by George Wier
“Ahh.”
“Also, we may not need any of this crap,” he gestured toward the bottom step. “If you’ve got your flashlight, me may even not need the lantern.”
I held it up and thumbed it on and a bright cone of light leapt up into the night sky.
“Lead the way,” I said.
*****
When we got to the switch, I saw what he meant. There were a series of switches for two sets of rails. Fortunately, they moved easily under my hand, and the grease, the WD-40, and the wrench weren’t needed.
“All right,” Frank said, “let’s signal for Corky to pass. After he’s by, we have to switch everything back the way it was in reverse order.”
“I can do that,” I said.
He nodded and held out his hand for my flashlight. I watched as he signaled Corky. Corky rang the bell and blew the whistle once in a short, shrill blast before throttling up the engine.
Once past us, Frank climbed back aboard and began stowing all the gear.
“Mind if I ride with you back here for awhile?” I asked.
“Tired of riding with a coffin?”
“Something like that.”
He grinned at me. “Suit yourself, then.”
And we were underway once more.
*****
I learned that I had missed the visit from Cap during my three-hour nap. There wasn’t much to tell. He had stopped by to check us over and check out the track for the next several miles to make sure there would be few surprises, then had disappeared back into the night. Also, he had imparted a little tidbit of information he had received from Waco DPS Dispatch. The two prisoners he had taken into custody were scheduled to meet with the District Attorney the first thing in the morning. Cap had every hope, at that point, that the two would spill the beans as to who their employers were. If they didn’t, they were facing possible life sentences for the commission of a crime while under the influence of methamphetamines, and while transporting a small quantity of the drug.
After fifteen minutes, Frank—who had broken out a rather large railroad map book—radioed to Corky that we were approaching the outskirts of Sweetwater. I asked for the radio and Frank handed it to me.
“Corky,” I said. “Let’s take it slow through Sweetwater. My daughter will be honking at us once we get close to downtown. She’s bringing sandwiches and soda water for everybody.”
“Yay!” JoJo broke in.
“Sounds fine,” Corky said. “I’m hungry, and Leo has been eyeballing me like the cannibal he is.”
“I’m hungry too,” Charlie said.
“On this train,” I said, “everybody eats.”
I handed the radio back to Frank.
“Looks like we’re coming into Sweetwater now,” he said.
“Yeah. We just might make it into Midland.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
True to her word, a car was honking repeatedly as we slowed for downtown Sweetwater. It was Jessica. Just to make sure we knew, she flashed her red and blue lights. Sometimes it’s a good thing having a daughter who is a Sheriff’s Deputy.
We slowed to a crawl and Jessica came alongside and shot past me where I stood waving in the doorway, accurately estimating where exactly we were going to stop.
She clambered out of the cruiser and left the door open, hoisted several sacks and a tall jug, and trotted over to me.
“Here you go, dad,” she said.
“You saved me.”
“It’s what I do, apparently. Drive two hundred miles to bring you sandwiches and bellywash.”
“That’s what daughters are for, didn’t you know?”
“Cool-looking train. Can I come aboard?”
“Sure, but there’s not much to see.”
I stood aside as she climbed aboard. I introduced her to JoJo, who shook her hand heartily.
“Your father is crazy,” JoJo said.
“I know. I think it runs in the family. You know, William B. Travis?”
“Oh shoot,” JoJo said. “I never made that connection before. Defender of the Alamo.”
“Dead defender,” Jessica said. “He never saw a problem he didn’t want to hug.”
“I’m standing right here,” I said.
“Dad, there’s a car back there that looks like it was eaten by the Kraken.”
“It was eaten by the Kraken,” I replied. “Okay, this here is one of two very old passenger cars.”
“He’s going into Tour Guide mode,” JoJo said.
“In front of the two passenger cars there’s a water car. Sometime ago—I think it was yesterday, or maybe the night before—I had to hold this totally crazy little woman by her ankles and dangle her over the side of it to make a repair of the water line that feeds the steam engine.”
“You’re lucky,” Jessica told JoJo. “He usually drops the women.”
“That I do. But I’m out to change that image. Ahead of the water car is a 1919 steam engine. It’s being serviced by a cranky old driver named Corky, and a Fireman named Leo who shovels coal into its stomach and who looks like no amount of soap will ever take the black out of his pores.”
“Leo and Corky love this train,” JoJo explained.
I noticed my hands were getting tired, so I set the sandwiches down on the nearest seat.
“Okay,” I said. “That’s it for the nickel tour.” I opened a sack and handed JoJo a sandwich, and took one for myself.
Jessica held out her hand and rubbed her thumb and fingers together. I recognized the signal, but decided to ignore it.
“I think she wants you to pay her for the sandwiches,” JoJo said.
“I know. I’m ignoring her.”
“Dad!”
I took a bite of my sandwich and had to resist the sudden urge to cram the entire thing in my mouth. My stomach hurt and my mouth instantly watered. A sandwich never tasted so good. I couldn’t have cared one iota what was in it; I simply wanted to devour it. But there were ladies present.
“I’ll take charge of the sandwiches,” JoJo said, “and make sure everybody else gets one.”
