The Powhatan Arrow Whistle

Image by Peter Chou from Pixabay

Train travel has always fascinated me. I love sweeping across the land, watching the view change out the window, from prairies to mountains, from tall buildings to scattered farmhouses. It’s a different experience than boarding a plane, only seeing the earth from above, and then landing thousands of miles away without any transition.

That fascination has led me to love stories about trains. The setting—constantly changing outside, but stable inside—feeds the imagination.

It was fun to write this one for those reasons and more.

This story is for my dad, who loved the sound of a train whistle in the night. And it’s for Jeff Garrison, who has a great fondness for trains. After reading his post about the Powhatan Arrow, I had to know more about its history. After that, I wrote this story.

It’s 1969 when we meet my character, RJ.

I hope you like this man. Please restack if you do.

---

The Powhatan Arrow Whistle

Doc Snyder read the test results, nodding, then frowning before glancing up. Once again, the news wasn’t good. RJ recognized that look. But he could have told the man what the tests were going to show. RJ was deaf in his left ear, and the right ear was slowly heading the same direction.

He’d tried hearing aids, but they drove him batty. He did okay understanding conversations one-on-one. He could cup his hand behind his right ear and lean close then. He caught enough of what the other person was saying, and along with watching them carefully, he pieced together most of the words.

It was when he was in groups that he became frustrated. With the hearing aids, everything was a roar. Without them, his ears might just as well have been filled with sand.

RJ wheeled his walker out of the office, agreeing to try a new “device” but never intending to fill the prescription. Since the stroke, he’d had enough of filling any prescriptions. He was too damned tired to be bothered. Besides, most of the Sunny Heights residents didn’t have anything interesting to say to him anyway.

That night, he took dinner in his room, watched an episode of Gusmoke, and after downing the five pills he sometimes forgot, he eased into bed, grateful to be horizontal for a few hours.

He chuckled. “With this lousy ticker of mine, it won’t be long and I’ll be on my back for good.”

Maggie would wag her finger at him and scold him for saying that. “You just stop saying those kinds of things, RJ, or you’ll be in for some serious words from me.”

Even though she’d been gone five years, he didn’t need ears to hear her voice. She spoke to him in his head as clearly as if she’d been next to him.

“Dang it, Maggie. It was me who should have kicked off first. It’s always the husband that goes ahead.”

But his wife did things the way she wanted. That was one reason he’d loved her from the first moment they’d met.

He stared into the darkness, waiting for the one sound his right ear could still detect without straining. The train was as regular as a Swiss watch and just as amazing to his way of thinking. The Powhatan Arrow—the Arrow, for short—steamed across the night, its deep-throated whistle cutting through the silence.

Whenever RJ heard that sound, it carried him back to another train ride. 1946 would always be a remarkable year. That’s when he mustered out of the Army. And it was the year of Maggie Riley, the only woman he couldn’t say goodbye to.

She’d stood on the loading platform, her dark auburn hair shining under the soft overhead lights of the train station. The banner above the table read USO, and the aroma of freshly brewed coffee filtered through the milling crowd of soldiers. There was already a line of men waiting for what was their first real cup of stateside coffee in years. While there were other girls serving at the table, the girl with the auburn hair had the longest line.

RJ pulled some rank that day—the first and last time he’d do that— but the train was pulling in, and he could not get on board until he’d met that girl. He hustled past the line to the front.

Fixing him with a strict schoolteacher glare, she’d put her hands on both hips and scolded him for crowding. “I don’t care if you’re a general; these boys were here first.”

“That’s my Maggie,” he said softly, the memory slicing another sliver from his heart.

He’d never gotten on that train. The next day he’d telegraphed his parents he’d be along shortly. Shortly became two months, but when he did arrive home, he had Maggie with him. She might have been one determined woman, but when it came to her, he was just as determined.

He’d promised her a real honeymoon later, but it turned out the only one they managed was on the overnight from New York to Cincinnati.

“No. I had the best honeymoon ever,” she’d said when he offered to book a cruise for their twenty-fifth anniversary. “I don’t need another.”

Not long after that, the cancer started, so they never got the honeymoon he thought she deserved.

“Oh, Maggie, my best girl.” Remembering their small moments together, hearing her voice in his head, opened the pit of loneliness around him.

The low whistle of the Powhatan Arrow sang out again and wrapped RJ into its music—the only sound in the world that he cared about hearing now.

The End

---

Thanks for reading. Please come back next Wednesday for another Weekly Dose of Fiction.

AMAZON