The following is an excerpt from my forthcoming fourth novel, Scrimshaw. It's an adaptation of a song by Nashville-based songwriter Pete Holland.
Scrimshaw will be available for purchase in paperback and Kindle formats via Amazon.com next Tuesday, November 12th.
Click-clack. Click-clack.
Click-clack.
The steadfast iambic rhythm of
wheels skittering over steel rails, more like a human heartbeat than the pace of
a machine driven by wood and coal, rods and pistons and steam. Some would no doubt
argue that the railroad is more akin to the pulse of the United States than its
denizens are even aware, with its heart located somewhere around Omaha, the
miles and miles of Union and Central Pacific tracks snaking in all directions,
carrying passengers and cargo and pumping its collective blood to every corner
of the country.
Leaving Iowa behind and chugging
through Nebraska signals that your odyssey is nearly halfway finished. You’ve never
been this far west in your life, and with every hour you move farther from
Massachusetts and everything you’ve ever known, and closer to California and
everything you’ve ever feared. You’ve buried questions like How will I find her? and Will she remember me? deep in your
subconscious. You don’t want to know the answers, anyway.
So you stare out the glass-paneled
windows as the miles roll away, the American Middle West shattering all your
previously-held expectations—Iowa wasn’t nearly as flat and featureless as you
envisioned, not the perfectly smooth ocean on the calmest and least windy of
days. Instead, you bear witness to sweeping, rolling hills, brown and green
waves pitching back and forth in the near distance, threatening to toss the
train from the rails and drown its passengers in a dizzying sea of swaying cornfields.
It’s been three days since you bid
goodbye to New Bedford and the Atlantic Ocean. Three full days of clicking and clacking as you’ve limped the aisles, wondering dutifully where the
other passengers were headed, wondering if they pondered your destination, your reason for sliding
your last 45 dollars through the window in Council Bluffs for the privilege of
riding in the belly of this steam-powered beast another day to Cheyenne, two
more to Ogden, and two more after that to San Francisco.
When you awaken after drowsing in
your seat, you pat your breast pocket fitfully, ensuring the letter remains
safe and sound, close to your heart at all times. You’ve managed to keep the
knife a guarded secret, but a few times every day you remove the scrimshaw from
your pants pocket and run your weathered fingers and thumbs over the intricate
carvings, your carvings, all that
remains of the life that the Atlantic swallowed and New Bedford all but forgot.
The whale bone remains a token, a talisman (it could be called a good luck
charm if it had brought any good fortune whatsoever), something to hold onto
through your travels.
You’ve been on a train only once
before, back in the summer of ’61, on your way to Philadelphia, mere weeks
after enlisting to help cement the blockade and Scott’s Anaconda Plan. The
train ride was a novelty then, the fastest way to move troops south to Pennsylvania,
Maryland, Virginia. Now, as you travel deeper and deeper into the thickening
American night, you grip the scrimshaw a little tighter, triple-check your
pocket for the letter and close your eyes as a deep sigh rattles through your 70-year-old
bones.
Click-clack.
