Two Trains Running

by Lucius Shepard

  “Best I can come up with, I figure we’re dead and this is some kinda test.”

  “Then how do you account for the fact that people die? And that some of us travel back to the world?”

  “Never said I knew what the rules was for bein’ dead,” I told him. “Maybe it all fits right in.”

  He sat there for moment, nodded, then hopped up and went over to the stacked notebooks. “I want you to check this out,” he said, digging through the stacks. “Here!” He came back to the desk and tossed me a ratty notebook with a red cover. “Read this when you get a chance, and let me know what you think.”

  “I can’t read,” I said.

  He absorbed this for a two-count. “You got a disability?”

  “Not that I know of. My daddy wasn’t too big on school. I can sign my name, I can add and subtract. That’s about it.”

  “You want to learn, I’ll teach you.”

  “I reckon not. I gone this long without, it don’t seem all that important now.”

  “I won’t push it,” Bobby said. “But you’d be smart to take me up on the offer. Time can move pretty slow around here.”

  The first grown-up book I read start to finish was a taped-together paperback entitled Sweet Wild Pussy. It had nothing to do with cats, nor do I believe it possessed much in the way of literary value, unless you were to count being made incredibly horny as an artistic achievement. Bobby had given it to me because the words were simple, and I felt accomplished on finishing it—the result of months of study. Still and all, I wish he had loaned me something else to begin with. Being the first thing I read, it exerted an undue influence on me for a while, and I found myself thinking overly much about “love ponies ridden hard” and “squeezable passion mounds.” Eventually I got around to reading the red notebook that Bobby had pushed on me during our first meeting. It had been found on a train that had returned from Yonder’s Wall and was purportedly the diary of a man named Harley Janks whom no one remembered. Harley claimed to have ridden straight from the world, past Yonder and on into the mountains. He said that beyond the mountains lay a world that was hellish hard to live in, populated by all manner of nasty critters; but there was a big settlement there and folks were carving out a place for themselves, working to bring order out of chaos. Most people who had read the notebook considered it a hoax. Harley was not a terribly articulate man, and his descriptions of life over Yonder’s Wall were pretty thin. However, Bobby thought the notebook went a ways toward proving his theory that Yonder was part of a computer game, and that the world Harley described was simply the next level.

  Time, as Bobby had said, did move slowly at the settlement. I came to view my life there as a kind of penance for my sins, a retreat during which I was forced to meditate upon the damage I had caused, the waste and delusion of almost my every waking hour. And maybe, I thought, that meditation was a measure of Yonder’s purpose. Though the actual nature of the place continued to elude me, I realized that Bobby was right—nothing about it made sense, at least in terms of a reality that I could comprehend. I noticed all manner of peculiarities. Like for example, no one ever got pregnant, and when someone died, which happened twice during those first months, sooner or later somebody new would arrive on a train. It wasn’t always a one-for-one exchange, yet from what I could tell the population had remained stable since forever. But if you strung all the peculiar things together, all you wound up with was a string of peculiar things that didn’t belong together. I kept going back to what Pieczynski had said—“Why should creation be all one way?” And then I’d think how it would he for a caveman whose task it was to explain the operation of the universe judging by what he knew of the world. That was how I understood our position. We were trying to comprehend the universe from information we’d gathered while living in a humongous tree for a few months or a few years, whereas it had taken folks thousands of years to come up with the theories of creation found in some of Bobby’s books. A theory, as I saw it, was a kind of net that held all the facts you knew. Back in the Stone Age, they’d only had a few basic facts and so the nets they used had been basic; but as the centuries went by and more facts came to light, the mesh of the nets necessary to contain them had grown finer and finer, and things still fell through the gaps. My feeling was they’d never come up with the perfect net, and we’d never know for sure what was going on, no matter how advanced we proclaimed ourselves to be. Maybe, I thought, first impressions were the most accurate. Maybe the old world had been created by a god, and this one was populated by the dead. It didn’t make life any easier to hang your hat on those notions, but it did allow you to focus on the matter at hand.

