by George Wier
“Sure,” he said.
*****
“Yessir,” Cap said. “A real pro.”
“It was my first time,” I said. We stood outside his cruiser not far from the train. I knew we were on a pretty tight schedule, but there were some things I needed to tell him.
“Yeah. Surprised you didn’t break your foot.”
“Who says I didn’t?”
He nodded.
I looked around, took in the double-lane highway close by, the underpass, the distant houses, nestled behind dark trees. There was a dim glow on the horizon to the southeast, the herald of coming day.
“Need anything?” Cap asked me. The fellow was younger than me, but not by much. He was starting to go silver on top, and the scant light from a distant utility pole shimmered in his hair. Also, he stood taller than me by an inch. He was lean and tough-looking—not the kind of fellow I would want ticked off at me.
“Yeah,” I said. “I’ve been thinking. Maybe we can use the people of Texas and the countryside we’re going through in our favor.”
“How’s that?”
“I was thinking we could get some people to man some phones and start calling all the little towns we’ll be going through on this trip, get them out in force to watch us go by. Every extra set of eyes on us might be to our advantage.”
Cap chuckled. “Making it more difficult for the bad guys to set traps for you. I like it.”
“Right. Calls to newspaper reporters, television stations, mayors—like that.”
“I’ll start arranging it. By the way, I’ve got something for you.” He bent and reached into his cruiser and came up with a big paper sack that had grease spots on it.
“What’s this?”
“Food. You look hungry, Bill, even in the dark.”
I took the sack. “I am hungry. Thanks!”
“There’s enough to share around, I hope.”
“What is it?”
“My wife just dropped it off. It’s...leftovers. But I’ll take her leftovers to most restaurant food any day.”
“I appreciate it. By the way, did Perry Reilly go home?”
“I saw his taillights headed south after the propane tank deal.”
“Okay, good. Anything yet on the prisoners?”
“Not yet. It takes time. The charge so far is criminal mischief. I’ve got some crime scene people going over the truck right now. There might be some drug charges, possession of stolen weapons, that type of thing.”
“It’d be nice to know who they are,” I said.
“Yeah. It would be.”
The train whistle blew behind me.
“Okay, they’re playing my song. Gotta run.”
“Get some sleep, why don’t ya. You look like something out of a zombie movie.”
“I feel that way too,” I said.
Cap shook my hand and I ran over to the steps of the passenger car and climbed aboard.
CHAPTER TWELVE
When I’m dreaming, I sometimes can’t tell whether I’m asleep or awake.
Dick Sawyer sat across the aisle of the passenger compartment from me.
“How are you holding up?” I asked him.
He looked at me and shrugged. I noticed that his movements were rigid, as if it took some effort for him to move. Then I remembered that he was dead.
“Sorry,” I said. “I forgot.”
“It’s okay. Long train ride.”
“Yeah. Listen, Governor, are you sure about this burial thing? I mean, after that, what else is there?”
“It’s a rest, Bill,” he said. “A good long rest.”
It was my turn to nod.
Corky came through the doorway ahead and put his hands on seats to either side of the aisle. “We’re on schedule.”
The Governor nodded, stiffly.
“Wait a minute?” I said. “Who’s driving the train?”
“No one.”
I looked out the window and into the bright, sunlit day and noticed the landscape was mostly a blur. We were traveling far faster than trains were designed to travel.
“How fast are we going?”
“About seventeen percent the speed of light.”
“Doesn’t that blow our schedule?” I asked.
“Not really. The Einstein time dilation effect should start kicking in shortly. Or rather, longly, depending upon your frame of reference.”
Then I remembered that Einstein had once tried to explain relativity from the viewpoint of someone observing a train. My mind reeled, and my stomach started to trail it.
“But Einstein,” the Governor said, “isn’t on this train.”
“That’s right,” Corky said. “He didn’t have a ticket. I’m wondering why everybody is trying to get on this train; why they’re trying to stop it.”
“Look,” I said, “you’re going to need to slow down. If someone tried to get a message to me, at this speed the baseball would tear the train apart.”
“Not a Nolan Ryan baseball. Those things are used to these speeds.”
“Well,” I said, “you got me there. Look, if we’re going so fast, we should be there any second.”
“You’re forgetting how big Texas is,” Governor Sawyer said.
“We’re coming to Fort Hood,” Corky said.
Something grabbed me and shook me.
I woke up.
“What? Huh?” I asked.
“I said we’re coming to Fort Hood.” It was JoJo, with a strong but wiry hand on my shoulder.
“Oh. Thanks. How long was I out?”
“About thirty minutes.”
“Good. Nothing like a good night of sleep.”
The hand left my shoulder and JoJo disappeared. I looked across the aisle at the empty seat and shook the image of Dick Sawyer from my head.
Outside the land crept past, and after a moment I noticed that we were slowing.
