Canyon

        A joke.

        That’s what they all thought it was. Just because he got hit in the ass.

        Even by a boxcar.

        They couldn’t help it, Frank Hiller thought during those days on his stomach, unable to sleep at night, only half awake the rest of the time, sweaty and feverish. It was human nature. Still, it pissed him off. He could eat only a little of the food Connie set on the floor beside his bed. Cleo ate most of it. She leaned her chin on the mattress and nudged him with her cold nose, curious. The kids peeked in through the door but came no closer. Once or twice, he staggered to the bathroom and squatted above the toilet without any skin touching the seat and still nearly passed out from the pain of bending his back and legs. The urine that dribbled into the bowl was bloody. Connie offered to bring something from the kitchen to use as a bedpan, but what good would that do? In bed or out, he’d have to move, raise some part of himself. Why couldn’t she figure that out? Sometimes the woman had no sense. Though she cared, at least. Give her that much. His conductor, Will Jamison, had tried to sound sympathetic on the phone but couldn’t keep a chuckle from creeping into his voice. Hit in the ass. Damn. He could imagine Jamison fighting a grin on the other end of the line. It can’t be all that bad, can it, boy? Got plenty of padding back there.

        “Doc Reed check you out? Nothing broken?”

        “No.” Except for every last blood vessel I’ve got back there. “He just said bed rest, give it time.”

        “Well, far be it from me to argue with Doc Reed. But still. How much time does he think you’ll need? Just a ballpark figure, now.”

        “As long as it takes, he said.”

        “Well, that’s fine, for him. Doc Reed ain’t in the business of moving trains. But we can’t have you making a vacation out of it, can we?”

        The pain wasn’t even the worst of it, Frank thought. The shock of being hit was. They’d been bringing a freight down from Klamath Falls, on the North End Pool, and at Cantara Loop, the steep grade just north of Dunsmuir – the line doubled back on itself like a paper clip; he could see the caboose going in the opposite direction right above where he, in the middle of the train, was checking the brake hoses and couplings between cars – they jumped the tracks. Four boxcars, two flatcars, a tanker. It wasn’t too bad, as derailments went. No cars actually tipped over and fell into the river. Thank God they were moving so slowly then. But it wouldn’t have happened at all if the goddamn SP had kept up the track and roadbed properly. They’d rather save a buck or two in the short run, and what happened? Men got hurt.

        Afterward, Frank remembered the banging and jolting and screeching, the red cutbank flashing by, cinders pulverized by the bouncing steel wheels, men yelling. But only afterward. The rear end of the boxcar behind him jackknifed out to the right and the swinging front end slammed into him. At a slightly different angle, he thought later, it would have crushed him against the flatcar ahead. It would have knocked him off the train, for sure, if he hadn’t caught the ladder beside him and held on by instinct. Instinct was all he had going for him at that moment. Because the weight of the thing ... how could he explain that to anybody? Connie? Jamison? Dead weight. Those words meant something to him now. Tons of steel, tons of whatever that boxcar was loaded with ... all had tried to squash him like a bug. Less than that. Like nothing. The shock of being nothing, nothing at all, against so much force had driven every other feeling out of him. It had run right through him and shaken apart something inside – his bones, his atoms – that might ne