Dead Man's Tunnel

by Sheldon Russell

  Hook took another draught and handed the bottle back.

  “It’s your life I’m saving then,” Hook said.

  “Likewise,” he said, tipping up the bottle.

  He tossed on another stick of wood, and the fire blazed up. Sparklers scattered into the darkness. Hook moved back from the heat.

  “See these hands?” the bo said, holding them in the firelight. “Twenty-five years laying brick. Didn’t ask for a goddamn thing ’cept the chance at work. Twenty-five years, one brick after another, and then came the day I looked at that hawk and trowel and I couldn’t do it no more. I couldn’t set another brick if hell opened up and swallowed me.”

  He held the bottle up to check its level. “Have another go,” he said.

  Hook took a drink and closed an eye. “A man does what he has to do,” he said. “No shame in that.”

  “Left the wife on her momma’s porch,” he said. “Caught a coal car headed north and never looked back.”

  Hook nodded and rubbed his face, which had fallen numb from being too close to the fire. He started to stand but decided that to leave too soon might offend his host.

  “One for the monkey,” the man said.

  “And to the demise of black thoughts and tremors,” Hook said.

  The man gathered up more firewood and tossed it on the fire. The circle of light danced and pushed back the darkness. He sat down and took out his makin’s again. After lighting up, he looked straight at Hook.

  “What happened to your arm?” he asked.

  Hook rubbed his shoulder. “Shriveling fever,” he said.

  “I’ve heard of that,” he said.

  “Some say it’s been detected as far north as the Rockies,” Hook said.

  “How’d it come about?”

  “While I was taking a bath.”

  “Maybe the bath’s what set it off.”

  “When the fever topped a hundred and ten, the arm fell off.”

  “Did it hurt?”

  “No more than an elephant standing on your balls.”

  His mouth twisted. “Is it catchy?”

  “No appendage is immune to its devastating effects, if you know what I mean.”

  The fire roared and crackled, and the man studied Hook through the flames.

  “I believe I’d as soon lose an arm such as yourself,” he said.

  “Things could have been worse,” Hook said. “I’d advise against unnecessary bathing, that’s sure.”

  “Ain’t that the goddangest lie ever told?” he said.

  “Yes, it is,” Hook said.

  A train whistle lifted up in the distance, and the man fell silent. He rose, picked up a stick of firewood, and hiked it onto his shoulder. Firelight gathered up in his eyes and in the blackness of his beard. Hook threw up his elbow to ward off the blow, but the stick of firewood dropped him headfirst into the dirt.

  * * *

  Hook awakened to the churn of the engine gathering up steam. He shook his head and rubbed at the knot that had blossomed on the side of his head. His mouth tasted of ash, and his bones ached. Smoke roped up from the fire. He reached for his wallet to find it intact, and his sidearm as well. What the hell kind of bo left money behind? He checked the clip to make certain it was still loaded because he intended to use it on the son of a bitch if he ever caught up with him.

  Down line the steam engine chugged and wheezed as she nursed the cars off the Yampai siding. She pulled back onto the main line. Steam shot from her sides and rose into the glimmer light. Hook headed for the tracks to catch her.

  The ground trembled, and black smoke boiled skyward as she gained momentum. Hook scrambled up the embankment, waving the whole time. But the engineer paid no mind, throttling up, his whistle screaming. The engine thundered toward him.

  Hook ran down track to keep from being yanked out of his shoes when he snared the ladder. At the last moment, he grabbed on and pulled himself up. The driver wheels churned below him, and the boiler heat scorched his face.

  Just as he reached the top of the ladder, a foot came out and began kicking at his head. Hook swung out on the ladder to escape the pummeling. The ground raced beneath him, and the wind sucked at his body.

  “Security!” he yelled. “Stop!”

  Someone stuck their head out the cab door. “What the hell?”

  “Yard dog,” he yelled through the clamor of the engine. “Haul me up, you bastard.”

  Once in, he rolled onto his back to catch his breath. Frenchy leaned over him, his cigar clenched between his teeth. The bakehead stood at his back with his hammer at the ready.

