THE TRICKSTER

by Muriel Gray

  “Want to get out and say hi to the rock?” The conductor spat the words.

  A pause.

  “Sure. After you, Wesley.”

  The delay in the reply was deliberate, the tone of voice imitating Joshua’s. “After you, son.”

  Joshua stood. It would get him. Of course it would. He would face it now, it would get him, and the thing would be done. Over.

  His eyes never leaving those of the conductor, he walked to the cab door behind his seat, pushed down the thin aluminum handle, and opened it. Cold air poured in like syrup.

  “Coming? Or are you scared, Wesley?”

  Funny thing, though, Wesley Martell was scared. He kept thinking about the rock. The living rock. Even though he knew the whole thing was bullshit, his stomach turned a loop at having to walk out that cab door and stand three feet from the craggy wall. But he was still more mad than scared, and if that crazy shit-for-brains hoghead thought he was going to back down now, then he was fucking loony.

  “Oh, sure, Tennent. It’s tricklin’ down my legs and fillin’ my boots. But I’m right at your heels, boy.”

  Joshua inhaled a lungful of warm cab air and stepped out onto the metal platform to face the rock. Martell was at his side immediately.

  Joshua waited. The two men stood silently, their backs to the light of the window, staring at the icy stone. Nothing happened. Joshua closed his eyes. Nothing. The only sound was that of the massive diesel engine chugging beneath a sheath of steel. Martell felt the cold settle on him like a silk cloak.

  Joshua opened his eyes, his breast heaving with a mixture of relief and dismay. Did he really imagine it last time? Was he crazy? He’d dreamed of this so many times in the last year, tossing and sweating in his bed as the nightmare darkness swept him away, and yet he knew there was nothing here but rock. He couldn’t “feel” any sound at all.

  He looked at Martell with naked contempt. “Happy?”

  “Pleased as a baby at a tit. I guess the livin’ rock ain’t home today.”

  He squeezed out a laugh as they re-entered the cab, closed the door and returned to their chairs.

  The throttle opened and the train made a series of metallic screeches of protest as it inched away. It was the deafening noise of the engine that prevented the three men from hearing the other sound.

  The sound of two six-foot-long icicles shattering as they splintered onto the metal platform where the conductor and engineer had stood.

  3

  Billy broke the laws of physics every time he yelled. How a holler that loud came to be emitted from such a tiny frame would have given Einstein pause to pull his mustache in thought.

  “It’s coming!”

  Sam Hunt made a mock ear trumpet with his hand and leaned toward his son. “Sorry? Didn’t get that.”

  Billy’s small oval face looked up at Sam and broke into a grin. “Sure you did. Feel. It’s coming now.”

  Sam bent into a crouch and laid a palm on the freezing rail. He could feel nothing, but Billy, they both knew, was the expert here.

  “OK, then. Bird or Queen this time?”

  Billy was thoughtful. He turned the pale yellow dollar coin over in his mittened hand and made a decision. “I’m gonna go for the duck. You put yours Queen-up.”

  He leaned forward and placed the dollar on top of the rail track as carefully as if he were handling a rod of plutonium. Sam, smiling, positioned his dollar a yard farther up the track, the profile of the Queen of England facing the direction of the oncoming train like she knew what she was in for.

  From here on the edge of town you could just make out the entrance of the tunnel, looming above the pines about three miles off, but Sam was damned if he knew how Billy could feel the vibrations of a train that far away. But he did, and here it came, the headlight emerging from the dark hole right on cue.

  “Stand back, Billy.” Sam stretched a hand out for the boy’s.

  “Aw, get real, Dad. That’s not gonna be here for at least five minutes.”

  Sam stood up and looked toward the tunnel mouth, his hand still extended to his son. “No, you’re right, Billy boy. Why don’t you just lie with your head on the rail, and if it gets cut off at the neck your Mom and I see what we can get for your bike at a rummage sale?”

  Billy sighed and rolled his eyes. He stood up and took the large offered hand, and together they moved back from the track. Still holding hands, they squatted on the snowy embankment ten feet away to wait.

