Crossing the Railroad Trestle

The crossing of the GS&WM railroad trestle over the Castle River is the central ordeal of the boys' journey to find Ray Brower's body, a life-threatening test of courage that forces each of them to confront their own mortality and the reality of the danger they have chosen. The trestle, a narrow wooden structure fifty feet above the shallow, polluted river, becomes a threshold between the known world of Castle Rock and the unknown wilderness of Harlow, and the boys' decision to cross it rather than take the longer road seals their commitment to the adventure. The event culminates in a desperate, near-fatal race against an oncoming freight train, revealing the raw terror and exhilaration that define the rite of passage.

The Trestle as a Threshold

The trestle itself is a precarious structure: the rails run over a long, narrow wooden platform of six-by-fours with a four-inch gap between each pair of beams, through which the water fifty feet below is visible. On the sides, there is no more than eighteen inches between the rail and the edge of the trestle, meaning that if a train came, there was barely enough room to avoid being hit, but the wind generated by a highballing freight would surely sweep anyone off to a certain death against the rocks just below the surface of the shallow running water. The river at that point is over a hundred yards across, and the bulking forest on the Harlow side looks like a different country altogether, the pines and spruces bluish in the heat-haze of the afternoon. The water is so shallow that the tops of the cement plugs planted ten feet deep in the riverbed to hold up the trestle are visible. The river itself smells like a laundry hamper full of mildewy towels, and dirty collars of foam, the color of old ivory, cling to some of the rocks. Dragonflies stitch at the surface, laying their eggs with impunity, as there are no fish to eat them. Looking at the trestle, all four boys feel fear start to crawl around in their bellies, mixing uneasily with the excitement of a boss dare, something they could brag on for weeks after they got home—if they got home. Teddy Duchamp, with a queer light creeping back into his eyes, seems to see not the trestle but a long sandy beach, a thousand LSTs aground in the foaming waves, ten thousand GIs charging up the sand, combat boots digging, leaping rolls of barbed wire, tossing grenades at pillboxes, overrunning machine-gun nests.

The Decision and the Crossing

Teddy is the first to edge his way out onto the trestle, walking on the six-by-fours between the shining rails. Vern Tessio, uneasy, asks if anyone knows when the next train is due, but they all shrug. Gordon Lachance points out that there is the Route 136 bridge, but Teddy scoffs, saying that would mean walking five miles down the river on one side and then five miles back up on the other, taking until dark, whereas using the trestle would get them to the same place in ten minutes. Vern, looking down at the fast, bland river, objects that if a train comes, there is nowhere to go. Teddy demonstrates by swinging over the edge and holding one of the wooden supports between the rails, showing how easy it is to hang there, but Chris Chambers asks if he is going to hang that way for five or ten minutes if it is a two-hundred-car freight. Teddy accuses them of being chicken, and Chris, grinning, dares Gordon. Gordon says dares go first, and Chris widens his gaze to take in Teddy and Vern, asking if there are any pussies here. Teddy shouts no, and Vern, after clearing his throat, says no in a very small voice, smiling a weak, sick smile. They hesitate for a moment, even Teddy, looking warily up and down the tracks. Gordon kneels and takes one of the steel rails firmly in his hand, finding it almost hot enough to blister the skin, but the rail is mute. He says okay, and as he says it, some guy pole-vaults in his stomach, digging his pole all the way into his balls and ending up sitting astride his heart. They go out onto the trestle single file: Chris first, then Teddy, then Vern, with Gordon playing tail-end Charlie. They walk on the platform crossties between the rails, forced to look at their feet whether they are scared of heights or not, as a misstep would send them down to their crotch, probably with a broken ankle. The embankment drops away beneath Gordon, and every step further out seems to seal their decision more firmly and to make it feel more suicidally stupid. He stops to look up when he sees the rocks giving way to water far beneath him. Chris and Teddy are a long way ahead, almost out over the middle, and Vern is tottering slowly along behind them, peering studiously down at his feet, looking like an old lady trying out stilts with his head poked downward, his back hunched, his arms held out for balance. Gordon looks back over his shoulder, but it is too far; he has to keep going now, not only because a train might come, but because if he went back, he would be a pussy for life.