  Frenchy said, “Hook, is that you?”

  “You damn near killed me, Frenchy.”

  “We thought you was a robber,” he said.

  “Do I look like a robber?”

  Frenchy lit his cigar and glanced over at the bakehead.

  “Maybe you don’t want to know what you look like, Hook. That goose egg on your head ain’t all that inviting.”

  Hook touched his temple. “I got a little distracted and let a bo slip up on me.”

  “Distracted by busthead liquor by the smell of it,” Frenchy said.

  Hook smelled his sleeve. “That’s expensive cologne and likely unfamiliar to engineers.”

  Frenchy checked his pressure gauge. “Only a yard dog could find whiskey in the middle of the desert.”

  The bakehead grinned. “Yard dogs can sniff out about anything long as it isn’t a thief or a bo.”

  Hook warmed himself at the boiler. “You boys couldn’t tell a thief from a yard dog with his badge nailed to his forehead.”

  “It’s like telling twins apart,” Frenchy said, winking at the bakehead.

  “Well, a man ought check before he starts kicking people off a moving train,” Hook said.

  “Didn’t expect no yard dog in the middle of the desert,” Frenchy said.

  “My popcar broke down. Anyway, yard dogs show up where least expected and in surprising ways,” he said. “That’s why we’re the law. Maybe you should keep that in mind.

  “What you doing out here, Frenchy, other than kicking people off trains?”

  “Called out to move these cars to the Johnson Canyon siding,” he said.

  “In the middle of the night?”

  “Appears so.”

  “Why didn’t they wait for a scheduled run?”

  “I don’t get paid for thinking, Hook.”

  “You can be thankful for that,” Hook said.

  Twenty minutes later, they’d barely made speed. As they hit the grade, the steamer bore down, beating and thumping like a giant heart.

  “Hell,” Hook said. “I could walk faster than this old hog.”

  “Just have at it,” Frenchy said, puffing on his cigar. “Them cars are heavy sons of bitches. Anyway, this ole bullgine ain’t made for speed.”

  “Who would have thought,” Hook said. “What does this ting-a-ling weigh?”

  “Half a million, more with a full tinder. These old calliopes can squash a penny flat as a fireman’s head.”

  * * *

  An hour later, as they approached Johnson Canyon, Frenchy lay in on the whistle. He pulled through the tunnel and over the trestle. He backed the boxcars onto the siding. Hook uncoupled and set the brakes.

  “Frenchy,” he said. “Mixer jumped out on me coming out from Ash Fork. Give me a minute to see if I can call him in.”

  Frenchy wallowed his cigar over and shook his head. “Dang it, Hook, my cab stank for days last time that critter climbed aboard.”

  “Was probably the fireman you smelled, Frenchy. Bakeheads been known to go all winter without touching water.”

  The fireman pushed his hat up and rubbed his face. Frenchy hit his whistle a couple times and waited as Hook called for Mixer.

  “I can’t be waiting all night,” Frenchy said. “They’re shutting down the line until further notice.”

  Hook looked over his shoulder. “Shutting the line? What for?”

&n
bsp; “Usually the big boys ask me before they make a decision, Hook. I guess this time they just forgot. Said I was to come back soon as the line opened and haul those cars back to Kingman.”

  “They wouldn’t close this line for a baby carriage stranded on a crossing, Frenchy.”

  “No, but they might for something important,” he said, grinning. “Reckon that dog is going to have to get back best he can.”

  “His life is on your conscience, Frenchy.”

  Frenchy turned his head to the side and lit his cigar stub. He looked at Hook and nodded.

  “Some things a man just has to live with,” he said.

  “Well, wake me when we get there, if I haven’t died of old age yet.”

  “That’s the one thing you ain’t going to die from, Hook. I guarantee it.”

  Even though Hook’s head throbbed, and the old engine pounded and groaned, he soon fell asleep. When Frenchy announced the wigwag crossing outside of town, Hook yawned and lit a cigarette. The lights of Ash Fork glowed in the distance. The boiler fire flickered in the cab. Hook moved to the door.