  From behind the forest came the deep, long, discordant hoot of the train’s horn, filling Silver Valley with a sound so thick it resonated in the spine as well as in the ears. Sam lifted his head like a cat smelling fish.

  “You like that sound, Dad, don’t you?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I like it too.”

  Sam looked down at the face of the boy, framed now in his blue anorak hood, his black eyes glittering in a brown face. “What’s it make you think of, Billy?”

  The boy looked solemn. “You.”

  Sam was silent. He tightened his grip on the mitten containing his son’s small hand and resumed gazing up the track.

  Billy smiled up at him. “Don’t you want to know why?”

  “Do I have a choice here?”

  The boy giggled, a sound so sweet that Sam thought it might make primroses poke through the snow at their feet. “It just sounds like you, that’s all. I don’t know why.”

  “So I sound like a freight train horn, is that what you’re saying? Remind me of that if I’m ever tempted into a karaoke bar.”

  But he’d lost his son’s attention. Billy had his timing wrong for once. The train was already in sight on the long straight stretch leading into town, and it would be on top of their dollars in about a minute.

  Billy yelped like a rodeo MC and jumped to his feet.

  “How big, Dad? How big? What’s the record?” He was jumping on the spot.

  “Two and a half inches. I think.”

  “Metric, Dad. What’s that in centimeters?”

  Sam, legs drawn up to his armpits, his arms flopping lazily over the knees, looked down into the snow and laughed. “Got me there, Billy boy. Guess I’m not doing so hot today. Sound like a horn and can’t count modern.”

  The rails were singing now as fourteen thousand tons of iron tested their rivets, and when the horn sounded again, father and son nearly felt it blow their hair.

  The train was on them. They could see the men in the cab, sitting high in the dirty red-and-white-striped metal box. The engine looked like a face, the crew peering out of small windows that made eyes at either side of a huge snout housing the horsepower.

  Billy waved up at the big metal face, yelling hopelessly, his voice lost in the roar of the thundering diesel engine, unaware that Sam held the hem at the back of his anorak protectively.

  From one of the eyes in the iron face, the flesh-and-blood face of a fat man scowled down at them as the engine rumbled past. No one was going to wave at Billy today. Sam watched his son’s expression turn from excitement to disappointment as the cab slipped away and they faced nothing but a mile of coal cars, shedding ice as the sun got to work on them.

  “He didn’t see us, Dad.”

  Sam knew they’d been seen, all right. In fact he knew exactly what that fat face had been thinking, as it looked lazily out of its window and fixed its beady eyes on them. But he would do everything in his power to protect Billy from that thought.

  “Guess not. How’re the dollars doin’?”

  “Still there, I think. I can see mine. Only about twenty cars to go.”

  Man and boy waited patiently, man perhaps more patiently than boy, until the last car rolled by, and they watched the back end of the train slide away.

  Billy looked down at Sam, who still squatted in the snow, lost in thought. “Can I get ‘em?”

  “Yeah. Go for it. Remember they’re hot.”

  Billy darted forward to the rail as Sam stood and stretched his six-foot body bene
ath its down-filled jacket: by the way his son was breathily mouthing wow, he guessed they’d had a result. He joined him by the track.

  “At least eight centimeters, Dad. Look.” Billy passed the flattened disc of yellow metal to his father, eyes wide in anticipation of approval as Sam turned the hot trophy over in his gloved hand.

  “Matter that it ain’t exactly round?”

  Billy shook his head.

  “Then I guess it’s a record. Official.”

  Billy cheered and snatched back the metamorphosed dollar. He ran to where Sam had placed his. “Sorry, Dad. Yours slipped.”

  True enough. Sam’s dollar had fallen off the track before the train could do its business. He was glad the glory had all been Billy’s but he feigned a little hurt as he pocketed the unchanged coin. “Gee. This isn’t my day.”

  Billy came up to his father, put his short little arms around Sam’s padded waist and hugged him. “I love you, Dad. You can have mine.”

