Letters Down the Line
News from town, carried by rail and worry
The whistle had come from an early goods train, not marked on the schedule.
Thomas set the signal to danger and let the heavy engine roll past.
His hands were shaking, but the levers, which were with rust, obeyed.
By morning the valley was calm, and his first real day began.
A mail sack was left at the station gate by the passing train.
Inside was a letter from his sister Margaret, who lived far away in town.
Her , which he knew so well, made the lonely box feel warmer.
She wrote that the town had been changed by new machines and factories.
Many workers, whose skills had taken years to learn, were no longer needed.
"The old where father worked has been closed," she wrote sadly.
Machines that never tired were now doing the work of many hands.
Thomas read the letter twice, then folded it into the logbook for safety.
That evening he wrote back by the yellow light of his lantern.
He described the hills, the trains, and the silence which surrounded him.
He did not mention the torn page, which still troubled his quiet nights.
Every week after that, a letter was carried down the line to him.
Margaret's words were the only voices that reached the lonely signal box.
She told him that young men were being offered work in cities.
Some families, which had lived in town for generations, had already left.
The world beyond the hills was being remade, and Thomas felt left behind.
One letter, however, ended with a line that he could not forget.
"Do you ever hear from the man who kept the box before you?"
Thomas lowered the page and stared at the cold iron levers.
No one had told Margaret about the signalman who had vanished.
How did his sister know that another man had once stood here?