Some clubs are harder to join than others.
The prompt is:
THE PENNY CLUB
The train ran a tourist excursion into the mountains and back twice a day. Joey waited for the afternoon run, tucked up underneath the tracks of the trestle high above the river, ready to feel the rumble of the oncoming steam locomotive, then hang on for dear life while the train rumbled past directly over his head.
After climbing out to the middle of the span, picking his way oh, so carefully from one rusty steel beam to the next, then carefully stacking his pennies on the exact center of the curved rail, Joey nervously clutched a truss as the first wave of vibration sang through the bridge’s superstructure.
Two stacked pennies. That was the rule. The token, made from two pennies welded together and stretched to paper thinness by the weight of the engine, its tender, the four observation cars, and the caboose, was the badge and membership requirement of the Penny Club. Just one coin would be stretched so thin that any proof Old Abe had ever graced it would be completely erased. But two perfectly stacked pennies would stretch out Abe’s face like a Scream mask. And, if Joey was lucky, a drive wheel might spin a bit, giving the token a curving wave.
But two was the limit. Any more would raise the lead wheel precariously high above the rail and might pitch the whole train into the gorge below.
What the Club members hadn’t told Joey, of course, was that the engineer used the span to dump the ashpan full of hot coal ash and clinker into the river—and right onto Joey’s head.
Having to explain to his mom his singed hair and the burn holes in his shirt was well worth the badge of honor that he triumphantly lifted off the rail.
THE END
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