Objects at Sea:
July 5th, 1956. Washington D.C.:
"Psst, Larry."
"Larry..."
"Larry!"
"Sheesh, he's really out of it. What did they do to him?"
"Did they give him moonshine?"
"Will you stop with dat? Dat is nothing more dan a legend!"
Larry groaned as his eyes slowly opened at the irritating sound of voices. The morning sun glared brightly into his sleepy eyes and forced him to keep them as closed as possible disturbing his slumber.
"Oh finally! He's waking up." One of the voices declared.
"What? What do you guys want?" Larry asked, still unable to see very well.
"Larry we've been trying to wake you up for the past ten minutes, you have a train to take!" One voice spoke up, it sounded like one of the switchers.
"So get off your back side and get to work ya lazy bum!"
Larry knew that one, it was Joe. What was he doing here? Didn't he have his own trains to take?
"You're one to talk Joe." Larry retorted as he revved his engine up. "Besides, my engineer ain't here yet." And speak of the devil, Larry's engineer burst through the door, panting.
"Oh good, you haven't left me behind! Come on let's get a move on!" He slurred as he rushed into the cab. Larry slowly pulled out of the shed into the sunlight and he heard some laughing from the other engines.
"What? What's so funny?" Larry asked, his vision had cleared now and there were three engines in front of him, Joe, and two yard switchers and they all had a snicker on their face.
"Where'd you get the time to go smooch'n someone?" One switcher asked. The other two made kissy faces and sound effects in mockery. There was a puddle of water from the wash rack and that's when Larry finally saw the kiss mark on his cheek that went red from underneath the black and white paint. There wasn't time to wash it off and Larry didn't tell his driver about it as it was the same one that told him to stay away from women. Fortunately he was supposed to be at the back of the locomotive consist, he was to take the Crescent down to Atlanta, rest a bit, and then take the Royal Palm down to Jacksonville. The other engines were waiting in the yard to connect to him before the train and they snickered at him as well, it was worth the wait to have seen him with that. At the station however most people didn't seem to notice. Larry held himself as quiet and as still as possible yet the minutes felt like hours. When was the signal going to change? When will the conductor give the go ahead? What will Mr. Debutts say if he saw Larry like this? All kinds of scenarios flew Larry's mind at lightning speed, and then suddenly he almost jumped when he heard an excited little girl's voice.
"Mommy look! That one has a kiss on his cheek!"
Larry's cheeks burned redder than ever before and he subtly bit his lip as he tried to look away. It didn't help that he heard the quiet laughter of his siblings and some of the passengers that have yet to board the train, he could even hear his engineer laughing from the cab as he barely managed to hear the kid. Oh why was he back there? Wasn't he supposed to be up front where he couldn't hear a dad gummed thing?
"Now Suzy it's not polite to point, even at trains." The mother told the child who then apologized, not that it helped Larry's current disposition. He put on a fake smile and sighed as the two walked away. The child skipped happily and Larry could hear her singing a little rhyme.
"Be wary young sailor
of wind and high water.
The sea has a secret.
The sea has a daughter.
She'll swim along starboard.
And capture our heart.
With a flip of her tail-fin.
Underwater, depart."
Larry was perplexed by that little rhyme but his thoughts were soon brought back to the subtle chuckling of everyone around him. He was indeed relieved when the train finally got moving, away from the crowds and chuckling engines that he passed. The trip itself was rather lack luster, just hours of rolling on the rails, with the usual annoyance of Norfolk and Western steam engines except for Molly, whom Larry hasn't heard from since the incident at the sheds. There were rumors that she had an early retirement, but it was more likely that her crew had wrecked her as the J class crews were known to do.
"How unfortunate would that be? Wrecked by foolhardy crews who make their engine go well above the speed limit, she should be retired and cut up peacefully." Larry thought.
He had been taught that the most respectful end to a steam engine was the scrapper's torch and those who fought to stay useful were fools. But no engine would wish the death on another caused by a wreck as it was often incredibly painful and slow. Of course the torch is even worse but Larry didn't know that, nor did most other diesels at the time. As Larry continued his thoughts through the Virginia night, he noticed a pair of amber eyes following his train. He assumed it was one of the N&W J classes, despite how nervous they seemed from his point of view. His assumption was correct as a rather downcast J class slowly pulled out into the Lynchburg station lights. Molly sighed as she watched the train exit Union Station and pulled in herself. Ever since that kidnapping she had been completely terrified of the Southern Railway diesels and hoped all this was just really long bad dream. But reality is never kind if you hope for anything, that she knew. Anyway, the Crescent traveled all night with no issue to which Larry was thankful, the Georgia morning was lovely as usual as the train pulled into Atlanta. The consist was taken off the train to allow the Atlanta & West Point to take it Alabama for the L&N, an arrangement that Larry thought was pointless, why should some back water line from Kentucky that doesn't even take care of their own infrastructure and equipment properly take something that is a Southern train to New Orleans when the Southern can do it already via the route The Southerner takes? The arrangement was stupid to Larry but it wasn't his decision to make. At least he got to have a full day's rest before he had to take the Royal Palm down to Jacksonville and this time he was going to lead the train.
"Excuse me Larry but what does this have to do with your relationship with Ingrid?" Bethany Garner asked as she was writing the story down.
"Not a lot, this story is the start of a mystery that haunts me to this day. For you see that night in Jacksonville rumors started to pop up of an engine that had been acquired from some scrap yard in Georgia somewhere and moved to the port to be shipped out to the buyers overseas." Larry began.