  Frenchy eased the bullgine to a stop. Air shot from the brakes, and the smell of smoke settled in around them. Hook swung out on the ladder and worked his way down a few rungs. He looked up at Frenchy, who leaned out the cab window.

  “Hold on a minute,” Hook said.

  He dropped off the ladder, retrieved the link from the Gunter’s chain he’d taken from the surveyors’ flatcar, and slipped it beneath the driver wheel of the bullgine. He waved Frenchy off. Frenchy rolled his eyes and pulled away.

  When he’d gone, Hook searched for the link, finding it half buried in the cinder. The engine had squashed the link away, leaving only the flattened end ring. He took the ring that he’d found beneath Sergeant Erikson’s body that day and lay it on the track next to the flattened Gunter’s ring. They were identical.

  In the distance Frenchy’s whistle wailed at the crossing east of town. Hook walked toward the caboose. He paused, lit a cigarette, and looked back toward Johnson Canyon Tunnel. Someone from that survey crew had been there the night Sergeant Erikson died, and he had a fair idea who. What he didn’t know was why. And now they were closing the corridor. Short of a catastrophe, that just didn’t happen.

  34

  HOOK PULLED OFF his shoes and rubbed his feet. Times like this, he envied those soft-handed men with office jobs, though he doubted he would last long behind a desk.

  He shuffled through the stack of books sitting next to the table, picking out a 1938 first edition of The Yearling by Rawlings. He’d perused it earlier and had a notion that someday it would be of value. But it needed a closer look.

  Right now the sack called out to him. He crawled beneath the covers just as Scrap’s crane roared into life. Exhausted, he put the pillow over his head and fell asleep despite the noise.

  But at some point, he stirred, dreaming of missing dogs and of a baby carriage sitting on a crossing. When black smoke boiled onto the horizon, he ran to the rescue. His heart hammered in his chest, his ears rang, and just as he reached the carriage, the steamer roared onto the crossing. In that last dying moment, he looked into the carriage to see the lieutenant staring up at him.

  He sat up and dropped his legs over the side of the bunk. Sweat trickled down his cheeks, and his heart thumped out of control. He rubbed his face to make certain he’d awakened. Rarely did he dream, and never something as vivid as this. He could sleep anywhere, in a boxcar, on the rods, or in a culvert under the tracks.

  Perhaps the Cream of Kentucky had caught up with him, or perhaps his subconscious had awakened him. The years had taught him not to ignore it, to pay attention, because it often spoke truth.

  Maybe the lieutenant had more to do with all this than he’d admitted to himself. Maybe he’d failed to look hard enough because he didn’t want to know.

  He lit a cigarette and thought about the lieutenant’s eyes staring up at him from out of the carriage. He rose and looked out the window at the main line. Darkness had fallen. He’d slept longer than he thought.

  The note he found in her brief had said to deliver J.B. on the seventh at 0100 hours and to secure all points. The only J.B. he could think of was John Ballard, the name she’d scribbled on the hotel notepad. But this was the sixth, not the seventh. He squashed out his cigarette in the ashtray. 0100 hours, military time, would put it an hour after midnight, which would make it the seventh.

  Who was this John Ballard, and why would the lieutenant deliver him anywhere? In the end, only she had the answers, and he delayed far too long in getting them.

  * * *

  Hook took his coat and walked through the darkness to Scrap’s office, pausing at the copper cars long enough to check his watch. If he could wrangle transportation out of Scrap, he should have plenty of time to locate the lieutenant if she was in town.

  When Hook walked in, Scrap was sitting behind his desk working on his books.

  “It’s late, Scrap. You counting your money?”

  “What the hell happened to your head?” he asked, looking up.

  Hook touched his temple. “Fell out of bed.”

  “If you’d drink buttermilk instead of blue john, that wouldn’t happen, Hook.”

  “I didn’t come for advice from a junk dealer on how to live my life.”

  “You can stop living it altogether far as I’m concerned.”

  “Look, I need to borrow your jeep. I only need it for a while. It’s urgent.”

