Day Ten (Tuesday, July 6, 1971)

My sleep was uneasy and restless. Several paintings of Jesus hung on the walls, staring at me in holier-than-thou depictions. Wasn’t it that Jesus’ physical appearance was never described in the Bible? How come alcohol was supposed to be bad if Jesus changed water into wine? Another monumental problem: How was I going to get Amy to heaven when she didn’t qualify for admission because she was a Jew?

Wasn’t Jesus a Jew?

A different atmosphere prevailed at Fellowship Mission in the daylight hours—completely unlike the mystical nighttime. All the neighborly love and sharing wore off, replaced by the bustling roles of different lifestyles: park ranger, breakfast cook, maintenance worker, gym teacher. The guys looked at me with suspicion when I joked, “I’m an independent—student, that is.” Instead of reading my pocket Bible— the translation was that old King James Version from 1611—I scanned news items from the Salt Lake Tribune: The Pentagon Papers, chronicling the United States’ dickering in Vietnam since 1945, were released to the public after a lawsuit. Three astronauts were in preparation for the Apollo 15 moon launch. The NCAA enacted strict financial limits on college athletic scholarships to prevent bribery.

After I slipped on the wet bathroom floor, I was just as glad to leave Fellowship Mission as I was to enter it.

Unfortunately, the only thing my partner wanted to talk about was his “transcendence” of the night before. “Jesus has been workin’ in my life without me even knowin’ it,” he said, adding that he’d better shape up—“pick up”—fast, or else something horrible was going to happen.

“Relax, good brother Otto. Your name is now inscribed into the Book of Life, and all your previous crimes are erased.” I reminded him Christians had individual personalities and troubles, and you had to experiment every now and then to find your limits. He agreed it was a waste of time to think about your earthly destiny when the best part of your life doesn’t start until after you’re dead. That gave me an added dilemma: Why weren’t Christians committing suicide left and right?

We spoke from the crystal white gravel of an entrance ramp on a perfect afternoon. Snowcapped mountains towered above us on three sides. The air felt like 100% purified oxygen. Our sign was out and thumbs ready.

“Curse it.” Otto pulled out his canteen from his pack. “I forgot to fill up this monstrosity back at the Mission. Hey Roger, wanna go down to that restaurant with me while I fill ’er up?”

“No,” I said flatly. “We’re all set to vault out of this place. Can’t you wait one ride so we can generate a little movement?”

“I’m thirsty now,” he protested, adding, “On a hot, sunny day, a man should be entitled to a swig of water.”

“Go ahead then. You’re the former Boy Scout. Quench your thirst. No thanks, I’ll just wait here.”

“Don’t get sore, Winans. I’ll only be gone ten minutes. That’s not long. If we get a ride, tell ’em I’ll be right back.”

No sooner did I start hitching alone when I plopped down on the guard rail next to our gear. When you’re the subordinate you can’t dictate conditions to a driver. Either you’re available for a ride or you’re not. I slid ‘CALIF.’ underneath my green bag and crossed my arms. Christian or not, I refused to participate. Until Otto came back, I was merely an observer.

I checked my watch. Ten minutes. I checked again. Fifteen minutes. It was unconscionable watching all those potential rides slip by and be making no effort to lure them over. Twenty minutes clicked off. Otto had me handcuffed!

After thirty minutes I waved off a car that slowed down to receive me. I banged the guard rail. “That’s it!”

I affixed ‘CALIF.’ through the straps of Otto’s backpack, similar to the time we were stranded in Colorado, and began thumbing, believe it or not, while sitting. It was a compromise. I didn’t want to seem rambunctious for a ride without my mate. On the other hand, Otto had to be back any second. If a driver really wanted to stop, it surely would be a sympathizer to the cause.

A tiny MG convertible with California plates buzzed up the shoulder and stopped. No, it couldn’t be, but yes, it was—a woman, a real one—a voluptuous brunette with long, fluffy hair and curly bangs. Through the windshield I beheld tasty, bountiful curves barely covered by a denim sunsuit. She was maybe thirty years old.

“Going to California?” She tilted her shades. “I’m going to San Diego. Would that be a help?”

She looked like an Alberto Vargas illustration from Playboy. She had cherry lips and bright teeth; toned skin exuding a whiff of peaches and cream, and an overall tan featuring prize-winning legs. She had all the components right down to high-heeled sandals and red toenail polish.

