Xolotl Strikes!

by William Stafford

  The moment had come for Hector Mortlake to choose his fate. I could be torn apart by a slavering beast or I could save Tommy the trouble and fling myself from the train.

  Decisions, decisions!

  I would have liked to have seen Cuthbert one last time - Odd the thoughts that occur to one in times of duress.

  The relentless Tommy landed nimbly and, perceiving, I was no longer running away, slowed to a more measured but no less terrifying pace. It was then that I saw he was still carrying the arm of Xolotl in his mouth. It seemed sacrilegious.

  And then, the most extraordinary thing!

  Tommy knelt before me and looked up with an expectant expression, calling to mind Cuthbert for some reason... Now, I haven’t interacted with a dog since I was a wee boy but there is an understanding between man and mutt that is unmistakable. I knew what I had to do.

  “Good boy; good boy, Tommy,” I smiled. I took the arm from him; he kept his eyes on it and panted in eager anticipation.

  I raised the arm high above my head, almost losing my balance in the process. Steam was billowing around me in such a way I was anxious Tommy would not see what I was doing. I flung that arm as high and as far as I could. Tommy’s eyes never left it - he leapt like a coiled spring, elongating his body to go after it.

  And that was that.

  Tommy was gone. All right, we were down by one mummified limb but on the whole I was pleased with the result.

  Chapter Fourteen

  I had to wait until the train pulled in at the next station before I could climb down from the roof and return to the compartment. The conductor assisted my descent. He was sombre, all the laughter gone from him.

  “Oh, lord, lord, lord,” he said. “I’m mighty glad to see you, Hector. Thought you’d done leave us.”

  “It’s Hector!” I said, as a reflex and then felt like a damned fool.

  The conductor inclined toward me with a conspiratorial air. “When we get to New Orleans, I’ll help you but after that, I want you off my train.”

  That seemed like a bit of a mixed message to me. He wanted to help me and throw me off?

  “Help me?” was the first question that sprang to mind. “With what, pray?”

  His eyes widened as he realised he knew more than I did. “The lady,” he said. He may have said something more but I didn’t hang around to listen. I boarded the carriage and tore along the corridor to the compartment.

  Miss Pepper was there. She was sitting upright and her eyes were closed. To the casual observer it would appear she was merely sleeping. I could see why the conductor would leave her like this - to avoid causing distress to other passengers.

  One-Eyed Helen was also there, but she was lying across the opposite seat, hogging the space like the dastard and tyrant she was. I decided I’d have it out with her once and for all. For one thing, her boots were on the upholstery and other people have to sit there, damn it.

  I closed the door behind me - I didn’t want to attract attention.

  “Now look here, you murderous old boot,” I began. One-Eyed Helen stirred not and heeded me even less, but I gave her quite the sermon about treating people and things with respect and not murdering the former or muddying the latter.

  “Hector?”

  Hearing my name startled me. I turned around slowly and was confronted by the smiling face of Miss Pepper, come to torment me from beyond the grave.

  “Nice speech,” she laughed. “Wasted on her, of course.”

  I blinked. “What mean you?”

  “Oh, Hector! She’s dead!” Miss Pepper giggled.

  “She’s dead as well?”

  “As well as what?”

  “As well as you!”

  “I’m not dead! Who said I was?” She sprang to her feet as though to prove it.

  I saw then my error. I had not imagined when the conductor said ‘lady’ he could possibly be referring to the withered old crone.

  “Where’s Tommy?” Miss Pepper tried to peer around me as if I was concealing him.

  “Gone,” I shrugged.

  “Doggone!”

  “I just said so, didn’t I?”

  Miss Pepper shivered. “Well, I’m glad. Hideous creature.”

  “Oh, I don’t know. I found him rather... fetching.”

  “What?”

  “Never mind. Now, what happened? Why did you kill the old woman?”

  “Hey! I didn’t kill the old woman. Who told you that?”

