Hervey Willetts

by Percy Keese Fitzhugh

What had happened was this. The switch had been standing open so that the northbound train might pass. Then it had been closed so that a Wainboro train moving south would be carried onto the branch. For a few moments, Hervey was so frantic with terror that he was controlled more by instinct than thought. He could only listen in panic fright and watch for the appalling sight of a headlight. He did nothing, not even think.

But now he collected his thoughts and attained to something like composure of mind in the reassuring remembrance that a southbound train stopped at Farrelton every night at about half past nine or a little later. That would be the Wainboro train for which the switch had been closed. He tried to remember just how it was. The first show at the movies was out at nine—about nine. He was a frequent patron of the first show. On his way home from the early show, he always crossed the tracks and often, if not usually, the gates were down while a southbound train went by. Sometimes he stopped for a soda or an ice cream (precious moments those seemed now) and still was interrupted by the lowered gates. That would mean that he had at the very least half an hour before the death dealing train would come thundering along.

Well, what should he do in that half hour, more or less? There was but one thing to do and that was to keep wrenching and pulling in the hope of freeing his foot. But he knew it was a vain hope. Perhaps in two cases out of three a foot so caught could with much pain be released. But he could not budge his foot. It was wedged to the crushing point below the heavy flange of the converging rails.

Well, at least he had a half hour or so. He wished that he had not swapped his scout knife for a belt buckle; he might then cut away the upper of his shoe and perhaps loosen his foot enough to wriggle it free. Any effort would be better than just waiting. He shouted again, but his own voice shattered his morale and brought him to the very verge of hysteria and collapse. Five minutes passed; ten minutes. It was very quiet in the woods. A small creature, glorying in its freedom, darted across the tracks—a quick fleeting shadow. Somewhere in the distance an owl was hooting.

Fifteen minutes passed. Time, which had never meant anything to Hervey, was precious now. He thought of the minutes as a miser thinks of his gold. He reflected that if he leaned far over toward the west, he might not be killed, only mangled and then released like a poor footless animal from a trap. He would not be able to walk; most likely he would bleed to death. If he could shout loudly enough perhaps some one in the train would hear him and he would be taken to Wainboro—to a hospital. He resolved that he would scream at the top of his voice just before the ghastly thing happened.

Twenty minutes, twenty-five minutes. Perhaps there would be a doctor on the train. Hervey had always laughed at the first aid scouts and had called their bandage work bunk. But this scout without any jack-knife or matches did not laugh now. He was not a boy of strong imagination, but all these horrifying, crowding thoughts aroused him to a state of panic and he yelled frantically again and again till his voice failed him and he went to pieces completely and sobbed in bewilderment and ghastly fright as the precious half hour closed up relentlessly, just as the switch had closed. Another five or ten minutes elapsed; anything might happen now.

He tried to steel himself for the inevitable. But Hervey was not sublimely courageous; the serenity of the hero dwelt not in him. He was just a daredevil. At Temple Camp they understood this perfectly. He did reckless things and got away with them. He was all right as long as there was a spectacular though perilous way out. But he had not that bravery of character which faces danger serenely. Still I wish to give him full credit as we follow him in the winding and sometimes dubious trail of his career. I like him so much that it is agreeable to record that in those tense moments, when grim death was upon him, a gentle thought entered his scatter-brain. It came in the last few precious moments. He wondered whether in a little while, “all of a sudden” as his thoughts phrased it, he would see his own mother face to face. Then, as if in answer, the modulated roar of an oncoming train broke the stillness.

Louder and louder grew the sound until it ceased to be a distant part of the night chorus and came out bold and strong for what it was, the voice of a thundering, heedless, steel monster, crying down the myriad sounds of the woodland with its alien, metallic clamor. On, on, on it came and a patch of mellow brightness appeared as the headlight came in view around a turn to the north and bore swiftly down upon him.

And Hervey Willetts stood and faced it. He called, but he knew that no one would hear amid all that clank and clamor. There was a bare possibility that the engineer might see him, but if so he would do no more than blow the whistle. Should he lie down? Then, if seen, he might be thought to be dead or unconscious and the train would be stopped. A forlorn hope. And he could not lie down without breaking his ankle.

So, trembling in every nerve, his heart beating like a sledge-hammer, he stood and faced the approaching light. He keyed himself to do it as a stunt—as if he had been dared to do it. There was pathos in the rakish angle of his outlandish hat, which usually bore a suggestion of bizarre defiance. On, on, on came the thundering locomotive, painting the rails silver with its blazing light, setting the ties in bold relief so that they seemed like rungs of a great ladder.