Pangs of frustration shot through my neck. Darn that George and that confounded canteen!

“I can squeeze you in. It’s only a twenty-five hour drive.” A zipper running down the length of her sunsuit was undone low, allowing what was underneath to perk out. She ran her fingers up and down her legs. The way she had adjusted her seat, she was practically stretched out full-length.

I checked for George. Nothing. His backpack lie next to my stuff by the guard rail. I pictured him whistling his way back to the ramp and discovering no trace of me or my duffel bags. Gone. My virginity was as good as gone, too, if I took this ride.

“Have to make up your mind, huh?” She spread her legs apart a bit farther.

“I, uh, you see—”

“Not that it’ll be all driving. We can stop when we see a nice place. Maybe you can drive when I get tired . . .”

I scraped my shoe against the pavement. I wanted to, but my legs weren’t going anywhere. I stammered and choked in torture. “I see, uh, you got room for one, but I’m not one, I’m two—I mean, er, I got this other guy with me. He left for a second.”

The collapse of anticipation flushed down both our faces.

“I’d love to come,” I laughed humorlessly, “but really, I can’t take off without my buddy. He’d kill me. There’s his stuff.”

She settled back in her seat. I added, “Besides, we’re going to San Francisco, not San Diego.” “That screws things up, doesn’t it?” The muscles tightened around her mouth. “And you can see I can’t very well take two. Well, okay. Good luck.” She sped up the ramp.

Otto actually asked if “anything interesting” happened while he had been gone.

“Damn you!”

I furiously recounted the story. The greater my fury, the louder Otto laughed.

“Come on!” I said, crying and laughing at the same time. “No more monkey business.”

To prevent further problems of that nature, at a shopping mall where one of our drivers let us off, we replaced ‘CALIF.’ with a new sign, ‘FRISCO.’

The afternoon didn’t pass without merit. We sampled the Great Salt Lake. A veterinarian from Hogle Zoo treated us to a swim, saying, “I got a place only me ’n my pinochle buddies know about.”
Inside his dune buggy we banged off the road and drove past a ‘NO UNAUTHORIZED VEHICLES’ sign over marsh and weeds. We rambled past the commercial beaches to a cove hidden by shrouds of salt coral. The sharp briny smell hit us as we stopped. The ground was brownish-white and crusty against the feet. He pointed toward a rusted car. “That baby has only been there about a week. The salt air does that.”

All vegetation ceased. What looked like sand dunes were salt mounds. The lake seeped everywhere around the garish salt bluffs under the unfolding blue sky. “The lake has been rising lately, that’s why it’s so shallow,” he said. He lifted up a salt chunk for us to touch. “The Morton Salt Company makes a fortune processing these rocks.”

The water was soupy and warm; the scent prickly. “Don’t duck your head. I’m used to it, but it takes technique.” I kept to my shoulders. He wallowed like a dolphin while I watched a flock of pelicans fly overhead toward a distant railroad crossing.

Otto the Odd-Christian elected not to go swimming. Add that to his growing list of eccentricities. Of course he wouldn’t explain why. But he ate everything in sight at Yo-Yo’s Burger & Dog Drive-In in Mills Junction, Utah, where the doctor dropped us off in the early evening after a great day of diversion. At least, that’s what I thought. Who knows what Otto thought.

A car stopped as dusk hunkered down. Under the lone streetlight was a Volvo—old, white, rusted, with smashed taillights and a rear fender hanging loose. The driver was an obese middle-aged lady, munching on an open box of sugar wafers. A loose cat clawed the seats. I was glad it was Otto’s turn for the front. She told us about Bonneville Salt Flats, which we were crossing. All sorts of land speed records had been set here over the decades, most recently by a jet-powered car named “The Blue Flame,” which clocked 622 m.p.h. The moon reflected an ancient dried lake. It was possible to make out a wooden raceway grandstand in the distance.

I welcomed the return of a completed interstate through the last part of Utah, but the Wendover exit displayed a wearisome directive, ‘FREEWAY CLOSED 1000 FEET ALL TRAFFIC EXIT.’ That put us back on U.S. 40 and headed toward the center of another small town. The saltflats ended suddenly, too; there were graduated hills and no more illusion of snow. Wendover appeared to fall between the jurisdiction of both Utah and Nevada; I never had heard of such a thing. But it was state number twenty—Nevada—for Roger J. Winans.

