Connor N. is a writer and traveler born and raised behind the pine curtain of East Texas.

After 14 days traveling across the Southeast by rail, a friend dropped me off near the Norfolk Southern train yard in Atlanta. I blindly walked through the woods and trailed the fence that guarded the yard, hoping to find a break so I could get in position to stake out my ticket to my childhood home in Texas. The Railroad Gods eventually rewarded me. I jammed my backpack through a gaping steel gash. In front of me were 30 ribbons of track bustling with activity. Skyscrapers loomed beyond the labyrinth of trains. I began to feel overwhelmed. I settled into the shadows and played the waiting game. The sun set.

The crew started pulling a line of intermodal cars to the departing track. I traced a few of the cars that pulled up next to me. One of them came up with a hit for Shreveport, Louisiana, which was exactly where I needed to go. I gathered my belongings and boarded the train, thinking I’d hit the jackpot. However, the train accelerated backwards, into the heart of the yard. I saw the main watch tower fly by me, then the yard office and the employee parking lot. Before I knew it, the engine had disconnected, leaving me stranded in the middle of a labyrinth of double stacks waiting to be assembled.

I jumped off and began walking towards the front of the line. There were no leading engines anywhere. I climbed back on a train for a minute and sat down to regroup while the footsteps of steel-toed work boots crunched back and forth against the ballast next to me. I could hear trucks whizzing by on the service road and the laughs and conversations of the employees. Their cigarette smoke was so close-by that I could almost taste the tobacco. My hands became damp, my chest tightened, and I felt a pain between my ribs. I prepared to be caught. 

I had to get back to the hop-out spot in order to catch the next outbound as soon as possible, so I bundled up my sleeping bag, dismounted the train, and began walking on the service road. I knew this yard had to have some serious security, but I couldn’t be bothered anymore. A train crept across a small overhead bridge. Walking under it, I looked up at the Norfolk Southern engine while the engineer hung his head out. We locked eyes. He stared at me for a moment. I waved and he kept rolling.

Forklifts and 18-wheelers slithered through a nearby lot. I bounced around underneath the cargo containers attached to the semis. I made it back to the hop-out spot just in time to catch an 11 o'clock westbound to Meridian, Mississippi. I climbed on board and two minutes later, the train started rolling. I kept my gear on my back, ready to hop off in case the train backed up again. My train slowly crept out of the yard. The yardmaster, working in the watchtower, stepped onto the deck. He looked directly towards me with his hands on his hips, and I crouched in the darkness, hoping he was secretly rooting for me.

I passed through rural Georgia, lots of no-name towns with gas stations with names like People Pleaser or the Boxcar Service Station, down winding dirt roads with walls of pine trees and dilapidated Baptist churches. I couldn’t have felt more alive. I had music blaring in my earbuds while the spring wind kissed my face, tangling my filthy mop of hair. “Hear the storm dancing outside / Something set free is running through the night / And the dark awaits us all around the corner / But here in our place, we have for the day / Can we stay a while and listen for heaven?” Mitski sang.

I laid out my sleeping bag and passed out through almost all of Alabama. I’d seen it before. In the morning, I woke as the train screeched to a halt. I checked the map on my phone. I was only a few miles from the yard in Meridian. I peered over the edge of my ride and saw we were next to a desolate interstate. Every now and then I would hear a car whoosh by in the distance, but the dawn was otherwise marked with silence. I looked at the map one more time, and right after I put my phone in my pocket, I heard the railroad gravel crunch nearby. It sounded as though a vehicle had pulled up alarmingly close.

I peered through a little hole in the side of the well car for the air brake to pass through. I looked both ways and saw nothing. I stood up and looked to my right. There wasn’t enough room for a car to have driven up on that side. Then I heard a car door shut about two train cars down to my left, and footsteps leading up to my train. I peered through the air brake hole once more, and two brown eyes popped through from the other side. Less than five feet away stood a man in his early 40s with black hair and black stubble holding onto a police vest.

“Railroad police! Go ahead and step down for me,” he said. I felt my heart catch in my throat and stood up. “You want me to go ahead and grab my stuff?” I asked. “Oh yeah, get off the train for me.” I wrapped up my sleeping bag, grabbed my backpack, and leapt down next to him. He asked for my identification and then went through his usual routine, asking if I had any warrants, if I’d ever been arrested before. “Where did you catch this train?” he asked. I told him the truth. “You stayed on that train all night long, throughout this cold front?” I replied, “Yes sir, I was there the whole time.”

“The way we do it around here is the first time’s a warning, but if I catch you again, I’m going to be hauling you off to the Lauderdale County Jail.” I nodded in passive agreement. He told me that he wasn’t trying to be a dick, but it’s his job to catch and pull riders off of the trains. Then he gave me a whole rundown on the best roads I could take to rubber tramp out of town. “How did you even spot me in the first place?” I asked. He said they do inspections on every train passing through Meridian. He spotted me through the air brake hole while the train was entering the yard. He told me his name was Special Agent Ron Bible. I had to stifle a chuckle, evangelism follows me everywhere in the Deep South.

I followed the road into town and the train rolled on without me, followed by three unmarked Norfolk Southern Special Agent vehicles as it entered the yard. Since the rails were being heavily patrolled in my wake, I figured I might as well hitchhike along the interstate, as the bull had suggested. I held out my thumb for an hour and a half. People either rolled by and honked or they would yell at me to “Go to Hell!” and “Get a job!”

A black pickup pulled over. Thinking this was it, I ran up to the passenger side. “Where are we headed, fellas?” I asked. Four younger white guys in camouflage ball caps stoically stared back at me. The driver told me, “We’re just heading down the road, but we thought you could use this.” They handed me a Bible pamphlet for their local church. “The Word of God is your true salvation! Jesus is Lord,” it declared. I bit my tongue. I tried to not let my annoyance leave me too dejected.

I jammed the pamphlet in my back pocket, with all my remaining cash, and made my way to the Amtrak station to catch a cheap Greyhound home. Night was beginning to fall. As I got to the station, I laid my backpack down inside of the booth. “Were you the one trying to hitch a ride out there by the interstate earlier?” asked the withered old lady sitting across from me. “Yeah, that was me,” I laughed. “Well, how’d that work out for you?” I retorted, “You see me sitting here, don’t you?” She chuckled and offered me a cigarette. I politely declined.

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Masthead

Editor-in-chief — Andrew Fedorov

Rails Editor — Connor McFarland

Altitude Editor — Matt Gu