Normal

by Scott J. Holliday

  IN COLFAX. WILL BRING HIM BACK.

  One to Delmont Graves’ office in Hale:

  IN COLFAX. TELL THE BOY HIS FATHER LOVES HIM.

  He’d wanted to add more to the second note. A voice in his head had pleaded with him to relay an apology to Gloria, but he didn’t want to be sorry in print. Printed words carried a different weight than spoken ones. Printed words persisted. When needed they were there, waiting to remind you, lest ye forget. They were a record of evidence, a weapon in a drawer. If he was going to be sorry, he wanted it in person. He wanted her ears to hear his voice, her eyes to see his face, and then he wanted disarmament. What’s more, he couldn’t be sure his father-in-law would deliver the message, or, considering her typical state of drunkenness, that any message to his wife would be properly understood.

  Now the day’s last sunrays reached through the windows, catching dust swirls in the act. The train station crowd had thinned out. Paul went to the ticket office. The clerk wore a green hat with a snubbed brim. He was sweating through a collared white shirt and his fingers were long and lean. His nails needed clipping.

  “Help you, sir?” the clerk said as he thumped a stamper down on some paperwork.

  “Any freighters come through this station?” Paul said.

  The clerk squinted at him. Freight-hopping was a nagging problem for the fledgling train industry. Any man at a ticket booth asking about freight trains was no doubt a suspect. A stupid suspect, maybe, but a suspect just the same.

  The clerk lifted his chin and looked down his nose at Paul. “Back and forth to Chicago,” he said. “Why?”

  “When?” Paul said.

  The clerk mulled on it for a moment, then he smiled. “There are plenty of commuter trains to Chicago, sir. A deal at ten dollars a ticket.”

  “The freighter,” Paul said through gritted teeth. “When?”

  The clerk tapped a finger on the wooden ledge before him. “Might be better if I report a freight-hopper than-”

  Paul slammed a fist on the ledge. The stamper hopped up and flipped over on its side. The clerk came to attention. “Every night,” he said. “Got one coming in soon. Running a bit late.”

  Paul went back to the telegraph booth. There was no message from Graves, but the warden had responded:

  YOUR JOB DEPENDS ON IT.

  Paul watched the ticket clerk disappear into the back. Good. He’d alert security of a potential freight-hopper. If Roy was out there, they might find him. He could take him off their hands and that would be that.

  He went outside and came to the rail yard. Dusk had turned the horizon a deep red. The yard was a flat expanse, gravel in all directions. Smelled like coal and fire. A forest began a quarter-mile down the tracks. A Chicago Mercantile train pulled in, trailing smoke. Workers moved quickly upon it, loading and unloading.

  The freighter.

  Paul moved along the side of the train toward the forest, away from the thickest hive of workers. The boxcars went on for what seemed like a half-mile before terminating at the caboose engine, now heating up to become the forward engine. Connected to the freighter was one boxcar without a door.

  The rail yard workers moved in and out of the boxcars. Paul sliced through them and continued down the length of the train, passing car after car to find them increasingly loaded, closed, and locked. A few more boxes and this train would be moving out.

  He came to the forest’s edge. Hardwoods mixed with evergreens, spreading out in three directions, the train station at his back. The tracks continued into the distance, bisecting the green and gray. Paul scanned back and forth, looking for signs of human life between the trees, but it was pointless. Impossible to see through the thick undergrowth with so little daylight left. He looked back toward the station. A moment ago the yard had been overflowing with workers. Now it was silent and nearly deserted. One man in overalls slapped a hat against his thigh before disappearing around a corner.

  “Whatcha doin’ out here?”

  Paul turned to the voice. A man with a revolver stood before him. The gun’s barrel was pointed at the ground, but the man’s demeanor was threat enough.

  Paul had expected someone official, a man with a badge. This man was clearly of the woods. He wore no badge on his chest, but a silver cross. He was bearded and dirty. His hat was creased and ripped. His teeth were discolored and of varying agendas. His wide nose had a crook in the middle. Paul imagined a fist might have broken the nose, and that the man who’d had the stones to throw the punch was probably dead.