"The southern had to cross bridge to get to the yard and the station that crosses the St. Johns River and I've seen some strange things on that bridge and this night was the first truly strange thing."
Larry was leading the Royal Palm with Lamar and two B units into Jacksonville, Florida. His face had been wiped clean of the kiss mark after a bit of mockery from his engineer who clearly thought the whole thing was hilarious. Larry was relieved to find that he was just teasing when he said women were trouble and offered a few tips of how to truly romance with Ingrid. It was late afternoon when they reached the bridge, despite the bridge being double track it was still narrow, nearly impossible for someone to stand on the edge without being hit by a train or fall off dodging the train. The river was a direct link to the Atlantic Ocean and thus there is a lot of sea life. Larry has seen dolphins in the past and always found them to be funny animals. As the norm for safety's sake, Larry had to lead the train slowly and he was okay with that. After all it did give him his favorite sight, seeing boats sail around on the sparkling water. Unfortunately there weren't a lot of boats in close proximity today for it was strangely misty that day, so Larry decided to whistle the sailor's hornpipe a little bit as he crawled forward. About half way across he heard something that almost made him jump. It sounded like a young woman laughing quietly, but there was nobody around that he could see.
"Uhhh, hello?" He called out. "Is someone there?"
"Nothing but a fairy tale, young male." Came the voice with a giggle.
"HA! H-okay, joke's over, come out to where I can see you." Larry replied with a hint of nerves to him. He was expecting a young couple to sail a little speed boat out from behind the far end of the bridge as part of a silly prank.
"If you insist, from your starboard bow I will come out from my mist."
Larry knew little of nautical terms so he shifted his eyes frantically along the water. Suddenly he saw a woman breach the surface, but she looked a little strange for a human, not that Larry could put his wheel on what about her. Her hair was blue, yet her skin was the same as most other humans Larry sees around the south, her eyes sparkly green eyes looked deep into his own, and she swam backwards at a pace that kept up with him with seemingly no effort. Larry could only see her head and shoulders as the water was too dark to see anything else.
"Excuse me ma'am but what's the idea pranking an engine on a narrow bridge? And in deep fog too, don't you realize you can get yourself killed that way by a boater that can't see very well?" Larry asked, annoyed.
"I'm sorry for the fear you have been stricken, I had no idea I was teasing a giant chicken." The woman replied with a grin.
"Well I hope you are sor-hey!"
The woman laughed loudly while Larry's eyes narrowed. Without warning, Larry blared his horn loudly and made the woman jump half way up the water, she was wearing a strange bikini top, they looked like sea shells, she was also fairly toned from what Larry could tell from some bikini posters he had seen as advertisements. The woman fell back into the water and glared as Larry laughed.
"Who's the chicken now?"
The woman dropped her glare and smiled, he did get her good she had to admit.
"A fine scare it was, almost reveal myself you did cause."
"You're already revealed, what are you talking about?
"Not what you are thinking, and my time to talk is shrinking."
Larry gazed up to find that he was coming close to shore on the other side, and when he glanced back down the woman was gone. Suddenly he felt something press against his side, it felt like the kiss he received from Ingrid, but much smaller. He looked to his right and saw the woman diving back into the water, but what Larry saw on her made his eyes widen and his mouth drop, and it stayed that way even after she splashed back into the water laughing until she vanished without a trace. Larry was left completely speechless, he didn't even respond when Lamar called to him. A little while later in the service yard, Lamar finally got Larry to talk to him.
"Lamar, have you ever seen a human...with a fish tail?" Larry asked.
"What do you mean, did she have a fish tail between her legs or...?"
"No, she didn't have legs at all, just the fish tail... like a fish was eating her legs"
"What in the world? I have never heard of such a nonsense, you probably saw a dolphin."
"Well, she touched my side too before she disappeared into the water, and she spoke english in rhyme too."
"That is strange, maybe you've been too mystified by your lovely night with Ingrid to think straight." Lamar suggested. Larry's cheeks turned red at this and he glared at his brother.
"And who said you can spy on me?"
"I didn't, when you came back to the shed with that kiss mark on your face and an expression that said you were on cloud nine I was able to put two and two together." Lamar replied calmly. Larry snorted.
"Anyway..." Lamar continued. "Have you been hear'n the rumors lately?"
"What rumors?" Larry asked, and then another voice chimed in. It was one of the Florida East Coast E8's, whose name Larry could never remember.
"There's a story go'n around that some European bought a steam engine from Georgia." He said. "Rumor has it that the engine is going to be shipped overseas to some island off of England that's supposed to be a safe haven for 'em."
"Okay now that's preposterous, steam is on it's way out and from what I hear not even the tiny switchers can fit in the UK anyway, something about them being too wide or something." Larry scoffed.
"That's what I thought until early this morn'n when I was visiting a friend in the port. I saw her size under a tarmac, she ain't no switcher, she's a main line engine for sure." The engine replied.
"Were you able to tell what kind of engine it was?" Lamar asked with interest.
"If I had to guess, it's probably one of Atlantic Coast Line's R1 class engines. I didn't see enough of the shape to truly tell."
"Their northern types?" Larry asked.
"yes."
"That won't end well, that's much too big for the tiny British loading gauges." Lamar protested.
"That may be, but it's the buyer's decision, and he'll have to live with the consequences, for better or worse." The FEC diesel stated.