The Great Accident

by Ben Ames Williams

The Caretall home stood in that end of town where the largest of the furnaces is located. A railroad siding passes this furnace, and a switching engine is busy here twenty-four hours of the day. The engine occasionally finds occasion to whistle; and the furnace itself has a whistle of enormous proportions; a siren whose blast carries for miles across the hills. This siren blows at every change of shift, it blows at casting time, and it blows at the whim of the engineer who may wish to startle some casual visitor or friend.

Persons who have lived long in this part of Hardiston grow accustomed to this great whistle. They sleep undisturbed when it rouses the night echoes; and they talk undisturbed when it shatters the peace of the day. It is even told of some of them that when the furnace went out of blast and its whistle was stilled, they used to be awakened in the middle of the night by the failure of the siren to sound at the accustomed time.

Wint’s own home was in the other end of town. He had not lived long enough near the furnace to accustom himself to its noises; and they disturbed him. They penetrated his stupefied sleep on the night of this debauch. The steady roar of the great fires, which could be heard three or four miles on a still night, played on his worn nerves and tortured them; the sharp toots of the switching engine made him jump and quiver in his sleep like a dreaming child; and when he woke in the morning to find Amos shaking him by the shoulder, he was miserable and sick and his head throbbed with the beat of a thousand drums, and seemed like to split with agony. He wished, weakly, that it would split and be done.

When he opened his bloodshot eyes, Amos laughed and jerked him upright and shook some of the slumber out of him. “Come, Wint,” he commanded heartily. “I’ve got a cold tub all ready. Jump in it. Got to get in shape, y’know. Inaugurated t’day.”

Wint groaned and held his head in both hands. “Hell with it,” he scowled. “Inaugural. Whole damn business. I’m not goin’ to do it. Goin’ sleep. Hell with it, I say.”

He tried to drop back on the bed, but Amos laughed and caught him and dragged him to his feet. “Come out of it,” he enjoined. “You’ll be all right.”

Wint shook his head stubbornly; then cried out with pain at the shaking. The fumes of the liquor were gone out of him; he was only dreadfully sleepy and dreadfully sick. He felt as though he were pulled and tortured by pricking wires that tore his flesh, and his eyelids were as heavy as lead and as hot as coals upon his bloodshot eyes. But he opened them, and said heavily: “No, Congressman Caretall. It’s off. I won’t do it. I’m through.”

It was as Amos groped for a next word that the siren began to blow. This was the signal for the morning’s casting. The engineer must have been in good spirits that morning, for he gave more than full measure on the blast. The whistle shrieked and roared till the very windows rattled and shivered in their places; and Wint, at the first sound, whipped up his hands to shield his agonized ears, and dropped on the bed and held his head and groaned until his groan became almost a shriek with the pain. Then, when the siren died into silence, he got dully to his feet, and glared at Amos, who said huskily: “I’d like t’ kill man that did that. Like to dynamite that whistle. Anything—make it keep quiet.”

Amos suddenly smiled; then he chuckled. “Well, Wint,” he said quickly, “there’s ways to make it keep quiet.”

Wint looked at him with torpid interest. “I’ll bite,” he said. “Tell me one.”