That was when I nodded at Ware and Ware opened his briefcase on the hood of my truck. Twenty-two pages. It had come in from the state rail division four days earlier and I’d read it so many times I could have recited it and I had not slept properly since. “Ma’am,” Ware said, “that’s the state’s answer. This is the question.” He handed her the first page. Her own letterhead, September twelfth, signed K. Brantley, Chair, Streetscape Committee, requesting the status of the Fern Hollow Branch for a community entrance improvement project. “I’m aware of what I wrote.”
It doesn’t change. Second page. Page two was a photograph she had attached to that inquiry. A close-up of this crossing taken from the shoulder in bright September light, framed on the rail head, the polished top of the steel, filling a third of the frame, bright as a mirror. Exactly what Griff Alderfer described four days later when he asked her to verify the line, and she wrote back that verification was not required. She had photographed the evidence herself and mailed it to the state.
Third page. Page three was a hand-drawn location map in her handwriting. North arrow, a box labeled project site, and the box was drawn on the branch north of a notation reading MP 3.2. Ware let her look at it. “The state answered exactly what you asked. It told you about the segment north of milepost 3.2 because that’s where you drew your project.” He turned the page under her hand. “This is the Fern Hollow and Southern milepost schedule. Pennington Siding connects at milepost 4.1.” Karen didn’t move. “4.1 is south,” Ware said. “You’re standing at 4.1. The state has never in any document said one word about this crossing.”
Nobody spoke for a while. Ike looked at the ground. Deputy Coye looked at Ike. Then Ike Trowbridge said the only sentence anybody in that neighborhood ever quoted afterward. “You drew the map yourself, ma’am.”
And she came back one more time. Because people like Karen always have one more. “The railroad knew.” Her voice had gone up. “If this track was so alive, where was the railroad? Where was the inspection? Somebody should have come out here and looked before they ran a train into a wall.”
“They did,” I said. It was the first thing I’d said since she got out of her car. Ike already had it out of his coat. A photocopied page from the Crest Point Patrol Group gate log dated April fourteenth, 0812. FH&S truck and trailer with backhoe, five personnel, refused entry at columns per written instruction of K. Brantley, board president. Advised trespass would be prosecuted. Vehicle departed 0834. Ike held it up so Deputy Coye could read it, too. “The inspection you’re asking about was a week ago Tuesday, ma’am. I was sitting in the truck. Your guard turned me around at your gate on your instruction in writing.”