Karen Brantley looked at the gate log. Then she looked past it, down her own entrance, at a locomotive standing three hundred eighty feet deep in a field of limestone and splintered lumber where her dedication had been. Behind her on the lawn, two of her own board members had drifted backward without seeming to know they were doing it. And they stood apart from her now with their arms crossed, not looking at her. Delphine Cargill hadn’t moved from where she’d been the whole time.
Then Marvin Ottoway, the association treasurer, said the sentence that ended Karen Brantley in that neighborhood. And he didn’t say it to her. He said it to the deputy. “We were told the railroad was abandoned. We voted on that. We assessed a million four on that.” Karen said his name, just his name, once, sharp. Marvin Ottoway turned his back on her and walked toward the houses.
I left them to it. I went out into that wreck with limestone crunching under my boots, past the shattered gate, past what was left of the guardhouse, and dug through the broken stone until I found what I was looking for, right about where the north column had been. Right about where it had stood since 1948. A rectangle of dirty brass with a dent in one corner from the inside of a dumpster. Pennington Siding 1948. Under it where the columns and the asphalt and the grand entrance had been, running straight and unbent and perfectly bright along the top, was my grandfather’s rail.
Ridgemark Indemnity denied the claim in nine days. The letter cited the exclusion for damage arising from intentional acts and knowingly maintained hazards. And it attached the exhibits: the railroad’s October removal notice, the April notice signed for at Karen’s house, directive number four with cover the rails in the margin, and Alderfer’s RFI with verification not required under it in blue ballpoint. One million four hundred thousand dollars of Grand Entrance uninsured in pieces on a lawn.
Then the bills started. The county cited the association for obstruction of a rail corridor and for unpermitted structures in it. Fern Hollow and Southern billed for damage to 1804, the wrecking crew, twelve cars held out of service, four days of lost line time. My claim went in through Ware for eight months of contract exposure and two laid-off men. Nobody had to prove much. It was all in her own handwriting.
The association held a special meeting on the ninth of May out on the entrance lawn because the clubhouse wouldn’t hold everybody. Wanda Curtland called me that night and talked for forty minutes, and Delphine filled in the rest later. One hundred eighty-eight households learned they were being assessed a second time, eleven thousand dollars a door, to demolish the footings, pay the railroad, and build the crossing Griff Alderfer had recommended in September for about the cost of the flowers. They sat in white folding chairs with the wreckage stacked behind them and looked at the woman who had told them there was no train.