Union Pacific No. 343’s smokestack billowed, invisible cotton distributing itself across the shivering sky. The eight-wheeler was a grain carrier, heaving thirty-two wooden hoppers of assorted oats, kernels, and barley across the collective United States. The anatomy of No. 343 creaked as it passed through Illinois, once pristine axles squeaking out pleas as they churned the battered wheels ever forward. Red chips of paint crumbled off of the locomotive, joining the uncountable other flakes of pageantry that had been wiped away throughout its many travels.
There was a time where No. 343 was synonymous with “the new.” A moment when the rose-colored cowcatcher and the spaceship chassis felt truly earnt, as though the train were a genuinely new idea. To look at No. 343 now, it felt like seeing a circus freak in garish clothing, something to mock for its gall, its sheer audacity to claim that it was something other than what it was. Still, there was a time.
Union Pacific No. 343 was better known as Union Pacific No. 119. It was under the title of 119 that this train was sent to Promontory as Union Pacific’s sole representative. It was in Promontory that No. 119 met with Jupiter, the representative of Central Pacific. The two trains looked much alike, except that Jupiter’s cowcatcher was a deep blue instead of No. 119’s punchy red, and that Jupiter had a balloon stack as opposed to No. 119’s traditionally thin chimney. With these two trains positioned side by side, the men of the transcontinental railroad hammered in the last spike necessary to unify North Pacific Rail and Central Pacific Rail into one.
Jupiter was the carrier of this final spike, a large golden obelisk which was crafted at considerable cost to both companies. No. 119 sat idly as the men took the spike from Jupiter, and both trains felt the ground shift as an 18-karat wedding ring brought their two families together. The men swarmed the two trains, hopping onto every available surface, crowding each other in celebration. With liquor bottles opened and assorted caps doffed, the men all turned towards their photographer to immortalize the moment. The two trains continued to face one another.
Of course, No. 119 had no idea that it would one day be renumbered. In fact, it couldn’t fathom the concept. For thirteen years, No. 119 worked on the unified rail, never once forgetting that it was the one that Union Pacific trusted on that terrific day. Out of all the machines at their disposal, No. 119 was the only one that had earned the honor of meeting Jupiter. There was a crisis down by Devil’s Gate, and No. 119 was the one fit for the job. Some might call it a lucky break, but No. 119 knew it was the universe making things proper. From New Jersey all the way to Ogden, there was not a harder working, or more deserving, train than Union Pacific No. 119.
But that was all along ago, and now it was Union Pacific No. 343. As it slowly barreled through the quaint towns of Illinois, it had only been known by this number for a year. The poor train was still not used to the change, and it felt that a fair amount of its aches and sparks could be blamed on the renumbering. Much like how it could have never expected to be renumbered at all, it also could not have possibly known that Union Pacific would one day sell it for scrap, erasing one of the two wedded trains for a thousand dollars' worth of material.
No. 343, too, could not have known that Jupiter would also be melted for a very similar price, only a few years after its own demise. Nor could either train have foreseen that the golden spike which married their companies would one day be pulled up from the railroad and placed in a wooden box with a glass case at Stanford University. When looking at a photograph of the wedding of the rails, you never could’ve seen it coming. Every man, every object, every thing believed that this was an unshakable moment in time. The 4-4-0 train had connected all of western America, every state, every person, bound together by these eight-wheeled titans. By 1910, the very concept of a 4-4-0 was deemed obsolete.
But the notion of being obsolete was never in question. Engineers and trains alike, they both knew that progress was assured. But it was the speed in which things progressed. It was the grizzly swiftness of how it all got blown away. The engineers have died, the trains are demolished, the spike is mummified. Perhaps the ultimate fate of history isn’t to be remembered, but to be replaced. To see that which came before, and to cover it with what exists now. Two trains gone for two thousand dollars. 18 karats replaced with another rusty pick. Anything to keep progress going.
There was a time when architects built follies. Intentional falsehoods, decayed castles designed to look like they were from a fairy tale. Statues of giants that never existed, temples for deities that have never been worshipped. People used to fall for aliens on the radio. Once, a golden spike was planted into a railroad, for no other reason than it felt right to do. But who really moves history? The strange builders of the folly, or the humiliated fools believing it?
No. 343 was too tired to comprehend any of this as it thundered through Rochelle, Illinois. Rochelle itself was once called Lane, a small town founded by a businessman who caught wind of a most alluring rumor. Haven’t you heard? There’s a trainline fixin’ to be built ‘round here.
