Creating Fiction from History: Railroad Wreck

It was a load crash. Only a few people had heard it at the time because, well, there were not a lot of people around.

Old Jimmy Hennson and his two sons rushed out of their little farmhouse across the tracks. Mrs. Van Oswald, the widow, came out of her small cabin near the tree grove with her four boys.

And there was us: my father, my mother, my five siblings, and me. Penelope Grange. We had the field on the other side of old Jimmy Hennson and between us now was a small crash of wood metal and wires. I was not sure how the crash had happened, to be honest. Any time I heard a train coming...