The Insane Train

by Sheldon Russell

  The man snorted once and then crumpled into the gravel. After planting his knee on his neck, Hook cuffed him up. Back at the supply shack, he set him in a chair and waited for him to come around. His chin bled from the gravel, and soot from the engine clung in his brows. A deep scar, still red and newly healed, cut at an angle across his face and into his eye. His shirt sleeve was torn away.

  “What’s your name?” Hook asked, lighting a cigarette.

  The man shrugged and then looked up, his eyes reflecting the wear of the rails.

  “Does that matter?”

  “It matters.”

  “Seth Durand,” he said.

  “You been bumming under the trestle at Needles?” Hook asked.

  “How you know that?”

  “Smelled your coffee this morning,” Hook said.

  “That motorcar that came through early?” he asked.

  “What happened to your shirt, Seth?”

  Seth turned his hand and looked at it. “Caught it in the grab iron,” he said. “Damn near dragged me to death.”

  “You been in the army?”

  “Forty-fifth out of Oklahoma.”

  “Don’t you know better than to hitch a flatcar across the desert?”

  “I aimed for an open side door on that boxcar back there,” he said. “But she spit me out, so I grabbed what came next, which turned out to be a flatcar.”

  “A man riding a flatcar into the Mojave ought plan ahead,” Hook said.

  “First I fried and then I froze,” he said. “And then I just hoped one or the other would hurry up and happen before the sand scoured off all my hide.

  “When I pitched my duffle on, it rolled off the other side. I should have jumped off with it.”

  “No guarantees when you ride the rails, son. Last summer a bo got locked in a boxcar over to Needles. They sided him off at Pampa. When I found him, he’d dried up no bigger than a Sunday pot roast.”

  “You reckon you could loosen up the cuffs?” he asked.

  “You aren’t figuring on running, are you? This hook I’m wearing doesn’t slow me down a bit.”

  “I’m too wore out to run,” he said.

  Hook took off the cuffs and put them into his pocket.

  “You AWOL, Seth?”

  Seth shook his head. “Medical. I spent some time in Balboa. They tried to patch up this mug. It didn’t work out so well.”

  “Where you headed?” Hook asked.

  “Here,” he said. “Course, I hadn’t figured on winding up in the slammer.”

  “Where have you been?”

  Seth rubbed at his wrists. “Tulsa,” he said. “Went home to see my wife.”

  Hook squashed out his cigarette. “Why didn’t you stay?”

  Seth shrugged. “This face is not something a woman wants to wake up to.”

  “Where did you get that scar, Seth?”

  “You ask pretty straight questions,” he said.

  Hook nodded. “You are under arrest. Maybe you ought to be a little more forthcoming.”

  “Germany,” he said. “A Mauser bullet. When I came to, I’d been laying in the mud for three days. My face looked like this.”

  “It’s against the law to hop trains, Seth,” Hook said.

  “I’m ugly, not stupid,” he said.

  “You got funds?”

  “I’ll have a comp check on the first.”

  “You have a place to stay?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “You going to run me in?”

  “What about work, Seth?”

  “There ain’t none to be had,” he said.

  Hook walked to the door. “I might have a few days for you.”

  Seth stood. “A few days?”

  “I got no time right now to run in bums,” he said. “Don’t let me catch you in the yards again, Seth. The second time around, I’m not so forgiving.”

  Seth looked down at his clothes. “A few days doing what?”

  Hook reached for his billfold and peeled off a five spot. “Do you know the Baldwin Insane Asylum?”

  “More or less,” he said.

  “Well, get yourself some clean clothes. Meet me at the depot in the morning. And figure on taking a bath if you want to ride in the front with me.”

  Hook lay on top of the covers in the sleeping room at the depot and listened to the callboy waking crews next door. When they’d gone, he checked his watch in the light coming through the window from the yards.