The young businessman stood on the vacant land, crossing an X out in the yellow grass with his walking stick. Every day, as the roads of Lane were being flattened out, while the carpenters built and the surveyors measured, the businessman would dig his X into the rich soil. He would stand on the ends of the X, looking straight down the diagonal paths, envisioning his mark as that of a railroad diamond. When the trains came, he bought the first conductor a steak dinner.
These trains would turn Lane into a bustling hub of capital, with countless folks coming not just by rail, but from neighboring towns who rode horseback simply to take a look at the trains as they came in. To these people, there was something mythic about the trains. It was seeing the seemingly endless line of grain, cattle, people, material, coal. More supplies than a dream, all in a straight line, all in front of your eyes, floating off the ground and into somebody else’s life. Meanwhile, you are here in Lane, eating popped kernels while the iron cornucopias glide by.
In June of 1861, William Burke would be found guilty for arson. Whole grain silos, razed to the ground. All of Washington street, completely gone by morning. In Burke’s satchel, a local deputy found frantic scribblings detailing a total vaporization of Lane by the end of August. Every page was signed and dated under Burke’s name; each paper viewed in Burke’s eye as an art piece. Once Burke’s arrest was made public in the Lane Leader, operators from Union Pacific contacted the mayor and requested confirmation that the rails were still operational and demanded a solemn vow that their cargo would not be damaged during their travel.
William Burke’s trial was worth only one day of debate. The deputy who found Burke’s work would recite many personal nights spent with the man, and all the horrible confessions that Burke would let slip once they started drinking. Your Honor, the defendant once told me that he refused to set aflame a neighboring barn, because “only” three horses would die. I swear to you, Your Honor, he described his matches as friends. The verdict was unanimously guilty, however the judge was unsure how to sentence him. While the judge considered all the options, a few audience goers who arrived late requested that the deputy’s transcript be read aloud for their better understanding.
A few passionate men, who had been in the courtroom since the very beginning, became so enraged upon hearing his actions a second time, that they forcefully grabbed Burke, tied his hands behind his back, and hung him out of the courtroom window before the recital was finished. In the next week’s Lane Leader, the hanging was described in this fashion:
“His punishment, though deserved and just, was awful in the extreme.”
With the death of William Burke, so too came the death of Lane. All those who had heard of the mob lynching would refer to Lane as “Hangtown,” and over the course of four years, Hangtown would be more synonymous with Lane than Lane itself. It was a horrible reputation, rope would be tossed out of passenger windows of trains just passing through, while little children were mocked by out-of-towners who stopped at the station. No matter how much they pleaded with people that it was just one bad morning from the minds of ill-tempered men, Hangtown would still be how they were found on the map.
The people of Lane could no longer live with the shame, and in sheer desperation, they decided to rename their town. Perhaps, they thought, if the name was erased, so too would be erased their reputation. A renamed town could be a new town, a place that has never existed before. Say, didn’t Hangtown used to be here? Oh, no sir, you must be mistaken. This here is the proud town of Rochelle, Illinois. We’re pleased to make your acquaintance.
And so again, the question arises: Who moves history?
Another question: Who deserves to?
As Union Pacific No. 343 timidly chugs through the eventide, one resident lays in the forest by the railroad, watching through prison bar trees as doomed history barks past.
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The lone straggler is a rough-and-tumble young man with a prickly beard and broad shoulders. His name is John Colyer, and he is smoking as No. 343 rolls past, and the wisps of his cigar smoke are blown in the same direction as the engine’s chimney cloud. He is lost in thought as the boxcars shift by, scratching his scalp and belching. He pulls out his pocket watch and sees that it is nearly 8:45, he must soon be getting home. There’s no time to be laying out here in the woods, not with such a big day ahead. But all the same, isn’t it nice out here by the tracks? Yes, he figures that tomorrow can wait. Tomorrow’s worries are for the unprepared people, and John is very well prepared indeed.
Pulling down his cap over his eyes, he sleeps in the forest and sets his dreams on his future. He dozes into a deep, losing kind of rest, dreaming of wooden boards and silent faces. He is dreaming of metal toothpicks and balloon shoulders, the girl in the fourth aisle, the bed she owns. He is thinking of sweating stars burning above ritualistic passion, another gloriously nameless tally for the book. He’s gulping absinthe and inhaling opium and he’s living one day at a time. Hat on the floor, nickels in the hat, joy in the heart, nothing in the grave.