The hallmark of the state greeted us on the west edge of town: S-T-A-T-E-L-I-N-E-R flashed on and off in red neon lights up the post of a small, boxlike casino. It sat all alone in the outreaches of a field in a wide canyon. But the lights were bright, cars filled the parking lot, and a red carpet led to the entrance.

Inside was a noisy, smoky din, carpeted wall-to-wall, packed with gamblers. A roulette wheel spun and clicked. Others lounged at high- end glass tables playing blackjack, eating and drinking. Townies in rough garb ordered shots at the bar. Barkers in tuxedoes called out winning numbers. Slot machines lined every inch of the back wall. Barmaids hustled around wearing skintight leopard outfits.

Otto and I lined up in back of a high-rolling couple at the slots, watching coins drop and dials spin.
“Gentlemen.” A security guard’s deep voice saturated my ears. “You must be twenty-one to play these games and be able to prove it. Can you?”

“I wouldn’t throw money down the drain anyway,” Otto said later.

“I’d throw away a dollar or two.” I already blew that when I asked a barmaid to bring me a Coke.

What a difference five or six steps to the outside makes. Nighttime. Rugged terrain. Split rail fence. Stones and gravel. U.S. 40. Frontier town. Both extremes a mere portal apart.

“You tired?” I asked.

“Nah. I’m good for hours more.”

“Me, too. We exist in a timeless zone.”

“We wanna get outta here anyway.” Otto sized up the lonely, windy canyon.

“You’re right. We do.”

He and I carted our belongings from where we stashed them and propped them up next to a split rail fence that ran along the highway’s shoulder. Even though it was past midnight, moderate traffic whisked by in both directions. My body felt spunky and my mind alert. Imagine— except for Otto, no one on earth knew where I was.

“Seems like Nevada will get lost in the shuffle, no pun intended,” I said. “I’m itchy for California. Aren’t you?”

“I’ll lay you a bet, Roger. A nice, roomy station wagon is gonna stop, and the driver will tell us, ‘Okay guys, get a good night’s sleep. When you wake up, you’ll be in California.”

“That would be supreme-o, Ott-o.”

He was unusually lively, singing and joking, hugging the inside lane, sticking his thumb high in the air, and darting into the traffic lane, style points he copied from me.

“Man, you got your second wind.”

“You gotta let these prospects know you want a ride, sons.”

“That’s right,” I agreed. “Night thumbing requires a strategy all its own.”

During a lull, Otto stepped onto the blacktop and did a dozen jumping jacks. I took off my shoes to air out my feet. I ran in place and lunged at flying insects.

“Hey Roger, does it seem that some of this traffic keeps drivin’ back and forth? Have you noticed that Ford pickup truck?”

“No.”

“It’s a green pickup, jacked up, with two guys inside. Both are wearin’ cowboy hats. I think that’s why the road seems so busy.”

“Probably a couple hands with nothing better to do except drive up and down the main street all night. If you don’t hang out at the casino, that’s the only thing to do.”

“Here it comes again,” Otto said. “Check it out.”

The green Ford was the first in line of three vehicles. Yep, it was jacked up with large wheels on a special axle. Chrome tailpipes bubbled underneath. The passenger was tall and bony, with pock marks on his face below his tan cowboy hat. The driver was more concealed, though you couldn’t miss his classic black ten-gallon cowboy hat.

“Super studs,” I said. “They probably slaughter cattle at some meathouse during the day and go out and drive around at night for kicks.”

“I don’t like the way they stared. Did you hear that guy burp at me?” Otto cautiously checked the highway. “The more they go by, the more I wanna get outta here.”

“I’m ready for a ride right now.” I exaggerated my stance for an oblong foreign car that didn’t stop.

A few minutes later, the green pickup truck came back from the other direction. The bony cowboy in the passenger seat gave us a dirty look and growled.

“Lord Jesus, I need to get outta here,” Otto said.

“Don’t worry yet,” I said. “Every town has a couple guys like this. Local color.”

A much shorter interval now passed before the cowboys appeared again. “Yo, motherfuck!” the passenger yelled out the open window.

“Hey Roger, I don’t like what’s brewin.’” Otto rustled over loose stones. “I think they’ve been drinkin’ and are lookin’ to cause trouble.”

