Pelican Road

by Howard Bahr

  The lights were on in the funeral parlor, too, and George wondered who could be laid out so early in the morning. For most of his grown life, George believed he would end up in that funeral parlor himself, but he wouldn’t now. Some other place awaited him: a piece of ground he hadn’t seen yet, or a cold river, a field, a ditch by the road. It didn’t much matter one way or the other. Sweet Willie Wine was already dead. George Watson would be cut or shot one day, or dangled from a lamppost.

  He was alive right now, though, and hunger gnawed at him. He hadn’t taken breakfast, of course, and he would have no chance at dinner. That was all right, too: he had been hungry before, and he could take supper in New Orleans where it wouldn’t be snowing. He knew a colored café where his three dollars would get him a good meal and a room, and he knew a dark alley uptown where the .38 would get him three dollars more. Maybe ten or twenty if he could find a fat white man. A cold steel barrel in a fat man’s belly always got the prize.

  George Watson got to his feet and went back into the dark where the cardboard was. He was cold, and he was done with watching, and he no longer cared whether he remembered anything or not. If he could only get to sleep, he wouldn’t know he was cold and hungry. He might dream, of course, but no matter. A dream was a dream, no more real than anything else.

  * * *

  By the time Roy Jack Lucas returned to the freight office, the snowfall was heavy, and the glass had dropped five degrees. Last night, the track gang had brought up a load of sand from the sand house to cover the bloody patches where June Watson had died. Lucas thought how the snow would finish the job. Sand, water, blood—in the spring, the dewberries would be lush there, but the Negroes would not pick them, Lucas knew. They would give that place a wide berth for years to come. He had known the people a long time, and he knew how, for them, the earth held the memory of death forever.

  The detective switched off the engine of the Chevrolet; it coughed, coughed again, rattled, and finally died. A black cloud of soot rose from the tailpipe as though the motorcar’s soul were escaping. Lucas glanced over his shoulder; the back seat looked empty now, and lonesome, where the doll had been. Lucas let his hands fall to the bottom of the wheel and sat back in the seat. He still had the smell of the funeral parlor in his nose, an odor of perfume and mothballs and cedar boughs. He could still feel June Watson’s cold hand when he lifted it and lay the doll beneath.

  Roy Jack Lucas watched the snowflakes fall. He watched them take possession of the ground, folding themselves over bricks and cinders, dusting the roofs of freight cars and buildings, everything growing whiter and whiter with each moment. He imagined how excited the children must be out yonder in the town. Sometimes, Lucas wished he could believe in Providence just so he’d have somebody to complain to. He’d petition the Almighty to let the snow keep falling, let it pile higher and higher until everything and everybody was covered up, and then leave it for a thousand years. He imagined the round globe of the earth floating through space, silver with snow and mist, glinting in the light of the sun as the ages turned. Then, one day, God might let the snow melt again and find once more the pure rivers and seas underneath, and maybe He would start all over then, maybe do it better this time.

  Lucas settled down in the car seat, watching the snow sift through the glassless windows. In a little while, he closed his eyes. His head was hurting bad now, and he hoped that Hido was returned with the whiskey. Even with the pain, he had to laugh at the thought of praying for eternal snow.

  Roy Jack Lucas sat in the car a long time. He grew sleepy and strangely warm, and the thought came to him that he might freeze to death right there in the company car. He was comfortable with the idea and was just about asleep when Hido rapped on the windshield and brought him back to the world.

  * * *

  Mister A.P. Dunn had been rolling fast, trying to make up time. Snow was falling briskly now—he hadn’t expected that—but not so bad that he couldn’t see. It was pretty, in fact, even if it was cold on his face when he leaned out the window. The long black boiler of the engine swayed and bounced, and the day was dark enough that he could see snowflakes swirl like delicate white moths through the headlight beam. The white-trimmed drivers were a blur, and the complicated back-and-forth motion of the drive rods was, to Mister Dunn, a beautiful, precise, mesmerizing display of which he never grew tired.

