The Echoes Of The Golden Spike

~This one is came second in the Northern Ireland heat of the 2008 Author V Author competition. I'm sure that it probably would have done better if it had been relevant to Northern Ireland rather than the US, but their history is more interesting.~

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I left my family behind me in that small Nebraska town, departing that sunny day with no idea of what was to lie ahead. I waved goodbye to their tearful faces, remembering the words we had spoken and all the promises that I had made. I cast my eyes to Heaven and I looked to God, I asked him to watch over my loved ones and I asked for His guidance, I asked for His strength. The simple belief of a simple man, but my life was in His hands and on my mind.
In the weeks that followed we were to sweat and we toiled and good men would lose their lives, to this day I don’t think that we really knew what for. This woeful fate, how we cursed our existence, many prayed for that bittersweet end. We gave to our masters everything they wanted and yet still they wanted more, in those days I gave them everything I had. They took my heart and they took my soul as fuel for this ravenous beast, but they couldn’t break my spirit, my dignity fought back against their cruelty. I was but a simple man and an immigrant to this country but I would not bend, no I would not crack.
Through the wind and rain we worked on, gangs of us digging the tunnels and laying the tracks, the young men pushing the carts shifting the earth, weak with hunger and weak with thirst but they would not be seen to lie.
We had sold our souls to the Devil, I fear truly that is what it was, he got us at a bargain in the work for the railway and he was sure to collect his due.
With a sound like thunder a torrent rolled in, the crack of beams snapping and upon us stone fell like rain in a storm as if the very soul of the Earth rose up in wrath for our arrogance in cutting into her. No one knew were those first cracks appeared but good men lost their lives, the coolies, the Chinese, lost, broken and buried with us Irish, the navvies. We called hopelessly for survivors, but we knew it was in vain. Those above, the educated men they had said it was safe but the truth it was clear they’d lied.
It didn’t matter, the colour of our skin, in that dust we were all the same, broken and wounded men in a pit of death. Black, white or yellow every one of us were grey as ash. A man died in my arms, he was but a boy, with a family out there, somewhere, far away from here. We saved those that we could but many were lost forever to that sunken and claustrophobic nightmare, you could hear the cries of the wounded and you could smell the fear, would the rest of the tunnel give way or had we been granted some small ounce of mercy? For a few brief seconds within which there lay an eternity I saw in that choking dust the very fires of Hell ready to consume us. But the Devil is patient, he knew that he need only take enough that our spirits be dashed upon the rocks for before this would be over many more would be delivered to him.
No one knew the true toll that day and as our betters forced us on it occurred to me that the heart of a good man in these days was hard to find. Our superiors were not decent men and in this atmosphere of fear compassion was nought but a tale of the past. Good fortune that day had been mine and though many good friends were forever entombed I thanked the Lord that I had been spared.
Still we worked, we worked like the devil and we pressed on ever further in pain. I can still remember the sweat stinging my eyes and the sun burning my back as we crossed the Great Divide Basin, as we cut through God’s country like a knife.
The weeks became months and the months became years, another winter in the snow and in the rain. I could think only of how there must be a better life than this, when every day might be your last, when each tunnel might become your final resting place, a tomb with no name.
I close my eyes and I can still see my wife standing at the door of our small cabin in Fall City, the tears in her eyes as she held my children close to her. I’ll never forget that day as they waved goodbye to their father, seeing him go off to work on President Lincoln’s railroad, to lay the tracks for Mr Durant. The memories of all those I left behind echoed always in my sleep, would I ever be able to go back again? Would I ever see her face again? Would I ever be able to forget that day when they waved goodbye to their father? My only dreams under the watchful starlight, my children, my home, my love.
We drove across the land like a great machine, against all the odds and against all misfortune we pressed on. No thoughts of destiny, no thoughts of glory we saw only the goal ahead and were carried by an irrepressible defiance of our brutal circumstance.
The rails stretched ever further west, in the summer we slept under the stars. Men came from the North and men came from the South, the Civil War of the new Union did not exist here and with picks and with spades we brought a new kind of order to this wilderness. In the end we had no fear for what may lie up ahead, our fates relied on each other and working as one we drove the great beast ever forward.
The world would never see the likes of us again.
Driving spike after spike we lifted and laid the track. As an army we moved across the land, blacksmiths and carpenters, engineers and masons all strove to keep up with our labours. We knew that coming from the west was the Central Line, blasting through the Sierra Nevada with nitro-glycerine and sheer raw desire, losing thousands in its rapine as it moved unstoppably onward. To some these were only coolies, “Not a Chinaman’s chance” they would say, but to us on the Union Pacific Line they were brethren, they were the same as us, they followed the rails, they slept under the stars.
My children I could see them even in those days, tears in their eyes as I departed, I could not forget that day. I would come home again because I could not slip this coil with only these memories in my heart, if I felt my strength failing I thought of them and felt it renewed, the sweat, the sun burning me and the blisters on my hands would not hold me back. The memories of my wife carried me forward and held my head up high when rightfully I should have fallen, another echo of the railroad fading away.
Even in darkness we pressed ever on showing no fear of danger, we cared not for what lay up ahead for we felt God watching over us, and even in this hell the power of the Lord had not waned. We would not be broken and with defiant hearts we sang that the world would never see the likes of us again.
Many died uniting east and west, good men all of them and I can still hear their voices at night, I see their faces in my dreams, not ghosts or wraiths but brothers in blood. I still look to the sky and offer my prayers, I thank Him for His guidance and strength, and humbly I ask him to look after my friends, to tell the dear departed to wait for me, another navvy coming home.
At Promontory Summit in the Utah Territory we met our brothers from the west, the lines were finally to be as one and our legacy complete, a new history would be borne on the blood of our fallen and on the tears of our broken.
A former grocer now governor of California, a man called Leland Stanford arrived on a glorious engine, a hissing black behemoth named Jupiter, and with him he bore the final seal of this epic, The Last Spike, the Golden Spike that would finish the track. He was to be the hero of the First Transcontinental Railroad, the newspapers and photographers were all here to capture the moment and ensure his legend, the telegraphers waited in anticipation of sending the last important message, the full stop at the end of the page, ‘DONE’.
As the hammer fell upon the Last Spike I saw myself once more in that tunnel as it collapsed, with each blow stone falling like rain, the blindness as the dust burned at my eyes and choked at my lungs. Young men shouting to be heard, the rails twisted, bent, and destroyed, the bodies of men broken or dead, the blood everywhere and staining the earth.
With each blow the memories ringed in my ears, cutting across Nebraska, Colorado, Wyoming and Utah, the friends I’d made and those that I had lost.
Those were the days that had forged America, when the country was finally united and the nation was truly born in the sweat and blood and lives of those who came to call it home.
The country erupted in celebration.
On May 10, 1869 I remembered my good fortune in the dark times, I remembered the lies our betters had told us, but most of all I remembered that the world will never see the likes of us again.
The echo would never fade.