  “Then I think you’d better tell me who did.” I sat opposite the corpse and motioned to Miss Pepper to do the same.

  “All right, all right.” She fidgeted with loose strands of hair, corralling them under grips and slides. “I’ll tell you.

  “When you went out the window and that dog-headed creature went after you, the old girl went crazy. She came slashing at us - me and the conductor - with that crusty old knife of hers. Well, the conductor - his name is Washington, by the way - he tried to protect me by putting himself between me and the knife and at the same time I’m trying to protect him by putting myself between him and the - well, you get the picture. So we’re doing this little get-behind-me dance and the old woman is swinging her knife at us, and the train’s rattling along, and then Washington, he opens the door to the corridor and tries to bundle me out there but I won’t go. I shove him out and slide the door closed and I turn and just about manage to duck in time. The old woman smacks into the door like a bird flying into a windowpane and then she’s not moving anymore. She fell on her own knife, see?”

  “I see.”

  I’m not saying I didn’t believe her - well, I am. I didn’t believe a word of it. If the chance arose, I would have Mr Washington’s side of the story.

  “What are we going to do?”

  “The police, I expect. They will have an interest.”

  “No!” she gasped, fuelling my disbelief.

  “Why not?”

  “Well, think about it: if the cops get involved at this stage, it can only slow us down. For my part, those Wright brothers will have their invention up in the skies before I can file my own patent, and for yours, well, Cuthbert ain’t immortal, is he?”

  Ah. She had a point.

  “Very well. We shall keep the untimely demise of One-Eyed Helen from the notice of the authorities for the time being.”

  “Untimely? She was ninety if she was a day.”

  “Even so.”

  “So what are we going to do with her?”

  I don’t know why she thought I would have all the answers. I had none. It appeared we now had two corpses to transport to Mexico. It looked like we would have to invest in a second trunk.

  “We’ll ditch her when we get to New Orleans,” Miss Pepper nodded gravely. “Then you can buy some new clothes.”

  “With what? We are, as Cuthbert might put it, boracic lint.”

  She frowned at the expression but she appeared to get the drift. She held up a velvet purse that was bulging with banknotes. “With this!”

  “Where did you - No! I can’t believe you robbed a dead woman!”

  “Relax! She was still alive when I picked her pocket.”

  Incorrigible woman! I declared I wanted no part of it, despite her protestations that the deceased had tried to kill us and was part and parcel of the nefarious doings that had imperilled my Cuthbert.

  “Honestly,” she shook her head. “You English folks can be so squeamish.”

  I instructed her to remain with the remains while I went off to find Mr Washington and secure accommodation for the night. The train was plunging into a darkening landscape and would continue through the night. I had misgivings about sharing a compartment with that woman - and not solely for reasons of propriety.

  I watched as with surefo
oted agility, Mr Washington moved from the adjoining carriage to mine. He greeted me with a wary smile. “You know about the lady,” he said.

  “Yes, I know about the lady,” I replied. “Come, Mr Washington; you must be due a break by now. Come and tell me your side of the story.”

  He looked bemused. “My name’s Melville, sir.”

  “Melville Washington?”

  “Washington Melville. And it ain’t for you to go calling me Mister.”

  “Oh, pish tush, man! I shall address you as I damn well please. And now, Mr Melville, if you please. Tell me what happened in my compartment.”

  * * *

  The conductor’s story corroborated that of Miss Pepper - but I still felt uneasy about the woman. And as for accommodation, there was none to spare. Melville said I could join him in the caboose if I was not opposed to roughing it. I translated this offer to mean I might spend the night in the staff car. I told him I would be honoured.

  I returned to Miss Pepper to tell her this news. She did not seem particularly bothered to hear it but she did express a wish to be spared a night alone with a dead body. Melville and I, with the judicious use of blankets, transported One-Eyed Helen to a closet where we stood her alongside a couple of mops and a broom.

