the headless brakeman
note: This is a work of nonfiction. Some names and identifying details have been changed to respect privacy.
Once upon a time, a line was cut through the dense thicket between Bragg and Saratoga, two rural towns nestled deep into East Texas. “Once upon a time” is 118 years ago. “Once upon a time” is 1902, and the line was cut by the Santa Fe railroad, which used the tracks to haul typical east Texas commodities, which is to say oil, cattle, lumber, and such.
For a short time, the railroad junction connecting Saratoga to Bragg had a nearby post office and oilfield workers and daily runs to Beaumont, Texas, home of the well known Spindletop. For a short time, the railroad junction connecting Saratoga to Bragg transported oil with a side of cattle and lumber in a manner by which one could set a clock, but the oil industry is feast or famine — often, for some areas, ending in famine. That space from Saratoga to Bragg was one of them, and as such, the railroad was dismantled in 1934.
Though those typical East Texas commodities are still prominent in parts of The Big Thicket, civilization in that area is sparse.
Saratoga is home to around 800 people. Bragg is now a ghost town.
Once upon a time, a line was cut through the dense thicket between Bragg and Saratoga for use by the Santa Fe Rail, and on that rail was a brakeman. As is the job of a brakeman, his days were spent applying the brakes, operating track switches, and coupling or uncoupling freight cars. The brakeman has no name. Or, he has no name for this story because to have a name would inch it closer to reality, and some of the most interesting corners of the world are rooted in legend. This little corner of the world is home to the legend of the headless brakeman.
The headless brakeman wasn’t always headless, of course. He was fully and functionally headed until a train wreck decapitated him. The tale is that searchers recovered his body, but his head was never found, and even today, nearly a century later, he wanders the road with a lantern looking for his head.
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It’s 7ish on a Thursday as I throw my apron in the back seat and buckle into the front. It’s 7ish on August 3, 1995, and I’m running home to shower by way of the local AM Country Music Station, whose call letters now elude me. My friend, Joe Hanks, 28 of Woodville, Texas, is the program director there, and I was dropping off provisions for the night’s adventures.
I adored Joe. He was nine years older, but at 19, he felt lifetimes wiser. His hugs were unmatched, and I suspect that that will still be true, should we see each other again, one day. He gave me an unmatchable hug when I walked in, and, catching me on a rare shit day, I melted into it. He smiled. I smiled. We chatted. I left. Buckling back into my car, I flipped on the radio to his sweet Texas twang saying “Smile, darlin’. This one’s for you,” followed by Pam Tillis’ powerful voice.
Lookin’ at you through a misty moonlight
Katydid sing like a symphony
Porch swing swayin’ like a Tennessee lullaby
Melody blowing through the willow tree
What was I supposed to do
Standing there lookin’ at you
A lonely boy far from home
Maybe it was Memphis
Maybe it was Southern summer nights
Maybe it was you maybe it was me
But it sure felt right
Read about you in a Faulkner novel
Met you once in a Williams play
Heard about you in a country love song
Summer night beauty took my breath away
What was I supposed to do
Standing there lookin’ at you
A lonely boy far from home
Every night now since I’ve been back home
I lie awake drifting in my memory
I think about you on your momma’s front porch swing
Talking that way so soft to me
What was I supposed to do
Standing there lookin’ at you
A lonely boy far from home
Maybe it was Memphis
Maybe it was Southern summer nights
Maybe it was Memphis
Maybe it was Southern summer nights
What was I supposed to do
Standing there lookin’ at you
A lonely boy far from home
I adored that song like I adored my friend, and he knew it. Maybe it was her voice. Maybe it was the word katydid. Maybe it was a million other things, but that moment is forever etched into my memory.
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It’s just getting dark when I wrangle my cut-offs over my freshly showered skin. I feel an odd chill for an August Texas night that I try to quiet with a thin, forest green, long sleeve shirt before running out to get Kathleen. Kathleen Albright, 19 of Chester, Texas is my closest friend. We worked together at Dairy Queen. We were outliers together in high school. We laughed at the silly squirrels, sang country music, and made ice cream floats out of old beer together. Tonight, that night, we were going on an adventure together.
She gets in my car, also in denim cut-offs, but a more seasonally appropriate white tank. The details escape me, but I remember the white, and I remember wondering why she isn’t feeling the chill. We laugh and sing our way back to the AM Country Music Radio Station.
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Henry is there. Henry Kelley, 20 of I can’t recall which tiny town in Texas, is my boyfriend. He’s also Joe’s best friend. He’s also a DJ at the same station, which is how they became friends.
Just after midnight, we load into Joe’s white 1990 Oldsmobile Cutlass while he collects his things, which, tonight, are his casual clothes and six-pack of Budweiser. We were young. He was simple. All of it was perfect.
We’re driving to The Big Thicket. Saratoga. Bragg. Deeper into Southeast Texas. Most specifically, we’re driving to find the Bragg Light. It’s only a forty-five minute trek to the ghost town of Bragg, but the skies are dark and the forest is dense. It’s easy to get lost when the moon is thin and road signs are sparse. Not until almost 2am did we find ourselves halfway down an 8ish mile old railroad turned bumpy dirt road. Joe stops the car and turns off the light, our cue to unbuckle and step out. He hands each of us a beer, and we wait — Joe and Henry perched on the hood, Kathleen and I wandering the blackness, whispering about everything, whispering about nothing.
