Summer had not, by any accounts, gotten so far, June 2007. The Golden Boy slept beneath swollen clouds choked with tears, the night Chuck B and I “caught-out” of town. I would never be the same again – and sometimes, on restless nights, I’ll take a drive down to Fort Rouge to watch the trains roll by. I ran into Chuck a few weeks back on one of these such nights. It was four o’clock in the morning and the streets were deserted – but there we were, the two of us wandering alongside the track reliving memories of our Winnipeg’s most Winnipeg.
Note: This story is not intended to encourage people to ride freight trains or trespass as trainhopping is an illegal and dangerous activity.
***
We waited all night in the Canadian Pacific rail yard, located on the wrong side of Winnipeg’s tracks, where dingy warehouses with graffiti stained walls littered the Streets of Nowhere. From the shadows beneath the Slaw Rebchuck Bridge I watched as a gypsy gale accosted a haggard prostitute soliciting in the eerie glow of a buzzing neon sign. Seems we weren’t the only ones waiting to catch-out that night.
And while my eyes tried to process the beleaguered scene, I couldn’t help but wonder what we were really doing out here amidst the decay of Winnipeg’s north end. We were a long ways from home yet the lonely cry of the midnight freight train beckoned us – transients on the open rail.
“This is bunk!” whispered Chuck in a throaty rasp. An undertone of failure lingered in his voice as he shuffled impatiently on the ballast, “We’ve been here all night.”
“Just wait.” I hushed. “Something’s coming in over there.”
I hunched myself lower on the limestone footing and peered in the space between a string of cars and the track bed. Across the yard, an imposing chain of rolling steel drifted along one of the mainlines. The silence in the sullen alleys of rustic junker cars was broken by the sound of a deep rumbling that echoed off the walls of decomposing boxcars and empty forty-eights.
I glanced over at Chuck. He was urinating in a pile of scrap metal.
“So, uh…whaddya say, check it out?” he asked, and then: realizing that despite the nonchalance in his voice there really was no question in the matter, he muttered, “The sun’s comin’ up, man.” Chuck did up his fly and fumbled with his belt which jangled in the wake of daybreak. Then, with a sweep of his arms, he bent his lanky frame downwards, scooped up his sac and heaved it over his shoulders as if he hadn’t a moment to spare. I suppose that was his point, but then, there wasn’t much time to spare – and so we prodded onwards through the vacant corridors and dark places between long strings of cars.
As we advanced into the depths of yard, we spotted a railway cop taking a lazy foray around the yard. The ‘bull’s’ white pick-up crunched along an old service road in lookout for prowlers, lurkers, skulkers and tramps; which is to say a host of derelict folk traverse these parts under cover of night. And it was not until we crossed the expanse of the gravel road that the runaway beat of the midnight freight train picked up its slack and thundered down the track.
Clickity-clack, don’t ya look back;
Clickity-clack, them jolts of slack!
C’mon!” yelled Chuck, “Before she gets away!”
A maniacal grin spread across his face as he scrambled over a flat deck and splashed into a puddle of muddy water on the other side. He quickened his pace like a footloose cowboy eying the passing cars. His long, thin legs strode alongside the stampeding herd of freight cars before the rustler made his move.
Chuck reached for the ladder rung of a westbound hopper car while visions of dismemberment flashed before my mind. He swung himself aboard the platform deck and extended his arm to take my hand. The murderous whine of squelching steel pierced my heart with great suspense and I could have bent to the ground and begged, “Chuck, don’t leave!” But oh, there was a freedom in the distance and an aching in my bones to find my home where no road goes. So I took to my last with every breath until step by step the sweetly rush of the warm June air caressed my face like tender kisses as thereupon the open rails we were dancing with the trains.
Inspired by the song “Where No Road Goes” (anonymous)