*****
We had actual coffee in the alley next to Fort Hood as the sun rose up into the sky. The base commander—a three-star Army general—came out to see us, along with his entourage: a one-star, two majors and a half a dozen lieutenants, all in full military dress regalia.
I stepped down from the train after setting my half-full coffee cup on the nearest seat and running my fingers through my hair. I suspected that I looked like a train wreck.
The general reached out his hand and shook mine.
“You’re the Texas Ranger?” he asked.
“Bill Travis,” I said, nodding.
“General Prescott Webber. Thank you for stopping by so that I might pay my respects. I couldn’t make it to the Capitol for the ceremony.”
He made brief introductions to his staff, and I shook their hands. They eyed me respectfully, if somewhat suspiciously, as if to say, “Why aren’t you in full dress for the occasion?” I thought of telling them about being belly-down atop the water car holding JoJo’s legs while she patched up the water line, or having to flatten atop the refrigeration car to keep from having my head taken off, but decided that it wouldn’t sell, or at least not well.
“You knew Governor Sawyer?” I asked General Webber.
“I knew him well enough. I’d only met him a few times, but we’ve talked on the phone many times, though it was usually over some disaster. Once it was a hurricane in Brownsville, once some forest fires in East Texas. A few times I had to have his help when a few of my men got themselves in hot water—legally speaking.”
“Governor Sawyer was always at the eye of the storm, General. I’ll miss him.”
His gaze swept the length of the short train. “Is he—?”
“Next to last car, right by the caboose. It’s a refrigeration car.”
The general nodded. “I understand.”
At that moment, Cap’s cruiser pulled up and he got out and came over to us.
I made introductions.
“Pardon me, General,” Cap said, “but I need to give some information to Mr. Travis.”
“Go ahead,�
�� the General said. Instead of the General stepping away, or Cap leading me aside, Cap laid the information on me right there.
“Bill, it looks as though our two meth-head prisoners aren’t going to talk until they see a lawyer. We won’t get fingerprint results for some time, so one of the girls at the Waco Barracks, knowing this, tracked down who they are by showing photos of them to the Houston DEA.”
“Who are they?”
“You’ll never believe it.”
“Try me,” I said.
“They’re a lesser-known Houston Wrestling tag team.”
“See?” I said.
“See what?”
“Told you it was going to be something strange. As I recall, we had a bet of some kind going.”
“I don’t remember that part,” Cap said.
General Webber chimed in, “Someone attacked your train?”
“Yes, sir,” I said. “First they put a truck on the tracks and shot at us. The second time they put a huge propane tank in front of us. They’re trying to stop this train.”
“We have two in custody but a third got away.”
“You know who the third one is?” General Webber asked.
“We think so,” Cap said. “A woman name Leslie Waltzer. A tough, mean wrestler woman who was part of the tag team. They team was recently disqualified by the Wrestling Federation when a drug test came back dirty.”
“It would,” I said.
“I wish I could help with a couple of Humvees and an Apache helicopter,” General Webber said, “but I can’t.”
“Possee comitatus,” I said, and General Webber nodded. It’s a bit of Latin, and simply means that the military cannot intervene in domestic affairs. The only exception is when the Governor calls out the National Guard for disaster relief, but that reserve force is still an arm of the state’s executive branch in such instances.
“I like the idea of eyes in the air,” Cap said. “I’ll call the DPS barracks and see if I can get one of our choppers in the air. Who knows if there’s still a threat.”
“In the meantime,” I said, “we’ll get back on the road. I’ll see if I can get Corky to push the speed limit on this thing,” I gestured to the train. “If someone is using our speed to figure out where we’ll be, and when, I’d like to confound them.”
Cap nodded.
I shook hands once more all around, then got back on the train.
*****
I made a call to Corky, and he and Leo came back to see me.
“I want to go faster,” I said.
“Faster than what?”
“Well, if I could, I’d go a percentage of the speed of light, but right now I’d be happy with ten or fifteen miles per hour faster.”
“Fifty-five?” Leo asked. “Sixty?”
I turned to Corky. “He’s not just the coal man, is he?”
“The technical term is Fireman,” Leo said with a bit of a huff.
“Leo is why this engine made it out of Palestine to begin with. He’s forgotten more than I will ever know about the firebox and the boiler. My job is to keep the train on the tracks. His is to make it run.”
“My apologies,” I said. “But still, can we safely run this train much faster than we have been?”
Leo, covered with soot from head to foot, doffed his cap to show me half an acre of bald, pink scalp which he proceeded to scratch, as if doing would stimulate thought. “Well, the forty-five per that we’re rated at is a degrade from what the ‘19 can actually do. Her boiler is fit. I personally took every piston apart and put it back together fifteen years back. She can do fifty-five or sixty, I’d say, without much problem.”
“Good,” I said. “If there was an emergency, could we go faster than that?”
“I wouldn’t push her much past seventy unless the hounds of hells were after us, and then I’d have to think about it.”
