The first streaks of day were breaking. It looked to the fireman of
496 that the old engine was sticking her nose into the red dawn as
she plowed ahead hauling her fast freight South on schedule time. Tim
Doogan was at the throttle--an old engineer who stood at the head of
the road’s list; for Tim had been in service longer than any of them,
had never failed in his duty and for twenty years had never taken a day
off except one--to bury his wife.
He had never even asked for a promotion, and when it had been
offered--the highest post of the engineer--Tim shook his head and
declined.
“I guess I’m used to this old route and I’d feel lost if I didn’t pass
through the Little Town every few days.”
They were now approaching the Little Town, and Tim had not spoken
since he left the city, a hundred miles back. He was naturally quiet,
but the fireman had never known him to make the run before and not
say something. Something told the fireman that Tim had struck sadness
somewhere, and so at intervals he fired up but said nothing to the big,
begrimed man in overalls and cap who stood silently at his post, with
one hand always on the throttle of his engine.
“I’m goin’ to stop twenty minutes in the Little Town, Jim,” said Tim
as they began to pull into the station.
“Any orders?” asked Jim, surprised.
“No, but it’s my orders--ever’ Easter--been doin’ it for twenty years.
Company don’t like it, kin lump it,” Tim added dry.
This was Jim’s first year, and he had never heard.
“No. 3 may be late an’ give me the chance. If she don’t, why, we stops
anyway, Jim.”
“Why, I’d rather she’d be on time, so we can go on. Don’t you want to
go on?” asked Jim.
“Not for twenty minutes, ef I can he’p it. Fact is, we’re goin’ to stop
here a little while anyway.”
The fireman said nothing, and Tim slowed up No. 496 in the yard. Then
he jumped down and went in to report.
“No. 3 twenty minutes late,” he said, as he came back. “Take keer o’
things till I git back. I’ll not be gone long.”
“You ain’t that there thirsty for a drink this mornin’ are you, Tim?
You don’t drink to speak of, and I never knowed you to leave old 496
befo’.”
Tim said nothing, but climbed up and opened his big box. The fireman
smelt something sweet, and very tenderly Tim took out a longer
pasteboard box.
“Flowers,” said the fireman. “Say, Tim, old man,” he laughed, “I’ve
caught on--it’s a gal.”
“She _was_ a gal,” said Tim, quietly, “and the pretties’ and sweetes’
one that ever hit the soil o’ this wurl. An’ the little boy wa’nt no
fluke.” He brushed at his eyes as he spoke, and left another grimy
smear there.
“I’m a-goin’ over to the little cemetery a bit, Jim--yes, you stay with
496. They’re buried over there. We lived--her an’ the little ’un--we
lived here after we was married. She was allers sweet on Easter, and
for flowers and sech, an’ I love to do this for her an’ the boy. Been
doin’ it twenty year’. We don’t know nothin’, an’ maybe it’s all
so--an’ if anybody’ll rise again it’ll be her--with her faith--for I
tell you, Jim it was as a little child. Yes, they was both my children.”
He was taking the flowers out, lilies and roses and carnations and
cultivated violets, big and blue and beautiful. In his big, grimy,
black hands, and amid the soot and dust of 496 they lay beautified and
glorified, and the sweet odor went through the rough fireman until he
saw pictures of a far-away home.
Silently Tim trudged across the hill to the little cemetery. The
village was asleep, the unkept streets empty, the cold, gray mist hung
low over everything, and finally Tim disappeared in it. But twenty
minutes later, when the sun had risen and 496 was butting through the
gray, her throttles open, the smoke belching from her stack, Tim stood
at his post, a smile lighting up his grimy face, his eyes fixed on two
graves amid pines, far up on the hill upon which shone lilies and
roses and violets.
They thundered past, and the old engineer took off his cap and, turning
to the fireman, said, above the roar of wheels and steam:
“She used to say it this-a-way, Jim--I’ve heard her so often, an’ fer
five years she taught it to the little boy befo’ he left.” He looked
toward the sun rising through the mist, and said slowly:
“_In the end of the Sabbath, as it began to dawn, toward the first
day of the week came Mary Magdalene and the other Mary to see the
sepulchre._
“_And, behold, there was a great earthquake: for the angel of the Lord
descended from heaven and came and rolled back the stone from the door
and sat upon it.... And the angel answered and said unto the woman,
Fear not ye: for I know that ye seek Jesus that was crucified. He is
not here for He is risen._”
He shut off steam as he pitched down a steep grade, and then Jim heard
him say:
“That’s the way she said it, an’ we don’t know nothin’, Jim, nothin’.
But we do know that stranger things is happenin’ ever’ day than jes’
the spirit livin’ agin. What’s light? What’s heat? What’s love? What’s
that wireless talkin’ through the air but things to tell us how little
we know, how small our minds is an’ how easy it ’ud be to be true, an’
we not know how to explain it with our little standards.”
He threw a kiss at the vanishing hill of pines. “No, I’ll keep on
sayin’ it as she sed it, anyway, true or not: ‘I am the resurrection
an’ the life.’”