She picked up the remaining sacks, said goodbye to Jessica and stepped off the train. It looked as though we were going to be parked for a short while.
I settled into a seat and Jessica sat down in the aisle across from me and watched me eat.
“You look like crap, dad.”
“I feel worse, but this sandwich is helping,” I managed between bites.
“Don’t talk with your mouth full. And you need to change your shirt. Didn’t it used to be...white or something?”
I looked down. “I’m not sure.”
“Mom wanted me to make sure you were all right.”
“I’m fine,” I said. “Mom worries too much.”
“She has every reason to. Any idea why everybody is trying to stop the train?”
“I’m starting to think,” I said, then paused and chewed another big bite, “that somebody doesn’t like us.”
Jessica laughed. “That’s how it usually works. Okay, I’m gonna go now.”
“You’re going to follow us the rest of the way in, aren’t you?” I asked.
“Yeah.”
“I’ve already got a State Trooper doing that. His name is Cap.”
“Where is he?”
“Probably somewhere ahead, checking out the tracks, making sure someone hasn’t set a trap for us.”
She nodded, then slid out of her seat.
“Still,” she said, “I’ll see you in Midland.”
I pulled out my wallet, reached in and extracted a hundred dollar bill and handed it to her.
“Thanks, dad,” she said.
I nodded and continued to eat.
“I could never watch you eat when you’re hungry. You eat like a sumo wrestler.”
“Danks,” I said, talking as I chewed.
And then she was gone, into the night.
It was at that point that I realized that JoJo had made off with the gallon of soda. You
can never trust a woman.
*****
We got underway and passed through Sweetwater without incident. I suppose that the hours between two and four—I had no actual idea of what time it was, and found myself vowing to put on a wrist watch and wear it every day when I got back home—are either too early or too late for your run-of-the-mill train-hijacking hood.
After passing through the town of Roscoe, I got a call from Cap.
“Yeah?” I said.
“Okay, it’s all set up.”
“What’s all set up?”
“I got to thinking about what you said about getting a look inside the coffin, just in case those guys are after the Governor’s body. So, I got a court order to open the casket, and I’ve lined up a funeral director to do just that.”
“Where are you?” I asked.
“Ahead of you. A little town called Loraine.”
“I’ll ask Corky to stop us at Loraine, then. But I’m not sure anything is going to be found with a simple search. I mean...”
“I know what you mean. That’s why I’ve got a Border Patrol wagon beating hell for leather to beat you to Loraine. They’re bringing one of those big x-ray machines. After the funeral director opens the coffin, they’re going to x-ray the entire contents to see what they can find.”
“Wow,” I said. “That’s a bit...overblown, wouldn’t you say?”
“Yeah. I would say. But here’s the score so far: one pickup truck turned into scrap metal during the first attempt to stop you, two fellows in custody and one on the lam from the second fiasco, two dead and a seventy-thousand dollar helicopter turned to mincemeat during the third. Don’t you think it’s time we know something for sure?”
“You’ve got a point.”
*****
I got the word to Corky to halt us once we got to the town of Loraine, and ten minutes later he brought the train to a slow and even stop.
For a minute after the train stopped, it felt like I was floating.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Stopped on the tracks in Loraine, I got out amid a flurry of flashing lights from the Border Patrol wagon, Cap’s state patrol cruiser, Jessica’s Travis County Sheriff’s Department vehicle. A hearse was also there, and I shook hands all around as Cap introduced the funeral director, a fellow named Bob Thomas, yet another official named Trey Hansome—a local Justice of the Peace, who apparently had to be there at the opening of the casket, by law—and the Border Patrol agent, a fellow named Pete Ramirez, who was going to do the honors of x-raying the casket in the event that a cursory search by the funeral director turned up nothing.
Cap and I stepped over to the side and I grabbed Jessica and pulled her after us as Bob inserted his hex key into the coffin and started turning it.
“You don’t want to watch,” I told Jessica.
“Maybe you’re right,” she said.
Cap, Jessica and I made a wordless triangle over to the side in the night. I mean, what exactly does one talk about while someone fiddles around with a corpse close by?
“This casket looks like it’s been through a meat grinder,” Bob said. “This is no way to treat the dead. Particularly a Governor.”
“We all agree to that,” Cap said. “You can file a protest with my prisoners back in Waco.”
“Nevermind,” Bob said. “I read all about it in the newspaper. Just sayin’, is all.”
Out of the corner of my eye I noticed that both lids were up, and I glanced over that way as Bob began rummaging around inside. Pete, the Border Patrol agent, moved out of the way for a moment, and I accidentally caught a glimpse of Governor Sawyer’s nose, and quickly snapped my head back eyes front.
“Anything?” I called out.
“Not yet,” Bob said.
We waited.
I looked over to the train to see JoJo, Frank, Charlie, Leo and Corky standing in the dry ditch. Just in case there was trouble, Charlie had his shotgun under the crook of his good arm.
“Okay,” Bob said. “I’ve got nothing in the lining, and nothing under him. Your turn.”
