Eclipsing Vengeance

by Jeremy Michelson

  Corbin went silent for a long moment. So long I was about to hang up with he cleared his throat and spoke.

  Aliens are stealing my oil trains, he said.

  Seven

  Aliens are stealing my oil trains.

  It was enough. I set up a meeting between Buck and Corbin.

  Me and Buck was sitting out on the steps of Buck’s single wide, enjoying a beer and the cool evening air coming up from the river. It was mid fall and we’d still been having hot weather now and again, so the earthy river and leaf scented air was a welcome relief. I took a sip of my beer, looking down at the cottonwoods along the river. The leaves were finally turning yellow, glowing like gold in the setting sun. The earthy smell of the river and cottonwood trees mixed with the cinnamon from the gum Buck was always snapping.

  Buck waved a hand toward the horizon. Somebody’s on the road, he said.

  I squinted at the road. I didn’t see nothing. Didn’t hear nothing. But I didn’t say anything. Buck had a way of knowing stuff. Maybe it was from his sniper training, maybe it was inborn, or maybe a little something else. Whatever it was, I waited, and sure enough a minute later a cloud of dust showed up where the road met the horizon.

  Few minutes later a real expensive looking black SUV pulled up. Along with a cloud of reddish Montana dust. Fortunately the breeze took away the dust cloud before it settled over us.

  Buck and I sat there and waited. The windows of the SUV were tinted dark, we couldn’t see nothing but a shadow behind the wheel. I got the feeling the driver was looking us over, wondering if it was safe to get out.

  I tried to picture what he was seeing. From his point of view he may been thinking we was just a couple of rednecks sitting on the rickety steps of an old swaybacked single wide. He’d see Buck as some kinda skinny guy with a long, braided beard and long hair coming out from under his black cowboy hat. Buck was wearing some blue jeans and a faded denim shirt that’d seen better days. He didn’t get dressed up for nobody. The guy in the SUV wouldn’t see how tall Buck was, but once Buck stood and gave a stretch, he’d be about six three in his crocodile skin boots. Then the guy might see that, while Buck was on the thin side, he was wiry, with broad shoulders and big hands. Hands that could smack the crap out of just about anything.

  As for me, I wasn’t much to look at. I barely made six foot with my boots on, and my middle was a little soft from too much beer and bacon cheeseburgers down at Donna’s Cafe. Lots of people think I’m older than Buck ‘cause of my prematurely white hair. I keep it cropped short and under my John Deere cap most of the time. A while back, when I was still vain about it, I tried coloring it with one of them Just For Men things. Buck saw it and just gave me a smirk.

  Ya earned it. Might as well keep it, he said.

  After that I didn’t bother with it no more. Like he said, I’d earned them white hairs. Just like I earned my cut from Buck’s adventure money.

  The guy must have finally decided we looked harmless enough. The door of the fancy SUV swung open and out stepped this fella in a light gray business suit. Had a red tie and everything. Even his shoes were shiny. He looked to be about sixty, with black hair losing the battle to gray. Probably a bit under six foot and soft around the middle like me. He had thick arms and shoulders, though. Like somewhere along the ways he’d done some honest work.

  His bushy gray-black eyebrows went down and he said to us: Is one of you Buck DeHass?

  You Corbin? I said back at him.

  He squinted at me, looking to make a judgement on which one of us was which. He decided I wasn’t Buck, and turned his eyes elsewhere. To Buck.

  I’m Ken Corbin, he said, I’m the CEO of Corbin Industries. If you’re Buck DeHass, I’m told you might be able to help me with a problem.

  Buck sat there, snapping his cinnamon gum and giving ol’ Ken his usual narrow eyed look. I took a sip of my beer and waited for Corbin to look back at me. It took him a while, but his eyeballs finally came around.

  Call us skeptical, Ken, I said, But what does a big time oil tycoon such as yourself need with a couple rednecks?

  Corbin’s neck went red, the flush spread up to his face. It almost matched the red power tie he was wearing. He clenched his teeth and his fists.

