A man went to work on the railroad as his father and grandfather and all his uncles had done. He liked the life. He liked the long night rides. He enjoyed the camaraderie with his fellow workers - all relying on each other for their safety. He liked waving at strangers in their cars, running alongside the train across half Nebraska. He loved the pleased smiles of children in car windows.
But one icy night at Winnemucca he slipped and went down between two cars. They weren't moving fast. Just fast enough to take off both his legs.
The man was devastated. During the months he was in the hospital he raged at himself and wept through the long nights thinking what a useless, dependent lump he would be.
The people from the Union said he would be looked after, but what did that mean?
Someone from the Company came with oranges and cigarettes and asked him if he had any ideas for being retrained.
``I never was a paper work man,'' he said. He said he did not want to relocate.
He was fitted with fake legs but he hated them. They made him look like a fool, he said.
The railroad said they'd found a job for him, and he wouldn't have to leave town. They arranged for him to learn the shoemaker's trade from an old woman who wanted to retire and sell her business.
In a few years he took over the business repairing boots and shoes.
The ladies of the town loved the delicate kid skin dance slippers he made. A girl named Madeleine said a pair of his slippers taught her to dance. She'd never danced in her life until she put them on, she said, and now she went dancing almost every night and wore out a pair every month.
When the cobbler made a pair of shoes, he would put his non-existent feet into them as he cut and nailed, and he could feel where to cut, where to nail to produce the best balance, the most comfort for the future wearer. His non feet did not mind in the least being those of a dancing girl, a toddling child or an old man with bunions. His shoes were sought after for fifty miles around.
When the man retired he missed his feet for the first time in years. He put on his fake legs and trained himself to walk again. He did quite well though he did look like a fool and he knew it.
The truth is he no longer cared.
``We're all fools one way or another,'' he said.