Storm's Thunder

by Brandon Boyce

  “What’s a Pinkerton doing here?”

  “He’s the expressman,” Burke resuming his walk. “You won’t see him again till California.”

  “What about the WC?”

  “They got everything they need in that express car. Even cook they own meals.”

  “What’d he come out for then?”

  “Well, sir, most likely to see what the delay was.” Burke shrugs, sheepish, and comes to a stop outside the last berth. He opens the door and shows me where I’ll be living. At first glance—despite the silk upholstery of the lone chair and the dark, stained wood of the folding table—between the two of us, Storm come out far ahead in usable square footage. “It may look a might cozy, but it’s a marvel of engineering.” Burke sets the luggage down on the narrow bed and pulls back the curtains, the bright midday glare filling the compartment. Just outside, the sagebrush zooms by too fast to make out individual plants, instead creating the effect of a dusky blue stream skirting the patchy golden country that sweeps upward toward what appears to be Placer Mountain. I ponder that, within the hour, every peak and formation passing beyond the glass will be something new and unfamiliar. Burke bends down and reveals an empty cabinet beneath the bed. “This here’s your storage. And you got some more drawers over here,” the porter sliding out a drawer and closing it again. “You want me to unpack you, sir?”

  “No, I need to get myself correct.” I flop the saddlebag into the chair and dig down for the other suit, still wrapped in brown paper. Burke walks over, scratching his chin.

  “If I may, sir. That there Spencer won’t fit in the cupboard, even with that short barrel, but I know just the place where it’ll be out of the way.”

  “I’d be obliged,” removing the rifle and handing it to him, stock first. “Unless you think we’ll come up on some buffalo.” Burke hefts it in his hands and I detect a hint of a smile.

  “No, sir. The hunting trains proved a little too popular.”

  “Not with the buffalo.”

  “No, sir. I ’spect they objected mightily.” Burke takes the rifle to the foot of the bed and gently tugs at the thin mattress, revealing a hidden recess along the sideboard. He slides the rifle into it and replaces the mattress good as new, with nary a bulge or indication of anything amiss.

  “Anyone busts in while I’m sleeping, I don’t even have to roll outta bed. They build it like that on purpose?”

  “More like a happy accident.”

  “Somebody had to be the first to figure it out.”

  “Well sir, let’s just say there ain’t a inch of this train that can’t be used for something other than what it was built for. Everything got a second purpose.”

  “Even this chair?”

  “Sir, that chair fold out flat to a bed, though a man wouldn’t know by looking at it.”

  “Well, ain’t I the dunderhead.”

  “Sir, I hope I don’t offend. I was simply making conversation.” The porter’s eye hitches, his palms spread in apology, as if he’s overstepped—and to a White Man, I’m sure he had.

  “You don’t offend, Burke. I was being a wiseacre. What I get, trying to question a man on his own trade.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “I only laid out the one bed, seeing as you have the berth to yourself, but I’m happy to make it up when we stop for supper at the Harvey House.”

  “Harvey, who’s that?” Burke scratches his head and I know I stepped into one of those clodhopper questions that a man with a double berth ought be knowing. But I figure, better to ask it now then to bust it out in the bar car with the cake-eaters.

  “Well, now, Mister Harvey is a businessman, got himself a string of restaurants all along the line that done near put our galleys out of business. But truth be told, no one ’round here put up much of a fuss on that. Save us the trouble of cooking up a bunch of meals. Now we just wire the orders on up ahead, and the hot food’s waiting when you get there.”

  “Model of engineering.”

  “That it be, sir.” I peel out of the mud-stained ditto coat and set to unfastening the shirt buttons. “Was that a yes on making up the second bed, Mister Harlan?”

  “Not unless you got someone soft to put in it.”

  Burke buries a smile and says, “Afraid it’s not that kind of train, either, sir.”

  “Well, in that case, you better point me toward the bar car.” I palm a dollar into his hand before he can answer.

  * * *

  Turns out the gray suit Pete made fits even better than the brown one. I splash some water on my face, square my hat, and bound down to the parlor car feeling like a new man.

  “Ah, Harlan.” I am not surprised that Spooner Ballentine found the bar before I did. He sits across from Owens, both of them on high-backed velvet chairs that rotate toward me as I push through the door into the plush comfort of the parlor.

