by Jessie Haas
A nervous pair of pointed ears appeared in the doorway. Shod hooves rang on the floor, and the mule dealer’s voice, dark as black coffee, spoke reassurance. “Easy, lad. That’s the way—leave the ramp. I’ll want to get him in and out. No, he won’t need tying. I’ll ride with him.”
No, Phin thought. No.
He pressed into the corner, clawed his fingers into the smooth angle of the walls. There was no gap. This enormous seamless box had just one opening, now guarded by the mysterious man who had followed him all day.
The walls squeezed him. His pulse drummed in his ears, a tiny sound, a dense sound, on and on and—
“Fraser?”
At the car door, incredulous; Plume again. “What are you doing?”
“Taking the cars north, Plume. Like yourself.”
“Odd way to do it, all of a sudden.” Plume’s voice was cold with suspicion.
“Maybe I killed that man this morning,” Fraser said. “Maybe I’m on the run.”
“Then you’re drawing a lot of attention to yourself.”
“Reckless, could be. Fool, could be. Or could be I’m a man who’ll do what he takes a notion to, and doesn’t care to be questioned. However,”—Fraser’s tone, which had become dangerous, lightened—“they’re wanting to move their train, and here’s you and me holding them up. Will you ride a ways with me? Pleasant pile of hay here, and an extremely pleasant flask.”
“I have a flask my own self,” Plume said.
“Two’s company.”
Deep in his cocoon of torment, Phin waited for the second refusal. It had to come. Plume must walk away. He must….
“Well then, I will,” Plume said, with sudden, entirely unbelievable friendliness. He shouted to someone far off: “Ridin’ in with Fraser and the horse. My ticket’s punched!”
No, Phin thought. No—
There was a scritch of gravel, an impact, a grunt, as Plume pulled himself into the car. Phin’s skin prickled, hairs rising all down his back. Sweat broke on his forehead. Like his leg, his spirit had a decision to make.
He laughed—weakly, just one helpless, nearly silent breath, and sagged in the corner, shaking his head, as Dennis’s voice echoed in his mind.
All right, then. Come on in if you’re a mind to!
10
LINING OUT
The whistle wailed. Chuffing, the train gained momentum.
“Down,” Fraser said at the bottom of the crate wall. “Aye, I mean it! Down.” A thud, a horse-sized grunt. “Good lad!”
“Like a dog!” Plume said. “He laid down for you just like a dog!”
Really? In the three weeks the horse had stayed at Dennis’s, Phin had never caught him sleeping. He was too alert. He’d be on his feet, shaking straw off his sleek sides, before anyone could get near. It would be worth seeing a horse like that folded up on a boxcar floor.
But Phin wasn’t tempted to look. He leaned back in the corner, speed dragging at him as the train lined out across the dark land.
The sides of the car shook, the crates shook, faster and faster until the shakes smoothed to a steady vibration. The wheels clacked. Through the partly open door, moon shadows leaped on the walls. The train plunged on. Faster and faster, it said, in a hundred clacking, creaking, rattling voices. Faster and faster, fasterandfaster.
And louder. Phin hadn’t imagined it would be like this—the clacking, the whistle’s blare, the walls shuddering fit to shake their rivets out. A moving train was a forest of sound.
Sheltered within it, he stretched his legs. Probably it made a noise. Probably the cloth of his pants hissed or rasped. Probably his boot heels thumped on the crates. It didn’t matter. Not even he could hear it.
He passed a hand down his shinbone. There was an enormous goose-egg swelling, like the one on his arm. He’d had hurts like these before and thought nothing of them. These injuries came in life-and-death struggle and seemed more important, but really they were just bruises—
No. Don’t think of that—Engelbreit’s head hitting the stove. He was safe for the moment; he must stop frightening himself.
He reached inside his shirt for his bundle. Bacon fat had soaked through the bandanna. He felt a slick of it on his skin. The biscuits were crumbly. He stuffed one in his mouth; salty and smoke flavored from its daylong association with the meat, better than anything he’d ever eaten.
Dry, though. He’d last had water when? Jimmy’s bottle, at the lip of the Dog Hole, a long time ago.