  Houses slipped past, shuttered against the cold, some close enough that he could see the brief reflection of the passing engine in the windows. In some yards, children played in the snow. These little ones had emerged into a world transformed, a landscape of purity and silence that drew them forth in awe. Many of them had never seen snow, but they seemed to know instinctively what to do with it. An audience of elaborate snowmen stood by the right-of-way, and now and then a company of sweating, overdressed midgets, white and black, boy and girl, would swarm from a backyard to pelt the engine with hard-packed snowballs. As the train announced its coming, these urchins would wait in ambush, snowballs piled like artillery shot, enough for the engine and the caboose, too, while their folks would wave from the porch.

  Trouble was, the cold was making Mister Dunn’s head hurt. A few months ago, he had been struck between the eyes by a chunk of ballast thrown up by the wheels. The pain now was the same, but he could not remember being struck lately. It is only the neuralgia, he thought, and when he had a chance, he would take some of the Bayer aspirin from the first-aid tin.

  Mister Dunn enjoyed running fast when it was appropriate and safe, on a good rail with the engine rocking beneath him. Nothing wrong with running fast if a man knew what he was doing, if he was making up time.

  Once, in the early fall, the crew was sitting amid the din and clatter of a noon café, crowded into a narrow booth—save Eddie Cox, of course, who had to take his meal on the engine—when Frank Smith, out of the blue, proclaimed that he would no longer allow the phrase “making up time” to be used on his train. He said it was misleading, even heretical, since time was a sacred commodity that could not be reclaimed.

  Well, Frank, said Ladner, what would you have us say?

  Well, just don’t say anything, replied the conductor. Just don’t talk about it.

  Sonny Leeke, cooling his coffee in his saucer, said, That is ridiculous. If you are five minutes late at one station, and two minutes late at the next, then you have made up three minutes, as any god damn fool can plainly see.

  No, said Smith, it is not time, it’s the train moving inside time. It’s only an illusion, he said. It’s a trick. There’s only one time, and that’s now. Now, now, now.

  Aw, fuck that, said Sonny Leeke.

  Of course, no one paid any attention; in fact, the conductor himself seemed to forget about it after a couple of trips, though it did take that long to get the idea out of his system. Now Mister Dunn had made up two minutes, and southbound 4512 was approaching Pachuta, Mississippi, where they were to pick up a solitary car of logs which seemed attached to an inexplicable urgency.

  Mister Dunn thought about Frank Smith and the conversation they had earlier in Meridian. The conductor had seemed truly angry about something. Smith would often bluster—everyone expected that—but he rarely got mad. Moreover, thought Mister Dunn, the men on the engine were behaving in a peculiar way.

  Eddie Cox had not said a word since they left the roundhouse. He worked the stoker and the water valves, the fire was clean and hot, but when he was in his seat, he stared straight ahead out the narrow front window of the cab. Necaise, too, was silent. Now and then, he looked at Mister Dunn and smiled, but that was all. The rest of the time he sat with his chin in his hand and looked out the window. True, it was hard to talk amid the racket of the engine, but usually the men would shout at one another over the noise, making a joke, calling attention to something by the roadside, cursing the motorcars and trucks that raced the train to a crossing. The men stayed connected by what was happening to them, but now they were not connected, and Mister Dunn did not like the
feeling.

  When they passed the yard-limit sign at Pachuta, Mister Dunn backed off the throttle and let the train drift and whistled for signals. They came around a long curve, and there was the same squat, hip-roofed, bilious-yellow depot where John Marquette had been shot dead by his own fireman in the year 1921. Mister Dunn had not thought about that in years. That it was so long ago, a lifetime ago, seemed impossible.

  The red arm of the semaphore was down as expected, and the agent was on the platform. Mister Dunn brought the train to a slow, squealing stop. Necaise had his gloves on and was out of the gangway without a word before the engine cleared the depot.

  The cab was silent now but for the hiss of steam and the throb of the air compressor. Mister Dunn looked over at his own fireman. Eddie Cox was staring straight ahead, his hands folded in his lap, and Mister Dunn thought how maybe this was the same thing old man Marquette had seen in the last minutes of his life.

  Mister Dunn said, “Well, Eddie, it is snowing for Christmas.”

  The fireman nodded but did not reply. Back in the train, a hog squealed angrily.