  There were two other men, deeper into the woods, undoubtedly kin to the first. Brothers. Each one could be a ghost of the dead man on the Colfax road. The two at the cart were wearing crosses similar to the first, but otherwise they were a study in contrast. The one on the left was a twin to the woodsman before Paul, but the one on the right was a different breed altogether. His clothes were impeccable, his demeanor relaxed, his eyes as vacant as porcelain knobs. He looked an official of some kind. Someone who makes the rules, not someone who breaks them. He held a scatter-gun by the shortened stock, broken open and resting over his shoulder. A one-horse cart stood beyond the two, and between them, on the ground, there was a black chest.

  “Back off,” the nearest man said.

  “I-”

  The train whistle screamed, dousing all other sound.

  The revolver man went back to his brothers. He and the other scruffy one picked up the black chest. The scatter-gun man trailed them, looking somewhat disinterested as they loaded the black chest into the boxcar. The revolver man hopped in. The second scruffy one stayed on the ground while the scatter-gun man hopped effortlessly aboard the boxcar as the train chugged and started moving.

  The remaining brother gave Paul a long, hard look before heading back toward the one-horse cart.

  21

  The train whistle screamed.

  Roy was a hundred yards up from the open boxcar, crouched in the woods, rubbing his spoon and watching the shadowy figures at the edge of the rail yard. The Ledger boys were threatening his old friend. Roy envisioned Frank Ledger blowing a hole through Paul’s chest, just like the man he’d killed on the Colfax road. The thought made him touch the revolver on his waist, but he stayed put, reminding himself that Paul was surely here to escort him back to Redmine.

  No chance at that. The only way Roy would go back to prison was as a bloodstain on his would-be captor’s clothes.

  Two of the Ledger boys loaded a black chest into the open car. A treasure of fine silverware, no doubt. They struggled with the weight as they hefted it aboard. A fortune in waiting, Roy thought. The big city would ingest their offering and spit money back at them like a riverboat payoff. All they needed to do was arrive on the Lake Michigan shore and open the chest in front of fine people.

  One brother stayed on the ground while the train jerked into motion. The mechanical arms pushed the wheels around. The engine blew off steam. The remaining brother faced down Paul before heading back into the woods.

  As much as Roy wanted to ditch any pursuer, he felt good knowing it was Paul. It was comforting that a friend was near, even if that friend meant to imprison him. It would be the same as their childhood games. Back then Paul was always the hero and Roy the villain. Dozens of times a stolid Paul walked the wayward Roy back to some imaginary prison at the end of a hazy summer day.

  Roy stepped into the open where Paul could see him. They stared at each other, a hundred yards apart, the train accelerating beside them. Dust and leaves lifted and twisted in the wind. Roy smiled. From such a distance he couldn’t see well enough to know if Paul smiled back, but he could see that his old friend nodded in response.

  He took the nod as Paul’s guarantee—I’m coming. He tapped Paul’s father’s revolver with his index finger—you better be. He lifted his hand from the gun and formed a thumb-finger pistol. He aimed it at Paul and dropped the hammer. Pow.

  Paul’s shadowy figure reached up and clutched its heart.

  The tra
in had gained momentum. The number seventeen boxcar nearly passed Roy before he reached out to the open doorway. His hand clamped the steel frame like a vise. He pulled his light body aboard in a flash of motion and knelt in the doorway. The wind buffeted his hat and cooled his skin.

  The Ledger boys stood against the far wall, bookending their treasure. The silver crosses on their chests winked in the darkness. Frank Ledger looked at Roy with his head cocked sideways like a curious dog. The other man reached for his revolver. Roy smiled when he heard a howl outside the train.

  The sound had jumped from Paul’s lungs without warning. He held the howl as long as his breath lasted, watching the train get smaller as it pulled away. It clipped toward the big city with a fight in its belly, and already Paul was far behind. He wondered if he should keep on. He might retain his job, sure, but he could always find another. And why not let Roy live his remaining days in peace, should he survive his encounter with the Ledger boys? Was it regaining his father’s gun that drew him? Could a simple object hold so much value that he’d trek across the country, re-imprison an old friend, and leave his wife and son behind just to retrieve it?

