Two Trains Running

by Lucius Shepard

  Spooked, Billy spotted the ax handle lying on the floor and grabbed it up. The collie came to his feet and barked, but the big man gentled him, and the dog curled up with the other three once again. Stupid, who had lifted his head, sighed and rested his muzzle on Billy’s knee.

  “What sorta train is this?” Billy demanded, and the man said:

  “Guess you could say we caught us a hot shot. We’ll be goin’ straight through. No stops.”

  “Straight through to where?”

  “Over yonder,” said the man. “You gon’ love it.”

  The train swung into a bend, and in the strong moonlight Billy saw they were moving among a chain of snow peaks that swept off toward the horizon, all with dark skirts of evergreen. The Canadian Rockies, maybe?

  “How long was I out for?” Billy asked. “Where the hell are we?”

  “’Bout ten, fifteen minutes.” The man shifted and the dogs perked up their ears and cut their eyes toward him. “My name’s Pieczynski, by the way. Folks call me Pie.”

  “Bullshit…ten minutes! Ain’t no country like this ten minutes out of Klamath Falls.”

  “Sure there is,” said the man. “You just never rode it before.”

  Billy noticed another unsettling thing. It was warmish in the car. An October night at altitude, he should be shivering like a wet cat. He’d squeeze himself into his mummy sack, then wedge the sack into the sleeping bag, and he’d still be cold. A terrible thought, the sort he usually dismissed as the result of too much drink, sprouted in his brain and sent out roots into every fissure, replacing his fear of getting thrown out of the car with a deeper, more soul-afflicting fear.

  “What’s goin’ on here?” he said. “What happened to me?”

  The man seemed to be assessing Billy, gauging his quality.

  “Was it my liver?” Billy said. “My liver give out? Somebody bust my head open? What was it?”

  “You ain’t dead, that’s what you goin’ on about,” said the man. “Dead’s what you almost was. Alive’s what’s in front of you.”

  What with the wine he’d consumed and the blow to his head, Billy’s mind worked even less efficiently than normal, and he was coming to view the man as a spirit guide of some sort, one sent to escort him to his eternal torment.

  “Okay,” he said. “I hear what you’re sayin’. But if I was…if I’s back in the yard and I could see myself now, I’d think I was dead, wouldn’t I?”

  “Who the hell knows what you’d be thinkin’, all the wine you got in ya.” The man shoved the mutt’s behind off his hat brim and jammed the hat onto his head—it was fashioned out of beige leather and shaped cowboy-style, with the brim turned down in front and the crown hand-notched. “Whyn’t you get some sleep? It all be a lot clearer come mornin’.”

  The floor was softer than any floor Billy had ever run across in a boxcar—that and the warmth made the notion of sleep inviting. But he had the idea that if he went to sleep, he would not wake up happy. “Fuck sleep!” he said. “I want you to tell me what’s goin’ on!”

  “You do what ya feel, friend. But I’m gonna close my eyes for a while.” The man turned onto his side and went to patting a stuffed cloth sack—one of three he had with him—into a pillow. He glanced over at Billy and said, “What’s your name?”

  “You know damn well what’s my name! You the one sent to bring me.”

  The man grimaced. “What is it? Ashcan Ike? The Philadelphia Fuck-up…some shit like that?”

  Billy told him.

  “Billy Long Gone,” said the man. “Huh! You sure got the right moniker to be catchin’ this particular ride.” He settled on his pillow, pushed the hat down over his eyes. “Maybe tomorrow you’ll feel good enough to tell me your real name.”

  An hour or so after the big man started snoring, the train snaked down out of the mountains and onto a marshy plain that put Billy in mind of an illustration in a pop-up dinosaur book he’d found in a Seattle dumpster six months back. It had depicted a marsh that extended from horizon to horizon. Reeds and grass and winding waterways, with here and there a patch of solid ground from which sprung weird-looking trees. Giant dragonflies hovered and flashed in the light, and toothy amphibians poked their wrinkled snouts out of the water. Larger amphibians waded about on their hind legs. There had been over forty different types of dinosaur in the picture—he’d counted every one. Take away the dinosaurs, the dragonflies, and what was left wouldn’t be much different from the moonlit plain then passing before his eyes.

