Photo by Brent Silveria

All Aboard

by Jeff Baker

We’d been downstairs watching Uncle Cuthbert run his model train he had set up on the big table in his basement. Watching as it ran under the mountain and past the little row of storefronts. Then we heard our Mom call from upstairs and Uncle Cuthbert left us downstairs with the train which he had switched off.

That was when we heard the voice.

“Pssst! Hey! Up there! Look down here!”

My brother and I looked around (this was way before cellphones) andwe didn’t see anybody. My brother looked under the table and I bent down too.

“Up here! Up here!” That was the same voice again.

We were actually crawling under the table and stuck our heads up so we were actually at eye level with the top of the table where the train was when we saw the little man in the train’s passenger car waving at us, trying to get our attention.

“Yeah, me! Right here!” The little man in the train said.

He was proportioned perfectly to fit in the little passenger car or even sit down on the seats inside. He was dressed like a guy playing the town banker in an old cowboy movie. Grey suit, green vest, grey hat. Not a cowboy hat.

My brother and I looked from the train to each other then back again.

“We’ve got another message for the Big Guy,” the little man said. “Take this down.”

He reeled off a bunch of names and numbers as my brother grabbed a piece of paper and a pencil. He was the math whiz. I was into baseball. He wrote down a lot of stuff on both sides of the paper.

That was over thirty-five years ago. My brother inherited Uncle Cuthbert’s train set. That was when he started playing the stock market.

People wonder how my brother got so rich.

I know.

Me, I didn’t want anything to do with that little man on the train.

—end—

Here’s a link to more of Brent Silveria’s work: https://brentsilveria.com/?fbclid=IwAR2pfV2CGesFlv6v805kPXRmHBTWHGdfYGON4GDlgzlEfya9Vwi4WAUQpPk