“Nay,” Fraser said below, and went on. To make out his words, Phin had to do the special thing with his ears that he’d learned at Murray’s. It was a kind of relaxing, not fighting the unwanted sounds, but letting them pass like water—water again!—through a sieve, catching only what he wanted. Up here he did what he couldn’t at Murray’s, cupped a hand behind his ear and pointed it at Fraser the way a horse would.
He netted Fraser mid-sentence. “—won’t be buyin’ mules just now, I’m thinkin’. They’ll wait till things quiet down. But there’s an outfit up north may be interested.”
“What outfit?”
“That’d be telling.”
“So tell,” Plume said.
At Murray’s his voice would make a little silence around it. From across the room Murray would catch Phin’s eye, jerk his head toward the back door. Phin would drift that way and be out of the room before anything started. He’d heard many fights at Murray’s, but rarely seen one.
Fraser broke the dangerous pause. “I’m like you,” he said. “Not answerable to myself alone. The man I work for wouldn’t want me telling his business to all and sundry.”
It was the equivalent of saying, I know you’re a Sleeper. Not wise, not wise at all. Everyone could know these things as long as everyone pretended not to. Fraser should know that. He’d only spent three weeks in Bittsville, but he was no stranger to coal country ways.
“Drink?” Fraser asked.
“Got my own,” Plume said. “Thanks anyway!” The forced lightness in his voice made the hairs rise on the back of Phin’s neck. Plume was suspicious. He wanted to know more before he did something irreversible. “Fine horse,” he said. “If your mules are anything to compare—”
“They are, as mules go.”
“Don’t speak ill of mules. There’s some down there could run the mine themselves.”
“Too smart,” Fraser said. “Smarter than horses. They won’t work themselves to death like a horse will. Always wondered why they’ll go into a mine at all.”
“We go,” Plume said. “It’s not so bad.”
“I’d rather slave in a cotton field under the sky and a whip than go down in a mine. Not bad?”
“We’re tougher than you Scots, aren’t we? Make the world go. It’s us down there with black powder and picks movin’ this train right now. The world rides on the backs of Irishmen.”
The open doorway dimmed as if they’d passed into a wood. Fraser said, “More than just Irish. There’s all kinds of folk bent down with toil. English, even.”
“English?” Plume’s voice was cold and vibrant. “You take your share of risks, mule man.”
Were weapons drawn? If they fought, someone would die. There was no escape in this moving box, no chance to miss.
But Fraser, like a man who pulls a cat’s tail, then strokes her when she scratches, said, “Nay, I meant nothing by it. I’m all for peace. War makes a man want peace and quiet, don’t you agree?”
“How’d you know I fought in the war?”
Fraser sighed theatrically. “A guess. Just a guess. Come, man, lay your hackle! I only want someone to talk to. The horse is a braw lad, but he’s no much for conversation!”
“Fair enough,” Plume said shortly. “What d’you say to a game of cards? Is there light enough?”
Apparently there was. Their voices dropped, and Phin could no longer make out the words. He moved his tongue in his dry mouth to work up a little spit. Water would be good.
They’d poured water f
or the stallion. He remembered the crash of it coming at him through that haze of insanity. It was down there now, dark surface shivering with the movement of the train. Black, with silver moonlit ripples. The stallion, whenever he wanted, could dip his muzzle in and flood the thirsty crevices of his mouth. Coolly it would glide down his throat—
Stop thinking about water.
He took the bundle on his lap and turned its contents over. Three biscuits left, and a lot of crumbs. He licked his finger, dampening it, and pushed it onto them to pick them up, cleaning out the whole bandanna that way. The bacon taste was strong and there was some other taste, too, wild yet mellow. At first he thought it was the wood of the matchbox. He put the box in his pocket so it wouldn’t get greasy, felt for more crumbs, counted his biscuits again—three, and one so small it was hardly worth saving.
He picked it up and suddenly knew this wasn’t a biscuit. He sniffed; tears started in his eyes.