  Mister Dunn took off his cap and goggles and was about to run his fingers through his hair when he touched the bandage. Puzzled, he unwound it and saw that it was bloody. “Eddie, what is this?” he asked, but again the man said nothing. Mister Dunn was not accustomed to being ignored by colored people, but he and Eddie Cox had been together a long time. He dropped the mysterious gauze out the window and watched it flutter to the ballast.

  Around them lay the shuttered town, given over to the cold. West of the main line was a long siding crammed with empty wood racks and log flats, all dusted with snow. A single paintless frame house, broad-galleried, smoke curling from all its chimneys, sat in a grove of barren oaks. The house shared the grove with an ancient Reo truck, its empty bed and log yokes like the skeleton of some supine beast, and a muddy lot with a dozen or so overturned barrels—the homes of fighting roosters. Another truck was parked in the middle of the gravel road with both doors hanging open and the hood raised. Arranged beside it was a canvas fly littered with greasy tools that were rapidly disappearing under the snow.

  The village itself huddled to the east at the junction of the state highway and an unnamed gravel road: a dozen buildings, some brick, some frame, some with a gallery and some without, all fronted with a plank sidewalk that rose and fell according to the level of the door sills. Robinson’s Dry Goods, with a string of fat colored lights draped around the gallery. Pachuta Feed & Seed. The Please-U Café. Dingle’s Drugs. A white Methodist church with double spires and a wreath of new pine boughs on the door. In a vacant lot, someone had left a trash fire burning, and the smoke drifted eastward in a rank cloud.

  The paved highway stretched north and south toward the wide world. Like the railroad, the highway offered escape should anyone think of it. The gravel road that crossed the highway led deep into the piney woods from which the town drew its meager bounty. Beside the depot was a historical marker erected by the D.A.R. Once, years ago, Mister Dunn had climbed down off the engine to see what it said:

  Pachuta

  Named for a prominent Chief

  of the Choctaws. Once a relay

  station on the old Pelican Road.

  Incorporated 1889.

  The Choctaws were gone to the reservation or off to Oklahoma. The teams of strong horses and the swaying, yellow-wheeled stagecoaches had long been replaced by railroad and motorcar. A single bulb burned deep inside the café, and a pair of motorcars coated with mud were shoved against the curbing, but no living persons were in sight save the railroad men. Necaise and the agent were stamping their feet in the cold, while Frank Smith walked up the train with his hands shoved deep in his pockets. A quarter mile behind, Ladner stood between the rails with his red flag.

  Mister Dunn knew he had a moment of grace. He spun in his seat and said, “Eddie, now you must tell me what is eating you and young Necaise. If I have done you a disfavor, I will try to correct it. In any event, you need to speak up.”

  Eddie would not look at his engineer, but his face grew long and mournful. He had white bristles on his chin. The collar of his coat was ragged. “Beg pardon, Mist’ A.P. I just got lots on my mind this mornin’.” He took off his cap and peered into it. Mister Dunn could see the cracked leather of the sweat band and the BLF button on the crown. Then, in a sad voice, still without looking up, Eddie said, “Mist’ A.P. Dunn, they’s blood just running down your face, sir.”

  “What?” said Mister Dunn. Sure enough, he could feel the warmth of it on the cold, dry skin of his nose. He wiped at it with his hand. A snowflake came through the window and settled amid the blood smeared on his fingers and for an instant was colored by it, like a red doily, then vanished. Mister Dunn looked out again at the snow falling, and he was all at once taken with a deep chill, one of those where your teeth start chattering, and you lose control of your muscles, and it seems your blood must freeze in the veins. He stood up and crossed unsteadily the iron deck plates and pressed against the boiler backhead, feeling the warmth calm him. He wiped at the blood again. The pain was growing in his head, and now he seemed to remember how the wheels had thrown up a rock and struck him between the eyes. Was that today, or another time? Something else troubled him, though, another pain he did not understand the need for. It lay over his heart as though a great weight were pressing there. He thought, Oh, it’s just time, Eddie. That’s all it is—just time that’s hurting.

  The fireman started as if Mister Dunn had spoken aloud. Eddie Cox stood up with his cap in his hand. He tapped the sight-glass and ran his long fingers over the water valves and stared at the firebox doors. “Mist’ A.P.,” he said, “you ain’t ever done a thing in your life to hurt anybody.”