  The similarity between picture and reality seized hold of him, rerouting his thoughts into a wet-brained nostalgia that induced him to stare open-mouthed at the landscape as if entranced. Scenes from his life melted up from nowhere like skin showing through a soaked T-shirt, then dried away into nothing. Scenes that were part fantasy, part distorted memory, filled with parental taunts, the complaints of women, and the babble of shadowy unrecognizable figures who went tumbling slowly away, growing so small they seemed characters in another alphabet he had never learned to read. Even when the plain was blotted out by the black rush of another train running alongside them, he barely registered the event, adrift in a sodden unfocused delirium…A dog barking brought him halfway back. The brindled hound was standing at the edge of the open door, barking so fiercely at the other train, ropy twists of saliva were slung from its muzzle. All the dogs were barking, he realized. He picked out Stupid’s angry, bassy note in the chorus. Then he was snatched up, shaken, and that brought him the rest of the way back. He found himself staring into the big man’s frowning face, heard him say, “You with me, Billy? Wake up!” The man shook him again, and he put out a hand in a feeble attempt to interrupt the process.

  “I’m here,” Billy said. “I’m okay, I’m here.”

  “Stay back from the door,” the man said. “Probably nothin’s gonna happen. But just you stay away from it.”

  The dogs were going crazy, barking at the other train, which was running along a track some thirty feet away, going in the same direction they were, and seemed identical to the train they were riding, with a string of boxcars towed behind a Streamliner engine. Laying tracks so far apart didn’t make much sense to Billy, and he was all set to ask the big man how come this was, when something wide and dark fluttered down out of the night sky and settled onto one of the cars. It was as if a dirty blanket had come flapping out of nowhere and collected atop the car in a lump.

  Billy thought what he’d seen must have been produced by a defect of mind, a rip in his vision; but before he could refine this thought into opinion, the lump atop the car flared like a sail filling with wind, and he recognized it for a creature of sorts—a rippling, leathery sail-like thing that resembled a manta ray without a tail. Twenty feet across if it was an inch and fringed with cruel, hooked claws. There was an irregular gray splotch at the center from which was extruded the debased caricature of a human head, a bald monstrosity with a mottled scalp, sunken eyes, and a leering, fanged mouth. The thing held aloft for a handful of seconds, then folded into the shape that reminded Billy of a taco shell, funneling the wind away, and sank down once again onto the car, which immediately began to twist and shudder beneath it, making Billy think of a train in an old black-and-white Disney cartoon that had danced along the tracks to Dixieland jazz. Rivulets of glowing yellow fluid spilled out from beneath the creature’s edges, flowing down the side of the boxcar, and the roof of the car arched upward, bucking convulsively, the way a cat’s back twitches when you tickle it. The assaulted train gave a high-pitched shriek that didn’t have the sound of any train horn or whistle with which Billy was familiar, and appeared to scoot forward, starting to pull away from Billy’s train. And then the creature raised up again, its body belling. It released the last of its hooks, and the wind took it in rippling flight past the open car where Billy stood gaping, passing close enough so it seemed that ugly little head stared at him with a pair of glittering black eyes and a mouth full of golden juice in the instant before it vanis
hed.

  Billy hadn’t been afraid while the creature was attacking the train. It had been too compelling a sight. But now he was afraid—now he put what had happened together with all the other strange things he had experienced, and the whole made a terrifying shape in his mind. He glanced at the big man, who was in the process of fluffing up his pillow sack again. The dogs, quiet now, were watching him attentively.

  “Call them things ‘beardsleys’,” the big man said, when he registered Billy’s bewilderment. “Friend of mine name of Ed Rogan was the one started callin’ ’em that. They used to call ’em somethin’ else, hut he changed it. Said they reminded him of his eighth grade math teacher. Fella named Beardsley.” He gave the sack a final pat and lay back. “They ain’t so bad. Hardly ever take more’n a few pints. You’ll see worse where you’re goin’.” He closed his eyes, then cocked one open toward Billy. “Bet you might just know ol’ Ed. He useta ride the northern line like you. Called hisself Diamond Dave.”

  “People been sayin’ Diamond Dave’s dead. Ain’t nobody seen him ’round for years.”

