Pelican Road

by Howard Bahr

  THE DARK WOMEN

  The 4512 rolled south from Belle Roman, and Mister Dunn felt better than he had in a long time. His leg still ached, but his head was clear and his heart strangely lightened. Whatever had happened back in Meridian, whatever he had done to upset his crew, was evidently forgotten, or forgiven, which amounted to the same thing. Even Frank Smith had been his old self at Pachuta, willing to take a chance, trusting in his crew to get the job done, trusting in Mister Dunn most of all.

  That fact was not lost on the engineer. The truth was, he could not remember much about their trip before the derailment. He recalled a collection of vague images. He heard disconnected voices spread across an indeterminate time. Something had been amiss, but it meant nothing now. They were running fine, everything in order, and Mister Dunn owned the men’s trust again. He would be careful to hold on to it, to cling to himself and not lose his way again. He would pay attention, not just to the job but to the world about, and to himself.

  In a little while, Necaise began to ask about the mechanics of steam propulsion. Eddie Cox surprised Mister Dunn by speaking learnedly to the boy about firebox ratios and boiler capacity, drive-rod lengths and the diameter of cylinders. Eddie laid out the complex process whereby mild and inoffensive tap water was transformed into a thing of terrible power, and how the power was controlled, and how it was used to turn the wheels of the 4512. Their dialogue grew intense, and Mister Dunn had to admonish them to keep watch ahead.

  The snow was a white tunnel down which they fled, distance a blurred, indefinite pool. The little country crossings slipped by, all empty of traffic, but still the whistle cried out for each and echoed in the woods and against the yellow-clay cuts. Mister Dunn felt the great engine moving under him, the sum of power and a myriad moving parts all balanced on the point of catastrophe, all under his hand.

  * * *

  One summer night, under a rising moon, Mister Dunn waits in the clear on Richburg Hill. Eddie Cox and Dutch Ladner sit with him in the dark cab, yawning, smoking, slapping at mosquitoes, talking quietly of nothing. Whippoorwills query in the deep, shadowed woods around them, and crickets sing in the grass. The opposing train, southbound, is a few minutes late but appears pretty soon, the engine working hard up the grade. They can see its shimmering headlight and a shower of sparks from the stack. They hear the hammering of the locomotive as the engineer opens his throttle. Eddie and Dutch lean out the window, and Mister Dunn has left his seat to join them, when all at once the hammering ceases, the headlight vanishes, and the whole countryside lights up in a white flash as if the moon itself exploded. A pillar of pure fire lances skyward then turns on itself in a dirty roiling fist of black smoke, fire and smoke rising as the sound reaches them, a terrific detonation that sucks the air out of the cab.

  Mister Dunn and Eddie Cox and Dutch Ladner drop to the ground and run toward the wreck. It is hard to run along the rails, and dangerous—pieces of the engine fall around them, crashing in the trees, thudding and clanging on the roadbed—and futile, for the men to whom they run are dead. Of this they are certain, but they run still, out of unspoken protocol and simple courtesy.

  In a moment, they come upon the remains of the southbound locomotive. Though they have brought no lanterns, they can see clearly the thing looming before them in a mist of steam and moonlight. The engine has rolled a quarter mile beyond the place where it died. The driving wheels are still on the rail, and the blackened, twisted frame, but above that, only stars and the lingering shroud of steam. A curl of smoke, too thin even for a ghost, rises from some crevice where hot ash has collected. Nothing remains of the cab, the boiler, the men who a few moments before were riding along, making up time. It is as if those men had breached an invisible rampart and passed into the country of time itself, swallowed up by tomorrow, or yesterday, or trapped forever in a present of unimaginable violence.

  After a moment, the whippoorwills take up their calls again, and the crickets, one by one, begin to talk in the weedy ditches. Mister Dunn and his comrades do not speak. They do not pray aloud, though Eddie Cox kneels in the gravel, and Mister Dunn remembers, Eternal rest grant them, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon them. The men gather close and listen to their own breathing. They hear the groan of air in the tangled cars, the tick of hot metal, the whine of mosquitoes. To the south, the bobbing lanterns of their own rear-end crew appear, small as fireflies, but no lanterns come from the north: nothing there but moonlight and silence.

  And no houses in that desolate place, nor telephones, and no time to dally, and men injured, no doubt. So they must leave their train in the siding and back the light engine two miles to a call box against a following train that might appear at any second. The conductor and flagman stand on the tender, popping one fusee after another, the red glare spreading over the rails and the trunks of trees. Mister Dunn keeps the whistle blowing, and Eddie the bell tolling, making as much noise as they can. They reach the call box with no time to spare, with the following train’s headlight glittering to the south.