  “You can look at me, Eddie,” said Mister Dunn. “You can say whatever you need to.”

  “All right, sir,” said the other. He raised his eyes then and let his hand drift until it barely touched Mister Dunn’s shoulder. “Sometimes lately you ain’t yourself, is all,” he said, and let his hand drop. “Like today. Maybe you ought to rest a while. Let me run the engine ’til you get yourself back.”

  Mister Dunn tried to remember when he wasn’t himself. He knew Cox was right because he couldn’t remember, and the blank spaces in the morning scared him. Frank Smith had been right, too: nobody could really make up time. But, thought Mister Dunn, a person ought not to lose it either. Still, A.P. Dunn was an engineer on the Southern Railway. He had been tired before, more tired than this. He wondered if he should take a Bayer aspirin. He said, “No, Eddie, I am only warming my back. I can run just fine.”

  Eddie Cox nodded. “I know you can, sir,” he said. He smiled a little. “You done already made up time.”

  Mister Dunn took his seat again and leaned backward out the cab window. Frank Smith and the agent were passing into the depot. Necaise was behind the first boxcar, his hand on the lift lever. “Gimme some slack,” shouted Necaise, and Mister Dunn backed the engine a trifle. Necaise lifted the lever. “Let’s go to the sawmill,” he said.

  They did not put poles next to the engine or caboose, which is why they came out with the boxcar. They rambled a quarter mile down the main and cleared the switch to the sawmill. Necaise, riding the stirrup on Mister Dunn’s side, signaled Stop. He lined the switch and crossed over—the curve was on the fireman’s side—and signaled Back Up.

  “Back up,” said Eddie Cox, for he alone could see the brakeman now. Mister Dunn put the 4512 in reverse, backing gingerly down the spur. This track was the property of the sawmill and was not well maintained, and even at their slow speed, the boxcar swayed on the light rail, pushing it down into the rotten ties. Mister Dunn drew the air off until they were barely creeping along.

  Necaise rode the stirrup, though he might as well have walked, they were going so slow. Eddie called the brakeman’s signals to Mister Dunn.

  “Two cars,” said Cox, signifying two car lengths to the coupling. The flanges of
the wheels squealed on the tight curve, and the branches of trees, closing overhead like a tunnel, scraped the roof of the boxcar. The locomotive seemed to grow in the tight space.

  Mister Dunn said, “I am not coming in here again until they cut the brush and fix this track.”

  “One car,” said the fireman. “No, sir, we got no business up in here with a heavy engine.” He leaned far out the window. “Easy,” he said. “That’ll do.”

  The log flat lay solitary in the muddy sawmill yard, and they made a good coupling. The brake line wheezed as Necaise cut in the air. When the coupling was complete, Necaise walked along the car and pulled at the chains that held the logs. Then he climbed onto the back end of the flatcar on Eddie’s side—it was uncomfortable and dangerous to ride the stirrup on a flatcar—and waved them on. “Go ahead,” said Cox.

  They were almost to the main again when the light rail twisted and turned over beneath the heavy load of logs. Cox saw the car lurch sideways, shouted “Big hole it!” and Mister Dunn without question or thought slammed the brake lever and blew out the air. Cox saw the chains snap and flail like snakes and the logs spill out over the mud and he cried “Look out, Necaise!” though he and Mister Dunn were already out of their seats and down the gangway.

  They were moving inside time all right, but the substance of it had changed. It was no longer like air or water, as it seemed sometimes, but like oil, thick and viscous, or like time in a dream. They did not take the gangway steps but slid down the handrails, these old men, and it was a long way, and they struck the ground hard so that Eddie Cox bit his tongue and spat blood, and the both of them trying to find purchase in the mud, swimming in time and light that seemed to congeal around them, and the snow drifting through the trees, and the flatcar canted over, the ground plowed up. What filled their minds now, what occupied the universe around them, was the expectation of what they must find, what they did not want to see, yet could not get to fast enough, just to get it over, to see it and be done with it. They climbed over the spilled logs like old spiders, their legs and arms made heavy by the ponderous weight of time they did not have.