Chapters 12-13: In Which Our Narrator Gets Run Over By a Train

Chapters 12-13: 

 While up on the trestle, Will get caught by the train and avoids death by flattening himself between the tracks so that the train runs over him but does not injure him (except for burns from the cinders and temporarily deafened from the noise). After the train stops, the mill girl he likes, Lightfoot McClendon, and his cook Queenie's husband, Big Loomis, help him and T.R. (who came out after the train) to get off the trestle. The train has to hurry into Cold Sassy because the next train is coming and might crash into them. Will promises to help Lightfoot replace the blackberries she left, that were her poor family's dinner. He quickly starts worrying about what people will say about him meeting a mill girl when the train pulls into the Cold Sassy depot and Big Loomis helps Will off the train.