I Found a 15-Year-Old Boy Hiding in the Nose of My Locomotive, 200 Miles From Anywhere in the Rocky Mountains. He Said If I Stopped the Train, He’d Jump

“Okay,” I said. “Nobody’s stopping anything. Close the door. You’ll freeze.”

He didn’t move.

“My name’s Tom,” I said. “That’s Darnell, my conductor. He’s got four kids and a terrible sense of humor. What’s your name?”

He hesitated.

“Eli.”

“Eli. Here’s the deal. This train doesn’t stop for a hundred and forty miles anyway. That’s a long time to stand in the wind. Come in. Sit in the cab. It’s warm. There’s coffee and a bag of jerky that Darnell thinks I don’t know about.”

Darnell said, “Hey.”

The boy almost smiled.

He closed the door.

He sat on the jump seat behind me in the cab, with his backpack still on his lap, and watched the headlight cutting through the snow ahead of us. I handed him my thermos.

For an hour, nobody said much.

The train went into the Moffat Tunnel, six miles long, under the Continental Divide. In the tunnel, it’s pitch black and loud, and you can’t see anything but the signals ahead.

In the dark, the boy started talking.

His mom’s boyfriend. The drinking. The black eye. The third time this year. His mother saying it was his fault for talking back. A school counselor who called child services once, and a caseworker who came once, and then nothing.

“So I ran,” he said. “I climbed on at the yard in Denver. I figured a train goes somewhere.”

“Where’d you want it to go?”

He was quiet.

“My grandpa lives in Green River, Utah,” he said. “My real dad’s dad. My mom won’t let me see him. I haven’t seen him since I was nine. I don’t even know if he’s alive.”

Green River, Utah, was on my route.

Four hundred and twenty miles away.

Behind us, Darnell was looking at me. I knew that look. It meant *Tom, don’t do something stupid.*

I looked at the boy’s black eye in the light of the control panel.

“Eli,” I said. “What’s your grandpa’s name?”