Ageless

Chapter 1 - The Gandy Dancer

Narrator: It is the summer of 1931. The depression has been raging for a year and a half and those who still have work feel lucky. Alcoholism, suicide and depression are rampant among those who have lost their jobs or their fortunes.

Tonight, we will meet Henri DuChaine, a man who is happy and satisfied with life until he is pushed into thinking that he deserves more…and when greed and vanity enter his life, his decisions will affect him and change him for the better or the worse. Those around him whose lives have already been corrupted will try to spread their evil upon this normally happy and rather good man. When this happens, he will be faced with the decisions of his life and he will find himself living in that grim place between light and darkness…that place where people's lives play out with no regard for time…that place known as The Twilight Zone.

The shiny rails glistened in the sunlight as the gang of gandy dancers were banging their steel hammers down on the spikes and pounding them into the wooden ties. The noise was rhythmic and metallic. Not much else could be heard as the noise blotted out most of the softer sounds of nature. The hot sun beat down mercilessly on the men and burned their skin. Some had their shirts off and they were sweating profusely.

Suddenly a man slipped and his hammer went flying in the air. It knocked the man working next to him down, landing on his foot. The man's own hammer slipped and hit his other arm. He moaned in pain. The others stopped work and the boss came over. The man's arm and hand were already starting to swell.

The boss took a look and told the man to get himself to the hospital; he obviously couldn't work any more today. He yelled at the other men to get back to work.

The injured man was taken by automobile to a hospital in the next town. The driver left him in the waiting room. The gandy dancer was wearing an undershirt with no sleeves and a pair of large overalls. He glanced at his arm which was swelling and becoming discoloured. There were no visible abrasions, but he was afraid it was broken. He couldn't move his fingers.

He waited several hours and finally was called to see a doctor. He was limping on his injured foot. The doctor took an x-ray and pronounced his foot sprained, but his arm as well as several bones in his hand broken. He put a cast on the arm and a sling over the cast. The doctor handed him a crutch and demanded that he use it for at least a week when the cast would be removed and the arm checked to see how it was healing. The foot could be reassessed at that time.

The gandy dancer took the crutch and limped out of the doctor's office. He was walking out the door and starting down the street when a pretty blonde nurse caught up with him. She was the same one who had helped the physician who had taken care of the man.

"You shouldn't be walking on that…don't you have someone to drive you home?"

"No," the man smiled. "The driver left; he's working for the railroad. He had to leave right away. I can walk home. It isn't far away." He had a soft voice with a slight foreign accent. She couldn't quite place it.

"Would you take a ride from a lady?"

The gandy dancer looked a bit uncertain…

"Come on, honey, I won't bite."

He got in the car and sat down beside her in the front seat. "This is very lovely of you to do this, but…"

"No buts…where do you live?" He gave her an address in a run-down part of town. The auto's open top let the wind tousle his curly grey hair. He had a small horizontal moustache with slightly curled ends. It was just beginning to grey.

"You have pretty hair…what did you say your name was?" she said.

He laughed. "Am I not supposed to say that to you?"

"What? Say I have pretty hair or ask my name?"

He laughed again. He had a nice laugh. "Both."

"Well, thank you! And my name is Sally, really Sarah..Sarah Fredericks. Yours?"

"Henri. Henri DuChaine. And you are going in the wrong direction, Madamoiselle Fredericks."

"I thought maybe you'd like me to buy you some coffee…"

"I am supposed to ask you that too…."

"Well, go ahead and ask me…"

"Would you give me the pleasure of letting me buy your dinner?"

"Oh, better yet! Yes, certainly. But neither of us are dressed for dinner. Let me drop you off at your home and I'll come back for you a bit later. I'm offering to drive because I don't think you can right now."

He grinned. "You are a forward little madamoiselle, are you not?"

"Is that bad?"

"Non, I am just not used to it…"

"Oh, I should have asked you…you're not married are you…I just assumed, since you had no one to come and drive you home…"

"My wife died several years ago. I live alone now…"

"Oh, I'm so sorry." She was quiet for a few moments. She had turned the car around and they headed for the address that Henri had given her. They arrived at a ramshackle house in a run-down neighbourhood.

"Can you get out okay?" He nodded. "When can I pick you up?"

"Six o'clock?"

"Sounds great." She smiled, waited till he had entered the house and drove away.