  If love could have weight, Sam thought that freight train would have trouble shifting his. He wanted to squeeze his son so hard his muscles ached at the restraint they were under. “I love you too, Billy. You keep the dollar. There’ll be plenty more. I’ll beat ya yet.”

  Billy broke the hug and ran through the thick snow, stumbling like a cripple to the parked car, making a noise like a train as he went.

  Sam looked at the retreating train, the distant sound of its bell clanging as it slowed up through town.

  If that driver really had been thinking what Sam suspected, he might be inclined to pull the fat bastard from the cab and kill him. But how could Sam know that Wesley Martell was innocent? Martell wasn’t thinking, That kid must be crazy if he thinks I’m going to wave at two stinking Indians. In fact, Martell hadn’t even noticed them. Nothing had been farther from his thoughts.

  “The light you can leave on all day. Light 96 CHFM. Stevie Wonder comin’ up next…”

  Sam’s hand couldn’t get to the car stereo “off” button fast enough. What the hell did Katie do with his cassettes? The radio would kick in if there was no tape in the player, and even after ten years of marriage, Sam still hadn’t learned to turn the goddamn thing off before he started the ignition. Katie always left the radio on, he should know by now. There were only two stations a car radio could pick up this far into the mountains, both of them beaming in from Calgary, and both of them made Sam long for legislation to shoot disc jockeys.

  The only solution was his cassettes, but it looked like she’d cleared them away again.

  “Dig in the glove box, Billy. Any music in there?”

  Billy opened it and rummaged around. “Nah.”

  “What does she do with them?”

  Billy smiled.

  “Help me choose some at the gas station.”

  “Sure.”

  Sam turned the car into Silver’s main street and headed for the Petro-Canada. Cruising down the wide street, its curbs piled high with wedges of old black snow, always made Sam feel like he was being covered in warm syrup. It was comforting. It was safe. It was also breathtakingly beautiful. At the eastern end of the street Wolf Mountain stabbed into the sky, a pyramid of seemingly impenetrable rock. Since Silver was nearly five thousand feet above sea level, and Wolf Mountain officially eight and a half thousand, the stone cliffs that towered over the town were pushing four thousand feet. But its fortress was a lie. The climber braving those crags would be crestfallen to discover that the mountain was all bravado and had been tamed several times over.

  Not only did the railroad run right through its guts, but its gentler western flanks were blanketed with ski trails and restaurants, hiding from the town as though Silver might notice the mountain had gone soft and lose its temper.

  But to the non-skiing tourists wandering around the sunny sidewalks, looking in gift shops and killing time until their partners came down off the slopes, Wolf Mountain was picture-postcard wilderness.

  Sometimes Sam thought the mountain looked like it sealed off the street like a gate, even though it sat at least three miles away from town. In fact, the very first night he and Katie spent in Silver together, he’d had a nightmare that he was running, lungs bursting, trying to escape from the town, or something in the town, and the mountain kept blocking his exit with a wall of living rock. Weird dream. Weird, since he loved Silver. And he loved Wolf Mountain.

  They turned into the gas station and pulled up to a pump. Vince looked up from the till and waved a solemn greeting to them through the window. Billy leaped out and ran into the shop while Sam watched the pump eating up his dollars. Next time he looked he saw Billy inside, earnestly spinning the cassette rack.

  A handwritten sign on top of the carousel read, TRUCK DRIVERS DELIGHT. ALL COUNTRY TAPES HALF PRICE. THIS WEEK ONLY. WE MUST BE CRAZY!!

  There was a guy in a felt hat at the counter who kept glancing back at Billy while Vince worked at his credit card. He mouthed a sentence to Vince and laughed. Vince smiled, then caught sight of Sam watching him. Vince saw something in Sam’s eyes and averted his gaze. The customer picked up the paperwork and left the shop.

  Billy was still spinning the cassette rack when Sam came in to pay.

  “Anything?”

  Billy looked thoughtful. “Whitney Houston?”

  Sam made a fanning motion in front of his face like he was wafting away a bad smell.

