“The last half hour.” This time her smile was whole.
THE JOHN WILKES BOOTH/WARNER BROTHERS/MGM/NBC FUNERAL TRAIN
2003
I WAS JUST SETTLING DOWN for a long afternoon nap when Marty Felber burst into my office.
“My God!” he cried. “You’ve gotta come see!”
I lay back, easily. “See what?” I said.
Marty looked as if he might tear out his hair. “Haven’t you heard? Down at the station, a special train is pulling in from Washington, DC. It’s a steam engine, dammit, that boils water to drive the wheels. We haven’t had a steam engine here for fifty years!”
“I’ve seen steam engines.”
“No, no, this is strange. All black and covered with crepe.”
“Covered with crepe? Let’s get the hell out.”
We got the hell out.
At the station we stared down the empty track. Far away we heard a melancholy wail, and above the horizon a cloud of steam rose to blow away in a sound of weeping.
The dark train glided from the twilight shadows in a drizzle of cold rain.
“Are there passengers?” I said.
“People crying. Hear?”
“My God, yes.
Stand back.”
The black train drifted like a dark cloud with the rain following and a ghostly steam clothing it.
The engine continued to exhale ghosts of smoke while it pulled a melancholy procession of cars, all burnt coal midnight black, with gardens of crepe papered along the roofs where the pale steam whispered and the weeping persisted from within the carriages.
On the side of one car was printed MGM.
On the second I read WARNER BROTHERS.
On the third and fourth, PARAMOUNT and RKO.
On the fifth, NBC.
A terrible cold filled my body. I stood, riven.
But finally, with Marty, I moved along the passing cars.
The black crepe rooftops stirred and the windows of each car seemed washed by rain.
The mournful cries from the engine sounded again and again as we moved swiftly, and the windows wept ceaselessly.
At last we arrived at the final, most melancholy car, where we stood staring through a great window dripping with rain.
Inside lay a long midnight coffin embedded in white flowers.
I stood as if struck by lightning, my heart gripped by a terrible fist. “Jesus!” I cried. “Nightmare! In my grandma’s big picture book there was a train like this, but no names on the sides like MGM or Paramount.” I stopped, for I could hardly breathe.