Casserole Diplomacy and Other Stories

by Various

  “Asheville,” Appleton said. “We want you to take Miss Pittman to see her mother.”

  Devin blinked. “What crew am I on?”

  Appleton pulled another folder from his desk. Devin could see his own name written on this one. Appleton left the folder on his desk, unopened.

  “How long have you been with the company, Mr. Barefoot?” he asked.

  “Five years,” Devin said. He looked at the folder on Appleton’s desk. But you already know that.

  “Long time. How come you’re not a railman by now?”

  Devin felt his face redden. “I don’t know. Just hadn’t done well enough to move up, I guess.”

  “Your foremen say you’re smart. Smarter than most, even. You can read and write.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You understand how a rail car works, how all the parts operate?”

  “Yes, sir. Sure I do.”

  “Well, what else do you think a railman needs?”

  Devin sat in the chair and chewed the inside of his cheek, pondering the number of times he’d been reminded how old he was for a hauler. “I don’t know. I guess if I had figured it out, I would’ve been a railman by now.”

  The corner of Appleton’s mouth twisted up into a smile. He pushed a brown paper envelope across the desk. “We need you to go to Thomasville and pick up Miss Pittman. It’ll be your second consecutive run, of course, so you’ll get time-and-a-half, plus mileage.”

  Devin ran his finger under the envelope’s flap. The contents fell out into his lap, and his heart skipped a beat. It was an octagonal patch of sky blue, with gold trim around the edges.

  “We’ll get one of the ladies downstairs to put that on your uniform,” Appleton said. “You can pick it up in the morning.”

  “Yes, sir.” Devin fingered the rough fabric of the patch. “Thank you.”

  “One of your foremen heard about this job, and thought it was time we gave you a chance,” Appleton said. “Herman Turner, as a matter of fact.”

  Devin gaped at him. “Herman?”

  “He thinks very highly of you. He said he figured you had wasted enough time with the grunts, even if you didn’t think so.”

  Devin thought of Alan. “They’re good boys,” he said. “Even if some of ’em aren’t too smart, they work hard.”

  Appleton smiled. “I know.” He handed Devin the job folder. “Good luck, Mr. Barefoot. Show us you’ve earned it.”

  Devin walked to the hauler’s quarters in a daze. He was a railman now. He could not even bring himself to speak the word, and signed in at the desk as a hauler, just as he always had. He took a candle from the bored clerk and trudged up the narrow staircase.

  Devin’s room was small and musty, like all the hauler’s quarters. He threw a blanket over the dirty ticking that served as the mattress and heaved himself onto it without even kicking off his boots. A cool breeze blew in through the window, tapping the shutter against the outside wall. The clack of a horse cart on cobblestone drifted up on the wind, and Devin caught a few snatches of drowsy conversation. Out there, the people of Greensboro were slipping off to bed, secure in the knowledge that another day much like this one waited on the other side of the night. By dawn, Devin would be long gone.

  He woke to the sound of a heavy fist pounding on the door.

  Devin caught the 5:15 out of Greensboro, bound south to High Point. For the first thirty minutes he and his mates churned the bars in darkness. Then the gray glow in the east turned to pink, and Devin saw the silhouette of a church steeple. As the train grew closer, he noticed gaps in the structure where sunlight came through, and then the tall grass in the churchyard. The plague had been here, and the village had been abandoned. Devin turned away and focused on the rails.

  In High Point he transferred to the 10:20 to Archdale, a four-bar Remington on which the foreman drove the bar along with the haulers. The load behind the Remington was light, two flatcars of cotton, and not twenty minutes out of High Point the train came to a junction. On the spur line heading west sat a single-bar Dawson, gleaming in the sun like a newly-polished rifle.

  Devin shouldered his pack but did not step off the car.

  “Okay,” the Remington foreman said. “This is it.”

  “Yep,” Devin said, tugging his pack’s strap tighter over his shoulder.

  The foreman’s puzzled expression softened into something like a smile. “Need help with anything?” he asked.