  “I feel mighty bad about this,” Melville dabbed at his brow with a handkerchief. “Respect for the dead and all.”

  “Oh, I’m sure she won’t mind,” I essayed to reassure him. “I’ve seen where she lived. Believe you me, a broom cupboard is an upgrade.”

  He led me to the caboose - the smallest of the train’s carriages. It occurred to me that the luggage was better accommodated. He boiled water on a gas ring to make coffee. I perched on a crate and watched this gentle giant perform the domestic task in those barbaric conditions.

  What’s your story, Mr Washington Melville, I wondered?

  As the train plunged into Alabama under the cloak of night, he told me.

  * * *

  The Conductor’s Story

  I came to the railroads after the war. You done heard about the war. The war that pitted American against American, North against South. I didn’t fight but my father did. He was given his freedom one minute and then went and sold himself into the army the next, like a danged fool. Well, he went and got himself blown up by a cannonball and we never saw him again. It was only after it was all over and the dust was settled and this great country of ours began to put itself back together again, that the truth came out.

  My father had been a railroad man too. But not the way you’re thinking. He belonged to an underground organisation that helped slaves escape slavery, taking them from the cruelty of the plantations in the South to new lives in the North, where they could work the livelong day in the factories, only this time, they were earning money for themselves.

  So, you might say, I’m carrying on the family tradition, working on the railroad for real. Now, I ain’t saying I’m a hero - that was my father through and through - but riding these rails sure does show you the good and bad in folks. Don’t you go thinking that’s the first dead body I’ve had to stash in a cupboard - no, sir!

  Why, there was this one occasion I ain’t obliged to forget. Not long after the war was done and a lot of folks were displaced and dispossessed and I don’t know what all. It was my first long-haul trip, from Alabama up to Massachusetts, and I was just a nervous young boy. I didn’t know how the folks from the South would treat me - turns out they just see me as another kind of servant, as I punch their tickets and tote their luggage from the box car to the platform.

  Then there was this gentleman - I’m stretching the term to call him that - a man of the South in a white linen suit and big white hat. He had a moustache that reached to his ears and was always sucking away on a cheroot. He made regular trips up North and back, some business or other, I don’t know what, but a lot of folks made a handsome profit out of that there war. And every time he saw me, he gave me a hard time. He called me Boy and demanded I do this and fetch that, and whatever I did, nothing was ever good enough. He complained to the railroad company, saying I ought to be whipped. The railroad company don’t hold with that kind of punishment in their disciplinary procedures but they said if there was any more complaints, I would be fired and they would see to it I would never work again. This gentleman was a big investor in the company, you see, and he didn’t like black folks getting paid for the privilege of working for him. Every time he mistreated me, I’d ask my father what I ought to do, what I ought to say. Of course, he never replied, with him being dead and all, but I tried to imagine the guidance he’d give me.

  Well, one day, this gentleman summons me to his compartment and demands a cup of coffee. I tries to explain we don’t offer coffee but we’d be stopping off in Raleigh in an hour or so and there’d be time for coffee there. He gripped his cane like he was about to thrash me with it and says he knows I got coffee in the caboose, and I says that ain’t for passengers but for the railroad workers, and he says he don’t give a damn and I must fetch him some at once.

  Well, I comes to the caboose and I fixes him his damn coffee and it’s all I can do to stop myself spitting in it. I takes it to him and he spits it all over me, screaming I am trying to poison him. And I says I wish I’d thought of that, and he leaps at me with his cane raised over his head and I thinks my brains is about to get bashed out when - well, he must have had the handle end of his cane too near the window. It catches on the hook they use to snatch the mail bags and he’s pulled through the window - he hasn’t the sense to let go, the danged fool. And all his papers are flying everywhere, all his banknotes.

  Well, he was gone. I never saw him again.

