The scene is a flashback to the summer Maggie was ten, when she and Jim Scott, a neighbor boy, sneaked off to the train tracks near her family’s farm.

“Hurry, Maggie, we don’t have much time,” he called back to her.

She was barefoot and the brush scratched her feet. She kept her head down, avoiding the broken glass in the high weeds and climbed the bank to the tracks, panting. The sharp gravel between the ties cut her feet.

“This is scary, Jim Scott. Don’t you get me in trouble.”

“No trouble. We won’t be here long. Give me your nickel.”

She handed him the coin that she’d been clutching in her sweaty hand, and he got a dime from his pocket and placed the two coins on a rail of the tracks. He squatted down and leaned his ear against the same rail.

“Listen, see if you can hear it.”

Maggie leaned down. The steel was hot on her cheek.

“I don’t hear anything.”

“You’re not listening right.”

“Well all I get is a burned face.”

She walked away from him down the track, balancing on one rail. The rail was hot too and she kept jumping off. Jim Scott had on sneakers but when he tried balancing, his feet kept slipping. She laughed at him and he stuck out his tongue and then all of a sudden they heard the train whistle, close.

“Let’s get,” Jim Scott cried and they ran, skidding down the bank into the high weeds at the bottom. Maggie lay on her stomach, feeling the itch of grass on her legs as the train roared down the tracks. The wheels squealed like a pig at slaughter and the ground thundered as if a regiment of horsemen galloped over them. Maggie put her hands to her ears and flattened herself against the earth, feeling the quake as a rumble deep in her belly. She breathed in dirt and clover and grass.

“Wow,” she said when the train had vanished around the curve. “Wow, Jim Scott, that was something.”

“Yeah.” He grinned. “Like being in a tornado.” He darted up the bank. “Come on.”

They found their coins, squashed into thin uneven circles like pieces of tin.

“I didn’t know a train could do that.”

“It just tells you that you don’t ever want to get in the way of one.”

They walked along the tracks. Maggie hop-scotched from tie to tie.

“You think they pee on the tracks, Jim Scott, or number two when they go to the bathroom?”

“I peed on the track when I rode a train to Baltimore to see my grandparents. When you flush, a thing opens up in the bottom of the toilet. You can see the ground rushing by. It’s pretty neat.”

“Ugh.” She stepped off the ties and walked outside the rails.

Jim Scott ran in front of her and started singing “I’ve Been Working on the Railroad.” He got to “all the live-long day,” but instead of singing the word “day” he broke off and yelled “damn!”

She wasn’t looking at him. She’d spotted a piece of red glass beside the track and was leaning down to get it.

“Come here, Maggie.” Jim Scott’s voice was quivery, like he didn’t want to talk loud. She tossed the piece of glass away and went. He was standing dead still, pointing to a tangle of vines.

“What?”

“There.”

She looked. A tiny hand poked through the vines.

"So? Somebody's baby doll, I guess. Probably grew up and didn’t want it anymore.”

“That’s not a baby doll,” Jim Scott said, putting spaces between his words like he was sounding out a vocabulary lesson.

That scared Maggie so that she wanted to turn away and run, but couldn’t. The little hand was stiff like a porcelain doll, fingers curled but not quite balled into a fist. The color of it was odd, dark, like it was bruised.

“Is it dead?” she whispered. “It’s got to be dead.”

They stood there like two posts in the ground. The hand didn’t move. Jim Scott finally broke the spell.

“Wait here, Maggie. I’ll get something.”

“I’m going with you.”

They went a few yards down the tracks. Jim Scott walked into the brush and came up with a long stick. She followed him back to the heavy vines, slowing to keep from getting close to the bruised hand. Jim Scott pushed the vines away with the stick.

“It’s a dead baby,” Jim Scott said. “It’s somebody’s dead baby.”

He probed with the stick. Maggie didn’t look. She didn’t want to see somebody’s dead baby.

“Colored baby, that’s what I’d say, look at the hair. Jesus God Almighty.”

“Don’t cuss, Jim Scott. Don’t take the Lord’s name in vain.” She stayed turned away.

“Not very old, I’d bet. Boy baby.”

“Hush, Jim Scott. You’re scaring me. What are we going to do? I’m not supposed to be over here with you. Mamma told me never to go around the railroad tracks. I’ll be in big trouble if she finds out.”

“There’s nothing to do. Baby’s dead. I bet nobody’s going to come looking for it, what you think?”

“I’m too scared to think.”

“Well, let’s get out of here. When we get home, I’ll tell my brother. He’ll know what to do. I won’t tell you were here with me.”

They raced down the bank and through the woods to the house, neither of them talking. She didn’t see Jim Scott for a week afterwards. She didn’t want to see him. When she ran into him at the feed and seed, he took her out back and told her that his brother said it wasn’t any of their business. “What a nigger does with her bastard baby doesn’t concern us none,” were the exact words Jim Scott used, apologizing for having to say the word bastard. She never knew if he told anyone else. She didn’t tell anyone, although she tried to get up the nerve to tell her father but couldn’t find the right time.

Months later, she dreamed she heard a baby crying outside her window. She came awake with thunder rumbling and flashes of lightning in the sky. She pulled the quilt over her head and thought about the baby lying in the rain, rotting into the ground like a dead dog.

* * * * * *

Well? Should I have cut this scene? I believe I should have. Because if you’ve read Absolution, you’ll see that this scene doesn’t really have a whole lot to do with the plot or theme of the novel. Yes, I like it. But it really isn’t important to the work as a whole. Does that mean I’ll throw it away? Yes and no. I’ve thrown it out of Absolution, but I keep all old drafts in files on my computer (and backed up on disks). Who knows? It might very well show up in another novel. There’s a scene in Absolution that came from a draft of an earlier unpublished novel about characters who aren’t at all like those in Absolution. I won’t tell you which scene that is. I’ll only tell you that I think it works just fine with the plot of Absolution.