  While learning to read, I naturally spent a lot of time with Bobby. People were always stopping by his room and telling him about something they’d seen, which he would then write down in a notebook, and he introduced me to all of them. But I never struck up any friendships, and once I started reading on my own, Bobby and I stopped hanging out. Looking back, I can see that he wasn’t all that interested in me—at least no more than he was interested in anyone else—and the main reason he taught me was to fill his time. That was how things were with everyone in Yonder. You might have a friend or two, but otherwise you left everyone else to their own devices. After the first week, I hardly ever ran into Pieczynski anymore. People I’d known on the rails, and there were twelve of them, men I’d ridden with like Shaky Jake, Diamond Dave, Dogman Tony…they acknowledged me in passing and then went on with their oddly monastic reclaimed lives. Even Stupid kept his distance. Once every so often he’d wander up and snoot at my hand to get petted, but he had become part of the pack and spent the bulk of his day associating with his four-legged associates. For my own part, I didn’t have much interest in anybody, either. It was like whatever portion of my brain was in charge of curiosity had been turned down to dim. The only constant in my life were occasional visits from Annie Ware. She never stayed long and rarely showed me anything other than a businesslike face. I guessed she was filling her time by checking up on me. I was always glad to see her. Glad all over, so to speak. But I didn’t enjoy the visits much because I assumed that I had done something bad to her—I had no idea what it could have been, but I imagined the worst and felt confused and remorseful whenever she came around.

  For more than six months my life was occupied by menial chores, and by studying and reading. The two favorite books I read were Gulliver’s Travels and Richard Halliburton’s Complete Book of Marvels, which was a travel book published a half-century before. It was full of black-and-white photographs of the pyramids and South Pacific islands and the Himalayas. When I compared them to mental snapshots of the switchyard in Topeka and tramps sleeping among piles of cow crap in a Missoula cattle pen and various hobo jungles, I wished now I’d done some real traveling back in the world instead of just riding the freights and drinking my liver stiff. Thinking what I could have seen, a world of blue sky and ice from twenty-nine thousand feet up or tropical fish swarming like live jewels in aquamarine water, it stirred me up, and I would go off exploring throughout the tree, climbing rope ladders from floor to floor, peeking into chambers where ex-hobos were engaged in mending shirts or decorating their cells, and ex-punk riders were playing chess on a makeshift board. The atmosphere reminded me of this idiot farm a Seattle judge sent me to when I was so fucked up they couldn’t tell if I was sane or not, a place where you sat around all day whacked on thorazine instead of jungleberries and smeared finger-paint all over yourself. Even though this state of affairs was preferable to the lives most of the residents had led prior to crossing the dimensional divide or the River Styx or whatever border it was that we had crossed, I just didn’t understand being satisfied with it.

  One morning about an hour before sunup—if it was a sun that rose each morning and not, as Bobby theorized, an illusion produced by the software into which our essences had been transformed—I rolled out early and waited for the fishermen and the hunting parties to set out, and when I s
potted Euliss Brooks, the best fisherman in Yonder, a rickety-looking, stiff-gaited, white-bearded black man with three rods on his right shoulder, carrying a net and a bait bucket, I fell in behind him, as did a handful of dogs. He glanced at me over his shoulder, but didn’t say anything and kept walking. I followed him along a path that cut inland for a mile, then angled back toward the river, rejoining it at a point where the banks widened and lifted into steep cliffs of pocked grayish black limestone, forming a cup-shaped gorge that shadowed the green water, and the perfumey heat of the jungle gave way to a profound freshness, like the smell of spring water in an old well. Birds were always circling overhead, their simple shapes like crosses against the high blue backdrop, then diving down to settle in the spiky-leaved trees that fringed the cliffs.

  At the edge of the gorge was a wooden platform that could be lowered on ropes and pulleys to a ledge sixty-some feet below, just above water level—that’s where Euliss did his fishing, while the dogs waited for him up top. Euliss didn’t utter a word until he was ready to mount the platform, and then asked me how much I weighed.

  “Hunnerd ’n fifty maybe,” I said.

  He mulled this over. “Reckon I’ll let you go on down alone,” he said. “Just hang onto the rail and don’t worry it sway back and forth. Damn thing always do that.”