  Hours later, when he finds sleep at last, Mister Dunn dreams of a monstrous shape, black under the pale moon, shrieking through the maw of hell’s own furnace, while a great bell tolls and tolls for the lost lives of men.

  * * *

  Mister Dunn said, “Bobby, come over here.” The boy crossed the cab, and Mister Dunn moved out of his seat. “Sit here,” he said, and the boy looked at him. “Go on,” said Mister Dunn.

  Necaise took the engineer’s seat. He looked small sitting there. Mister Dunn guided the boy’s left hand to the brake valve, his right to the throttle bar. “Now take hold of it,” said Mister Dunn. Necaise tightened his grip and sat up straight in the seat so that he seemed to grow a little. Mister Dunn leaned down and spoke in the boy’s ear: “Feel it under your hands, how it wants to get away. But you won’t let it. You have to sit here and feel it and listen to it, and you have to know you are part of it.”

  “Like a horse,” said Necaise, who had never ridden one, but had read in boy’s books of “the iron horse” and “the iron steed” and so on.

  “Not at all,” said Mister Dunn, who had never ridden one either. “A horse has just enough mind to be stupid and unpredictable and willful. This thing runs off the law, and that’s all. If you’re man enough or mean enough, you can force your will on a horse, but not on a steam engine. You cannot knock a locomotive in the head with a two-by-four and get its attention. All you can do is know the law and be careful, and all the attention has to be your own.”

  For you cannot alter the Law, Mister Dunn thought.

  For God has made the Law that governs the world and all that dwells and moves therein, but He will not save you from it. You can bury a murdered cat under the walls, and they will come down just the same.

  The fireman perhaps—no one would ever know for sure—turned away to watch the moon or think of his wife, and the water fell in the glass, and the men died.

  The inspector in his rounds laughed at a joke or thought of his mistress as she looked when last night she opened her door to him, and for the sake of these things missed the crack, no more than a hair-breadth, in the riveted fabric of the boiler. Perhaps. And three men died on their way up Richburg Hill, trying to fool time.

  For the Law will suffer no dreaming.

  “Bobby,” said Mister Dunn, “it is not God sitting here, it is you, and you only get the one chance.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Necaise, and turned his eyes ahead.

  They passed a whistle post, and Eddie Cox began to ring the bell. Without being told, Necaise lifted his hand and closed it on the whistle cord and pulled. A feather of steam slipped out of the bronze whistle’s mouth and was flicked away by the wind. Then the sound followed, echoing in the woods, as the deserted highway crossing passed beneath them.

  * * *

  George Watson was tired of the sound of the whistle. He had lived the soft life too long and lost the patience that hardship demanded. He was tired of the
train whistle and tired of riding and sick of being cold and hungry. He was so cold that he couldn’t feel his toes anymore, and he wanted to sleep, wanted to crawl under the cardboard and curl himself into a ball and dream some more, no matter what the dreams brought him. The trouble was, if he went to sleep now, the cold might take him.

  He blamed Lucy Falls for his presence on this raggedy-ass local. All he wanted to do was take her out, have a little fun, maybe lay up with her over Christmas. Then she sprung the bad news, and here he was.

  Nailing a drag was always chancy; you could never tell what might happen out on the road. An experienced rider tried to find a long train, one that was going on through to someplace, one that wouldn’t have to do a lot of switching and maybe set your car out on some godforsaken spur track. George Watson knew all that. He had been a traveling man all his life, and he knew about trains. Still, Lucy Falls and her ice pick had clouded his judgment. If not for her, George would not have climbed in the first empty boxcar he found. In fact, he wouldn’t have had to leave at all. He might have seen his brother laid out, even. Now that chance was gone, like his money.

  The sporting clothes George Watson wore, that he put on last night just for Lucy Falls, were wrinkled and stained and stank of coal smoke. All the shine was gone from his two-tone shoes, and the slag had gouged the leather. The damp air had undone the pomade in his hair. He had run off scared and left two hundred god damned dollars, and sometimes when he thought about it, he felt like bailing off the train right then and going back and killing some people if he had to—niggers, police, it didn’t matter—so long as he got his stash and his raccoon coat.

  But not Lucy Falls. Somehow, he could not imagine killing her. Maybe Sweet Willie could, but George could not. She was the one needed it most, of course, but when he tried to imagine the act, he failed. He might as well try to imagine marrying her, a prospect unlikely as his own salvation.