  “He’s doin’ right well for a dead guy.” The big man shifted about until he got comfortable. “Best thing you can do is get some sleep. I know you got questions, but what I’m gon’ tell you’s gonna go down a lot easier tomorrow.”

  If the man hadn’t gone right off to sleep, Billy might have told him that he had no questions, he knew he was traveling east through the land of the dead, on his way to whatever hellish corner of it had been prepared for his eternity. No other explanation fit. It would have been nice, he thought, if death had taken away the pain in his lower back and cured his sciatica; but he supposed—like the man said—there would be worse to come.

  He shuffled over to where he’d tossed his pack and sat with his back to the end wall. Stupid ambled up, plopped down next to him, and Billy pulled a wadded-up bandanna from his pocket and cleared away some of the saliva from the dog’s muzzle. “Dumbass,” he said affectionately. “What you think you gon’ do, you got at that damn thing? Motherfucker woulda wrapped you up and took you home for a snack.” It occurred to him then that if he was dead, Stupid must be dead, too. That pissed him off. The bastards had no right to go tormenting his dog. This so troubled him, his eyes teared and he began feeling sorry for his dead self. He dug into his pack and hauled out a pint of Iron Horse. Unscrewed the cap and sucked down a jolt. Most of the wine went into his stomach before he could taste it, but what he did taste he spat back out.

  “Jesus…fuck!” He sniffed the neck of the bottle. It smelled horrible. Something must have gone wrong with the batch. It was his last pint, too. He’d wind up drinking it anyway, but for now he didn’t want to put up with having to puke. He was wore down, the borders of his consciousness crumbly and vague, like he was coming down from crank. He scrunched himself up to fit the floor and rolled onto his side. Set the pint by his head. The gentle rocking of the train made it seem that the fire-breathing stallion on the label was charging directly into his eyes.

  When I woke the next morning, my eyes fell to that same label, but instead of reaching for the bottle in desperate need as I would have the day before, I had a flashback to my last mouthful of Iron Horse and turned away, coming face to face with Stupid, who licked my lips and nose. I got to my feet, feeling less achy than I might have expected. And hungry. That was odd. It had been ten years easy since I woke up wanting breakfast. Pieczynski was still asleep, encircled by the other dogs. I supposed now that he had stolen them all. He was one butt-ugly son of a bitch. That long nose had been flattened and spread, probably by bottles and fists, until it resembled a nose guard on an ancient gladiator’s helmet; and his mouth, thick-lipped and wide, bracketed by chiseled lines, made me think of the time my dad had taken me bass fishing, the part before he’d gotten drunk and decided it would be funny to use me as the target for his casts.

  Maybe I was dead, I thought. I didn’t see any other way to explain how I’d felt so bad every single day for the last three, four years, and then, after one night’s sleep, it was like I’d never had a drink in my life. And it wasn’t only a sense of physical well-being. I felt strong in my head. My thoughts were clear, solid, defined. Even though it had only been seven or eight hours, I was already starting to perceive the Billy Long Gone of the previous night as a different person, the way you might reflect on how you behaved when you were a kid. But I wasn’t sure what to think about what I had seen, whether the “beardsley” had been part of an alcoholic fugue or if it had some basis in reality.

  I pushed two fingers hard against the wall of the car and felt a slight resilience. Like pushing against stiff leather. I wondered if I was to cut the surface, would glowing yellow blood spurt forth? That could explain the light that illuminated the car. And the warmth. I dug a jackknife out of my jeans pocket, opened the blade, and laid the edge against the black surface; then I thought better of it. I didn’t want this particular car to go to twitching and heaving itself around. I folded the knife and put an ear flat to the wall. No pulse I could hear, but I thought I could detect a faint stirring and that caused me to pull my head back in a hurry. The idea of a live train didn’t rattle me all that much, though. Hell, I’d always thought of trains as being half-alive anyway. A spirit locked into the steel.