  He turned on his side and could see his stump against the whiteness of the pillow. He should have run that bo in. Weakness in a yard dog could be smelled out a hundred miles away, but he knew the price the boy had paid. He knew the pain that he bore.

  4

  Hook watched from his window until he saw Seth coming down the tracks. He met him at the front door of the Harvey House.

  “Hungry?” Hook asked. “We have time for a little breakfast.”

  Seth, clean shaven and sporting a new shirt, said, “Naw, it’s a bit fancy for the likes of me.”

  Though his ears were peeling with sunburn, a night’s rest and a bath had taken ten years off of him.

  “I’m buying,” Hook said. “But I figure to get my money’s worth out of you before it’s done.”

  A Harvey girl, looking like a nun in her black-and-white uniform, took their orders, trying hard not to stare at Hook’s prosthesis or Seth’s scarred face. Hook ordered two eggs sunny-side up, flapjacks, country ham, and black coffee, times two.

  When they were finished, Seth pushed his plate back. “Mighty fine eating,” he said. “Who do I have to kill?”

  “Nothing so simple as that,” Hook said. “I need some help for a few days, someone who knows his way around. A one-arm driver like myself can be a little dangerous.”

  “Look, Hook, I appreciate what you’re doing here, but I’ve been getting along on my own for a good long while now.”

  “I’ll tell you straight up, Seth, I got no time for whiners one way or the other. I have one arm, so I just use the other one best I can. You got your face tore up a little, so smile more. Either way, if I pay money, I expect you to work. Do you want it or not?”

  “I need the work,” he said.

  “Come on then. They ought to have things up and running at the asylum by now.”

  From the driveway of the Baldwin Insane Asylum, Hook and Seth could see the heap of ash that had once been a building. The facility across the way, while still standing, had a canvas stretched over one end where the roof had given way. A tent had been erected to the side.

  Seth pulled into the lot and shut down the pickup. Hook rolled down his window and lit a cigarette.

  “There’s folks over there,” Seth said. “Under those trees.”

  Hook flipped up the visor. A couple dozen people were gathered in the shade of the elms that encircled the compound. Nearby, a pile of freshly dug earth had been dozed into a heap.

  “I’m going over,” Hook said.

  “What do you want me to do?” Seth asked.

  “Stay with the truck. I don’t know how long this will take.”

  Some of the people were crying, their handkerchiefs pressed to their faces. Hook realized that he’d come upon a funeral in progress, with people standing at the precipice of a mass grave.

  He looked down at the dozens of bodies wrapped in white sheets, stacked like cordwood in the ditch. The smell of cold ashes hung thick in the morning.

  On the other side of the ditch, a woman took off her glasses and dabbed at her eyes with bandaged hands.

  The person next to her stood still and rigid with arms folded. At first Hook thought her a man, the angular cut of the jaw, until she turned to expose the tail of her dress from under the coat.

  At the head of the open grave, a man in his late fifties bowed his head.

  “God take these poor lost souls into Your care,” he said, his voice cracking. “Their miseries have ended on this earth. May they now bask in Your glory. Amen.”

  He picke
d up a handful of dirt and tossed it into the grave. The others in turn did the same, and when all had done so, the dozer fired up its engine, splitting apart the silence. As it shoved earth into the grave, Hook approached the man who now stood with his back to the crowd.

  “Excuse me,” Hook said.

  “Yes,” the man said, turning.

  “My name’s Hook Runyon, law enforcement with the Santa Fe. I’ve been asked to come.”

  “I’m Doctor Theo Baldwin,” he said. “I’m glad you’re here. Would you mind waiting for me for a few minutes?”

  “Not at all,” Hook said.

  Doctor Baldwin worked the crowd, shaking hands, letting his arm linger on a shoulder, pulling someone in for a hug. When he’d finished, he motioned for the woman in the black suit to come over.

  “Mr. Runyon, isn’t it?” he asked.

  “That’s right.”

  “This is Doctor Bria Helms, our associate psychiatrist here at Baldwin.”