Deep in the midnight slum, there is an ambitious young boy who has fallen asleep at his desk. His name is Henry Evecker, and he was working at candlelight, re-writing all of his lines for the seventeenth time, copying these lines from a complete script that he learnt by rote months ago. His candle has started to drip onto his left hand, but he doesn’t notice the sear as the melted wax meets his flesh. He’s too lost in his fantasies to acknowledge the outside world, dreaming of foreign leaders and daffodil petals and all the beauty in a look. He is dreaming of makeup and loose veils, dancing amalgamate with annoying snakes. He is somewhere else and someone else and home and self dancing but repeating with the same new lovehate at the first hundredth crack of the prepared real flutter. His thoughts are words but he speaks like truth, his words are truth but he speaks like sale yet he touches like marble, so what does that make him? And it hasn’t even happened yet. It is all so very confusing.
The next morning, the two wake up at precisely the same time. After collecting their bearings and preparing for their day, they head over to the theatre, preparing to run through rehearsal one last time.
Henry arrives forty-five minutes earlier than John, a tradition that has never faltered once since their first meeting. Their playwright, Isaac Strachleigh, rushes Henry over to his wardrobe at once. Isaac apologizes for his hurriedness, but he wants to begin the play as soon as John arrives, not wanting to waste even the smallest fraction of time. Henry takes a seat in the tiring house, putting on his corset and lifting his hair into a chignon.
Young Henry is reciting his lines silently by the sandbags when John walks in. John is holding a rose in one hand, declaring that, come tomorrow, the troupe will see a dozen more like it from the Rochelle public. The room is filled with a smattering of applause, with a couple of hear-hears thrown in by more lively members of the crew. Isaac rushes John along, stating that there is no time for him to change into his stage attire, immediately making John stand on his mark whilst calling for final preparations. John peers over at the slender Henry, who stops reciting as their eyes meet. John speaks with his face, as exemplary as he always has. ‘Can you believe this,’ he is expressing to him. Henry, still not quite as gifted with facials as John, merely shakes his head.
Isaac Strachleigh has devised this play entirely by his lonesome, accepting advice only from his wife and players whom he deeply trusts. Isaac has long had an obsession with the stage, first being introduced to the world via minstrel show performances in the early 1820s. As Isaac matured, he discovered the works of the bard, and the many other great plays that England had to offer. These tales spoke to him on a much deeper level than the frankly juvenile plays of his American brothers, and if there was one thing Isaac yearned for more than anything else, it would be to create a play on par with Sir William’s finest.
It was for this reason that Isaac staged this most recent work in the merry land of England, and had expressly forbade all players from speaking in their native accents. The story tells the tale of a young maiden named Anne Marie, who falls in love with a mysterious figure by the name of Tarado, a devilish rascal from an unknown land. Isaac had attempted to create a story as close to the bard as he could manage, that many of the players worried they’d be ridiculed and called a parody. Isaac quelled these worries by stating that if any resident of Rochelle could name a Shakespeare play, he would personally buy the crew supper for a fortnight.
Although Isaac’s prior plays have never amounted to any success, he truly believed that his time spent crafting this play was his own personal epoch. He had never devoted himself to anything quite as much as he had with the creation of this romance. When he believed that the script was finally finished, he grabbed a dagger and carved his own personal announcement into a log of firewood. The log read: ISAAC STRACHLEIGH PRESENTS - HANGTOWN.
Isaac ran rehearsals strictly, obsessing over every detail, re-doing acts hundreds of times a day. By the time Anne Marie and Tarado finally met, the whole troupe was already exhausted, and Isaac had no choice but to declare a brief recess. Henry ran outside to use the privy, and when he had completed, John waited for him by the door that led back inside. Rather than return to the theater, they both stayed outside and loitered by the door. Henry rubbed his arm, embarrassed to be out in public while in women’s clothes. Still, he did not wish to go back indoors. Sensing a blush in his face, Henry decides to strike up a conversation.
“He ought to have written a novel.”
“Pardon?”
“I’m talking about Isaac. Doesn’t he know what country he’s in? He’d have a better chance if this were a book, that’s all.”
“I don’t think that’s true, Hangtown feels like it’s meant to be performed.”
“That’s not what I said. I didn’t say it’d be better as a book, I said he’d have a better chance if it was.”
Henry gestures broadly.
“Look at this place. We’re built on a railroad, he should know better than to make a play. He’s watching people board trains with books in their hand every day.”
“And what’s that matter to him? Are you saying it’d make more money? Unless he’s Mark Twain, he’s not making money as an author, so who cares?”
“You’re not listening to me. Of course it isn’t about the money, but he wrote Hangtown for a reason. He’s trying to get this story seen, isn’t he? What does it matter if those eyes are on us in a theater, or on the pages of a novel? What matters is that, somehow, this story is being shared. It’s being told. People feeling it, relating to it, comparing it to themselves. That’s why people make stories, right? To feel? So, why not make something that more people can feel? Why not make a novel? Maybe he wouldn’t be Mark Twain, but he’d be more successful, and I can promise you more people would see it.”