  “Mister Owens,” I say, removing my hat. “I believe I’ll have that drink now.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Hard country rolls past, brown and gold in the lengthening shadows. Each mile that ticks off—putting distance between me and a swirl of trouble—unclenches a knot in my gut just a little more, although the whiskey has a dog in that fight too. I spin my chair and, before it comes to rest, the waiter sees my empty glass and heads over with the bottle on a silver tray. He lowers the tray and I set the glass on it and he pours a healthy slug and holds the tray steady while I take my glass again. Then he goes back to the sideboard and marks the purchase of my third whiskey down in his little book—the reckoning to be settled later. Such is the privilege of wealth. The richer you get, the more conversation has a way of becoming unnecessary. I reckon if she set a mind to it, the Queen of England could navigate a whole day’s worth of royal business flapping nothing but her eyebrows. Good thing too. All the air coming out of Spooner right now, the Queen would have to busy herself with breathing just to dispose of it.

  The lawyer had switched subjects from the war to politics and back to the war again and there were a few minutes in there where somebody, just to button him up, tried to corral him to the unfamiliar territory of hog farming. But Spooner just shifted on a dime into a formal oration on the merits of crossbreeding a Berkshire shoat with a Tamworth sow. At that point, with the smooth timbre of his voice harmonizing the train’s hypnotic rhythms, I closed my eyes and had nearly drifted off when I felt my glass sliding off my knee and it brought me back again. The waiter spotted the empty and approached with the bottle.

  “Despite the popular sentiment of my heritage,” Ballentine says, “I find no repugnancy in miscegenation, whether it be swine or Homo sapiens. Why, even my own mother developed a predilection for a certain house negro, light skinned as he was. And I assure you, daddy was no stranger to the charms of Nubian pulchritude. Lord knows how many coffee-colored siblings trying to sharecrop their way out of penury could call me half-brother and not be lying.”

  “Would get ’em strung up, though. Wouldn’t it?” Owens lighting his second cigar.

  “In the wrong company, it just might,” Ballentine says, conceding a fact that disappoints him. He stares out the window in a rare moment of reflection.

  “That why you come west,” Owens asks. “To get away from all that?”

  Spooner’s gaze softens and he gestures his empty glass toward the waiter. The car has cleared out, save the four of us, with most of the passengers taking their drinks elsewhere, blaming either Spooner’s diatribe or the thickening raft of tobacco smoke as the likely reason.

  “Who’s to say why any of us make the migration?” Spooner, in one of his more confounding habits, answering a question with another question. Owens shrugs, holding his glass directly as the waiter pours, skipping the tray all together.

  “For me the question’s easy. To get rich. Soon as I shake the color from the ground, it’s back to Philadelphia. My wife finds the West a bit too rugged.”

  “Well, you would not be the first to cross the Divide in search of fo
rtune. I suppose for me, the motivation is rebirth.” Spooner goes back to looking out the window and I can see there is more to his story, but I let it go and suspect Owens does the same.

  The waiter takes the quiet to swap out the ashtray, asking, “Would you object if I opened a window, sir?”

  “Object?” Spooner lighting up, even though the question was aimed at Owens. “My good man, I sustain most heartily. This compartment could use a rebirth of its own.” The waiter lifts a pair of latches on the window and brings the top pane down a few inches. He lingers there, stealing gulps of fresh air before returning to the sideboard. Spooner turns in his chair and looks at me. “What about you, Harlan? What brings you beyond the frontier?”

  I take a sip of whiskey and feel the burn in my throat and the eyes of the room upon me. I have no idea what I am going to say. And then I open my mouth.

  “Rebirth, is it?”

  “That’s right.”

  “That’ll do fine.” Spooner smiles a sly grin, acknowledging a connection of secrets left unsaid. But Owens, normally a man of circumspection and reserve, can’t help but stick his toe in the water.

