The Waterbury Democrat., 1938-06-02

She never did understand. Un- less in one single flashing instant. The eastbound came on, whistle shricking in the din, brakes scream ing. Nothing could stop the massive momentum of that special. Nothing did.
 The two trains came together, passed each other on adjoining tracks. laundering and screaming, and the earth shook with them. Somewhere in the thunder and screaming was Joe's Helen, with Joe's warm lunch and her gingham dress that she'd put on clean few minutes before.
 That was what happened at noon that June day, three weeks before the wedding.
 I've got to go on. This is not love story, but story about love. The death of the girl Helen and what happened to Joe after that arc only the true materials of my story. I warned you ahead of time. If you think I'm making this up, you're terribly wrong. I couldn't make up thing like those train rushing to- gether and the girl Helen unaware and Joe going out of his mind look ing on.
 What Joe suffered needn't be gone into either. You will know without the telling. He went out of mind, literally. He cursed his Maker and did lot of things mo- body paid any attention to, because if you stopped to think about it, it almost seemed he was right. What pulled him together-not altogether, but enough-Was the fact that the old people drew him to them as If he were part of her and they needed hi into endure it. I guess they did. As he needed them. They were all three close together for little time in life in the terrible loneliness of death.
 Joe hung around for a couple of weeks after the funeral. He didn't go back on the job He wanted no further sight of railroad tracks. He just hung around quietly, like man knocked on the head and slow to get over it, none too clearly aware of what's going on around him. Then one day he packed his bag without a word and blew the town, getting a lift on truck trundling hundreds of miles to northWard.
 It was the start of a long, long journey. That town never saw him again.
 Once more the MurrayS at home heard from their Joe from all parts of the nation. He never showed up at home, but he always wrote every little while. His letters were differ ent from the old ones, as you might expect; yet not different in the smart, glib tone of them, or in the genial razzing for his brothers and sisters, and all news from home, but rather in the underlying meanings that Mrs. Murray in her shreWdness could clearly read. Only once had Joe dropped his wisecracking style with which man covers his feel ings; when he told them simply of Helens death. That finished all Mrs. Murray's worry, leaving only deep, abiding pity. She was rarely caustic about him after that: her son was no longer in the immediate stage of cocky and headstrong boyhood; he was man, subject to sore hurt even as a baby, and so close to her now. It is not only philosophers who req son out those things.
 Hes in Duluth" she told the family. She missed him. Or perhaps it was Detroit or Dallas. He's working in sheet metal shop again there. He says it's good job with plenty of work and nice fellows and his boarding house is clean and cheap. He likes it and he thinks he'll stay While."
 But he never stayed. Soon would come letter from another town Where'd he flown on sudden impulse The journey was resumed. He had blown again, alone, always alone.
 He got too restless" Mrs. Murray would explain. He couldn't stand it.