  I offered to take the bucket and the rods down with me, but he said, “Naw, you might drop ’em.”

  “I ain’t gon’ drop nothin’,” I told him, annoyed—what did he take me for?

  “First time down you liable to drop somethin’,” said Euliss. “My word on that.”

  I began to lower myself, and the platform swayed sickeningly, scraping against the limestone. I gripped the rail hard. Up close, the cliff face resembled the smoke-blackened ruin of a derelict cruiser: rocky projections clumped with blue-green moss; flat surfaces hung with twists of vine; punched into here and there by caves, the largest being about five feet in diameter. As I descended past one of the cave entrances, I thought I spotted movement within. I peered into the blackness, and a wave of giddiness overwhelmed me. My vision dimmed, my throat went dry. I had a moment’s panic, but that was swept aside by a rush of contentment, and then I had a sense of a shy curiosity that seemed distant from me, as if it were something brushing the edge of my thoughts, the way a cat will glide up against your leg. Allied with this was an impression of great age and infinite patience…and strength. A strength of mind like that you’d imagine a whale to possess, or some other ancient dweller in solitude. I lost track of myself for an unguessable time, and when I pulled myself together, I could have sworn I saw something go slithering back into the cave. Panic set in for real this time. I lowered the platform hastily, and when I jumped off onto the ledge, I shouted up at Euliss, asking him what the fuck had happened. He waved for me to send up the platform. Minutes later, after he had joined me on the ledge, I asked him again.

  “Didn’t nobody tell you ’bout the elders?” With effort, he bent down and plucked a large dead bug out of the bait bucket.

  I half-recalled Bobby using the term, but couldn’t recall exactly what he had said.

  “Lookit that vine there.” Euliss pointed to a long strand of vine that was hanging into the water about a dozen yards from the ledge. “Follow it on up. Y’see where it goes?”

  The vine vanished into a cave mouth halfway up the cliff.

  “That’s one of ’em,” Euliss said. “He fishin’ just like us.”

  I studied the vine—it didn’t twitch or vibrate, but I could see now that it was different from the other vines. Thicker, and a mottled gray in color.

  “What are they?” I asked.

  “Old hermits like to fish. Thass all I know. And I ain’t crawlin’ into one of them caves just to catch a look at ’em. They be fishing with that tentacle thing they got all day long.” He handed me a rod—a Shimano. “Don’t be mistreatin’ that pole, boy. Took me most of a year to get Pie to fetch it.” He straightened, heaved a sigh, and put a hand to his lower back as if to stifle a pain. “I figgered you knew ’bout the elders. Don’t nobody ’cept me like fishin’ here ’cause they scared of ’em. Ain’t nothin’ be scared ’bout. Once they touch you up, they know all they want to ’bout you, and they won’t never bother you again.”

  The fishing itself wasn’t much of a challenge. We were after the big sluggish fish with tarnished-looking scales that hid out under the rock shelves underwater; once they were hooked, they struggled briefly, then gave out and let us haul them onto the ledge. The bulk of my thoughts turned to the strange creature that had scoped me out with its tentacle, to the impression of age and patience and calm I’d derived. It occurred to me that the presence of the elders suited Bobby Forstadt’s theory that we were constructs in a computer game better than it did the notion that we had passed on. They served no apparent purpose, they were window-dressing, an invention designed to appeal to twelve-year-olds—like mutant Zen monks in their shyness and simplicity, possessed of vast wisdom, bestowing calm and contentment on everyone they touched, even—I assumed—the fish they ate. Or maybe they had a hidden purpose. They might be the secret masters of this bizarre place. I was beginning to wish I’d never learned how to read. Too many ideas started rattling around in your head, and it got to where you couldn’t make up your mind about anything.

  “Best thing you can do,” Euliss advised me, “is concentrate on fishin’ and don’t worry ’bout it. People ’round here worry too damn much ’bout what’s goin’ on. Ain’t nothin’ to worry ’bout. It’s just God.”

  “God?” I said.