  I went to the door of the boxcar and sat gazing out at the land, wishing I had something to eat. We had left the marshes behind and were rolling through a series of hills with long, gradual western slopes and steep drop-offs on their eastern sides, as if they were ancient access ramps of some long-demolished freeway that had been overgrown with tall grasses. The sky was a clear, deep blue with a continent of massy white cloud bubbling up from the northern horizon. Up ahead were bigger hills, dark green in color, lush-looking. The air was soft and pleasantly cool, the air of a spring morning. I took off my shirt to enjoy it; in doing so, I caught a whiff of my body odor. No wonder Stupid was always licking me—I smelled like something two days dead.

  “Hungry?” said Pieczynski—his voice startled me, and I nearly toppled out the door. He was holding out what looked to be a flat gray cake with a faint purplish cast.

  “What is it?” The cake was cold and slimy to the touch.

  “Jungleberries.” Pieczynski settled beside me, his legs dangling off the edge of the car. “We mush ’em up and press ’em. Go on…give it a try.”

  I nibbled at the edge of the cake. It was almost tasteless—just a vague fruity tang. I took a bigger bite, then another, then wolfed the whole thing down. It didn’t satisfy my hunger, but after a few minutes I felt an appreciable sense of well-being.

  “There some kinda dope in this shit?” I asked, taking a second cake from Pieczynski.

  He shrugged. “Seein’ how they make you feel, I s’pose there must be somethin’ in ’em. Couldn’t tell you what.”

  “I don’t believe I ever heard of jungleberries.” I turned the cake over in my hand, as if expecting to find a list of ingredients.

  “There’s a whole buncha things you ain’t heard of that you’re gon’ be comin’ up against real soon.” Pieczynski scrunched around so he could look directly at me. “How you feelin’?”

  I gestured with the cake. “Big as you are, I eat another of these damn things, I’m liable to be lookin’ down at you.”

  Pieczynski gave a dismissive flip of his hand. “I ain’t talking ’bout if you high. Is your body strong? Your thinkin’? I know they are. Same thing happened to me. Night I crawled onto one of these here trains, I was more messed up than you was. Sicker’n a caught fish from crack. Couldn’t keep nothin’ in my stomach. Doubt I weighed more’n hunnerd-sixty. I was havin’ hallucinations. Truth be told, I was damn near dead. But the next mornin’ it was like I was reborn.” He took a bite of his cake, chewed it noisily, swallowed. “Same thing happens to ever’body catches out on the black trains.”

  We had begun climbing a fairly steep grade that would, I supposed, take us up into those dark green hills, and as we passed
a defile, I saw at the bottom of it what appeared to be the wreckage of a train like the one we were riding. It was nearly shrouded by huge ferns and other growth, but I made out rips and gouges in the sides of the cars.

  “Ever’ once in a while comes a flock of beardsleys,” Pieczynski said, staring gloomily down at the wreck. “Train ain’t gon’ survive that.”

  Despite the cake-and-a-half I’d eaten, the sight of the wreck unsettled me. “What kind of place is this? These things…the trains. They’re alive, ain’t they?”

  “They ’bout the most alive things I ever run across. Though that don’t seem real plausible if you think about it in terms of where you useta be.” Pieczynski spat a gray wad of jungleberry out the door. “Don’t nobody know what kind of place this is. Somewheres else is all I know. People taken to callin’ it Yonder.”

  “Somewhere else,” I said thoughtfully. “Yonder. That sure ’nough covers a lot of ground.”

  “Yeah, well. Maybe if some scientist or somebody was here, maybe they could say it better ’bout where we at. But so far ain’t nobody caught the ride ’cept for tramps and some kids and a coupla yuppie riders. One of the kid’s got hisself a theory about it all, but what he says sounds harebrained to me.” Pieczynski made a noise like a horse blowing out breath. “Me, I love it. Life I’m leadin’ now beats hell outa the life I useta have. But there’s times it don’t seem natural. You got these trains rollin’ ever’where on tracks nobody built. Ain’t even tracks, really. Some sort of natural formation looks like tracks. That ain’t weird enough, you got the beardsleys and other animals just as bad. And then you got no people that was born here. It’s like God was building a world and decided he didn’t like how it was shapin’ up, so he went and left it unfinished. I don’t know.” He tossed a piece of jungleberry cake to the dogs, who sniffed at it and let it lie. “Why should creation be all one way?” he went on. “Why should this place make sense when you lay it next to the one we put behind us? I just leave it at that.”