  But the more I think of it, I can’t see how a hook outside a closed window could have grabbed him like that. Something else pulled him through the glass, I am sure of it.

  Well, I used some of his money to pay to have the glass replaced. The rest I divided among the workers. We had a mighty fine meal in Raleigh that day, yes sir!

  Something was looking out for me. I knows it. I ain’t saying it was my father - Maybe it was just a freak accident after all. But it’s made me determined to get off this railroad, sir, and use the brains that I was allowed to keep in my head, and make something of my life.

  Chapter Fifteen

  I didn’t see much of Miss Pepper during the rest of the journey but when I alighted at New Orleans, there she was, smiling prettily on the platform. One might be forgiven for thinking there stands a young woman without a care in the world. I had never met anyone so brazen.

  “Good morning, Hector!” she grinned at me. I exchanged a glance with Washington Melville. I was sorry to be leaving the fellow. I promised to look him up on the return journey and somehow get a signed copy of Water Nymph to him as fast as possible. “Is everything in order?”

  I took this to mean One-Eyed Helen. I assured her it was.

  Melville directed us to the stagecoach booking office - the railways had not yet made incursions into Mexico - but Miss Pepper declared she had some other purchases to make first. She was hell-bent, then, on spending the dead woman’s cash.

  I said farewell to my new friend and followed Miss Pepper to the centre of New Orleans, a place that feels like it has just come out of a hot wash. The humidity was doing no favours to her hair, which frizzed up like a tangle of copper candy floss. She seemed oblivious. Despite the heat and the moisture, I have to report, there is a certain elegance to the city. Greenery is everywhere - it flourishes while the humans wilt. The architecture is colonial, to be sure, but there is a decorative element with its finery and lacy ornamentations, its arches and galleries that gives the place its unique character, and is much to be admired - as long as you are prepared to overlook the damnable Frenchness of it all. Not that I mind the French. That’s not it. It’s just that, as an Englishman, well - give me mock Tudor beams a
nd mullioned windows any day of the week.

  “Know something?” Miss Pepper cast the question over her shoulder. She was striding along with the confidence of someone who knew where she was going.

  “I know a few things,” I pointed out. “You’ve been here before.”

  “Yes, many times. But what I was going to say was I kind of like the idea of you being dressed as my valet. Makes it look like I’ve gone up in the world.”

  “I thought you invented a machine for that.”

  “You’re very droll when you put your mind to it, Hector. So, instead of spending good money on a new suit for you, I think we should try to acquire us an automobile. It would get us to Texas and Mexico in next to no time.”

  I pulled a face. “That’s not strictly true. It would take us about the same time as a horse-drawn carriage except we wouldn’t have any of that unpleasant business with a bucket and shovel.”

  It was her turn to pull a face. “Oh, we just leave them where they fall. The horse apples.”

  I grimaced at her indelicacy. “In England, we take great pride in the cultivation of roses.”

  “Everyone should have a hobby,” she gave one of her infuriating shrugs. “But what do you say? Automobile or stagecoach? Which will it be?”

  I must admit the idea of being behind the wheel of a car again - even an American one - was not without appeal. I missed my Bessie sure enough but she was never more than a plaything to me. I wasn’t sure a horseless carriage would be up to the job of transporting us over long distances and arduous terrain. Further to which, I did not wish to be alone with that woman for what could be days on end. I voted for the more public option: the stagecoach.

  “Overruled!” she laughed. “Now, there must be somewhere in town we can get one of those babies...”

  I felt hot under the collar and could not blame it entirely on the climate. She really was the most irritating young lady.

  She strode away, past the boutiques and restaurants, leading me into a less salubrious area. Music - if you can call it that - hung in the air like the moisture itself. Drunks staggered and slumped in the streets, on porches and in gutters. The road beneath our feet gave up its brickwork and became little more than a track through the mud. It must be very difficult, it occurred to me, to do one’s laundry in New Orleans. How would one ever get anything dry?