  He walked back to the train station and checked with Western Union for word from home. There was none. He pulled the warden’s message from his pocket and read it again.

  YOUR JOB DEPENDS ON IT.

  He squeezed the paper in his fist, felt it crinkle. The paper would never be perfect again. It would always have those ridges now, those scars. He sent another message to Delmont Grave’s office:

  ON TO CHICAGO. ILLINOIS CENTRAL.

  Paul walked to the ticket office thinking of his son, Jacob, sitting on their front porch swing, waiting. Waiting to play games and laugh. Waiting to grow up. Waiting and watching for dad with those bright blue eyes. Pain emerged from his back and moved into his neck. The train he found was an overnight commuter to Chicago. His ticket offered no sleeper car, but Paul was certain it wouldn’t matter; sleep would not likely come to him this night.

  22

  Frank Ledger stayed his brother’s revolver with a gesture.

  Roy crouched in the doorway with two hands flat on the rusted floor. The train clacked on the rails. The weight of the car shifted back and forth like a seagoing vessel. The front of the car was empty, the backside filled with wooden crates, each one numbered and marked with black paint, one to twelve.

  Frank Ledger leaned forward, his head still cocked sideways. He blinked. There was no fear there, just simple fascination. “What are you?”

  Roy said nothing. His hands throbbed for action. His legs ached to propel him forward. He wanted to bite and kick and punch. Outside a ringing station bell shot by the doorway.

  “It’s the devil,” Steven Ledger said.

  Frank ignored his brother. Addressing Roy, he said, “Do you speak?”

  “It’s the devil,” Steven cried, “can you not see that, brother? It’s here to steal back the salesman’s silver.” He cocked the hammer and raised his gun at Roy. “That silver was from our mountain.” With his off hand he gripped the silver cross on his chest and thrust it at Roy. “The salesman had no claim, devil. Be gone.”

  Roy cocked his head to meet Frank Ledger’s gaze at the same curious angle he was receiving.

  Ledger smiled. “The devil,” he said, “the proud spirit, cannot endure to be mocked.”

  Roy nodded. His hands closed into fists. His jaw ached from tightness, his tongue found the gap where the fat guard had knocked out his teeth. If there was any animal in him, any mystical gator blood, it was well in control.

  Frank Ledger’s eyes grew wide with revelation and, Roy thought, some ghastly level of glee. “You’re from Redmine,” Ledger said. “You’re on the run.”

  Roy exploded forward with both fists against the man’s chest. Ledger’s back slammed the boxcar wall. Roy got a face full of beard. He smelled soap powder. He drove the crown of his head under the man’s chin, heard clicking teeth and a groan. He seized the scatter-gun by the barrel and ripped it from Frank Ledger’s hands. He spun and dropped the scatter-gun’s short stock on Steven Ledger’s shoulder like an axe. A bone busted with a satisfying crack. The revolver clattered against the floor. Steven staggered backward, gripping his shoulder. His lips curled with rage. Roy snatched up the revolver and pointed one weapon at each of his adversaries.

  For a moment everyone stood still, just breathing. The train clacked on.

  Roy nodded at the door, insisting them toward it.

  “It can’t kill us both,” Steven said. “Let’s rush it.”

  “Quiet,” Frank Ledger said. “This convict won’t hesitate to end you.”

  He was wrong about that, but Roy didn’t mind Frank Ledger’s way of thinking.

  “It ain’t no convict,” Steven screamed, “and it ain’t no man. It’s the devil, brother, have you gone blind?”

  Roy gestured toward the door again. The brothers moved into the windy opening while Roy kept their own guns leveled on them.

  “You’ve lost your way,” Steven said to his brother. “I knowed it’s been coming a long time.” He cringed at his shoulder pain. The break was bad. The shoulder sagged down and away from his neck and there was a cleft in the middle, the broken bone pressuring the skin. “I’d rather die in God’s glory than let this beast steal directly from Jesus’ ha-”

  Frank Ledger shoved his brother off the train.

  Steven bounced and rolled in the cinders along the train tracks. There’d be more broken bones, but likely he’d live.