  She shook Hook’s hand with a firm grip.

  “Mr. Runyon,” she said.

  “Could you come to my office, Mr. Runyon?” Baldwin asked. “We can talk privately there.”

  Hook followed them across the compound. Doctor Baldwin pointed him into a chair before settling in behind his desk. Doctor Helms stood at the window watching the dozer level the last of the dirt.

  “You’ve arrived at a very difficult moment,” Baldwin said.

  “So it seems. Perhaps you could fill me in.”

  “We had a fire in the boys’ ward. There were over thirty deaths. Tragic,” he said. “Just tragic.”

  “But a mass burial?” Hook said.

  Baldwin glanced over at Doctor Helms, who said, “You must think it callous, Mr. Runyon, but the fact is that most of the bodies could not be identified. Very few had relatives willing to claim them in any case. We didn’t have much choice.”

  “Do you know what caused the fire?” Hook asked.

  Doctor Helms sat down then and crossed her legs. They were thin but shapely.

  “We believe it to have started in the attendant’s room near the front door,” she said. “Most likely poor wiring. The structure was wooden and quite old. The fire spread rapidly.”

  “The boys were unsupervised?” Hook asked.

  Doctor Helms dropped her chin and focused her black eyes on him.

  “Frankie Yager, the orderly, was making his rounds in the downstairs ward when it happened. When he realized a fire had started, he ran to fetch Doctor Baldwin and me. In the meantime, Andrea spotted the flames from the women’s ward. She tried desperately to save them.”

  “The girl with the bandaged hands?” Hook asked.

  “That’s correct. Our nurse. She has suffered painful burns on her hands.”

  “But I’m not clear what you want with the railroad, Doctor Baldwin?” Hook asked.

  Doctor Baldwin pushed back his chair. His undershirt peeked through where the buttons on his shirt parted over his stomach.

  “We’ve a desperate situation here as you can imagine, Mr. Runyon, one that we can’t sustain. With one building burned and another damaged, we have had to house some of the inmates in tents. The security ward for the criminally insane was spared, thank God. I don’t know how we would have managed.”

  He pulled at his chin. His eyes were round and sad and filled with water.

  “We’ve had considerable pressure from the community to move to a secure location. There are over fifty inmates remaining, and it’s been impossible to locate a facility in the area that will serve so many. So far no lawsuits have been filed, but there’s been pressure from the governor’s office.”

  “I’m sorry for your troubles, Doctor Baldwin, but what is it exactly you need from us?”

  “I’ve had plans to open another asylum for some time now. I knew that many troubled soldiers would be returning from the war someday. When an old abandoned military fort in Oklahoma came up for sale from the federal government, I purchased it at a rather reasonable price.”

  “You still own the property?”

  “That’s correct.”

  “And you want to move these patients there by train?”

  “Our situation here is dire,” he said.

  “This could be an expensive proposition, Doctor Baldwin. And the problems in such a move could be considerable.”

  Doctor Helms stood. “As it turns out, Doctor Baldwin had the foresight to insure the buildings here. There should be sufficient funds to make the move. But this is the least of the difficulties, I’m afraid.”

  “Oh?”

  “You see, the security ward houses extremely dangerous men, Mr. Runyon, men who have committed the most egregious crimes. To complicate matters, the law prohibits the use of weapons in their management.”

  Doctor Baldwin rose from his chair. “These inmates are mentally ill, Mr. Runyon. They are not evil, not in the way most people think of evil. They have been determined by the courts not to be responsible for their crimes. As such, they are considered to be patients and to have all the protections that come with that. In the end, it is believed they have the potential to be cured.”

  Doctor Helms said, “Whatever one’s philosophical position on this issue, the security risk is considerable, given the violent nature of these inmates.”

  “How many patients are we talking about?” Hook asked.

  “Of those who would require constant security, twenty,” Baldwin said.

  “But don’t you have employees who work with these men?” Hook asked.