  You’re the one I talked to, right? He asked.

  I shrugged. Buck and me weren’t playing games with the guy. Well, not totally. We just liked to be cautious. There’s some government types that weren’t really happy with Buck’s current career, such as it was. A couple times we’d almost been stung by an undercover type trying to figure out where Buck’s stash of alien toys was.

  I’d checked out this Corbin guy on the computer, and made some phone calls. From what I could tell, he was legit. But, like always, it was up to Buck to sniff out whether the guy was the real thing. And it was my job to piss Corbin off just enough for Buck to get a read on him.

  You boys think you’re gonna play some game on me, you’re gonna find yourselves in a world of hurt, Corbin said.

  Like what kind of hurt? I said, You got something specific, or is there just some generic kind of hurt you’re peddling?

  I thought steam was gonna come out the man’s ears. The man gave me look that woulda crisped me to a cinder if it could. Apparently he was used to people cowering and saying yes sir, more please! every time he passed gas. Maybe I’d been around Buck too long. Some of his disrespect for authority seemed to have rubbed of on me.

  But then, I’d seen what people in authority tended to do. Wasn’t much respectful in what they did.

  Am I wasting my time here gentlemen? Corbin asked.

  Maybe, I said, I’m more concerned about our time being wasted. But since it’s a nice evening and we’re just sitting here enjoying the breeze and a beer, why don’t you tell us what kind of problem you’re wanting Buck to solve.

  Corbin gave me another one of them laser stares. His jaw was working and I could see he was thinking about getting back in his fancy rig and throwing some dust our way.

  I told you the problem on the phone, he said, Didn’t you tell Buck about it?

  I did, but maybe I forgot something in the telling, I said, Buck likes to hear it direct from the horse, anyway.

  Corbin’s face went a deeper shade red. Man was gonna have a stroke if I pushed him much farther.

  You insinuating something? Corbin asked. His voice was low. Something else caught my eye. Corbin’s right hand was moving up, fingers slipping inside his coat. I did a quick glance at his suit. Sure enough, there was the slightest bulge right along his left side. Man must have had a real nice tailor to hide a weapon so well.

  Buck noticed it, too. Course, he probably spotted it right off when Corbin stepped out of his SUV. I’m a little slower on the uptake than him. But then, Buck’s mind tends to run along the lines of how things kill each other.

  You touch that gun and I’ll shove it so far up your ass you’ll need a doctor to go get it for you, Buck said.

  Corbin’s hand froze. His eyes measured us, calculating how far we could move before he could pull his gun out. We didn’t have nothing in our hands but a couple long necks, but that wouldn’t matter.

  He’ll do it, too, I said, I saw it happen to another fella one time. Guy never did sit right after that. Had to take one of them donut cushions with him wherever he went.

  Corbin looked a long time at Buck, then he lowered his hand. Something must have shifted in his head because of a sudden he broke out in a big smile. He spread his arms wide, hands open.

  Fellas, I think we’ve gotten off on the wrong foot here, he said, How about we take this back to square one?

  Buck must have made his judgement about the man because he spit his wad of cinnamon gum into his beer bottle. How he managed to survive the taste of beer and cinnamon together, I’ll never know.

  How about you tell us why you think aliens are stealing your oil, Buck said. He took a fresh stick of cinnamon gum from his shirt pocket and folded it into his mouth. Snap, snap, sn
ap. Man never gave it a rest. Must have jaws of steel by now.

  Corbin started to get that haughty look again, but then his shoulders slumped and he looked at the ground.

  You fellas got any more of that beer? He asked.

  Sure, said Buck. He rose to his feet. Come in and sit a spell and tell us a story.

  Eight

  We got ourselves situated in Buck’s living room–him on his solid oak rocker off in the corner, and me and Corbin at the opposite sides of the lopsided old couch that had come with the trailer. We each had a cold beer in hand. Corbin rubbed the bottle against his forehead. Buck still had his black hat on like he always did, and his face was shadowed. There was just there glint of his eyes, almost like they was lit from within.

