The Money Changers

 

All lights red.  We were standing between the double-tracks of the Canadian National main line, about a mile west of the Kingston train station.  The signal lights, three to a standard, one standard on each side of the tracks for a total of six lights, were a short distance beyond the station.  Steve handed me a stick of Doublemint.  I unwrapped it, folded it into my mouth, and began to chew.

Steve was never without candy.  He lived around the other side of the crescent, and we would walk to high school together.  He always had five dollars for his daily candy stash.  Each morning, our first stop was the corner store, so he could load up.  Back in the early 1970s five dollars was a lot of money.  And candy was cheap.  He would emerge with a paper sack stuffed with an assortment to get him through the day.  Rolo caramels, Hall’s mints, Twizzlers, Caramilk bars, Peppermint patties, an assortment of gum - everything sweet.  Steve was not pudgy or overweight, he was tough, lean, and strong.  He played on the football team.  He had a paper route, delivering them on the run, barefoot.  He seemed to prefer gravel.  His soles were leathery and black.  Sugar was his fuel.

Green light!  Steve handed me another piece of gum.  We took great pride in our ability to read the lights.  They were only ever all red, or five red and a single green on one side or the other.  There was no complicated code involving multiple lights in varying patterns, no complex semaphore sending messages to engineers and workers down the line.  Just one green light indicating that a train was due in the not-too-distant future.  And this one was on the right, which meant the train would be on the south track.

We were a mile west of the station because this was where the tracks demarcated the northerly edge of the woods, which were, in turn, adjacent to the creek that flowed behind our neighbourhood.  During the few years of our early teens, we spent a lot of time in these woods, canoeing across the creek in summer, or walking across the ice in winter.  We built forts.  Odd constructions nestled amongst natural formations, simple lean-tos, an elaborate, two-storey A-frame using hand-cut poles lashed together with rope.  It wasn’t possible to stand upright on either floor.  Steve liberated a roll of polyethylene from his dad’s garage, which wrapped the forts and kept us dry.  We would gather dead branches for firewood and have campfires.  We kept tabs on the trees being chewed down around the pond, but never saw the beaver.  We took target practice with our bows and arrows; tried our hand at snaring rabbit; considered ourselves to be woodsmen.  And when a train approached, we could run through the woods with great speed to observe its passing.

A wire fence, well back from the tracks, separated us from the private property of the railway.  We were careful not to get caught trespassing.  On the easement, a couple of yards from the shoulder of the railbed, there was a pit with no apparent purpose.  It was four feet in diameter, four feet deep, and lined with a stone wall, like you would see in a well.  We took a piece of fencing and wove long grass through it.  Placed over the pit, it became invisible.  When the train rounded the distant corner, we would climb into the pit, now an effective blind.  Waiting in the gloom, the snarl of the straining diesel intensified.  Our pulses quickened.  The ground began to tremble.  The roar was deafening as the engine, a monstrous presence, hurtled past.  We slid back the cover.  The looming freight train cars thundered above us; we could almost touch them.  Eye level with the rails, the wind whipped our breath away, and the ka-tuk ka-tuk! ka-tuk ka-tuk! of the wheel sets crossing the joints thumped in our chests.  It seemed to go on forever; it was terrifying and exhilarating.

A mournful whistle arrived on the wind.  The train was signalling at the last crossing, five miles to the west.  The Doublemint was sufficiently worked in, smooth and sticky.  It was time to prepare.  We reached into our pockets, laden with copper, and withdrew a penny.  A pinch of gum was applied to the penny and the penny applied to the rail.  The gum kept the pennies from sliding off due to the vibrations.  We stuck pennies on the tracks until the gum ran out, about fifteen each.  I’d heard that defacing money was illegal.  We were risking jail time.

A powerful headlamp appeared from around the bend.  We retreated over the fence and into the woods.  The freight rumbled past, and as it vanished into the distance we went back onto the tracks.  We only found four or five squished pennies:  smooth distorted ovals with a black smudge on one side – the gum – which rubbed off under your thumb.  The rest had been flung aside or disappeared into the gravel between the ties.

In time, woods gave way to cars and hanging out in town.  Steve got a job in the corner store.  The dentist caught up with him in grade twelve.  The Wednesday morning root canal.  It went on for weeks.  Money can change in unexpected ways.  Be careful where you put it.