LaVyrle Spencer - Small Town Girl

And the morning after that, and the morning after that.

And often, when they would look at it, in the years ahead, one of them would say what Casey said that morning in the hotel, "It's like it was meant to be, isn't it?"

And the other one would smile.

For no other answer was necessary.

Celebrate the magic of

Lavyrle Spencer…

"Lavyrle Spencer's books get read and reread, passed on from one friend to another, mothers to daughters, daughters to mothers, sisters, etc. They're given as gifts, and for gifts to self-bought for self-care, nurturing, and special escape into another world… They've become a part of the work I do in helping people develop healthier ways to live."

– Judy Ohmer, Ph.D., President,

Lifeskills Training and Development

Discover the joys of her newest bestseller…

Here is an excerpt from Lavyrle Spencer's captivating novel, Then Came Heaven . It is a very special story, with a very special heroine. A woman who has taken a nun's vows, only to find that God works in mysterious ways… and that love is His greatest gift.

Then Came Heaven

Available in paperback from Jove Books

Thursday, Sept. 7, 1950

Cyril Case was making the daily run from St. Cloud to Cass Lake, sitting up high on his box seat in engine number two-eighty-two. Beside him, his fireman, Merle Ficker, rode with one arm out the window, his striped denim cap pushed clean back so the bill pointed skyward. It was a beautiful morning, sunny, the heavens deep blue, farmers out in their fields taking in the last of their crops, most harvesting with tractors, though down around Sauk Center they'd seen one working with a team. They'd passed a country school a couple miles back where the kids, out for recess, waved from the playground, and their teacher-a slim young thing in a yellow dress-had stopped gathering wildflowers, shaded her eyes with an arm and fanned her handful of black-eyed Susans over her head as she watched them pass. It was days like this that made driving a train the best job in the world: green woods, gold fields and the smell of fresh cut alfalfa blowing straight through the cab. And beneath the men the shuug -a-shuug-a of the steam engine hauling smoothly down the tracks.

Cy and Merle were having another one of their friendly disagreements about politics.

"Well, sure," Merle was saying, "I voted for Truman, but I didn't think he'd send our boys to Korea."

"What else you gonna do?" Cy replied. "Those Communists go in and start bombing Seoul. Can't let 'em get by with that, can we?"

"Well, maybe not, but you ain't got a nineteen-year-old son and I do. Now Truman goes and extends the draft till next year. Hell, I don't want Rodney to get called up. I just don't like how things are going." Merle pointed. "Whis-tlepost up ahead."

"I see it. And don't worry, MacArthur'll probably clean 'em up before Rodney gets any draft notice."

Up ahead, on the right, the arm of the white marker shone clear against the pure blue sky. Cy reached up and pulled the rope above his left shoulder. The steam whistle battered their ears in a long wail: two longs, a short, and a long-the warning for a public crossing.

The whistlepost flashed past and the long wail ended, leaving them in comparative quiet.

"So," Cy continued, "I suppose your boy's gonna go to work for the railroad if he doesn't get…" He stiffened and stared up the track. "Seet Jesus, he ain't gonna make it."

A car had turned off of Highway 71 and came shooting from the left, trailing a dust cloud, trying to beat the train to the crossing.

For one heartbeat the men stared, then Cy shouted, "Car on the crossing! Plug it!"

Merle jumped and hit the air brakes.

Cy grabbed the Johnson bar and squeezed for dear life. With his other hand he hauled on the steam whistle. Machinery ground into reverse and the brakes grabbed. From the engine through the entire train life, everything locked in a deafening screech. Steam hissed as if the door of hell had opened. The smell of hot, oily metal wafted forth like Satan's own perfume. The couplers, in progression, drummed like heavy artillery from the engine clear back to the caboose while the two old rails , with fifty-three years' experience between them, felt it in the seat of their pants: forward propulsion combined with a hundred tons of drag, something a railroad man hopes he'll never feel.

"Hold on, Merle, we're gonna hit 'em!" Cy bellowed above the din.

"Jesus, Mary, Joseph," Merle chanted under his breath as the train skated and shrieked, and the puny car raced toward its destiny.

At thirty yards they knew for sure.

At twenty they braced.

At ten they saw the driver.

Dear God, it's a woman , Cy said. Or thought. Or prayed.

Then they collided.

Sound exploded and glass flew. Metal crunched as the gray '49 Ford wrapped around the cowcatcher. Together they cannonballed down the tracks, the ruptured car folded over the metal grid, chunks of it dragging along half-severed, tearing up earth, bruising railroad ties, strewing wreckage for hundreds of yards. Pieces of the car eventually broke free and bounced along the flinty ballast of the rail bed with a sound like a brass band before tumbling to rest in the weeds. Throughout it all some compressed piece of the automobile played the tracks in an unending shriek-metal on metal-like a hundred violins out of tune. Dust! They'd never seen so much dust. It billowed up on impact, a brown, stinky cloud of dirt, momentarily blinding Cy and Merle as they rode along haplessly above the discordant serenade. The smell of petroleum oozed up, and sparks sizzled off the steel tracks, setting small fires in gasoline drips that flared briefly, then blew out as the train passed over them.

Slower… slower… slower… two terrified railroad men rode it out, one maintaining a death grip on the Johnson bar that had long since thrown the gears into reverse, the other still hauling on the air brakes that had locked up the wheels more than a quarter mile back.

Slower… slower… all those tons of steel took forever to decelerate while the two big-eyed men listened to the fading squeal that dissolved into a whine…

Then a whimper…

Then silence…

Cy and Merle sat rigid as a pair of connecting rods, exchanging a shocked, silent stare. Their faces were as white and round and readable as the pressure gauges on the boil-erhead. Number two-eighty-two had carried the Ford a good half a mile down the railroad tracks and now sat calmly chuffing, like a big old contented whale coming up for air.

Outside, something small fell-glass maybe, with a soft tinkle.

Merle finally found his voice. It came out as tight and hushed as the air brakes. "No way that woman's gonna be alive."

"Let's go!" Cy barked.

They scrambled from the cab, bellies to the ladder, free-sliding down the grab rails. From trie caboose, twenty cars back, the conductor and a brakeman came running-two bouncing dots in the distance-shouting, "What happened?" A second brakeman stayed behind, already igniting a fusee that started spewing red smoke into the gentle September morning, mixing the stink of sulphur with the sweetness of the fresh-cut alfalfa.

Running along beside the locomotive, Cy yelled, "Look there, the engine's hardly damaged." The lifting lever on the drawbar was a little scraped up, and a couple of grab bars were marred. The two men rounded the snout of the engine and halted dead in their tracks.

It was a sickening sight, that car riding thin on the pilot as if it had been flattened for a junkyard. The coupler at the front of the cowcatcher had actually pierced the metal of the automobile and protruded like a shining silver eye. Some broken glass remained in the driver's side window, jagged as lightning.