It was a plug of tobacco—the cheap kind that breaker boys chewed, and mule boys. He’d seen everything Mrs. Lundy put into this bundle, could see in his mind’s eye each motion of her hands. This had been slipped in later. Only Jimmy could have done that.
When Jimmy’d gone into the breaker, he’d started chewing. All the boys did. Tobacco juice kept you from coughing, made the juices flow. Man enough to work, man enough to chew—that was the idea.
Phin had tried it. It made him puke. It made everyone puke until they got the hang of it, but Phin quit and Jimmy kept on, and that was the difference between Phin Chase and Jimmy Lundy. Jimmy, in Phin’s place, would—
Would what? Phin opened his eyes. What could Jimmy do that he wasn’t doing? Traveling with his enemy like this, even Jimmy Lundy would lay low, wait his chance to get away.
So he was doing all right, maybe. He turned the tobacco in his fingers.
Makes the juices flow.
He licked it, gingerly. Springs and fountains opened in the back of his mouth and he nearly gagged. He swallowed, swallowed again—
“Slowing down?” Fraser. The voices were suddenly clearer.
“We’re never there yet!” Plume said. The train came to a slow, sighing stop. The quiet was astonishing. Then she began to creep backward.
“Ah,” Fraser said. “They’re pulling onto a spur to let another train pass. Aye, lad, get up!”
The stallion’s hooves scraped and thudded on the floor. Then Phin heard Fraser walking him in a circle, giving him the chance to stretch his legs. To Plume he said, “So they took you off to fight, you were saying, and you just a lad?”
“Made a man of me!” Plume sounded bitter.
Fraser said, “I don’t know what it made of me.”
“Conscripted?”
“Volunteered.” Fraser laughed shortly. “Hard to imagine when you’ve got to the other end of it, but there’s no fathoming the notions in a boy’s head. So I’m only a little surprised at that murder back there. I know what boys are capable of.”
“When I get through with him,” Plume said, “that boy won’t be capable of anything.”
Every atom in Phin’s body went still.
“Saw him around the stable,” Fraser said after a pause. “Quiet, good with the horses—well, this one liked him, and he doesn’t take to many.” The horse had stopped moving; he started it walking again. “And yet he killed a man—do you believe that?”
Phin heard the sound of Plume’s deep-drawn breath. “Engelbreit drove men he shouldn’t drive and fired men he shouldn’t fire.”
“This lad won’t have killed him for that,” Fraser said. “He was never—”
Plume interrupted him, in a voice that shook with fury. “I don’t make war on kids. She knows that. I meant for him to run. But when I catch him now, kid or no kid—I’ll cut his throat.”
11
WATER
The approaching train shrieked. The horse dropped manure, and Fraser said, “Step away from the door and I’ll kick these out. We’ll have a pleasanter ride.”
There were scuffing sounds. Fraser went on. “You’ll not be content to just take back your property, then? Or turn the boy over to the law?”
“No.” Plume’s voice steadied, vibrant with anger. “If I’m the kind of man she says, I’ll be that man. Double that man. I’ve held myself to a standard—well, what good did that do me when she won’t even—”
The other train shrieked again, passing close, buffeting their car with wind and drowning Plume’s words. But Phin didn’t need to hear more. He could see the scene, the smoke and lamplight and Margaret on her stool nursing that slow first whiskey. Did they tell of the killing first, brag of their strange mercy, not killing but framing him, letting him run? Or did Margaret start it, asking if Plume had gotten his wallet, she gave it to Phin Chase to leave here?
However it started, it ended with the eagles tearing at each other. Margaret must have flown out bitterly at Plume in front of everyone. She might not care about Engelbreit, but she was fond of Phin and she’d loved his mother, and that was the end of Ned Plume.
The train passed in a last gust of wind and noise. In the sudden quiet Fraser said, “So the wallet’s the least of it, even with that in it.”
“What’s your meaning, mule man?” Plume’s voice was like steel. “What should a wallet have in it besides money?”
“Six men’s lives. You said yourself—”
“What surprises me about you,” Plume said, “—and I don’t like surprises, mind!—is how you keep asking questions. Most people in coal country learn it’s not healthy.”