  “Hell, a young fella like you’s hardly past his first birth. You musta scorched some bridges, be on number two.” I hold no ill will toward Owens and attribute his poking about to boredom, and a desire to hear the voice of someone other than Shelby J. Ballentine. But I have no mind to elaborate and have no sooner evaded the cloud of expectation when the door bursts open and two sturdy young bucks—nineteen if they’re a day—fill the doorway. Stuffed uncomfortably into their suits and neckties, they look like Protestant farmboys who can’t wait to strip off their church clothes and break for the nearest swimming hole. But they carry enough size and muscle to warrant caution. And there’s two of them. I feel my spine straighten, boots flat to the floor. Neither man cares to remove his cap when he enters, their eyes combing the car, as if unsure of its purpose. The blond works something small and white in his fingers as he steps toward the three of us.

  The darker one, an inch taller than his tow-haired friend, rests on his broad shoulder a heavy, wooden club. I sit up in the chair, the pistol pressing hard and reassuring against my hip.

  The smaller man finds his throat and says, “We in the right place to get a couple sarsaparillas?”

  The waiter nods and motions them toward the vacant chairs next to Ballentine, the lawyer watching the boys with delighted interest. I let drift any thought that this corn-fed pair would mean me harm. Despite their physical attributes, the awkwardness they show in a civilized setting cancels out any threat of their being hired muscle. Still, the wooden club I can’t figure until Spooner weighs in.

  “I say, if you boys are looking to bat for the White Stockings, you’ll be needing the eastbound train to Chicago.”

  The blond lights up and shows the white object in his hand to be some kind of ball, which he slaps from one hand to the other.

  “No sir, we’re headed out to the California Leagues. Hear they’re paying top dollar for boys what can play.”

  “Well, that’s fine. Fine indeed,” Spooner says. “Make yourselves at home.”

  “Not too at home,” Owens interjecting, “Best keep your shirts and shoes on.”

  “I’m fixing to try out for the San Francisco Emersons, hear they’re hurting for infielders. My cousin George, here, he’s got his eye on the Pioneers, on account of everybody needs a hard-slugging catcher.”

  “So you know how to swing that thing, son?” Spooner pointing toward the lumber on George’s shoulder.

  “Ain’t a pitcher in Nebraska I can’t take deep,” George hefting the club, his hands choking around the thinner end. “Ain’t that right, Skip?”

  “From both sides of the plate too,” his cousin adding. “Here, show ’em.” Skip takes a step back and George retreats to the farthest end of the car, widening his stance as he raises the club with both hands over his right shoulder. Skip lofts the ball underhand, and as it arcs upward, the room breaks into a panic. The waiter drops the silver tray, his black skin ashes white in horror. Ballentine spins his chair toward the window, hoisting a meager newspaper for protection as his whiskey and cigar tumble to the floor. I stare in amazement as George locks eyes on the ball, and I feel a sudden dread at what is about to happen. But all at once Owens springs from his chair, leaping across the room and snatches the ball before it descends into certain disaster.

  “Whoa, boys,” Owens never losing his cigar. “Save it for the supper break, will ya?”

  “Aw, we was just messing around,” Skip waving him off. “Weren’t we, George?”

  “I can lay down a bunt, drop that pill right between your shoes, fella. You don’t need to be jumping in.”

  “Settle down, friend. I ain’t taking your toys away,” Owens offering the ball to the reddening George. “But who wants to see a slugger playing small ball?” George holds a heavy stare on Owens, not yet sure if he’s being made fun of. And Owens, for his part, seems ready to go whichever way George decides to play it. That’s when Spooner regains his knack for interjection.

  “How ’bout those sarsaparillas? Put ’em on my tab,” Ballentine wagging a finger at the waiter, who only now collects his tray and what’s left of his nerves. “Let’s all have a seat and discuss America’s game. Now, how about that collapse of the Knickerbockers last fall? Faded down the stretch like a two-dollar nag.”

  “Well, they ain’t got no pitchin’,” Skip chiming in. The waiter searches through a cabinet and comes out with two dusty brown bottles, which he wipes off in a hurry and pops open.

  “True,” Ballentine considering, “but their batters went colder than a witch’s broom handle.” The waiter thrusts a bottle into George’s hand, stealing his attention enough to break the standoff. Owens turns away and starts for his seat again. He catches my eye as he passes, whispering, “I doubt the state of Nebraska shed a tear at their departure.”

  “Appreciate the sody pop, sir,” Skip finding his manners for the first time since arriving. His cousin’s search continues.