  Devin shook his head suddenly, as one waking from a dream. “No thanks,” he said, and hopped down onto the gravel rail bed. “Thanks for the ride.”

  The Remington’s foreman waved as the train moved away. “Good luck! Watch out for that first hill!”

  Devin turned to the little Dawson, and the lump in his throat grew larger. In a kind of trance he stepped through the pre-run checklist—gears oiled, flywheel rotating freely on its bearings, brakes smooth and unblemished. Then he climbed aboard, put his feet on the iron footplate, and gently let off the brake.

  The track sloped downhill, and the Dawson drifted off without a sound. Devin gripped the oscillating handbar and gingerly added his own force. Soon the Dawson was sailing along at ten miles an hour, and Devin allowed himself a hint of a smile.

  No sooner had he done so than the track rounded a bend and plunged down a five percent grade. Devin felt his stomach lurch as he pulled back on the brake lever. Try though he might, the Dawson’s speed dropped only a little by the time it reached the bottom of the hill. Devin gritted his teeth as the Dawson swung around a tight corner, wheels screeching.

  “Stupid. Stupid,” Devin said as he brought the car to a halt. He breathed deep and wiped the sweat from his palms. “You know you’re supposed to read the top first.”

  He withdrew the map from his pack and spread it on the barpost. There, marked by a tight convergence of contour lines, was the hill he had just come down. It was even labeled with red letters.

  “It won’t happen again,” he said, and studied the rest of the route until he could see it in his mind.

  The country through which he passed was one of rolling hills, requiring no more than a 3 gear for a single-bar like the Dawson. The soil was rich, but the plague had been here twenty years before, and the human population had yet to return. The only sounds Devin heard besides the whoosh of the Dawson’s mechanism were the blue jays and the wind in the oak trees. For half an hour he saw no sign of another human being. Then he rounded a turn and saw three columns of smoke rising into the morning sky. He had arrived.

  Devin brought the car to a stop at the Thomasville landing. It was hardly more than a plank floor, without even a roof to keep off the rain. Devin set the Dawson’s brake and looked around the little glen.

  “Hello?” he called out. “Is anyone around?” Then Elaine stepped into the clearing.

  Devin knew he was staring, but he could not take his eyes from her. The last time he had seen her, she had been a skinny adolescent, with the giggly carelessness of youth. Now she had become a woman, and carried herself tall and upright. Devin swallowed hard and wondered if he had matured as much.

  “Elaine,” he said, reaching down to take the basket she carried. She climbed aboard without returning his acknowledgement, lifting her skirt to clear the grease-covered workings of the Dawson. “You can sit here,” he said, indicating one of the two passenger chairs at the front of the car.

  “Thank you,” she said, arranging herself on the seat. Devin contemplated her solemn expression, trying to find even a hint of recognition. He set about preparing the Dawson for the next leg of its journey, switching the direction of the drive gear and oiling the machinery.

  “I’m real sorry about your mother,” he told Elaine. “I hope she’ll be all right.”

  Elaine nodded. “Thank you,” she said. When she did not speak again Devin let off the brake, gave the bar a good shove, and the Dawson glided off in the direction it had come.

  She remained silent all the way back to the main line. Devin p
aused at the junction and leaned into her field of view. “It’s me,” he said, “Devin. Remember?”

  She turned to look at him, as calmly and dispassionately as a surgeon might regard a patient. “I know,” she said. “I want to thank you for coming. The railroad answered faster than I thought they would.”

  The chill of her gaze made him feel even more childish, and he fished for something to put him on an even footing. “I’m a railman now,” he said, touching the blue insignia on his sleeve.

  It had been the wrong thing to say. Outright hostility replaced the coolness in her expression. “How nice for you,” she said. “Enjoy it while you can.”

  Devin cursed himself silently. He kicked off the brake and pushed the Dawson forward again.

  The sun rode high in the sky now, filtering through maples and oaks to shed a mottled light on the rails. The scent of honeysuckle was in the air, mixing with the fragrance of the pines that crowded the track. Occasionally they would pass a signal tower, and Elaine would crane her neck to look up at the red flags waving in the breeze. At ten, they passed to the south of Salem and pushed on west toward Hickory, paced by the steady beat of the bar.

