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Show There I saw a horrible event. Instead of staying on the side of the grade, John the older colt, alarmed by the roar of the locomotive, ran up on the track and tried to outrace the train. Jimmie raced along on the shoulder of the grade. When he saw his older brother overtaken to disappear he must have assumed that John had crossed to the other side. Jimmie tried to join him but instead threw himself against the train wheels and was thrown off. A pain struck me in the chest. A heart attack, I thought. I couldn't breathe. I fell to the sand before the store. But I wanted to die for grief and guilt and shame. Father had seen the happening from the post office window. He came running. Father could be cruel to be kind. He did not think I'd suffered a heart attack. Instead he gouged his hard fingers into the very spot in my ribs where nerves and muscles had knotted up. He hurt me for a few seconds but gave me quick relief. For a few minutes he massaged me in the nerve centers. When I was on my feet again we went to little Jimmie. He was lying beside the track, not mutilated but dead. John must have been caught up in the locomotive machinery for we found no trace of him. Sadly I buried Jimmie on a ridge to the east in ground we hadn't cleared of brush. We never did clear that spot. Father and Mother did not sentimentalize about it. They respected my grief. They did not chide me. They knew my self-reproach was bitter enough. In all my time at Nada I did not have such gentle and jolly companions as those burro colts. Even Shep, although he had his wonderful traits, was not as sweet-tempered and eager to go along on any of my projects. |
