Destination Unknown
Emmet St. Bridge
Admiral Biscuit

The underside of a bridge was protected from the weather, and the steel beams that supported the deck served as a windbreak. While the sloped concrete abutments were easily climbable, and did sometimes provide shelter to humans or animals, the pillars weren’t. A small space, true, barely big enough to turn around in, but for now it was hers, safe and unassailable.

Or at least reasonably so; the local avians occasionally squawked their displeasure at her intrusion.

She’d already checked for nests; there weren’t any in her current hidey-hole, and she and the birds had eventually come to an uneasy truce.

Trains were big and noisy and trains had no right to sneak up on a mare. They sounded their horns all the time, but not before arriving at the overpass.

Just to the south of the bridge was the crew-change point. She’d flown off a southbound freight when it stopped, her car far short of the bridge—she’d needed a chance to stretch her wings and to explore Battle Creek.

Now that was done; she’d seen what she’d wanted to see, she’d earned some bits from her singing, and she’d even toured a cereal factory. Now it was time to move on again. Time to stow away on another freight train, time to go wherever the rails took her.

The locomotive glided under the bridge, prime mover idling, nearly silent on the steel rails. A gust of diesel smoke befouled her temporary perch, eddying around the girders and the train’s slipstream, and then it was gone. Two of the more aggressive sparrows chirped after it in a vain attempt to scare it off; Sweetsong and the veterans of the Emmet St. bridge stayed put, watching it pass below.

Mixed freights were the best, giving her a wide variety of cars to choose from. Humans liked to ride grain cars with high-sided ends or boxcars with easily-opened doors, while she preferred freight cars that were open on top.

Coal cars were not good, even if they were open on top, and that’s what the train had to offer. In her experience, trains carrying coal hauled nothing else, so as soon as the first aluminum gondola swept beneath her, she slumped back down on the abutment.

She’d tried riding a collier once; it was oily and grimy everywhere and took countless baths to wash out of her fur. Out west, train after train was nothing but coal gondolas, and she’d gotten impatient—but she’d learned her lesson.

Sweetsong flicked her tail and fluffed her wings, unintentionally inviting a few chirped threats from the birds. She wanted to go, and she could; she could abandon her temporary perch and fly along the tracks until a better train came into view beneath her.

It’s just one train, there’ll be more. Riding into Battle Creek, she’d seen an abundance of trains passing northeast, and it was reasonable to assume that the southeast track was just as busy. She had a good spot, all she had to do was wait and the right train would not only come along, but it would stop below her just like her last train had, just like the coal train was, taunting her with the view of an empty aluminum hopper streaked with coal dust.

She settled back down on the cold concrete and waited.

After a crew change and brake check, the coal train moved on, and as the sun crept towards its zenith, no new trains stopped. A priority container train swept by underneath, slow enough that she could find a spot if she really, really wanted to, but it wasn’t worth the risk. If the car had a proper floor at all, it was barely a hiding space; it wasn’t a matter of if she’d be seen, but how quickly. A better train would come along if she waited. Patience was a virtue.

Sweetsong wasn’t patient enough to sit on the abutment forever; a half-hour after the container train passed she stuck her head down below the girder, looking up and down the tracks for another approaching train. When that failed to provide any gratification, she dropped off the concrete and flew out from under the bridge, followed by a few birds who thought they were chasing her off.

She climbed up and circled, following the tracks with her eyes, looking for a train going in the right direction. Ten miles of visibility, maybe; she could see Bellevue’s water tower poking above the trees and trains were long enough that even with some of the tracks obscured, she ought to be able to see one if one was there to be seen.

Sometimes she got impatient, and followed the tracks along in the hope that a train going in the right direction with a suitable car and going slowly enough that she could land might pass beneath. Most often what she’d get instead was sore wings and a veritable cornucopia of inviting railcars that were too fast to catch, cars she could have boarded if she’d been more patient. As she glanced to the south, she spotted a mixed freight that was headed in the wrong direction, swore at it, and then reminded herself that another would come, another would stop in the yard, and she’d have her pick of cars to ride.

Amtrak was also an option, they had a station in Battle Creek and if she knew where she wanted to go she could buy a ticket there, but half the fun in riding the rails was not knowing where she was going to go until she got there.

When she returned to her perch, the birds didn’t welcome her back, but she didn’t care. They could deal with it; she wasn’t going to be a fixture all that long.

Napping was the traditional pegasus way of dealing with boredom, and while the concrete was cold and un-sunwarmed, she dozed off until the distinct whine of a dynamic brake and the clatter of slack action perked her up. Sweetsong’s head was over the edge of the concrete in time to get a blast of exhaust from the locomotives, and then her eye was on the train as it rumbled by underneath.

A motley collection of box cars and grain cars, then a string of tank cars—nothing she could ride, but a mixed train nonetheless. The first gondola, empty but for some leftover dunnage, two centerbeam flatcars loaded with lumber—those were a possibility, but cramped and dangerous if the load shifted. Coil steel cars, with mismatched covers, two stray autoracks likely collected as an afterthought, another cluster of mixed grain cars, and then, trailing a Wisconsin Central boxcar, was a low-side gondola with no cargo in it.

The train police didn’t like people or ponies getting a free ride on the train. Being in the yard was risky; the longer the train sat still the more likely somebody would spot her. She’d found her car; she could fly to the other end of the yard and catch it as the train left.

That was the wise thing to do: unnecessary risk was foolish and would get her nothing, any more than flying along hoping to spot a slow-moving train beneath her. She knew that, and yet, like a thunderstorm building on the horizon, her wanderlust nagged at her, demanded action. Her army blanket looked like a tarp, and she could blend in with the leftover dunnage in the car. She’d have more time to settle in while the crew got changed.

Sweetsong sighed and shifted on the bridge as the gondola passed beneath. She could have dropped straight down in it and nobody could have seen her, and now it was gone. Now a trio of auto racks skimmed by, nearly touching the bridge beams.

All the other nearby bridges were close to businesses that would be open, she’d have to fly all the way out of Battle Creek to catch the train again, and right now the autoracks on her train and the cars on the next track provided excellent cover, almost as good as dropping in the car from her perch.

Patience was a virtue, but impulsiveness got things done. She grabbed her gear and caught up to her gondola as the train braked, landing on the scarred floor two car-lengths beyond the bridge.

Waving a goodbye to the birds wasn’t really necessary, but she did anyway. They still had their bridge, and now she had her train. As soon as it got a new crew, she’d be on her way south.

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