  Billy rolled his eyes and resumed his search, as Sam walked over to the desk.

  “How’s it going, Sam?”

  “Good. Good.”

  “Twenty-eight dollars.”

  Sam fished the bills out of his wallet. “What did that guy say about Billy, Vince?”

  “What guy?”

  Sam jerked a thumb in the direction of the man, strapping himself into a Chrysler beside the Wicked Witch of the East.

  Vince looked out. “Aw, nothing. Just passing the time of day. Tourist.” He held his hand out for the money. Sam put the bills on the counter.

  “What did he say?”

  Vince sighed. “He said, Am I getting old or are truck drivers getting younger? Funny guy, huh?”

  “That was it?”

  “That was it.”

  Sam looked into Vince’s eyes and was confused by the message there. Vince picked up the money and opened the till.

  “Need a receipt?”

  “No, thanks.”

  Billy joined them, his head barely making it over the counter, his hand clutching a cellophane-wrapped cassette.

  “OK, what about this one? Kenny Rogers.”

  Sam put a hand on his son’s head, still looking at the man behind the till, and tried to repair the damage. “Jesus, Vince, your taste in music stinks.”

  “We aim to please.”

  “Catch you later. Give my regards to Nancy.”

  “Will do.”

  “Billy. Put back that box from Hell.”

  Billy complied and they left the shop.

  They had driven fifty yards before Sam spoke again. “What did that guy in the shop say to Vince? You know, the guy that was in before me?”

  Billy was singing to himself and looking out the window. He stopped singing, and smiled up at Sam. “He said was he getting old or were truck drivers getting younger? He was meaning me.” Billy giggled again. “Imagine thinking a nine-year-old kid was a truck driver. Just ‘cause I was looking through the cassettes.” He laughed again, and then got back to the busy task of singing to himself.

  Sam felt sick. What the hell was wrong with him? That shit-kicking train driver had thrown him off balance by not returning Billy’s wave. Why did Sam have to look for prejudice where there was none? He was going to have to learn to trust.

  Silver was a nice town. It was full of nice people. Sam thought he should maybe write that out a hundred times when he got like this. Stop him getting so cranky.

  Yeah. It was full of really nice people.

  He turned the radio on.

  “… not too hard, not too soft, just light
. This is ‘Daniel,’ Elton John…”

  Truth. Silver was a nice town. Regular population eight thousand, twice that when the tourists poured in.

  In summer they came in camper vans, bringing the main street to a standstill while the passengers peered at maps and pointed, and the drivers constantly wheeled round in their seats, either shouting at kids in the back or looking for somewhere to park, like predators stalking game. They were a pain in the butt.

  They turned the town into a zoo.

  Winter, right now, was better. Skiers traveled by car or on tour buses, and somehow they weren’t so cheesy, didn’t wear so many shiny leisure suits, didn’t picnic in dumb places.

  But the winter trade was altogether different. Even the Japanese, who skied all season wearing identical white ski suits like Elvis’s last days in Vegas, were different from the packs that roamed Silver in the summer. The summer Japanese were on tours, herded around by fierce guides, photographing pretty much anything their diminutive leader pointed at. The winter ones came in couples. They had more money to spend, stayed in the big Canadian Pacific hotels on the edge of town, and no one minded them a bit.

  Winter also brought the ski bums, the Australian and American kids who worked just enough to buy a lift pass and ski the season away. They camped out in the staff accommodation shacks, hidden well out of sight of the tourists in the back streets, revealing their residence by the stinking T-shirts and ski suits they hung out their windows to air.

  Sometimes Sam had to take the staff minibus and pick them up; all part of the menial work as an employee of the Silver Ski Company. Other company guys minded plenty when it was their turn, but Sam kind of liked it. The Aussies were funny. In fact, last season he’d gotten real friendly with a guy called Bunny Campbell from Melbourne, who’d invited Sam, Katie and the two kids out to Australia for a vacation. They’d never go. Sam knew that. But he got the occasional card from Bunny and it made him feel cosmopolitan, knowing someone halfway around the world.