Painted Charlotte’s Critters on the rust-red flank. Lettering on the cupola reads Critter Line. The platform bell is not for stations. It is for timelines.
From the pasture the caboose is an honest railroad car: rivets, lanterns, a ladder to the roof, a round window in the door, trucks that remember freight. It sits on a short spur under the big oak as if a train once ended there and forgot to take its last car home. That is the story the neighbors are welcome to keep.
Step through the door and the floor does not agree with the outside. The aisle runs farther than the hill. Lanterns hang in a line that does not end. Hay bales, rescue crates, water barrels, a rack of lead ropes, and a row of coats in sizes no one living on the farm has worn yet — they wait in a hall that was never built with a tape measure.
The Dodecahedron is bigger on the inside. So is the caboose. One holds the old Ozark wonders. The other holds the work.
Duckster’s bay
Dolly’s personal vehicle, the Duckster, is stored inside the caboose the way a good knife is stored in a kitchen — close, oiled, not shown off. When a run needs a smaller mouth than a railroad car, Duckster goes first. When the run is finished, Duckster comes home to the same bay, under the same lantern, as if it never left the farm.