“But what are you going to do except keep thumbing? I’m trying my hardest. Stick with it. We’ll get a ride. We’ve got to get lucky with one of these cars.”

“I just don’t need no medical bills, and these cowboys are givin’ me
the jitters. They know we ain’t from Wendover, that’s for damn sure.”

A minute or two more they came again from the other way. The driver didn’t bother with us, but the feisty passenger leaned out the window with growing anger. “Motherfuckin’ hippie!”

I tried to smile. “They’re having a grand time tonight, don’t you agree?”

Otto’s face was dead serious, with desperation gathered in his eyes and mouth. “Roger, what about callin’ it quits for the night and sackin’ out in the middle of that field? These cowboys look agitated, and it doesn’t look like we’re gonna get any ride. Come on. What do you say?”

“Man, you act like they’re coming after you with a rifle. It’s not that bad. How can you sleep under these conditions?”

“But you’re also flirtin’ with a couple cowboys who might be stone drunk. That guy is yellin’ at me, if you don’t know. I’m the hippie with the long hair, and I think he’s tryin’ to pick a fight.”

“You’re seeing more into the situation than there actually is.”

Otto wagged his finger at me. “If they come by one more time, I’m gonna be shittin’ in my pants.”

Here they came. We stood limp on the shoulder, thumbs down. The bony cowboy stuck his torso out the window and pounded the door with his fist. Yes, for some reason his target was squarely Otto.

“You damn hippie! Get the fuck out of town! You hear me? I said out, motherfucker!”

We waited until they passed and then turned toward each other. Otto looked pale.

“Look . . . ” I said.

“You look.” Otto trembled. “It’s easy to see these guys haven’t had their nightly fight yet. If they come back one more time, I don’t even wanna think about what could happen to us. The only thing a drunken cowboy knows how to do is fight. I say let’s get the heaven out of here.”

“Okay, okay, okay, okay.” I tried keeping under control. “Where you going to go? To the casino?”

“No.” Otto cast around. “That’s the first place they’d look. I say let’s grab our stuff and go down in that field, over by that railroad bridge, before it’s too late.”

Several hundred yards away, off in the canyon, stood a small wooden trestle where a train line ran underneath an adjacent state highway.

“Let’s shove.” I pulled my bags together.

“Oh God.” Otto gulped. “Here they come.”

The cowboys flashed their high beams on and off and honked the horn as they drove up. The bony cowboy yelled and screamed, his face a deep hue of scarlet. The truck screeched a U-turn, and skidded to a stop on the stones in front of us. Otto and I backed up against the split rail fence.

The bony cowboy flung open the door and jumped out, swinging his arms. His disfigured face foamed. Neither Otto nor I breathed. I was first in his path—though he got nose-to-nose with Otto.

“Listen, you dumb fuckin' asshole! Didn’t we tell you to get out of town? Now if you’re not gone in fifteen minutes, we’re gonna kick the livin’ hide off your asses!”

Otto’s head flinched with every word.

“Got that, shitass? I want your hippie ass out of here in fifteen minutes.” He gave me a dirty stare. “You, too!”

He backed off toward the door. “We’ll be back to check up. Pricks.” He spit on the ground, then climbed aboard and slammed the door. He pointed at each of us. “Remember, fifteen minutes.”

Wheels spun, the pickup made another screeching U-turn, and the cowboys sped off.

We watched the taillights with pent-up anxiety. Otto turned his frightened attention to me. “You still gonna argue with me?”

“Let’s get the freak out of here!”

We scooped up our gear and headed toward the barrenland. I tripped on the stones of the opposite shoulder and went sprawling. A duffel bag cushioned my fall, though I sprained my wrist. Otto sprinted ahead. I ignored my dusty frontside, coughed out dirt, and painfully hustled after him. Sharp cactus, gopher holes, and rocks made movement in the dark treacherous.

I felt like hunted prey. Sweaty dust itched my face. Every few steps I cocked my head backward. Otto leapt over a gully, found a dirt path paralleling the railroad track, and galloped toward the trestle. I waded through weeds and briars. I missed the dirt path, but found the track. Panting out shockwaves, I jumped two wooden ties at a time.

The tops of the rails shone from the moon.

“See anything?” Otto stood under the trestle in silhouette in the center of the railroad track, hands gripping his pack, feet bolted to the ties, face drained.

“A couple cars. No pickup trucks.”