Fraser hadn’t asked a question, Phin was almost sure. He’d only said things, provocative things, like a man slipping a ferret down a rat hole to see what would come out.
Plume said, “Let’s talk mules. Where’s your jack stock from? What you got for mares?”
“The jacks are out of Maryland—I’d rather have Kentucky, but you know how it is. The mares, though—”
Fraser went on about his mules, making them sound like the best mules ever to set foot in a mine, just as a real salesman would. But were there any mules? Phin doubted it.
He touched the roll in his pocket. Worth the lives of six men? But all he had was money, right?
The train began to move. Soon it was plunging cross-country behind its own self-important shout—Out of my way! Out of my way.
The men grew quieter. Miles passed—miles of sketching escape plans that would have worked perfectly, if only Phin didn’t need a clear path to the door; miles of licking the tobacco, trying to pretend that quenched a thirst; miles of dozing, half dreaming, negotiating the quicksand complexities of coal country only to jerk awake to the sound of a gunshot, and remember.
Finally the whistle blew, the brakes made their long silvery squeal, and the train came to a stop.
A station; yellow lantern light made the shadows blacker. Irish voices called back and forth. Something thumped on the roof above Phin’s head, and footsteps walked along the top of the car, then jumped to the next one. The horse snorted and scrambled up. “Shh,” Fraser said. “It’s only noise.”
Outside the car door someone said, “Plume? Ned Plume?” Phin recognized the voice. Occasionally men from high in the organization visited Murray’s, men who cast silence before them like other men cast a shadow. Phin couldn’t put a face to this voice, but he’d heard it; heard, and been motioned out of the room by a jerk of Murray’s head.
Plume answered carelessly. “Yeah. Here.” He jumped down from the boxcar, and his voice was lost in station bustle.
“How long are we stopping?” Fraser asked someone outside.
“Five minutes, ten at the most.”
“I need fresh water for the horse. Here.” Probably he handed the man a bill. Phin touched the money in his pocket. Money could pave the way—if only he could get out!
The stallion seemed to feel the same. His hooves rang and banged on the bare wood floor, and Fraser kept turning him from the door.
The man ret
urned. Water crashed into the tub. Fraser said, “They’re looking for a boy, right? Overhead?”
“Overhead, under the cars—they’d have looked in this hay, only Plume himself was riding on it. Kid went south, likely, or he came through on an early freight.”
“What’s he look like?”
You know what I look like! Phin thought.
“What does any boy look like? Dark hair, I think they said. Doesn’t have a coat, unless he stole one somewhere.”
“Can’t ride the rods if he doesn’t have a coat.”
“Not for long!” the man said cheerfully. “Freeze and fall off and be cut to mincemeat. Likely that’s what happened to him.”
“Aye, right enough.”
Voices outside. The whistle blew, and a giant shadow loomed on the back wall.
“Thought you were stopping here,” Fraser said. He sounded slightly disconcerted.
“I’m not.” Plume’s voice was darker, flatter.
“I’ve enjoyed your company,” Fraser said. “Don’t think I haven’t. But wouldn’t you be more comfortable in the passenger car?”
The train had begun to move. Plume shouted out the door at someone. “You catch him, he’s mine! Spread the word. Not Mahoney’s or anybody else’s. Mine.”
Now his voice was inside again. “I’m ridin’ here. I don’t feel like talk, and I do feel like drink.”
After a moment Fraser said, “No talk, then. But—a bite to eat? You’ll want to lay a foundation—no? Fair enough!”
The next leg of the journey was longer and thirstier. Phin couldn’t make himself eat another biscuit, not without a drink first. His mouth produced less saliva all the time, and the tobacco gave less relief. In the breaker the boys had water bottles. They could snatch a swallow from time to time, at the risk of missing a piece of slate and getting a beating.
Envying the breaker boys; would his mother laugh? She could laugh at bitter things, even as she rolled up her sleeves to do something about them. She’d smile, at least, at it turning out that Phin would have been safer if he’d defied her. Though it wasn’t safety she’d wanted for him so much as a way out, and he was going.
