It was the end of the summer and Chris was working with me on those condominiums. He was about to leave for baseball camp, vacation, and then the beginning of school.

“Hey, go.”

“Go?”

“Yeah, go.”

“Go?”

“It’s your turn. Start!”

“Start?”

“Come on, this work will bore us both to death without more stories. I told the last one, and now it’s your turn.”

“No, you go.”

“Why me?”

“You’ve lived longer. You have more stories.”

Our story telling began days ago. Chris tells a story, I tell one, then he tells one, and that helps us survive our mind-numbing days. Even when we’re lifting beams or replacing supporting walls, we’d tell stories. We stopped only when we were glued to our ladders working on those tall chimneys.

“Okay, I’ll start. This one is about trains and walking the train tracks. Something you and your sixteen year old friends are familiar with. I was fifteen at the time.

“Glenn and I …”

“It’s always Glenn and…”

“We were inseparable, which might not have been a good thing. This time we brought Arnold, who, to be honest, was as much mascot as friend. Glenn always included Arnold, although he was slower, clumsier and odder than the two of us. In a three way race, Arnold would come in last behind the turtle and the rabbit. I hate to admit it, but we made fun of him when he wasn’t around; in fact, we made fun of him when he was with us. And our constant needling killed any trust between us. Remember the firecracker story and how I couldn’t convince Arnold to throw his M-80’s away as the cop was sneaking up behind him?

We lived within three blocks of one another, a few miles from downtown Cincinnati, so these tracks weren’t in the sticks as they are here in Acton. Anyway, Glenn and I, wearing out traditional white shorts and black BVD muscle t-shirts, met Arnold at his house. It was early, sticky hot and we had no plans but to walk those tracks. Our previous hike-the-tracks distance record? All the way to Ann Rush’s, a girl I had a crush on in junior high. This time we passed behind her house, wending our way through what little undeveloped land remained.

After two hours of following the tracks, we emerge from the woods. No longer are we in amongst the trees and the distant houses; we’re at the top of a hill with a view of the city. The ground descends to the street, and a railroad trestle stretches off in the distance over the cars and the houses and the factories below. A majestic view for us suburban boys and an enticement richer than a root beer float.

Are we going to turn back and go home, or follow the tracks out on this wooden trestle? There are two obvious problems. To walk on the trestle you have to skip from one tie to the next because in-between those ties is nothing but air. No more gravel, no more mother earth. The bigger problem is the rightful owner of those tracks, Mr. Freight Train. I’d like to say the three of us weighed the pros and cons, but that would be a lie. Instead, Glenn and I convinced Arnold it was perfectly safe.

As soon as we strut onto the trestle, and don’t ask me why, chalk it up to the times, street kids below begin throwing rocks at us. This forces us further out, away from the boys and their stones, but also away from the safety of land.

Now we’re on the trestle and giddy. With each step forward we gain about a mile in altitude. We pass a rickety, wrought iron, wooden floored platform, about four feet square, which hangs off the side of the tracks. We look at it and laugh. Standing on the tracks over the ant colony below is bad enough, but there is no way we’re going near that thing. What if it breaks off? We keep walking, staring into the city haze, hoping to see the end, where the trestle again marries mother earth.

Every hundred feet or so, I bend down and rest my ear on the sooty iron rail to listen for an oncoming train. I learned that from Tonto and The Lone Ranger. We’re hundreds of feet out on this trestle – from the street we surely look suicidal – when it finally penetrates our thick skulls – this is crazy. We’ll never reach the other side, and if a train comes, we won’t be able to outrun it. And as if on cue:

“I heard a whistle,” squeaks Glenn.

“No you didn’t.’ I put my black ear back on the rail.

Arnold looks into the distance and then back at me and says , “Oh no!”

I jump up and sure enough, way off, but not way off enough, is a black locomotive, its single head light shining, steam from its smoke stack trailing.

We freeze. How fast is it going? Who cares? We turn and run, but it’s hopeless. We’re miles from land and running for your life on railroad ties linked by the void is a nightmare. Try practicing back flips on the rim of the Grand Canyon. And besides, we have our mascot, Arnold. If Glenn and I beat the train, Arnold won’t.

Terrified, we squawk at one another.

“You idiot. Why we’d come out here?’

“Shut up.’

“My mother is going to be so mad.’

“Shut up and run.’

“I’m going to fall.’

“Shut up.”

I glance back at Arnold and he appears to be running on strips of flypaper. Soon, he’s twenty feet behind us. “Faster, Arnold, Faster,” I shout, but he can’t move quicker, and this time it’s not because he thinks we’re playing some prank. There is one choice – the scary platform- and Glenn and I leap onto it. We look back and there’s Arnold, a flailing cartoon character outrunning a freight train. We holler and wave our arms like the pit crew at a stock car race and Arnold finally lumbers onto the platform.

The three of us pin ourselves against the rusty back rail as if fat balloons on a dart board. The train roars by and like a popsicle stick strummed between your teeth, our floor rattles up and down. I can’t see the rocks whizzing by our heads because my eyes are closed. Arnold moans like a kicked dog, and Glenn, convinced we’re going to be launched into space, or some part of the train will decapitate us, sounds like he’s reciting the rosary.

Now, you tell your story.”

“My story? Is that all?” Chris replies.

“What do you mean is that all? I’m here aren’t I? The train went by and we walked home. And you know what? We didn’t learn a thing from that. You’ll see. I’ve got more stories, but let’s hear yours first. ”