With increasing agony I hauled my two bags to where Otto established our hideout. I heaved them next to his pack. We jumped around on the chalky basalt.

“You’re going to have to be our lookout, with your eyes.”

“D’ya think they saw us?”

“Ow, my palm is bleeding. And sore. I sprained it.”

“We’ll run for it if we have to.”

“Yeah, leave our stuff behind.”

“You know they’re gonna be back.”

“I’ll run straight to the cops and tell them what’s going on.”

“They’d never listen. Where you gonna find a cop out here?”

“No?”

“No! The cops hate hippies more than the kids. We’re the aliens, Roger, not them. You don’t know about these small towns. Everyone knows everybody else. The cowboys are probably the cop’s sons.”

“Well, we can’t do anything but wait. I don’t think we’ll get—”

“Shh.”

“What?”

“What’s that?”

“What?”

“That sound.”

A vehicle approached the bridge above. We listened as the noise increased. All possibilities shot through my head.

“Not a truck.” Otto exhaled. The vehicle tumbled across the wooden supports, plunk-plunk-plunk, dull and loud. A tractor-trailer rolling past the casino, a quarter-mile away, drowned it out. Other sounds, from the tweet of birds to faint womens’ laughter to the yawl of ground animals, could be detected from every direction. Even the wind was whispering.

Tall, thick weeds staggered up an incline near the mortar embankment of the railroad trestle. He and I camouflaged and concealed our gear up there, then came back. We each claimed a rail, facing each other. I was greasy and dirty, totally fagged out.

Every time a vehicle went past, we took turns moving out from under our hideout to identify it. “If the cowboys see us gone from the casino, maybe they’ll call off their search.”

Otto was still harrowing. “You don’t know what those cowboys might do to us if they catch us,” he said direly. “No one knows where we are, Roger. They could tie us to a rope and drag us around the field until we’re dead, and no one would know the difference. I’ve heard of spite-mongers who get a charge from crap like that. There’s a lot of open land around here.”

“They just wanted to scare us. They’ll check up, see that we got out of town, and then go home and sleep it off. We’ll be safe.” (I didn’t know if I believed my own words or not.)

Time passed. I remained wired for sight and sound. I determined the origin of every hum, ping, crush, cackle, and rustle. My ears had the sensitivity of my father’s, who could hear walking on the driveway outside from his bed upstairs on the far side of the house.

“Maybe they already went to bed,” I offered. “They had to get up early anyway to get over to the slaughterhouse.”

Otto exhaled long and slow and seemed to ease up a notch.

“Enjoy the peace and quiet.” I smiled, venturing the first chummy vernacular since we holed up. “Experience the dead of night.”

Traffic virtually ceased, although the red neon S-T-A-T-E-L-I-N- E-R sign still flashed. Every once in a while a car tumbled across the overhead planks.

“This wouldn’t be a bad place to camp out if you didn’t have to worry about no cowboys.”

“Not at all,” I encouraged. “You wouldn’t have any trouble around here making love. I’d like to bring Amy out here and sack out in the weeds for a couple of weeks.”

Is 3:35 a.m. late or early? Our talk drifted further and further from the matter at hand. Finally we joked about how Otto’s regular postcard home the next day would be worded: ‘Mom—Foiled Two Cowboys in Nevada Who Wanted to Skin My Hide. Currently in Hiding. Love, Otto.’

“We might as well wait out the rest of the night and get ourselves back on the road at the first hint of daybreak.”

“Yeah, I’m too frazzled to sleep.”

Otto stood at the side of the railbed with his fly unzipped, washing down the stones. Beyond the yellow splashing, down the line, I could see a tiny headlight curving around the bend.

“Better whip that noodle back in your pants.” I squinted. “Here comes a train.”

Otto hip-hopped over. “Where?”

“Down there.”

I looked up. Otto was frozen solid. His eyes were glued to the moving light, mouth open. “Train nothin’! It’s two headlights out in the field!”

For an eternal instant we watched the pin of light get bigger and bigger. When it split in two, he yelled, “It’s a pickup truck!”

Fear seized every fiber of my body. I scampered up the side of the grassy knoll by the mortar supports, behind Otto, grabbing his belt for leverage. He clambered like a dog, struggling, yelping. Weeds stained my hands and knotted up my ankles. My pulse ripped through my neck. I gained my balance, peered ahead, and crawled toward taller brush.