  The hills grew steeper here, with the occasional crossing on the stout oaken bridges the Royal Engineers had thrown up over creeks and rivers. Devin used a number 4 gear, a medium ratio with enough power to get up hills but enough speed to make good time going down. The Dawson’s flywheel absorbed a great deal of the energy on downhill stretches, giving it up when the track sloped upward again. With a good railman at the helm, the speed of a train did not vary more than a few miles an hour. The Dawson glided along, barely making a sound. “Is Asheville a very big place?” Elaine asked suddenly.

  Devin thought for a moment. “No,” he said. “It’s not much bigger’n Thomasville. The mountains is a hard place to make a living.”

  She made a little motion that might have been a shudder. “My mother’s written me from the sanatorium. She says there are crowds of men in the streets at all hours of the day and night, without any work to do, and without any families. She says none of the patients are allowed in town after dark.”

  Devin remembered seeing groups in the streets of Asheville, but could not recollect feeling threatened. Some of those boys are railmen, he thought, blowing off a little steam. “It’s not really so bad—”

  “They won’t let me stay in the hospital,” Elaine broke in. “They say I’ll have to stay in town, and walk to see Momma.” Her expression was imploring. “I don’t know anyone there. I don’t know if there are any places to stay, any hotels or inns—”

  She broke off and turned away. Devin stared as she worried the lace edges of her handkerchief and darted little glances out at the forest.

  “I’ll walk you into town,” he offered. “There’s a couple of places to go. You won’t be the only lady.”

  “I’ve never been so far from home,” she said. “When Momma left, I didn’t think I’d ever see her again. Asheville seemed like it was on the other side of the world.”

  Devin pushed the bar, thinking of the great spaces beyond the mountains but saying nothing.

  “Nothing much ever happens in Thomasville. People don’t fight, they try to help each other. The only bad thing is when the plague comes.”

  Devin thought of the two men on the train the previous day and bit his lip. “Asheville’s got some good people too,” he said. “You’ll see.”

  By mid-afternoon they had reached Hickory, and Devin called a stop to eat. They sat atop a small rise, from which the surrounding countryside rolled away in rippling hills that were only a hint of what Devin knew lay over the horizon. He chewed the sandwich he had stuffed in his bag and looked out to the blue sky in the west, shivering a little as the sweat dried from his arms.

  “Do you ever think things might have been different?” Elaine said. She too was looking out at the horizon.

  Devin hesitated. “You mean . . . for us?”

  “That maybe the plague would have never happened, and so many people wouldn’t have died.” She looked back at Devin. “What kind of world would we live in?”

  Devin shook his head. “I never thought about it.”

  “Really? You never thought about how our lives would be if we didn’t spend so much time burying the dead?”

  Devin shook his head again and smiled sheepishly.

  Elaine laughed. “Of course not. You wouldn’t think of such foolishness. Men have to be so practical.”

  Devin laughed too, and ducked his head to hide his embarrassment. It was the first time she had ever called him a man.

  After they finished eating Devin set about preparing the Dawson for the long climb into the mountains. He struggled with the heavy iron machinery, lifting the armature to switch the drive from the 4 gear to the 5. He climbed aboard and breathed a quiet sigh of relief as the bar moved easily in his hands, and they ascended again, slowly, into the hills.

  The North Carolina mountains were deceptive in the approach. Unlike their younger counterparts to the west, they did not rear up suddenly from a flat plain. Cloaked in a soft-looking carpet of trees, they hid behind row after row of foothills, each one only mildly higher than the last. It looked easy on the map, a succession of not-too-high peaks through which the road wound like a snake. A railman starting out in confidence from Salem would arrive in Asheville utterly spent, arms shaking from the endless row of hills. Devin knew this danger, having been to Asheville twice. He let the pace of the bar slacken, saving himself for the final push.

  “Is it hard?”

