The shed El Jefe and I live in is small and cramped. On warm nights I sleep outside when the weather is nice. Sometimes even when it isn't nice. El Jefe says I'll rust if I'm not careful. He offers to sleep outside when it rains so that I can have more room, but he's an old steam engine and needs to take care of himself. I'm young and strong and don't mind the leaks.
We didn't always live in this shed, and I didn't always live with El Jefe. When my parents were alive, we had a big rotonda that looked like a real house and had a courtyard with a real iron gate. The jealous neighbors said it looked like we lived in a garaje like the automóviles. My papa proudly called it "nuestra hacienda." Mama called it "la casa cara." The railroad let us live in the rotonda because Papa had been a great racer and pulled passenger trains with lots of carriages. Mama had been one of those carriages.
I was supposed to go with them on that last day as my birthday present. It had been a whole year since they had built me. Papa had promised to let me hitch behind him and help pull the carriages over the canyon bridge. Mama had a basket prepared for our lunch in the valley beyond. But it rained that week, and I caught a cold.
"Luego, chamaco," Papa promised, patting my head as I lied in bed. Mama kissed my cheek and called me her angelito. They left me with our neighbor, La Dama, who was a coche-cama. La Dama was El Jefe's wife, but she's gone now too. My parents went first.
La Dama and El Jefe took care of me after news came back about the broken bridge over the canyon. I couldn't stay in the rotonda anymore because the railroad gave it to another family.
El Jefe and La Dama had a nice shed too. Not with a courtyard, but nice. We lived there until the railroad made us leave so that a diesel family could have the shed. We had to find a new yard, far down the track, that still hired steam trains so that El Jefe could work.
Diesels are nuevo, El Jefe says, so the railroad likes them. "The railroad thinks steam trains are viejo y muy caro," he says. I'm not viejo. I'm younger than some of the diesel kids, but I didn't come from a factory. I don't know why that matters, but the railroad thinks it does.
We lived in one shed for over a year. La Dama tried to make it nice even though the paint peeled and the windows wouldn't close. She got sick. Now she's with my parents, hitched behind the Expreso Astral, El Jefe says.
A month later, El Jefe and I moved again because the railroad sold the land to a rich train who has enough money that he doesn't have to work. The rich train tore down our old shed to build a new one. It isn't finished yet, but I see the construction when I roll to school. The rich train is going to build it with a courtyard. I can tell.
El Jefe sits with me in the small shed when I'm home. I do my school work by candles so that we can save coal. We have no furniture and sleep on blankets that used to belong to La Dama. El Jefe promises me that if we are faithful, the Expreso Astral will take us to his yard and give us better homes than what we can imagine. I can imagine a lot though.
"Remember, Ferrito," he tells me over breakfast each day. His limbs squeak when he places my plate of machacado con huevo in front of me. If it's Sunday, I get some pan de leche. "Remember, better things are waiting for us if we have faith. La Dama and your padres now live in better moradas than what even the rich trains have."
"Do they have courtyards?" I ask.
El Jefe doesn't know, but he sees no reason why they wouldn't.
The weather is starting to change, and El Jefe's limbs ache in the cold, making it hard to work. There's not much use for steam trains on the passenger or freight lines in this part of the railroad's property, and El Jefe is too old to travel to the better tracks which use steamers.
I have decided that I don't need school. I'm almost three now. I can apply for a job as a locomotora de maniobras at the train station. They don't make as much as the other engines, but it's still money. It'll mean I have to work long hours, even in bad weather, but I don't care about rust.
If I save every peso, I can move El Jefe to a better morada. Even if it doesn't have a courtyard.
THE END
I was reading my copy of Backpack Literature by X.J. Kennedy and Dana Gioia. I came across the short story, "The House on Mango Street", and as I was reading it, I thought it would fit Ferro, specifically. Two days later I looked at the information on the author, Sandra Cisneros, and discovered she was Mexican American. Funny how that all works.