Otto waddled like a duck on crouched knees. We lined up a few feet apart on high ground, facing each other. The height of the weeds and the blackness of the overhead trestle kept us hidden (I hoped). We cowered.

Otto closed his eyes and prayed. I did the same, only with eyes open. I was too jolted not to keep sight of visuals. With my heart pumping madly I kept repeating, “Dear God, please get me out of this, please God, help me get out of this, Oh dear God . . .”

I must’ve said that prayer seventeen times.

The pickup moved toward the bridge. The wheels raced over the rough road, engine working hard. It braked about ten yards below us. The engine shut off. Doors slammed. The cowboys stood outside.
“They’re around here somewhere, Boyd. Come on out, hippies. It’s whippin’ time!”

Otto stared at me desperately, his face dripping. His crooked mouth sucked in huge gulps of air. Me, I fleshed out every sound, trying to learn what was behind it. Every crunch, tap, and peck was overamplified.

An instant later a steel apparatus snapped shut. “Ah Christ! My foot! Oh hell!”

“What’s that, Colby?”

“My fuckin’ ankle’s ’bout tore off! Help me, for Christ’s sake!”

“Shit, one of them goddamn animal traps.”

“I think it tore right through to the bone. Help me out of here, Boyd. We got to get to emergency. Quick. Damn it all.”

They hobbled back to their truck, the chain of the trap dragging over the stones. It sounded like they loaded the trap into the cab with the cowboy’s foot still caught in it. The ignition charged, and they
revved away. Holy madness. Was that scene for real?

I fell forward onto the weeds, softly touching the ground. Had Jesus Christ helped us out of an impossible situation? Was fantasy controlling my imagination? “Lord, Lord, Lord, Lord . . .”

Otto stayed crouched while I crept to the edge of the wall on all fours, like a Vietcong guerrilla. I slowly peeked over. The scene appeared exactly as we left it: A single railroad track running over a thick bed of stone. The moon sparkling on the tops of the rails. No truck, no cowboys.

I rubbed my burning whiskers and eyes. “Four a.m. and all is well.”

“All clear?”

“Yeah. They’re gone.”

Otto’s knees cracked as he rose from his crouch. He looked depleted,
like a baseball catcher who had been charged with an error for making a wild throw to second base in the seventh game of the World Series. We brushed dirt and grass off each other.

“You okay?”

“Yeah, I’m all right, I guess.”

“What made them step into a trap and not us?”

“Incredible, Roger.”

“You’re not kidding.”

“That coulda been one of us, you know.”

“That’s what I said. But it wasn’t.”

“My legs.”

“My lame football knee regressed two years.”

“Who’d leave a trap around here?”

“An old hunter?”

“Someone musta forgot it.”

“Was it booby-trapped?”

“I thought we were dead ducks. I wanted to run.”

“I’m glad we didn’t. It might have been fatal.”

“Packs still there?”

“Hope so.”

“Jesus God, we were lucky.”

“You’re not kidding. And speaking of God, I know the Lord had something to do with this.”

“I was prayin’ the whole time.”

“So was I.”

“I was afraid to open my eyes.”

“I was afraid to close them.”

“But I heard ’em all right—clear as a bell.”

“A little voice inside my head was telling me what to do the whole
time.”

“Me, too.”

“I’m glad we didn’t run. How’re you going to get away from a truck when you’re on foot?”

“When there’s a will there’s a way,” Otto broke the pattern and laughed a bit, “and let me tell you, sons, this kid had the will!”

If Otto looked spent, I couldn’t have looked much better. Shuffling our way down the incline, I almost fell head first onto the train bed. Exhausted, he and I made further checks to make sure the cowboys were gone for good.

“Thank you, Jesus.” Otto raised his arms high in the air. “I’m gonna be thankin’ that man every night and every day for what he did.”

“Thank you, Jesus.” I was too humbled to look up. What an exercise to test your faith! I was sorry there had to be people in the world like that. “Normal living’s hard enough.”

Our stuff was untouched. We pulled it out and resumed our seats on the rails.

Any nerves that hadn’t been sufficiently rattled were literally shaken out when a Union Pacific freight train came surging through the canyon just before dawn. The overbearing weight, the unrelenting power, the massive wheels churning against the rails, all felt like they were grinding against my innards. I plopped down on the rail when the caboose passed, faint and listless.