  The room smelled like cinnamon and beer and Corbin’s expensive cologne. Corbin’s hands looked soft, but I could see scars on the back of his hands and his knuckles. I guessed the old boy had seen more than a couple bar fights in his time. He may have been soft now, but he wasn’t always that way. Which he proceeded to tell us before getting to the point. Buck listened, letting the man tell his story his way.

  I built my company from nothing, Corbin said. He stared down and his hands, flexed them, switched the bottle between them. I started out a roughneck down in Texas, back in the boom years. Used to wrestle pipe all day and spend half the night drinking and fighting. Seemed like a good time until one day the rig I was working hit a gas pocket and all of a sudden there was fire everywhere. Three of my buddies got turned to cinders in the blink of an eye. I got lucky cause I was working the pumps that day.

  From then on, I decided it would be better to own the pipes rather than work them.

  Corbin sketched out how he’d worked his way up to management in the company he was working for. He learned everything he could about the business, and ten years later he struck out on his own.

  Eventually he made his way up to North Dakota and got in on the ground floor of the new oil boom there. The way he described it, he was making money hand over fist, pulling oil out of the ground and shipping it by rail over to the west coast.

  That was, until his oil trains started disappearing.

  Literally, disappearing.

  When the first one vanished in the mountains of western Montana, it made the national news. They had the national guard out searching for it, but they never found so much as a speck of oil or a steel wheel. They searched the bottom of snowy ravines and flew airplanes with ground penetrating radar over the mountains for weeks. They found an old WWII fighter that crashed, but no thirty car oil train with three locomotives or the two guys that was in the lead engine.

  It was just gone.

  It made the tabloids. Corbin remembered one of his foremen tossing some rag on his desk, saying his wife had bought it. On the front was an unflattering photo of Corbin along with a picture of a train and a slobbering, bug-eyed alien reaching for it.

  Corbin laughed it off at the time.

  About a year later another train vanished.

  This time the Feds did an investigation. Their general line of thought seemed to be that Corbin had somehow made this train disappear himself, for reasons of fraud. They ran their fingers through his company’s finances, his personal finances, the finances of all his employees and their families. They found a few things to wag their fingers at, but no oil trains.

  It came near to ruining Corbin’s business. His investors were getting scared, the railroad company was suing him. The families of the lost train crews were suing him. He still had the Feds sniffing around.

  When the third train disappeared, Corbin opened up his wallet and hushed everything up. His wallet was feeling pretty light after that. The oil money was still gushing, but it wasn’t enough to keep taking hits like that. Especially if he couldn’t get his product to market.

  But he caught a small break when this last train disappeared.

  Corbin had hired guards to ride the trains. He’d outfitted the engines and the cars with video cameras, all wired to send their images directly to satellites overhead.

  Which all worked just fine. Right up to the point where the train disappeared. Corbin said he watched the videos and he saw the train chugging through a stretch of pines and then all of a sudden the videos stopped. Like someone flicked a switch, Corbin said.

  But someone noticed something funny in the video. Corbin’s tech people enhanced it and took it to Corbin.

  A hobo had been riding the train, perched up on top of the last car in the line. The video showed the hobo look at something up in the sky. He got a terrified look on his face. Then he jumped off the train. Five seconds later the video cut off.

  Corbin ordered a search for the hobo. People combed the railway where the train had gone. They didn’t find the hobo’s body, so they started combing every rail line in the country. They had a pretty good picture of him from the video. It took a couple months, but Corbin’s men finally caught up with him in Kentucky. Corbin himself flew down to talk to him. At first the guy didn’t want to talk, but a stack of hundred dollar bills changed his mind right quick.

  When the hobo told his story, Corbin got so mad he near about got up and starting whupping on the guy. He thought the hobo was trying to put one over on him. Or was just drunk or high on something. But the hobo swore on a stack of bibles that it was true.

  What he told Corbin was, a big, steely gray spaceship had dropped down out of the sky. It came so fast, the hobo thought it was going to smash right into them. That’s when he jumped off the train.