  “My brother often loses himself,” Frank said.

  Roy nodded toward the open door.

  “The name’s Frank Ledger,” he said, removing his bowler hat and taking a small bow.

  Roy moved forward with the scatter-gun, leveling the barrel just inches from Frank Ledger’s nose, the barrel holes as close as spectacles. Up close Roy could see the man’s eyes were bloodshot red and sickly looking. Roy touched the trigger, felt the mechanical pressure as it began to move.

  Frank Ledger said, “Just wanted you to know the name of the man who’s going to deliver you to justice.”

  “Get in line,” Roy said, but only the wind heard him; Frank Ledger was already gone.

  Paul grasped a brass handle and pulled himself on to the diner car. The aisle was carpeted and the ceiling was a landscape mural. Beneath the mural there were advertisement boards. All of them were filled, but with only one repeated ad: Come See Edison’s Electric Light! New Year’s Eve in Menlo Park. The hectographed image next to the words looked like a closed question mark. There was a spire on top and a looped filament in the middle. The contraption was called a light bulb, and it was said to run on electricity.

  The train, however, was still lit by oil lamps. Each side of the car was lined with four-person booths—two benches squaring off around a wooden table—and they overflowed with people. Tourists. Only a few booths remained open. Paul squeezed into one and sat on the aisle side of the bench, hoping to fend off anyone who might want to sit with him.

  He found himself surrounded by the rich. Colfax was a fanciful destination for those who had too much time and too much money. They called it quaint and considered it rough, having no idea what the latter word really meant. They came and went in droves, spent money on things they would soon forget they owned, and complained about poor service behind the closed doors of barely suitable hotel rooms. Gaudy hats riddled the car. Each one hovered in a fragile state upon their women’s heads. Men in impeccable clothing checked pocket watches to see that the train was running a few minutes late. They shook their heads with a kind of disdain only the opulent could muster. Paul’s ears caught phrases like these people and ingratitude. He closed his eyes and sagged low in his seat, hoping to gain some rest.

  “Well, I just know he’s here somewhere.”

  Paul’s eyes snapped open; the voice was familiar. He sat up and searched the car slowly, scanning front to back.

  The little girl’s voice sounded out
again, “I don’t know how on earth we got separated, but he told me if we do, just meet him in the diner car.”

  She was behind him. Paul turned, gritting teeth as he did so.

  “Daddy!”

  Sandy released a rich woman’s hand. She bolted down the aisle to where Paul sat, hopped into his lap, and hugged him. Begrudgingly, Paul returned her embrace. She smelled faintly of the woman’s perfume.

  “She’s yours then?”

  Paul looked up to see a man standing over him. His face showed the same contrived displeasure as Paul’s father-in-law, plus the same style of clothing, the same stance. If the man wasn’t a lawyer, Paul wasn’t Cajun. He stood next to the woman that’d been holding Sandy’s hand. She was beautiful, young, and kept.

  Sandy wriggled over Paul’s lap to find the inside half of the bench. She sat down pretty and pleased.

  “Please don’t be upset with my daddy, sir,” Sandy said, “I tend to run off and get lost. It’s my own fault.” She batted her eyes. “I’m like a dog that just won’t heel.”

  “And a mouth that just won’t close,” the lawyer said. “Stay quiet while I’m talking with your father.”

  “Now just hold on,” Paul said.

  “Keep an eye on your brood,” the lawyer said. He pointed at Sandy. “And keep her quiet.” He gripped his woman’s arm and they turned away. Over his shoulder he said, “No need to repay me for her ticket.”

  Paul plucked off his hat and grabbed his coin bag. He stood and began untying the leather string, but stopped. His own ticket had cost him the lion’s share of his coin. The cost of Sandy’s ticket was more than he had to give. He slumped back into his seat as the rich man and woman took seats of their own, just down the aisle, the man with his back to them, the woman facing them. She was striking. Crimson hair and emerald eyes. The kind of woman you could watch dance or scrub a floor with equal fascination, though Paul doubted she had ever scrubbed a floor. She smiled at Paul, by way of apology.