A few sips into the Budweiser, I hand it off to Joe. He’s bigger, and he likes it. I’m small, and I don’t. Size has no relevance to taste, but it has relevance here. It has relevance here, because I didn’t consider the effect only two beers would have on a bigger person, which, in this story, is a normal size man, but I’ll circle back to that. Sometime between the beginning of his beer and the end of mine, Joe scream-whispers Kathleen and I back to the car. He sees the Bragg Light. Henry sees it. Then we see it. We are watching the fabled headless brakeman and his lantern meander through the black night sky. We stay for a while. I don’t know how long because time was swallowed by The Big Thicket, but we stay for a while, speculating, contemplating, hypothesizing what the light could actually be.
It’s nearly 4am when we pile back in, Joe driving, Kathleen next to him, Henry and I in the back. I’m nestled behind Kathleen, mind still reeling from the old legend and new adventure. I forget to buckle my seatbelt. Somehow, we all forget to buckle our seatbelts. Yet, onward we go.
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They’re so bright, so flickery against the dark East Texas sky. I feel a hand on my right shoulder. “Can you talk?” Yes. “She’s conscious.” “Do you know where you are?” No. “What hurts?” Huh? Where is Kathleen?
I don’t remember how they got me out of the car. The things I do remember in those first moments: those three questions and my answers, Henry talking with his hand on my leg, Kathleen telling me her arm is stuck, and me trying to help her. The rest is broken. The rest is a puzzle missing most of its pieces.
There are two paramedics and four of us. I remember that I’m on the ground trying to pull myself up with the leverage of the door that once housed a window. I have no pain, but I have no grip, no strength, no mobility.
Henry holds me down. Or maybe a paramedic holds me down. There’s a familiar and an unfamiliar voice in my ear, and I’m silencing it with my own. Where is Joe? He didn’t answer me? Kathleen did. Henry did. Where is Joe?
And The Big Thicket swallowed my memory just as it swallows time. I can only surmise that the paramedics gathered us up from our crumpled heap on the side of Highway 287, where 45 miles north, my parents were sleeping in their home just off the same highway, and took us, with their lights, bright and flickery, to the closest hospital.
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In the wee hours of the morning on August 4, 1995, a nurse is cleaning my blood-covered body. That’s the next thing I remember from our Bragg Light adventure. She’s saying my name, and I wonder how she knows it. She’s telling me that she can’t find my parents, and I wonder how she knows how to try. She reminds me her name is Mary and that she’s my cousin and tells me I should be still. Where is Joe? She’s silent, so I’m silent. I think I already know, but I want to someone to say it so I can stop hoping.
I don’t know how long they kept me. I only recall them handing my mom a bag with my cut-offs and forest green long sleeve, now covered in dried blood. I don’t know when Henry left or Kathleen left or when they told any of us about Joe. Joe Hanks, 28 of Woodville, Texas, died at the scene. Thank God, he died at the scene so he didn’t have to feel it, see it, relive it.
Kathleen had a concussion and was paralyzed from the waist down. She’s now lived over half of her life in a wheelchair. She is in north Texas, currently, with a boyfriend and a job and an ongoing love of country music.
Henry had 72 stitches in his left arm, where the glass tried to sheer it off. He was the luckiest, and his size kept him relatively stable. He later married, had three children, and then died of pancreatic cancer.
I had a fractured cheekbone on the right side, a concussion, avulsions in my right arm, and muscle detachments in both arms and my left leg. I missed my sophomore year of college. My size let me fly, but the seat in front of me kept me in the car. Now, I’m here, trying to save the world, one yoga class at a time.
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Epilogue:
I later learned that Joe fell asleep while driving. We made it off the Bragg Light road to FM 1003. FM 1003 ends at Highway 287, which is the highway that gets us back home. Somewhere along FM 1003, Joe gained speed and fell asleep just before the two roads met. In that spot, Highway 287 has two lanes going south, a crossover, and two lanes going north. We made it across the southbound lanes, the crossover, and the northbound lanes before hitting a ditch that flung us head-on into a tree the size of a telephone pole. A trucker watched it happen, and he is the one who called for help. If miracles are a thing, then the fact that it was a single-car crash and the trucker was able to see it at that dark hour has to be one.
One of the truest, most raw statements I can make about any story I have to tell is that there is a tremendous amount of guilt attached to this one. I mentioned my beer earlier. I mentioned handing off most of it to Joe thinking that two beers in two hours wouldn’t leave him drunk, and it didn’t. Two beers in two hours after having been up for twenty-four left him sleepy. I mentioned Kathleen asking me to help her unstick her arm. I mentioned me trying to help her. I didn’t know not to.
I don’t say this to garner empathy. I realize that the second beer may have added nothing to his exhaustion. I realize that Kathleen’s head slamming into the windshield likely put her in the wheelchair. I say it because it lives in my head with the handful of broken memories, the handful of puzzle pieces. I say it because it’s part of the story, and when we write, it’s our duty to write all of it as best we can.
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I wrote this story in response to a good friend‘s suggestion to dive into the details surrounding my car wreck. The following is my clarification, to him, on this particular trauma:
“You suggested this topic because it’s rooted in trauma, and I know that. I understand it. I respect your curiosity about it. For a while, and again “a while” is fuzzy, I did have fear of people speeding, and I looked away if we passed a wreck, and to this day, that’s the only time I’ve ever forgotten to wear a seatbelt; but that’s not my trauma. Mine is the guilt that lurks from not knowing. I’m strangely grateful for that, though — for the not knowing — because I don’t know if I could live with the knowing.”
