Sharyn McCrumb - Foggy Mountain Breakdown and Other Stories

Davy stayed in the smokehouse in the backyard, working as long as it was light. He scrounged, and tinkered, and sanded, and hammered, and painted, and tinkered some more, until the bike looked almost the way it had before. It would never be as good, of course. He couldn’t get the handlebars completely straight, and the deeper scars showed through the new paint job, but the bike was fixed. It had brakes again. He could ride it.

When Mama asked him what happened to his bike, Davy told her that he’d tried to take it down too steep a hill, and that he’d wrecked on a hidden tree root. She had looked at him for a long minute, as if she was fixing to say more, but finally she shrugged and went back into the house. There wasn’t any point in telling his folks about Junior Mullins, whose dad was a boss down at the railroad shop. No point at all.

He practiced riding the bike on Friday night, up and down the road in front of the house until the fireflies lit up the yard and Mama called him in. He found that he could maneuver pretty well. With a few minor adjustments the bike would be ready to go.

On Saturday morning he set off early, before Dad could catch him with a list of chores or Mama could set him to work weeding the corn. His sneakers were still damp from dew when he heard shouting from up the dirt road past the quarry. He found the gang at the usual congregating place, Wells’s pasture. This time, though, no game was in progress. Five boys had pulled their bikes into a circle, and now they were arguing about what to do on a long Saturday morning. Davy looked at them: Johnny Suttle, Dewey Givens, Jack Howell, Bob Miller, and Junior Mullins. Davy walked his bike across the expanse of field, and slid silently into place between Johnny and Bob.

“Polo is a sissy game!” Junior was saying.

This declaration was followed by a doubtful silence. The younger boys looked at one another. Finally Bob Miller said, “How ’bout we jump potholes in the quarry?”

“ How ’bout we jump potholes in the quarry? ” said Junior, changing his voice to a mocking whine.

More silence.

“Anybody want to play pony express?” said Junior. “Or are you boys too yellow?”

Johnny Suttle whistled. “Chase a freight train on our bikes? My mama would skin me alive if she found out I was doing that.”

Several of the others grunted in agreement.

“How’s she going to find out?” said Junior.

“When I come home with my bike all tore up,” said Johnny.

Junior shrugged. “Not if you do it right. The only tricky part is when you grab onto the ladder of the boxcar and kick the bike away. But if we find a place where there’s a grassy slope alongside the track, it shouldn’t hurt the bike too much when it falls down the embankment.

“It’s dangerous,” said Davy softly.

“I’ve done it before,” said Junior. “It’s a great ride. When the freight train slows down to take the curve, you catch up to it, swing up on the ladder, and ride the rails until you find a nice soft jumping-off place. Don’t tell me you sissies have never tried it?”

Junior looked at each one in turn, daring somebody to admit he was scared. The five Foggy Mountain boys stared back, wide-eyed, and redder than their sunburns, but nobody objected and nobody looked away.

“It’s settled then,” said Junior. “I know just the place.”

The five boys followed him out to the dirt road, riding slowly along in single file up the hill until they reached the place where the railroad tracks crossed the road. Junior led the way on his store-bought red beauty, sitting tall in the saddle and signaling with an outstretched forearm, as if he were a cavalry officer in the matinee.

“We’ll follow the tracks to the right!” he shouted to his troops.

They turned on command and dismounted, wheeling their bikes along the gravel shoulder of the railroad tracks, while Junior inspected the terrain. “We need a long straightaway where we can build up speed, but it has to be just after a curve, so that the train will be slow enough for us to catch up with it.”

Nobody bothered to answer him. He was thinking out loud.

Johnny Suttle, following close behind Davy, was bringing up the rear. “He’s not looking at the embankment like he said he would. He’s not looking for a grassy place. There’s rocks all the way down this slope.”

“He doesn’t care,” said Davy.

They both knew why.

The solemn procession followed the tracks up the steep grade that would send the train up and over the mountain in a series of spirals. The fields below glistened green in the July sunshine, and the Nolichucky River sparkled as brightly as the railroad tracks that ran alongside it for the length of the valley. Here the gravel berm was two feet wide, and just beyond it the ground fell away into a steep slope of clay and loose rocks.

Johnny Suttle touched Davy’s arm. “We could turn back,” he said.

Davy shook his head. You couldn’t chicken out on a dare. That was part of the code. If you showed that you were afraid, you were out of the group, and Junior Mullins would hunt you like a rabbit from there on out.

They trudged on, past two more curves that Junior judged unsuitable for their purpose, and then they rounded the sharpest curve, midway up the mountain, and saw that there was nearly a hundred yards of straightaway before the tracks started up another incline. Junior turned and nodded, pointing to the ground. “Here!”

It was a good place. There was a thicket of tall laurels on the edge of the embankment that would hide them from the view of the engineer. Once the locomotive hurtled past their hiding place, they could give chase, and they had a hundred yards to build up speed and grab for the boxcar ladder.

Junior motioned the pack under the laurels. “Should be a freight train along any minute now,” he said, squinting up at the sun. He had sweated so much that his shirt stuck to his back, making the bulges show even more. He wiped his brow with a sweaty forearm, and surveyed the track. “This will do,” he said. “There’s just one more thing.” He set his red bicycle carefully against the trunk of the laurel, and stared at the gaggle of boys. He was grinning.

Everybody looked away except Davy.

“I’ll need to borrow a bike.”

“I just fixed mine,” said Davy quietly. He wasn’t pleading or whining about it, just stating a fact that ought to be taken into consideration.

“That’s real good,” said Junior. “I’m glad you got it working again. I wouldn’t want to borrow no sorry bike.” He gripped the newly repaired bike with one hand, and shoved Davy out of the way with the other. “You can watch, kid,” he said.

Davy shrugged. It wouldn’t do any good to argue with Junior Mullins. Things went his way or not at all. Everybody knew that. Complaining about the unfairness of his action would only get Davy labeled a crybaby.

Johnny Suttle looked at the railroad track, and then at his own battered bicycle. “Here, Junior. Why don’t you take mine?”

“That beat-up old thing? Naw. I want a nice blue one. I’m kinda used to Davy’s anyhow.”

Davy knelt down in the shade of the laurels next to Junior’s bike. “Okay,” he said.

Junior stepped forward, ready with another taunt, but a faint sound in the distance made him stop. They listened for the low whine, echoing down the valley, a long way off.

Train whistle.

“Okay,” said Junior, turning away as if Davy were no longer there. “Mount up, boys. I lead off. You wait till the coal car has gone past us, and then you count to five, and you start riding. Got that? When you get up alongside the boxcar, grab the ladder with both hands, and pull yourself up off the saddle. Then kick the bike away with both feet. Got it?”