  Devin looked down to find Elaine watching his struggles. He blew off the drop of sweat dancing at the end of his nose and grunted out, “Yes.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  It had been the easy thing to say, but he could see in her face that her pity was sincere. He shrugged. “It’s my job.”

  Elaine scowled. “Everyone says that.”

  In two more hours they reached the mountains proper, and the track took them along the side of a steep cliff, from which they could look down on the waving tops of maples and pines. The sun rested in the shallow bowl between two rounded, ancient Appalachian hills. In a few minutes it was gone, and the shadows crept up from the valley to swallow the track and the little car moving along it. Devin struck a match to light the oil lamps hanging at the front and rear of the car. Elaine sat in a circle of yellow light, shuddering at the chill in the air.

  “It’s going to be dark when we get there,” she said.

  Devin knew it would be midnight by the time they reached Asheville, and said so. He got a woollen blanket out of the supply box at his feet and gave it to her.

  “Do you have much problem with . . . people harassing the train?” she asked, wrapping herself in the blanket.

  The castlings, Devin thought. “Sometimes,” he said. “They don’t much like to mess with little trains like this. They wait for big ones that carry a lot of cargo. Besides, we got some protection.” He patted the iron box attached to the barpost. A six-shot pistol rested inside.

  “I’d just as soon not see anybody till we get to Asheville,” Elaine said.

  Devin knew this part of the country had been decimated by the plague. The graveyards were full, and the towns almost empty. “You might get your wish,” he said softly.

  Darkness came on in earnest now, and the grade reached one in eight, the steepest the road would build. Devin clambered beneath the Dawson and changed the gears once more, to the sixth and last, but still his muscles screamed. Sweat poured from his forehead and spattered the deck. The bar grew slick in his hands, and his knuckles turned white with the force of holding it.

  At last, when he thought he could push no longer, the Dawson crested the hill and the track levelled off. Devin blew out a sigh and let the bar cycle without him, massaging feeling back into his shoulders and arms.

  “Are you all right?” Elaine’s voice sounded far away, as though the thin mountain air could not carry her voice.<
br />
  “I’ll be all right in a while.”

  “I don’t want you to get hurt. I don’t know what I’d do if something happened to you.” She pulled the blanket more tightly around her.

  “It’s beautiful here in the daytime,” Devin said. “You’ll see tomorrow.”

  “We could die up here,” Elaine said. “We could fall right off this mountain and not stop till we got to the bottom.”

  The wind gusted, a cold breeze that lifted the sweat from Devin’s brow. He became aware of how quiet it was, not a single cricket or frog to be heard. “It’s beautiful,” he said. “I’d hate to go my whole life and not be able to see it. Lots of people do.”

  Elaine’s fists were two lumps clutching the inside of the blanket. “There are so many bad things in the world,” she said. “You’ve seen more than I have. How can you stand to think of it?”

  He shook his head, seeing her dismay and not comprehending it. “I don’t,” he said.

  The train hit something hard. In the next instant the Dawson was up and off the tracks. Devin heard Elaine scream. Then he hit the ground, and the air was knocked from his lungs.

  The Dawson’s oil lamps went out, smashed against the ground. A half-dozen figures appeared in the moonlight, hunched over and moving with the jerky gait that identified them to Devin immediately.

  Castlings, he thought.

  Devin rose and ran to the Dawson, lying on its side next to the track. The castlings quickly encircled him, careful to keep outside the range of his grasp. One by one they lunged in toward him. He batted away first one attacker and then another, moving ever closer to the box where the pistol was stored. Before he could reach it he felt the sting of a blade catch his arm from behind. He cried out, and with a flood of anger spun and grabbed his assailant by the waist. Each castling accounted for perhaps half Devin’s body weight, and with muscles developed through five years of hauling, Devin hurled the man squalling down the hillside.

  Devin found the strongbox on the side of the overturned Dawson, and fired two shots straight up. A tongue of flame flared out from the barrel, and in the brief light Devin saw the castlings scattering into the woods. One looked back at him, and he saw the pinched features, more canine than human, of a young woman no more than three feet tall.