  “Pleasure is mine, gentlemen.” Spooner bends to retrieve his glass—empty, but unbroken—from the carpet. But the waiter beats him to it and retreats to the sideboard to fetch a clean replacement. Spooner’s cigar, orange-tipped and glowing, has already returned to its place of importance.

  The door opens, noisier this time—as the Santa Fe has built her speed—and the butcher boy enters, spots the lawyer, and says, “Who ever heard of drinking whiskey without salted peanuts? Brings out the flavor.”

  “Ah, a bag of peanuts would do nicely, my boy.”

  “Five cents, sir.” The boy reaches into a pail, retrieves a small burlap bundle—the peanuts pre-apportioned for easy commerce—and hurls the sack across the car to the unsuspecting Ballentine who traps it, ham-fisted, against his ample chest.

  “Kid’s got an arm. We ought see if he can hurl a screwball,” Skip says.

  “You keep any sandwiches in there?” George rubbing his belly.

  “Yessir. Ten cents apiece and fresh made in Lamy. I got hamsteak and hard cheese, or corned beef with pickle relish.” George crinkles his nose at the options. “If that don’t sound good, I’ll make you a jelly fold-over.”

  “Gimme the corned beef,” George fishing out a dime.

  “What kind of jelly on them fold-overs?” Owens wandering closer.

  “Apricot preserves. Straight from my daddy’s orchard.”

  “I’ll bet it is,” Owens scoffs, flicking a dime from his thumb. The boy snags it with a grin.

  “Born salesman,” Spooner says.

  The door opens again and Burke enters, notepad in hand. He sees the boy and frowns.

  “Now don’t you be spoiling everyone’s nice supper with your candy.” The boy just grins like a puppy that knows he’s too cute to spank.

  “No one goes hungry on my train, Mister Burke.”

  “Oh, it’s your train now is it, Master Reginald?” Burke says.
r />   “It will be someday,” Owens answering. “I can guarantee that.” Burke pulls a stub of pencil from behind his ear.

  “Dining room or the counter, Mister Harlan?”

  “Huh?”

  “Your supper, sir. Got you a choice at the Harvey House. Dining room or standing at the counter. They’s awful fancy in the dining room. Truth be told, it’s all coming from the same kitchen no matter which way you go.”

  “Counter’s fine, I reckon.”

  “Nonsense, my boy,” Spooner frowning. “No friend of mine eats standing up like a horse. Put him at my table, Burke. He’s my guest.”

  “Much obliged.”

  “I extend the invitation to all present, of course.”

  “Hey, that’s swell of ya, sir.” Skip beaming. George raises his bottle, tacks on a nod.

  “Thank you, Ballentine, but I got the family.” Owens says. “You don’t want them monsters messing up a nice meal.”

  “Tallywhack, children add color to any meal.”

  “Oh, they add color, all right. Usually all over their faces. But thank you, Spooner, be our pleasure.”

  “Pleasure is mine.”

  “That’ll be eight for supper, then, Mister Ballentine.”

  The lawyer beams wide and says, “Like Sunday dinner at my grandmamma’s.”

  Burke turns to me, his notepad rife with fresh scribbling. “In that case, Mister Harlan. All you need do is decide what you’re having so the kitchen can get it firing. Choices tonight are Cornish hen or salmon croquettes.” He lowers his voice and adds, “Truth be told again, that’s the choice every night.”

  “Which is better?”

  “There’s about as many salmon in the Territory as there is buffalo, if you catch my drift.”

  “I’ll have the hen.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Ten minutes past Coolidge, the Santa Fe uncorks her whistle and begins the grand pageant of her arrival at the Harvey House. I join Ballentine and the others on the observation platform as the low, widespread building comes into view. Modeled after one of the great Spanish missions, the Harvey House sits protected by a pair of rolling hills at the mouth of a green valley and carries all the stateliness of a centuries-old casita—the kind that might anchor some venerable ranch or homestead—but the fresh-laid stonework, still unsullied by the elements, betrays a construction newer than the railroad itself. The train commands all the attention she can muster as she brakes and steams and wails—sending Owens’s children into dizzy circles of excitement until the young boy, overwhelmed by the noise, bursts into tears and flies upward into his father’s arms. The little girl clutches her mother’s hand.