Трое мальчиков рискуют жизнью, переходя железнодорожный мост в момент приближения поезда

The Railway Bridge Three boys talked idly as they meandered along the railway. The prized swim hole could be reached via the footbridge that ran parallel to the railway line and down an embankment to the water’s edge. That was the easy route. Another more challenging way to get there exercised the boys much more. It involved a teetering walk along one line to about halfway across the bridge and sometimes a bit of a wait for a train to approach in full knowledge that the way back to safety off the tracks was too far and they’d have to leap the forty-foot drop into the river. The walk up the tracks and the approach of a train, knowing that you’d gone too far along the line and couldn’t make it if you turned back, altered the boys. From relatively calm and circumspect about this and that, they became wild-eyed, added volumes to their talk, slapped one another all over the body to punctuate key moments of their challenge of one another. You can’t do nothing. All you doing is talking. You scared to walk. Move out me way, man. Let me show you how things go. They would not let one another turn back, even if one of them changed his mind. A hand on each arm, a shove in the back, a look of stone if looks could kill, was all it took for the least courageous among them to know his place. One boy with a slight build but a deep bass to his voice that caused folk to look around when he said something to see who might be throwing his voice with such command, said he would try another time. He preferred to scramble down the bank and wade into the mineral-brown river and wait for them to jump and join him in the cool kept there all afternoon. But the other two would not let him leave. They kept him between them, hemmed in, just in case he made a dash for it. They said he should grow some and prove to them there and then that he was big enough to be in their company and not just a loudmouth. They said the first time was the most difficult and the best of all, and that he was lucky to have that feeling, that they could remember it and look back and laugh at what they imagined would happen compared to the great thrill of what actually happened. That a boy who had never made the jump had not lived up to this point but only played at living. That wherever he came from before he got to this place, he would regard the world differently from that moment on. They took turns to slap him on the back reassuringly and said that he would thank them. Trust them, they said, and tapped his arm and chest with the back of their hands, hands that gestured every bit of their talk. All he had to do was follow their instructions. It was that easy. He should consider himself lucky to have their wisdom at his disposal rather than no guidance and the bigger risk of finding out blind, without anybody to keep him safe. In no time, he found himself stepping off the land under the rails and balancing on the sleepers that took him step-by-step away from land and out over the river that glistened seemingly far below. He tried to look ahead at the feet in front of him, the taller boy’s back drawing him on and out farther for a look of blinding zinc below where the sun hit the water and spiraled to his left and right under the gentle but firm pull of the current. He wanted to look back at the boy who followed him and who talked about the clues of the first sign of a train and the necessary deep breath before the big leap off the tracks. He knew from flattening nails into a knives how the rails would sing, if you lowered your ear next to them as a train approached from so far away it could not be seen, how there was a gradual increase from a sound made by something the size of a mosquito to a buffalo herd stampede, the monolith of an engine, sometimes two, pulling a long road of carriages. He hoped he would feel it in his feet before he caught sight of it. He latched his eyes to the sleepers in front of him, not the spaces between them, and kept his ears peeled for any trace in the air of a train. Maybe a long warning whistle from the driver who must know what the boys get up to at this crossing. The driver who must see them below in the water gesturing at his train after a leap at the last second and splash and surface, mouths and eyes wide to drink in the whole spectacle of the crossing occupied by the dragon of an engine with no room for anything else. The three boys reached about halfway, the point of no return and not enough time to make it to the other side even if one tried to run fast along the sleepers. All anyone could see on the other side from midway was the framed edge of a notice nailed to a tree inside the border of a wire fence. You’d have to duck under the wire to approach the tree and read the small letters of the infraction that the weathered sign warned you against, and maybe stick a piece of gum on it, or etch something vulgar into the wood with a penknife. It stated the obvious. Everyone knew not to trespass. They heard the long whistle, far off and yet near, shrill the way it shredded the air and sewed it back in an instant. Could the driver see them? The middle boy peered around the one in front and wobbled and thought better of it. The two boys, one in the lead, the other behind him, spoke rapidly and without their usual touch-talk. Wait for me to jump, then follow. Don’t look down, just jump. Make sure you don’t land on me. See you on the other side. The train filled his head. What felt at first like a gentle shake underfoot now seemed to want to shake him off the line. The two of them, firing instructions, sounded small and far away. Wait, wait. Look at the rass! He tried to glance round the boy in front of him. He heard the whistle but it seemed to come from all around him. He thought he saw lights flashing, headlamps, but big, like those on an articulated truck. Wait, wait. What the rass! He risked a wobble and glanced for the last time. There it was, squarely aimed at him. He saw it sail clear of the trees and enter the bridge. So much ornate iron, charging, a contraption compressed from a herd of buffalo, or rhinos, snorting, firing, baying, no letup in its speed, no way for it to stop, no intention of stopping, for boys always turn up on the line in this way to test the driver, and at the last moment, they jump off the line into the river. They never try and outrun the train by turning back. That would be foolish after seeing the train enter the crossing and knowing that the distance it takes for those iron wheels to meet you shrinks faster than any speed a pair of legs could muster to run back to land and jump clear of the tracks. No. Jumping had to happen at this late stage. At this modest height, that looked worse than the third floor that it really was. The boy knew that. The others told him to watch them jump first and follow immediately. He was not to wait to see how the first one made a big splash. Just trust that he would too, and surface and holler at the heavens even as he dragged on air. He should hold out and be last of all and be sure to look at the train and maybe, if lucky, report to them about the color of the driver’s eyes. The whistle emanated all around his body, the rail trembled so that it worked its way up his legs and deep inside and made his voice carry the same tremor. No, no, no, no, no. Best to keep the jaws clamped together and tense up for that jump. Off they went. One in front, one behind, with a whoop and holler, and now his turn. What made him look at the train then down at the twisted ropes of the river, somewhat farther below now, with his friends disappearing, one then two, in quick succession, and rather than follow (as sure as the pressure of the occasion could instruct him to join the tangle of his friends in the element they love), instead spin on his heels and sprint back the way he came? The whoops of joy switched to hollering his name, a few garbled screams of stop, don’t, jump. The driver spotted the boy doing what no one in a right mind should try at this point in the game and prolonged the train whistle and locked the brakes. The wheels skidded and screeched on the tracks. The boy ran hard. He pumped his arms. But he ran with caution. He could not sprint all out as he would have done on land. He alternated his steps between the track and the sleepers. He had to follow each step on the track with a step on a sleeper. Next track, then sleeper again. He would have preferred just hopping from one sleeper to the next, but the gaps between sleepers seemed too wide for his legs, and the yawning opening made him feel uncertain about running by jumping from one to the next. The hop onto the rail cut the distance between sleepers in half and closed comfortingly the gaping open between them. He knew he could not look back but had to make it to land, at least close to land, before a final leap from the tracks. He felt the sleepers shake beneath him, the rails too. The whistle screamed in his ears, wheels shrieked. He lost the sound of his friends shouting their warnings. Air in his wake seemed to gather behind him and push him forward, help him along to the end of the tracks where they met land, and the land settled the tracks to a quieter report of a train, half the size of the one at his heels. He felt his body was one muscle like an engine fed by a firebox, whose sparks and pistons resulted in power beyond comprehension for a boy mired in flesh and blood and bone. He felt airborne, barely touching the sleepers and rail in his rapid strides, not drawing another breath, swept into the air, flying, the push of a speeding train behind him to power him up, up, up to the sky.