  Scrap took out his pipe, pulled the stem off, and blew through it.

  “Well, I don’t know,” he said, putting it back together. “There’s a little matter of gas. I got demands on my funds.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like buying milk for the babies,” he said.

  “You don’t have babies.”

  He filled his pipe. “That may be true, strictly speaking. But if I was to have babies, there’d be no milk, would there?”

  “I’ll put gas in the jeep.”

  He pulled the jeep keys from his pocket. “I guess I can make the sacrifice this once.”

  “What about the lights?”

  “I ain’t had time for fine-tuning no lights, Hook.”

  “Lord help me,” Hook said, taking the keys.

  * * *

  When Hook pulled onto the road, the power lines and the tops of the trees lit up like daylight, but the road ahead disappeared into the darkness.

  When at last he made it to the motel, he took a look around the parking lot. A number of cars had pulled in, but no signs of the lieutenant.

  He decided to check with the manager and found him sitting behind the desk listening to the radio. He turned it down and looked at Hook through dusty glasses.

  “We don’t give out information on our customers,” he said.

  Hook showed him his badge. “Railroad security,” he said.

  “This ain’t the railroad,” he said.

  “Track crews used to stay here,” Hook said. “They’re not likely to again.”

  “A female lieutenant, you say?”

  “That’s right. Drives a staff car.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “She left not long ago.”

  “Did she say where she was going?”

  “She didn’t say nothing. Paid her bill and left.”

  “Thanks,” Hook said.

  “Pretty, though,” he said.

  “Right.”

  “Wasn’t alone either. Had a man with her. Probably nothing to worry about, though. She paid for separate rooms.”

  * * *

  Hook sat in the jeep, rocking the steering wheel. He could think of only one other place she might be. He pulled off for the Johnson Canyon Tunnel.

  The night had turned clear as ice, and his headlights shot off into space as he navigated the road next to the tracks. The moonlight raced along the rails, and the smell of juniper filled the night air.

  A good distance from the tunnel, he coasted to a stop, far eno
ugh away so as not be spotted. From there, he could see the lantern in the guardhouse window and the lieutenant’s staff car parked at the bottom of the steps.

  He moved in closer just as the door opened, and the lieutenant came out on the porch. A man followed her, and they talked for several moments. The man went back in the guardhouse, and she made her way down the steps.

  Hook slipped in closer to the car and waited. When she opened the car door, he stepped out and clamped his hand over her mouth. She struggled, but he held tight, all the while pulling her back into the shadows.

  When safely out of sight, he said, “Lieutenant, it’s me, Hook.” She squirmed under his hold, and her heart thumped against his wrist. “Take it easy. I’m not going to hurt you. We have to talk. I’m going to let you go now, but you must stay quiet.”

  The lieutenant nodded, and he released his hand. She turned and faced him.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “Looking for answers,” he said.

  “There’s a lot you don’t understand. Go now. I can’t explain.”

  He took her arm. “I’ve been running in circles, Lieutenant, and each time the tracks lead back to you.”

  “Please, go. Time is short.”

  “Then you better get started, hadn’t you?”

  “What is it you want to know?” she asked.

  “You’ve been lying to me. I want to know the truth.”

  The lieutenant looked up at the guardhouse. “There are things I can’t discuss. Can’t you just trust me on this?”

  “I have an unexplained death on railroad property. I can’t let that go. And I have enough information to turn things upside down around here if I have to.”

  She looked up at the guardhouse again and then back at him.

  “Alright,” she said. “You don’t leave me much choice, do you?”

  35

  “FIRST, WHO IS it you really work for?” Hook asked.

  “I did work for Transportation like I told you, but a few months ago, they assigned me to OSS.”

  “OSS?”

  “Office of Strategic Services. Army intelligence.”

  “Jesus, you’re a spy?”

  “No. It’s kind of an operation.”

  He took her arm. “Lieutenant, I’m already in this up to my eyeballs. This railroad is my jurisdiction, and I can raise more different kinds of hell with an operation than you can imagine.”