“...”
“Well? Do you have anything to say about that?”
“I think you’re too young to speak about things you don’t know.”
Henry scoffs.
“The nerve! I don’t understand playing?”
“That’s not what I said. The things you’re talking about, you’re saying he needs a bigger legacy.”
“Well, sure, but only because legacy comes with fame.”
“So he should be famous, is that it?”
“I just think his work should be known. It’s good work, it deserves praise.”
“Yeah, right. It’s horrible. My character’s name is in Spanish, and I doubt he even knows that.”
“You make it sound like it’s not going to succeed.”
“It won’t.”
“Then why’d you agree to perform for him?”
“Because I’m a good player.”
“Oh, now I know you’re kidding. You’re barely even here!”
“I’m here now, ain’t I? I’m here every day.”
“But you’re never on time. You’re always joking and laughing, and I see how you look at his wife.”
John turns to Henry, inquisition in his eyes.
“And just what are you implying?”
“I’m just stating what I see. I have to share a stage with you, you know. I have to feel you touch me, I have to hear you murmur all those sweet words to me.”
“That’s called playing, child. I told you, you’re unlearnt.”
“It’s not playing with you. When you touch me, you don’t even see me standing there.”
“Of course I don’t! You’re Anne Marie for Chrissakes! That’s who I’m holding!”
“No! You don’t even see Anne Marie, you don’t see anyone!”
“And how do you know that?”
“Because I’ve seen how you look at his wife.”
“And I see how you look at me.”
Henry goes silent.
“I- That’s-”
“That’s playing? Is that what you want to say? Give me a break. I chose to play Tarado because I’m a good player. Wanna know how I do it? I’ll tell you. I understand something that you don’t. There is no legacy. We’re American players, performing an art that lives in England. And even if Hangtown really did succeed, if it really became a national touring sensation, where does that leave us? Anybody could be Tarado. Any young frail boy could take your spot as Anne Marie. I used to perform King Lear, do you know any of the players who were in the original King Lear? What about Macbeth? Tell me Henry, who was Macbeth? I can tell you now, I portrayed an incredible King Lear. One of the best King Lears that there will ever be. But there will always be more King Lears. From now until forever, King Lear will have his legacy, and all of his players will have nothing. Our legacy isn’t for us, it’s for who we portray. We live a life of intentional erasure, that’s what we taught ourselves to do. ‘Legacy’ is just a word to describe temporary history. Meanwhile, ‘history’ is just a word to describe what’s popular. Hangtown gets popular? Congratulations, Isaac, you’ve made history. Life’s a blue ribbon contest, Henry, but the ribbon is the only thing the future remembers. Quit caring about who I choose to look at. Quit caring about the way I touch you on stage. Just shut up and enjoy how it feels. That feeling is the only thing that will ever belong to us.”
“...”
“Can I tell you about a dream I’ve had?”
“Go ahead.”
“I dreamt that I stood next to a cauldron. There was a doctor there, but I could not see his face. Without speaking, I could tell that he wanted me to peer into the cauldron. There was icy water within, it looked crystalline, like one large moving snowflake. I saw my reflection in the water, but suddenly, it wasn’t just my head staring back at me. It was everything. My whole life, all of my meals, all of my travels, every thought that had ever gone through my mind. I saw my face, but I felt all of these things at once. Everyone I had ever known, they were all there like we’d only just met. I thought of my mother Miranda, and there she was in the cauldron! And everything I felt about myself, I now felt it for her! Secrets she never told me, nights my father never knew, everything! And I saw her friends, and her friends’ friends, and so on forever! An endless fractal of everyone! Fame, legacy, reality, all at the whim of a thought! I was struck with this terrible fear, this horrible knowingness that I was not alone. The world rumbled, and I saw a train carrying gondolas of cauldrons and I knew that the train was endless. As I watched the train slink forward, I felt truly dead. Never before had I known so much about this world, and I wanted only to perish. I wanted to die because, the whole time I was experiencing all of these people’s lives, I felt absolutely nothing at all. It was like I was folding laundry. My own mother’s life, as engaging as a meal. There, and then not there. My fear was replaced by doldrum, and I woke up with nothing on my mind at all.”
“...”
“That’s quite a tale. But you’ll forgive me if I don’t see its relevance.”
“Well, I suppose it’s relevant because I don’t know what’s worse anymore. What you said, or what I’ve dreamt.”
“Mm.”
The wind picked up, causing goosebumps to form on Henry’s skin. The chill encouraged the duo to return to the theater, where they practiced being nothing for the remainder of the night.
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