CHINA MAIL FRIDAY SUPPLEMENT, SEPTEMBER 3, 193
The sudden menace of death, to youth and love in the Great Salt Desert
The Whistles Bring Things Back
desert took a deep breath would swallow Wendover and think a bug had got in its month. And that is one reason
I'm Salt Lake
I went to live in Wendover when I was eleven, when my fa ther was transferred there from the Southern Pacific shops in Ogden. Now I am twenty.
In Wendover either you raise children legitimately in a railroad shanty, or do the best you can to show people that you don't belong. in the Lucky Strike The least Salt Lake does is give you a job as a waitress, and your tips are for serving meals efficiently.
But also I came to Salt Lake ast year for another reason. after what happened on the Salt flats. I've not been homesick. No, God knows. Only sometimes at night
when I hear the en- gines whistle in the Salt Lake yards. It's the railroad that makes me remember, because there wouldn't be any Wendover with- out the railroad.
Sometimes at night I think: Forty-four is in the block and Two-thirty-eight is taking up slack in the hole. And then I begin to wonder if it will be able to make the Saline siding before the silk special wants clearance? It can make Little Mountain, any- way.
The whistles bring things back. In Wendover lived on the se-
We cond floor in one end of the de- pot building. My window looked out over the tracks, and even if I couldn't see who was at the
throttle, I knew by the whistle
who was pulling a train out. In Salt Lake my window looks out on an alley, and the whistles mean nothing only they make me
think of Wendover and of the freight and passenger whistles there that told me if the drags and limited were on time and cccasionally I think about
the quiet desert beyond the tracks and the stirring cottonwoods around the water tanks.
If you have a car you generally use it in Wendover on Sunday, even though there isn't any place to drive to, except straight out across the desert or mountain the heat But Cary and I got so we would sit around on Sunday afternoons. There wasn't any place we wanted to go. Maybe we would take a ride in the even- ing when it was cooler He came from Denver and got the Denver Sunday paper and even though it was printed on Thursday in time to get there, it had a lot of inter- esting stuff in it, such as puz- zles and problems and fiction Stories. It was better than the Salt Lake paper, which mostly had just-dry news
In April Cary was put on the middle shift and didn't get re- lieved until midnight. Some if the dispatcher wasn't
would go up in
hile. But the
the
sit with him
me back on days."
At night there in May every thing is soft, even the mountains, which aren't so sharp, and the stars are clearer. and the new leaves on the cotton-woods around the water tanks make a lighter sound than they do after they've been burnt a while by the sum- mer heat. They sound like a soft rain. If it hadn't been that I was so damn tired by noon the next day, I would have stayed up oftener until he got through. But mother wasn't well, and with seven others around the house, and all the work to do, I couldn't. sleep late. The kids would have gone to school half-dressed half-fed if I had.
and
Cary called out the window of the dispatcher's room that Satur- day evening when I was getting the dispatches Six-forty-eight's conductor had brought for dad.
Short Story
"Wait up for me."
"If I can stay awake." "Wait up. We're going places to-night."
"Where?"
"The key's yelling," he said. “Salt Lake.”
It was a hundred and forty miles to Salt Lake. I didn't think we ought to go, even after we'd started.
"It's a hell of a place to go on Sunday," I said, "unless you want to go to church"
"I feel like going some place," he said, "and I've got something to tell you."
"What have you got to tell me?" "Sims says I can have a week off beginning the f fifteenth of June. How does that suit you?"
I thought about it.
"For getting married,” he said. “Well?"
"It's a little sooner than fe pected," I said.
"There's no reason we should wait any longer, is there?" he said.
well
No, I guess not. We might as
We had put the top down, and 1
lay back in the seat after that and Jooked ats stars over the white desert and the wind was soft and warm and I felt like I was flying and I thought. You're going to get married to a railroad man just all the other girls and you're going to live in a shan- ty in Wendover and maybe your man will go the ladder He might even et to be a tendent in Ogden or Reno or Cali- formis
I closed my eyes and then I looked at him. We were going fast and he kept watching the road. The road was along the edge of the salt flats and the starlight seemed to reflect on the white salt and his face was against the light
I thought: You're smarter than most of the young men around Wendover and you won't be an operator long I guess I knew that four months ago when you came
By Upton
Terrell
here, and I don't know why didn't marry you in March, in- stead of asking you to wait while. We might have been mar ried all this time I've wanted to get ed. I couldn't m up my mind and you must have thought I
little screwy always liked you and I liked looks from the first
tell you I was a litt you once and thought sort of loose coupled an break in two.
eyez
you had a way of looking at me as if you didn't see me, and there was a line that would set like a cord in your cheeks, but I under stand that anybody who sits in front of a prattling key eight hours a day might forget how they were looking and just be thinking. I'll marry you the fif teenth and go to hell or stay in Wendover with you
I could have gone to sleep rid ing like that and looking at the stars and thinking I felt peaceful and satisfied, as if I'd got ever thing I wanted a smart railroa man who would go up line, and love, and a dump
own and maybe kids, when
lit a
You coul
wheel, he said, and
We'll drive down
the Grand Can-
make it easy
pass out
carll carry two. The pass on't But we can drive out Frisco
I've seen mountains and grand canyons all my life Id like to see the ocean and some thing else
"It don't matter to me, he "But if Im going to get that ring right off the bat
got to somewhere in the car for a wed- ding trip. You want the don't you?
"Even if I have to take you ith it I said
We had breakfast in Salt and then went over to the moon Temple ground and to some music in the
and looked around in the
We sat down on a benc
some flowers, but Cary kep
ing his feet around. He looked at his watch.
"This place is dead,"
"Let's go to a mov
said.
The show opened at noon and
we had to stand are We walked up an
und-look
And get kille
when we got
hum and
didn't
Td go to sleep then and you'd
road We can miles if we go
They say that the early bird catch thing or other, but whatever it is, yo MAIZEE'S has certainly caught
autumn arriv
that
famou
the right thi
that their
It is an exq
fasmon
ite collectio
ted on 1
MAIZET