  A few seconds later a blue green light shot out of the ship. The diesel engines and the electrics went silent and all the lights went out. There was a squealing of metal and thudding, thunking of cars as they came to a stop.

  The hobo huddled in the trees and watched a bunch of little ships come out of the big one. They weren’t much bigger than hubcaps. They flew down and started sticking on the locomotives and the oil cars, about six or eight to each car. Then other ships came out of the mother ship. Bigger than the hubcap ships, they were about the size of semi trucks. One at a time these ships hovered over the oil cars. The air got wavy between the ships and the cars, then the oil cars came up off the rails and rose into the air. The other ship grappled onto it and then off they went to the big ship. This got repeated until the entire train was up in the big ship. They didn’t leave nothing.

  Except the hobo.

  He said the light went out, then the ship shot off into the sky so fast it was just a blur and then a little dot. And then nothing.

  Eventually another train came up the hill and the hobo jump aboard. He said he hadn’t today nobody about what he saw until Corbin set him down. People thought he was crazy enough riding the rails. He didn’t need to get put in no funny farm because he was seeing aliens, too.

  Corbin made the guy take a lie detector. Which he passed with flying colors.

  Corbin kept thinking back to that stupid tabloid cover with the slobbering alien snatching the train. He’d always prided himself on being practical. So he started looking into the alien thing. While aliens were a known fact because of the Blinkies and Stickmen, there weren’t many of them hanging around Earth. And the governments of the world kept real close track of them.

  Least that’s what people were told.

  99.999% of what Corbin found about aliens was pure crap, plain and simple. But that .001%…there was something there. He kept digging and eventually he come across someone who mentioned someone who had known someone who knew this guy who went after aliens.

  It took more time and money, but Corbin finally got a hold of my number.

  Which brought us back to the three of us sitting in the trailer.

  Corbin wiped his brow and slugged down the last of the beer. He set it down between his feet and rubbed his face.

  I don’t know how long I got, he said, The trains disappear roughly a year apart, and it’s been about ten months since the last one. One more train disappears and it’s gonna
break me. I don’t know what else to do. Far as I’m concerned, you’re my last shot.

  Buck sat still and stared at Corbin for a long spell. I knew Buck had done some snooping on his own about this situation. He hadn’t shared it with me, but that was normal. He liked to keep things close to his vest.

  He drummed his fingers on the arm of the sturdy wood rocker.

  Can you find me this hobo again? Buck asked.

  Corbin looked up. The arrogance was gone from his face. Now he had a look, half hope, half pleading.

  Damn right I can find him, Corbin said, I have a guy keeping tabs on him.

  Buck nodded, staring off at his boots. He stroked his beard. My heart started doing double time. Buck was interested. Maybe more than interested. If he started tugging at his ear then he was taking it. Then it would be my turn again.

  I’m gonna need to talk to him before I take your job, Buck said, I have a pretty good idea which ones is doing this.

  Corbin’s head snapped up so fast I was surprised it didn’t fly off his neck.

  You do? How do…

  Don’t ask, I said, The less you know, the better. Feds don’t like Buck much. They don’t have much use for freelancers.

  Corbin got an angry, grim look on his face. Me and the government ain’t buds, he said, They won’t get no help from me if they’re asking after you.

  Buck stroked his beard, a far away look in his eyes. We wasn’t at the ear tugging stage yet. There still musta been something he was turning over in his mind.

  Feds aren’t the problem, Buck said.

  You’ll take the job then? Corbin asked.

  Didn’t say that, Buck said,There’s something I’m wondering.

  Corbin ran his fingers through his hair and blew out a breath. What?

  Why your trains? Buck said, There’s hundreds of them oil trains going out of North Dakota every year. Yours is the only one that’s been taken. Why?

  Corbin’s face got red again. If I knew I wouldn’t be here, he said.

  Buck stared at him, his eyes glittering under the shadow of his hat. He raised his right hand and tugged at his ear.