“Okay,” I said. “Corky, this next leg of the trip is up to Sweetwater, right?”
“There’s a switch northeast of Sweetwater where we’ll have to stop. That’s the last switch before we get to Midland, which is the end of the line for us.”
There was something ominous about his “end of the line” statement, so I decided to pursue it. “Wait a minute. What do you mean by that?”
“By end of the line?”
I nodded.
“None of us is getting any younger. We resurrected this old engine for this last trip. Right now, today, this is the last run of the 1919. She’s not going back to Palestine. We’ll unlace the cars, and at some point the owner will pick up the refrigeration car and the water car. But the engine and the passenger cars and the caboose, they’re going to sit where we park them. It’s the end of the line for them. We’re flying back home from Midland after the services.”
“You already have plane tickets?” I asked.
Corky reached into his vest pocket, lifted his ticket where I could see it, then put it back.
A distant train blew. The train we were waiting to pass us was coming.
“I thought we were going to wait an hour,” I said.
“Maybe they hurried along. Anyway, coffee is ready up in the engine.” Corky and Leo turned to go.
“I’m coming up to get some,” I said.
*****
By the time we got to the engine, the other driver was passing us. I sat in one of the two drivers seats and had a cup of black coffee. The sun was out of sight somewhere behind us and the day appeared as if it was going to be a hot one.
Below us, Leo was already stoking the engine fires.
“Corky, what did you do in regular life?”
“I run an insurance office.”
“No joke? That’s what Perry Reilly does. His office is right next to mine.”
“He’s a funny fellow.”
“He is. What made you fall for trains?”
“Who says that I fell for them?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Anybody that would spend their time driving an old steam engine up and down the tracks has got to have some affinity for them.”
“It wasn’t my idea,” he said. “My wife died eight years back. I had retired as an insurance salesman, and she didn’t like me being underfoot. A friend of hers had a husband who was a member of the Big Thicket Steam Association, so she suggested that I go down and check it out. So, she got rid of me on the weekends that way. I’m not in love with trains, Bill. Hell, I’m not in love with anything. I don’t think I ever will be again. But when I’m driving this train, nobody is bothering me. I guess that’s about it.”
I nodded and sipped my coffee.
Corky picked up his radio, said something into it softly, and an instant later the other train came roaring past. It was a long one, and I couldn’t have counted the cars if my life depended on it, they were going so fast.
“It seems funny,” I said, over the roar.
“What’s that?” Corky asked.
“Those big trains,” I said. “Running on vegetable oil.”
He laughed. “Yeah.”
*****
When we got underway again—about the time I made it back to the passenger car and settled into my seat—we passed the forty-five miles per hour threshold and kept on going. JoJo came forward and sat down across from me.
“Are we expecting any more trouble?” she asked.
“Hmm. I hope we don’t have any.”
“But?”
I looked at her. “JoJo, it’s my experience that the only time you may not have any trouble at all is when you’re looking hardest for it.”
She nodded.
“I’ve been thinking,” I said.
“About what?”
“There’s something on this train that those people were after. At first I thought it might be the train itself, but that doesn’t make any sense. Corky tells me that you’re all flying back after this trip and are leaving the train in Midland.”
“That’s right. Final run.”
“Then it’s not the train, bu
t something that is on the train.”
“Uh huh.”
“But it doesn’t make any sense that they would want the body.”
“No, it doesn’t.”
“Unless there was something else in the casket with him.”
“That’s just too...grisly, Bill.”
“I know. But it’s just a thought.”
“What else you got?” she asked.
“They could be after me.”
“Why would they be after you?”
“I have been known to make people mad at me from time to time.”
“Oh. Uh huh.”
“Or, they could be after one or all of you.”
She shook her head, dismissive of the thought.
“I may have to go back there. Open that casket.”
“We’re still accelerating. How fast did you tell them to go?”
“Sixty. Sixty-five. In an emergency, even faster.”
“Then you don’t want to try going back there on a train moving that fast.”
“Why?” I asked.
“Because, it’s a hurricane up there right now.”
I thought about it, about the hard force of the wind when the train is moving at forty or forty-five. About how difficult it is to keep one’s footing at those relatively innocuous speeds.
“Maybe you’re right. We’ll have to stop before we get to Sweetwater to switch tracks. Maybe I’ll have a look then.”
“Let me know when you’re ready,” she said and held up a large key ring full of keys. “I’ve got the key.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Strange things begin to happen when you reach the point of exhaustion. The world begins to narrow, thoughts loop back upon themselves, and it becomes easy to fixate, and especially upon the wrong thing. In a nutshell, when one is tired, he begins to make mistakes. Then again, like the proverbial child, drunkard or fool, I’ve always been either lucky or blessed.
Both cell phones began buzzing at once. I answered my own cell phone, noting it was Julie and that the battery had a thirty-six percent charge still on it. I should have turned it off.
“Hold on a second, honey,” I said. “The other phone is ringing.”
