is yours,” he repeated, drawing her to him, her eyes making him lean down and kiss her on the forehead, on the cheek.

“There’s more,” he said quietly, richness in his voice. “Are you stuck on that dresser?” He moved his hand to her shoulder, let it move to the curls that hung down, found her neck, massaged it. “Laurie?”

“Brett,” she breathed. “It’s beautiful!”

Brett McCarley was a mild mannered man, he could be outgoing and cheerful, but you couldn’t say that he was a swashbuckling character by any means. His smile, though, could light up the room and now it did, and he laughed richly, letting his fingers play with her soft bouncy curls.

“Here.”

He led her away from the dresser, placed her before the large king bed. He let her survey it, keeping an arm placed about the middle of her back. Laurie let her eyes roam across the high, intricately carved bed, neutral blankets, a muted comforter, inviting a tired, overworked body to stretch out in its warmth. She moved closer to Brett, letting her side rest against his. Her eyes roamed to the nightstand, the small maple wood clock with a brass face, its gold hands gently lighted, the reserved black of the nightstand elegant, blending in with the folding blinds, the big glass picture window. She moved toward it, saw a quiet yard below, gentle roses with vibrant reds and yellows deep as the summer sun.

“You belong here,” Brett now said, suddenly realizing it. “It looks good on you.”

Brett slipped warm, callused fingers through her’s , led her to the couch that sat against the wall opposite the window, its own quiet shades of blue comforting. He sat down, sighed, patted the spot next to him. She joined him there, snuggled close, her body sinking into the velvet cushions. She leaned back into the welcoming embrace of the sofa, lay her head softly against his shoulder, a button on the sleeve of his flannel shirt pressed into her hair; she moved her head to look lovingly into his face.

“Tired?”

It was Saturday afternoon and sometimes the work week could linger in his eyes.

“Fine. Today is quiet. I turned off the alarm.”

“did you?”

“Yeah. I did.”

They smiled, sharing a personal joke. So many Fridays at locomotive cabs, shimmering in their elegant dirtiness, beautiful with their chipped orange, or blue, or white paint, Brett explained that he would sleep in the next day, turning off his alarm. Over the next year or two they made reference to it in their phone conversations.

Brett took her hand in both of his, caressing it gently, relishing the peace of this Saturday afternoon.

“Now you’re the one who looks like you’re making a million dollars in your head,” he quipped. Laurie shook her head.

“No, sweet engineer, I’m just taking it all in.”

“Like a kid at Christmas?”

“Like someone who just loves your house!” She ran her fingers across the warm skin of his hand, feeling the hair across his knuckles, feeling a scar he had acquired in a railroading accident years back. “Just loving you.”

“Good,” he said, rubbing her hand and closing his eyes and leaning back in the comfort of the afternoon. Soothed from his weariness, he realize that peaceful Saturday afternoons hadn’t happened very often with Carol. He wondered if with Laurie something would be different about Saturdays? He decided not to analyze it, only to enjoy it.

They looked up as a black presence, sleek in the early afternoon light, approached the sofa, looked at Laurie, walked away and eyed them with suspicion from the middle of the room.

“Okay so your cat is not sure about me,” she laughed. “NO worries.”

“I’m sure about you,” Brett said. “You’re something else. You’re cool.”

She curled up beside him. Lulled by Brett’s warmth, Laurie opened her eyes now and thought that time had passed, maybe they had both fallen asleep. The sun had moved when she opened her eyes. Brett slept beside her, his head cocooned on the edge of the sofa against the back of it. She watched him for a moment and then got up and came to sit on the floor next to him. His left hand lay suspended over the edge of the sofa, she looked at it, his ring finger bare. He had taken off his wedding ring after Carol’s funeral one year earlier.

It had been a well attended affair, many of Brett’s colleagues came to give him support and solace, Laurie had inserted herself unobtrusively in the middle rows, sitting between two solid women, perhaps railroad wives, and listened to accolades and stories, the poring forth of memories, her heart full of love for this man who had been her silent friend. She had passed through the line, shaking hands with Brett, looking briefly at him and then slipping away into the hot, still afternoon that had formerly ended a rocky railroad marriage. Texting Brett in the months to come had opened the door to their friendship once again, culminating in a breakfast at Union Station and now ending here in this peaceful respite for a good man and the woman in love with him.

Now, in his master bedroom, she reached out and touched his fingers, resting her hand there, connecting in some kind of moment with his past. The movement of her fingers on his gently woke him, and he sighed easily, opening his eyes.

“What?”

“Diverging clear,” she said quietly.

“Huh?” He smiled a little, amused at her inference to railroad signals and their meanings. “Silly!”

“Just watching you,” she breathed. “Sleep sweet train engineer.”

“Hungry?”

“I don’t’ know.”

She sat there thinking for a moment. She loved this house, she hadn’t thought of food for quite some time.

“Lunch would be nice. Got any ideas?”

“There’s a nice Italian spot down the road. I’ll drive you home.”

“hat’s a long drive,” she protested weakly.

“Not so long, sweetie,” he said gently. “I’m an engineer I’ve driven much longer distances to get to my trains. Besides, we don’t’ want to be rushed by a train’s schedule. Let’s just go let you digest this house. My treat.”

 

 

Copyright © 2010 Shelley J Alongi
Published on the World Wide Web by "www.storymania.com"