  “That’s right! You set here and fish long enough, you gon’ feel Him. He’s all around us—we livin’ inside Him.” He cocked an eye toward me. “I know you think you heard all that before, but what I’m sayin’ ain’t the same as you heard. You quit runnin’ your mouth all the time, you’ll know what I’m talkin’ ’bout.”

  Each morning thereafter Euliss and I went out to fish; each evening we would return home and drop off our catch with the cooks. I’d thought that we might become friends, but we never did. Euliss had one topic of conversation—fishing at the gorge—and once he was done communicating whatever information he felt compelled to convey, he would fall silent until next he needed to instruct me on some point of lore. Once I asked him about his life before arriving in Yonder, and he told me he had ridden under the name of Coal Train and he been hoboing for almost fifty years. He didn’t appear eager to expand on the subject, and I guess I understood that. After all the painful remembering I’d done, I had little desire to share my old life with anyone.

  I woke up one day feeling poorly, and instead of going to the gorge, I slept in. Around noon, moved by restlessness, I forded the river and set off walking the path along which I had come to Yonder. Three dogs—one, the little collie that had ridden with me and Pie—fell in at my heels. I followed the path up through the jungle, then ascended the ridge line until I reached a point where I could see the tracks curling around the base of a hill. A train was standing on it, most of the cars out of sight beyond the curve. The engine and the visible cars all bore ridged scars left by beardsley attacks, and that led me to believe it was an old train. As I’ve said, my curiosity had been at low ebb ever since my arrival, but now I was suddenly overcome with curiosity, wondering how the trains got born and how long they lived or if those questions were even relevant. Once I had scrambled down the slope, I walked alongside the cars, examining them closely. Nowhere did I see a bolt or a seam. The entire train was of a piece—couplings and wheels and doors all seemingly grown into shape. The wheels appeared to be made of the same stuff as the cars, only thickened and harder, and the tracks they rode on weren’t metal but grooved black rock that sprung from the earth. I scraped away dirt from the grade and saw that the rock was embedded to a depth of at least two feet—that was how far down I excavated. The engine had no windshield, no doors, no lights—it was just a dead black streamlined shape. How could it watch ahead? I wondered
. How did it take sustenance…fuel? I had a hundred questions and no answers. It was like Bobby Forstadt said, nothing made any sense.

  I went around the front of the engine and then walked down-train between the side of the engine and the hill. Just above the engine’s rear wheel someone had spray-painted a red message, faded, but still legible:

  SANTA CLAUS RODE THIS

  BLACK BASTARD INTO THE EAST

  HEADING OVER YONDER’S WALL

  I’d never met Santa Claus, but I’d heard old hobos talk about him, much of the talk regarding what a devious piece of crap he had been, this coming from men who themselves were notable for being devious pieces of crap. They did testify that Santa Claus had been a balls-out rider, how when he was determined to catch out on a train, nothing, not the bulls, not security devices, would stop him. What interested me was why he had signed his moniker and not his birth name. Maybe, I thought, his parents had stuck him with something as unappetizing as Maurice Showalter.

  I went back around to the other side of the train and sat myself down on the grade. The trains, the tree, the beardsleys, the elders, the placid, disinterested inhabitants of Yonder treading water in their lives, and Yonder’s Wall—they still seemed to be pieces belonging to different puzzles. But now I wondered if Santa Claus hadn’t hit on the only solution there was to all of them. What was the point in sticking around the tree and eating jungleberries and fishing and thinking about the past? Might as well see what lay beyond the mountains. Could be you’d die…but maybe you were already dead. For certain sure, according to everything I’d heard, you eventually were going to die from sitting on your butt. And if Bobby was right, then moving to the next level was your one chance to win.

  I was going round and round with this in my head, when I spied somebody walking toward me from the curve. Soon I saw that it was Annie Ware. She had on an orange T-shirt and her khaki shorts. She looked like ice cream to the Devil. “What you doin’ out here?” I asked as she came up, and she shrugged and said, “I like the trains, y’know.” She stood over me for a few beats, staring off along the tracks, shifting her feet, as if feeling betwixt and between. Then, with an abrupt movement, she dropped down beside me. “Sometimes when I’m huntin’ for berries, I come back this way so I can look at ’em. There’s always a train waitin’.”