Road Going Nowhere

Since the houseboat was chugging and spluttering way behind us, along the way Niz took a detour to the Road Going Nowhere -- an old train tunnel that had once been high up on the valley wall, but was now flooded and just a low curving arc that rose about six feet above the surface of the water...the curved walls and ceiling maybe four feet away on all sides. It was cold and dark and Niz was nothing but a tense silhouette against the bright wash of Kentucky sun at the other end of the tunnel. We were deathly quiet -- maybe nervous about hitting a wall and ruining the boat, but maybe more than that, too. We were floating through a train tunnel from a distant era now buried, and how many people had memories of that tunnel from before? How many had been breathtaken at the view from their carriage as the train chugged along the high valley wall above the meandering Cumberland River, the sun sprinkled over the tops of the trees and glinting off the tendril of water below?

I think we all felt the ghosts trying to tell us, and when Niz finally got to the other end, he gunned it, and none of us ever mentioned that tunnel again.

Three Dances