  “That’s just it,” Doctor Baldwin said. “The employees are locals. It’s highly unlikely that many of them will be willing to move themselves and their families across the country for what is a difficult job under the best of circumstances.”

  Hook stood. “Let me get this right. You want to transfer fifty mentally-ill patients from California to Oklahoma. Twenty of them have committed violent crimes. There are no employees to assist, and, even if there were, they couldn’t carry weapons to protect themselves?”

  Doctor Helms said, “There is another matter.”

  “And what could that possibly be?” Hook asked.

  “This transfer must happen soon, or things are going to deteriorate. We are already having difficulty keeping the inmates under control. And, just in case you haven’t thought about it, we have no idea what to expect at the other end of the line. That facility has been empty for some time.”

  “I see.”

  Doctor Helms stood and looked at her watch. “If you have nothing else for me, Doctor Baldwin, I really must be going.”

  When Hook got back to the pickup, Seth had disappeared. Hook searched out the parking lot, but no Seth, so he went over to where the dozer driver worked at cleaning the blade with a shovel.

  “Yeah,” he said, leaning on his shovel handle. “Baldwin security picked him up about half hour ago. He yelped like a goddang she wolf.”

  “Where?” Hook asked.

  “Security shack over there, providing they ain’t killed him by now.”

  Seth looked up through his brows when Hook stepped into the security shack. Sweat had popped on his forehead from struggling with the straitjacket he now wore.

  The guard turned. “Who are you?” he asked.

  Hook pulled his badge. “Santa Fe bull.”

  “You turning yourself in for treatment?” he said, grinning. “Never knew a bull who wasn’t crazy.”

  “Get me out of this thing,” Seth said. “I think I’m going to explode.”

  “I know this man is a little unusual,” Hook said, “but he’s my driver.”

  The security guard looked at Seth and then back at Hook.

  “We figured he might have gotten loose from the security ward. We’re running shorthanded around here.”

  Hook shook his head. “I’m not saying he shouldn’t be in there. I’m just saying he currently isn’t.”

  “Goddang it,” Seth said.

  The guard untied Seth’s s
traitjacket. “It’s a little hard to tell which side of the fence a man ought be on sometimes,” he said.

  “Understandable mistake,” Hook said. “One time I arrested a man taking a leak off the Cimarron Bridge over to Belva. Had him cuffed and loaded before I recognized him as the divisional supervisor.

  “Got a Brownie for that one, though they took it off later. He wouldn’t admit to whizzing off the bridge like a schoolboy.”

  As they made their way back to the pickup, Seth rubbed at his arms.

  “It’s a poor son of a bitch can’t tell a war hero when he sees one,” he said.

  “Drive to your place first,” Hook said. “I’ll take the truck back to supply before the clerk blows his boiler.”

  “I’m not staying at a place exactly,” Seth said, pulling out onto the road.

  “You sleeping on the streets?”

  “We’ve got a jungle under the Fourth Street Bridge. They keep a pot cooking. Most of the boys are short of work like myself.”

  “You show up in the morning? I could use a little more help.”

  “I ain’t sitting in no goddang pickup truck in an insane asylum,” Seth said.

  As they drove down Main, Hook told him about what he’d found out from Baldwin. At the bridge, Seth pulled over.

  “They burned up?” he asked.

  “And then they dozed them under,” Hook said. “Guess they had no choice.”

  “What are they going to do?”

  “They want the inmates moved to a new location, but there’s a shortage of help.

  “Listen,” he said, turning to Seth. “I’m looking for rare books while I’m here. Happen to know where any are?”

  Seth got out and leaned back in. “Books are rare all over this town,” he said. “But there’s a used bookstore up on Fourth, or you might find something down at the Salvation Army thrift. I’ve seen boxes of old books down there.”

  “Thanks,” Hook said.

  “What you going to do about Baldwin?” Seth asked.

  “Guess Division will be letting me know that soon enough. See you tomorrow,” Hook said.