Pete stepped away, opened up the back of his wagon, reached inside the open back window and brought out a small machine that looked like a cross between a hand-held vacuum cleaner and an orbital sander. He walked back to the coffin, flipped a switch, and started the scanning process. I wasn’t sure what I had expected. Maybe something that could scan a whole car at one whack—and doubtless, such devices existed. Then again, it made sense that there would exist small, compact hand-held devices, on the off-chance that a Border Patrol agent would have to x-ray something out in the middle of the desert, dozens or even hundreds of miles from the nearly outpost.
The scan took five minutes. Five minutes of standing in the dry desert wind, not talking, and fidgeting uncomfortably.
“Nothing,” Pete said.
“Really?” Cap asked.
“Yeah. Really. Scanned every inch.” Pete turned the thing off, and walked it back over to his truck.
“Okay,” the Justice of the Peace said. “Close him back up.”
“Gladly,” Bob replied. I didn’t look again until the casket was sealed.
We loaded Governor Sawyer back into the passenger car, and everyone dispersed—Frank to the Caboose, Charlie to the forward passenger car while grumbling something about taking a nap, and Leo, JoJo and Corky back to the engine.
“I’m tired,” Jessica said. “Can’t wait to get a good night’s sleep—or a day’s sleep—when we get to Midland.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Heard of sleep once. Seems like a long time ago.”
*****
After leaving Loraine, pursuant to my instructions, Corky opened the throttle up and the night blurred around us. We had lost valuable time, but it looked as though we were going to make the deadline. According to my calculations—which were all done within the narrow confines of my thoroughly weary and addled head; not much space in there, but sometimes it’s like dropping a quarter into a machine and getting your fortune on a piece of paper—we were about thirty hours out from the burial. Still, I wanted to be over and done with Old ‘19 and its misfit crew.
Outside, the countryside blurred past at what seemed like about forty or fifty, but because of our height from the tracks, figured to be closer to seventy. I sat and ruminated about old friends, both alive and gone: my best friend from the old days, Brad Fisher, dead these many years; Hank Sterling, who had once again entered retirement; and Walt Cannon, living out his final years in what he considered paradise on the Yucatan Peninsula.
I tried to sleep but couldn’t, and so I got up and stepped to the passenger car doorway. On a lark, I opened it up and stood there, watching the landscape blur by me.
There was a positive draft throughout the car from all the broken windows to the rear. In the center of the aisle, blocking the way aft—the direction it didn’t pay to go, because that way led to the refrigeration car, which was little more than a place-holder in the Lone Star Express—was the golden coffin.
I was standing there in the night when JoJo came back from the engine. Maybe she was checking up on me, seeing if I was sleeping or needed anything.
“We just passed Colorado City,” she said.
“I’m not sure what that means,” I said. “How far do we have to go?”
“Frank says we have a couple of little towns, then Big Spring, a few more little towns, then Midland. We ought to be there not long after dawn. At least at this rate. You told Corky to open her up, and Leo’s watching the pressure gauges like a hawk. If they start to redline, he’s going to make Corky slow down.”
“Sounds reasonable. What time is it now?” I asked.
“A little after four in the morning. I believe the burial service is tomorrow, isn’t it?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Gosh, but I’m tired.”
“I was born tired,” she said.
“The days and nights have a way of running all together to become one thing.”
“That they do,” she
agreed.
“It’s been a hell of a run, hasn’t it?”
“It has.”
At that moment, a baseball sailed past my head and thunked into the far wall.
Perry!
“Oh crap.” JoJo said. “Not again.”
“When you meet him,” I said, “you’ll love him.”
JoJo retrieved the baseball, handed it to me. I peeled off the rubber bands and opened up the handwritten message.
HEADS UP! BRIDGE OUT AHEAD!
A GUY JUST BLEW IT UP!
STOP!!!
My blood froze in my veins. JoJo took the message from my hands and read it. She swallowed, tried to speak, then began fishing for her radio. She keyed the mic and her voice croaked.
I took it away from her and tried to speak into it. The sound was little more than the mewling of a kitten.
JoJo did me a very large favor: she jabbed me in the solar plexis, and the word exploded from me.
“STOP!”
“Why?” Corky asked.
“Why?” Frank echoed.
“BRIDGE!” I managed. “OUT! Bridge OUT!”
“Shit!” Corky said.
Then I remembered. I had turned my phone off. Perry had no way to call me because I’d never given him the other phone number.
*****
“We’re not going to stop in time,” Corky shouted over the radio. “We’re going to wreck!”
“Hit the brakes!” I shouted into the radio. “Slow us down enough to jump for it.”
“I’m hitting the brakes!” Corky said. “Out!”
I looked ahead down the tracks where the front lamp of the train revealed yawning blackness where a railroad bridge should have been.
“You have to jump!” I yelled at JoJo.
“No! I’m scared!”
“If you don’t jump when we slow,” I said, “you’re dead.”
At that moment the whine that sprang up was like the mother of all blackboard fingernail scrapes—the large and high-pitched, self-sustaining and propagating scream of layers of steel scraping away and shredding themselves on yet more layers of steel.
