Lieutenant Eugene S. Brooks was the last to arrive on the scene. As he approached, the crowd parted to let him in, and everyone became so quiet that you could hear a pin drop.
Due to the gruesome nature of the scene, the men formed a circle around the body to prevent the women and children from getting too close until the coroner could retrieve the body parts and take them to the morgue. Gracie Brooks made her way to the front of the crowd. She stood only four feet and eleven inches tall, and she was able to sneak by the men without being detected.
As she got closer to take a peek at the man, her husband, the lieutenant, came up behind her and turned her around and told her to go back home because the scene was too gruesome and she would only be in the way. He told his deputy to send all of the women and especially the children home. Most obeyed the orders given and left the scene. However, Gracie did not take heed to his instructions, and she was determined to find a way to see this mysterious man that had been sliced in half by a speeding train. In all of her years living in East St. Louis, Illinois, she had never seen nor heard of anyone being killed by a train in such a way.
As she walked away from her husband, a young boy grabbed her hand and told her that he knew a good spot to view the body, so she followed him behind some old out-of-service train cars, and he helped her climb inside one that was close enough to see him without them being caught. Immediately after seeing him, she clutched her chest and fainted. The boy became frightened and screamed for help. Officer Wesson heard him and ran over to the train, and he found Gracie Brooks on the floor passed out. He lifted the boy from the train and told him to go get the lieutenant.
Chapter 2
Sydney had nowhere to call home. Since the age of fourteen, he had been shoveling coal for the railroad. He worked very long hours feeding coal into the furnace. He was considered an introvert because he seldom spoke; most of the time he would slip off in an empty car to be alone.
In order to keep warm, the men drank whiskey inside one of the train cars. They told stories of their lives before coming to the railroad. Most of them were travelers without any hopes for their futures. The ones with families took the job to support their wife and kids. When Earl, the senior of the men, inquired about Sydney, Benny told him that he had found him lurking around the yard looking for food.
Benny had not seen him in two weeks, so he thought that maybe he went back home. During that time, a lot of young black men would hang around the yard, looking for work because their fathers were off fighting wars or they had left their mothers. Almost all of them never returned. No one knew if they were killed or just abandoned their families because of the burden.
While Benny was walking the tracks, he heard moaning coming from one of the cars—it was Sydney. He had become extremely ill from a lack of food and from sleeping in an ice-cold train car. Benny had compassion on him and took him to warm by the furnace. After a few days, Sydney was able to eat and drink without throwing up. Benny knew that he was a runaway by the way he was dressed. His clothes were at least two sizes too small, and his boots had seen better days.
Working the tracks did not bring in much money; he barely had enough to send home to his wife, let alone take care of a drifter. Sydney did not know his own age nor where he was from, all he knew is that he left Illinois by train years earlier and ended up in Ohio. Benny spoke to the yard foreman about giving Sydney a job around the yard. Since he was too young and weak to shovel coal, he gave him a job as an errand boy. He was responsible for getting water and food from the local restaurant across the street.
By the time he reached fourteen years of age, he stood six feet tall with a very muscular build, so the yard foreman put him to work moving coal from the cargo bay to the furnace. His pay was $45 a month, which was not bad because he slept in the boarding house across the street for $7 a week in the winter months. During the summer and spring, they pitched tents around the train yard in order to save their money.
Earl still had reservations about Sydney because he was a loner. Every time Earl spoke, his chewing tobacco would drip from the corner of his mouth, leaving a brown smudge on his chin. Each time, he wiped it off using the back of his hand. Earl did not hide the fact that he did not like Sydney. He made it known each time he saw him; he would call him a queer and say that he had a taste for men. Sydney ignored him and kept on doing his job. Earl was determined to destroy him one way or the other. He plotted against Sydney by hiding the foreman’s stopwatch under Sydney’s cot and accused him of theft. The foreman liked Sydney because he was a hard worker, and he did not cause any trouble, so he decided to send him to another location away from Earl.
The following day, he told Sydney to gather up all his things because he would be on the next train heading to Michigan. Benny was furious about what happened, but he did not make a scene with Earl because he knew that Earl could have him relocated just as well. Throughout the Midwest, Ohio was the best yard to work at. Everyone in town knew Earl, and he could cause problems for anyone who went against him. There was a certain woman he would sleep with when her husband was away. Rumor was that he was so in love with her that he wanted to end his marriage just to be with her.
Benny and some of the men took Sydney across the street to a tavern, which was merely a shack. He had never drunk whiskey before, and its effect was not what anyone expected. He became very talkative and extremely confident. He went over to talk to one of the local women sitting on a stool in the back. After about fifteen minutes of talking to her, she led him by the hand out the back door and upstairs to a small room over the tavern.
Later that night, Earl went to the tavern after his shift for a shot of whiskey. He saw the woman he was in love with walking through the back door, holding Sydney’s hand. He turned the table over and called her a whore. As he tried to approach them, Benny jumped up and stood in front of him to calm him down. The woman stood behind Sydney, fearful that he might hurt her because she knew that he was in love with her, but she did not feel the same about him.
Earl asked her how she could fuck a queer. Not only did he call Sydney a queer, he told her that he was still a kid. He was able to get around Benny, and he grabbed Sydney by the throat and told him that he was a dead man. It took three men to pry Earl’s hands from Sydney’s neck. As soon as he was free, Sydney ran out the door, heading back to the yard. Sydney gathered his few possessions and got on the train that was heading to Michigan the following evening.
As he lay in a dark corner, he heard Earl talking to one of the men that if he caught up with him, he would kill him. Sydney feared for his life, so he kept quiet so that Earl would not find him.
Earl searched every car until he found Sydney. When he tried to board the train, Sydney threw a whiskey bottle, hitting him on the head. Earl fell to the ground and hit his head on a rock. Sydney grabbed him by his legs and dragged him to the furnace and burned him, making sure to heap more coal into the furnace.
When the time came for the train to pull out, Sydney was more than ready to leave behind the ridicule he suffered at the hand of Earl. He was excited to start a new life in Michigan, even though he knew that he had to fit in a new place. When the train arrived, several men got off along with him, to be met by their new foreman Walter. Walter was a short, obese bald man smoking a stubby cheap cigar. The first thing that he said to them was “I ain’t your daddy, your momma, or your friend. If you fuck up, your asses will be gone.” Then he said, “Find somewhere to sleep and have your ass in my office at 4:30 a.m.”
Leon Maddox was around the same age as Sydney, give or take a year. He was full of energy and talked nonstop all night—Sydney had enough of his useless chatter. That kid talked about his girlfriend back home who was expecting their first child. He told Sydney that once he made enough money, he planned to marry her and buy some land in Ohio. Sydney had very little knowledge about life, but he knew that it was unheard of a young black man owning land.
No one was aware of the fact that they slept past 4:30 a.m. because Leon kept them up telling wild stories about his life. Walter was walking through their camp, yelling, calling them sons of bitches because they were late to meet the train. He ordered them to get up and dressed and out the door.