The Psychic Flash and the Race

In the middle of the trestle, Gordon has to stop and look up at the sky for a while as a dizzy feeling gets worse. He sees phantom crossties that seem to float right in front of his nose before fading out. He squats and makes a fist around the rail on his left, and it thrumms in his hand, thrumming so hard that it is like gripping a bundle of deadly metallic snakes. This is his first and last psychic flash. His bowels turn to water; a thin stream of urine runs listlessly down the inside of one thigh. His mouth opens by itself, his jaw dropping like a trapdoor from which the hingepins have suddenly been removed, his tongue plastered suffocatingly against the roof of his mouth. All his muscles are locked in a dreadful lockbolt, and he cannot move at all. All sensory input becomes intensified: he can hear a plane passing in the sky somewhere near and wishes he was on it, sitting in a window seat with a Coke in his hand; he can see every little splinter and gouge in the tarred crosstie he is squatting on; out of the corner of his eye, he can see the rail itself with his hand still clutched around it, glittering insanely. The vibration from that rail sinks so deeply into his hand that when he takes it away, it still vibrates, the nerve-endings kicking each other over and over again. He cannot hear the train yet, cannot know if it is rushing at him from ahead or behind, or how close it is. An image of Ray Brower, dreadfully mangled and thrown into a ditch somewhere like a ripped-open laundry bag, reels before his eyes. The last thought breaks the paralysis, and he shoots to his feet, screaming "TRAIN!" The last of the paralysis falls from him, and he begins to run. Vern's head jerks back over his shoulder, the surprise distorting his face almost comically exaggerated, and he sees Gordon break into a clumsy, shambling run, dancing from one horribly high crosstie to the next. Vern begins to run himself. Far ahead, Gordon can see Chris stepping off the ties and onto the solid safe embankment, and he hates him with a sudden bright green hate as juicy and as bitter as the sap in an April leaf. Gordon's left foot almost slips into the yaw beneath him, but he flails with his arms, gets his balance, and runs on, now right behind Vern. They are past the halfway point, and for the first time, Gordon hears the train, coming from behind them from the Castle Rock side of the river, a low rumbling noise that begins to rise and sort itself into the diesel thrum of the engine and the higher, more sinister sound of big grooved wheels turning heavily on the rails. Vern screams, and Gordon yells at him to run faster. Vern runs faster, a shambling scarecrow with a bare, sunburnt back, the collar of his shirt swinging and dangling below his butt. Gordon can see the sweat standing out on Vern's peeling shoulderblades in perfect little beads, the fine down on the nape of his neck, his muscles clenching and loosening, his spine standing out in a series of knobs, each knob casting its own crescent-shaped shadow. Vern is still holding his bedroll, and Gordon is still holding his. The train is very loud now, its engine deepening to a steady rumble, its whistle sounding as it crosses the junction point where they had paused to chuck cinders at the rail-flag. The freight's electric horn suddenly spanks the air into a hundred pieces with one long loud blast, and then Chris is below them and to the right, and Teddy is behind him, his glasses flashing back arcs of sunlight, and they are both mouthing a single word, the word is jump, but the train has sucked all the blood out of the word, leaving only its shape in their mouths. The trestle begins to shake as the train charges across it. They jump.

Aftermath and Significance

Vern lands full-length in the dust and the cinders, and Gordon lands right beside him, almost on top of him. Gordon never sees that train, nor does he know if its engineer saw them. He claps his hands over his ears and digs his face into the hot dirt as the freight goes by, metal squalling against metal, the air buffeting him. He has no urge to look at it. It is a long freight, but he never looks at all. Before it has passed completely, he feels a warm hand on his neck and knows it is Chris's. When it is gone, Gordon raises his head like a soldier coming out of his foxhole at the end of a day-long artillery barrage. Vern is still plastered into the dirt, shivering. Chris is sitting cross-legged between them, one hand on Vern's sweaty neck, the other still on Gordon's. When Vern finally sits up, shaking all over and licking his lips compulsively, Chris asks if they could use a Coke. They all think they could. The crossing of the trestle is the moment that transforms their adventure from a lark into a serious, life-threatening ordeal. It is the first time they truly confront the possibility of their own deaths, and the shared terror and survival forge a bond between them that is both profound and fragile. The event is later recalled by Gordon as a key part of the "rite of passage" and the "magic corridor" that their journey represents, a fundamental event that could not be approached by hitchhiking but had to be walked, step by step, on the twin rails themselves.