Suddenly, the president-elect hears a loud crack as one of the train’s axles breaks in two. The passenger car derails and tumbles twenty feet down a rocky embankment. Screams. Hysteria. Bodies hurled from their seats. The car “broke in pieces like a cigar box,” the New York Times will state. America’s new president-elect climbs out of the wreckage as it rolls to a halt. He is badly bruised but otherwise unhurt. Jane is distraught but not injured. Yet Franklin Pierce cannot find his son. He frantically searches the carnage, believing Benny might have been ejected from the train.