  He cursed himself as a fool for ever thinking he would be in New Orleans by suppertime. Even without the derailment, they were bound to go dead in the wasteland along Ponchartrain.

  Back in the little town, George suffered with impatience as the train was backed into the yards. He saw the depot sign: Pachuta, a place he never heard of and didn’t want to see again. He was surprised when the train got underway again so soon, the engine snorting and blowing black smoke past the door, the slack slamming in and out. In the mad race that ensued—Who knew what the fuck was going on?—George could hardly keep his feet in the swaying, bouncing car and got knocked around pretty bad. His idea was to close the door, but, as often happened, it was stuck, and the wind howled around in the empty box, stirring up dust and cornmeal and fluttering the cardboard. Once a big piece went sailing out the door like a monstrous brown bird. Finally, all George could do was hunker down in the corner and hope that he would survive the wreck when it came. The boxcar like to have beat him to death, and the sudden, unexpected clamor of the reefer train bursting past the door had scared him worse than any apparition.

  At least the ride was smoother now that the race was over. George wondered what it would be like to ride inside a nice warm passenger train. He never took one in his life, not even a Jim Crow car. He tried to ride the blinds once, between the lead coach and the tender—an experience so terrifying and disorienting that he never tried it again.

  George thought about all the things he was afraid of. People believed Sweet Willie Wine wasn’t scared of anything, but that was only a lie George Watson used to protect himself. George Watson would not ride the blinds or the hog rods. He wouldn’t go outside when it was thundering. He was scared of snakes and wasps, of being burned to death, of being stabbed with an ice pick. Once, when they were little black, bullet-headed spawn, he and June snuck into a circus on a dare and found no joy there, only the horror of wild beasts, of painted clowns and midgets. George was scared of empty churches. He was scared of funeral homes and wide, empty spaces, and close, tight spaces. If people knew these things about him, his reputation as a bad man would be ruined, and that reputation, in the end, was the only thing that protected him.

  But what good was it doing him now? Here he was on the lam, nearly broke, going to a place where he had no reputation at all. Still, that’s what he was after. If he wanted Sweet Willie Wine dead, then he would have to kill his reputation, too.

  Of course, that meant George Watson would have to replace the old rep with a new one. That seemed like a lot of trouble so late in life, and maybe it wasn’t worth it. He was too old to change, and too old and soft to be out on the cholly in the wintertime. He felt the weight of the pistol in his pocket. He began to think how easy it would be to just put the pistol to his head and go to Jesus, as the saying went. But George was scared of that, too. Jesus would not be waiting for him, no matter what the people said.

  He had too much time to think, and while he was thinking, he understood what really scared him about Lucy Falls. George Watson would not have taken her to Memphis. George Watson would have tried to marry her and bring out the child into the world to suffer. That was more fearsome than anything he could conjure. George Watson was a god damned fool.

  And now George Watson discovered that, along with everything else, he had to take a shit. Foul his own nest, and no escape.

  He rose and staggered across the car to the far corner, took off his coat and dropped his suspenders and dropped his breeches and backed up against the bulkhead, his privates shriveling in the cold. Though the call was urgent, nothing came at once. He was forced to balance himself while he strained and strained, until at last he dropped a half-dozen little pellets so hard and cold that they bounced. They had almost no smell. George was thankful for that, anyhow; only dog shit smelt worse than a man’s. He tore off some cardboard to clean himself, then, eyes averted, scraped a pile of cornmeal over his poor leavings.

  The slack ran in and nearly knocked him down. Most likely a town was coming up, for the train began to slow, and George could see motorcars and junkyards, and houses with lamps in the windows burning bright and cheerful. No doubt they would do some switching here, more delay, more hours carved out of whatever life he had left.

  The whistle blew steadily, grating on his nerves. George Watson leaned against the door and rolled a cigarette, no longer caring if anybody saw him or not. Out there, beyond the door, the world seemed distant and strangely pure under the snow, all its meanness hidden. The echoing void of the boxcar lay behind. George Watson let his ruined two-tone shoes teeter on the door sill while he smoked. It was one of the best smokes he’d ever had. All at once, he felt pretty good, and he thought maybe he would lie down again after his smoke, just for a little while.

  * * *

  Mister Dunn was back in his seat as the 4512 came into Laurel and pulled into the clear. At the depot, they were given a list of eleven empty boxcars to pull off the Gulf & Ship Island interchange. Frank Smith delivered this news to the head end and personally uncoupled the engine from the train and rode the tender stirrups to the switch and lined them in.

  To get to the G&SI interchange, they had to back down through the edge of town, clumping past backyards under the bare arches of oak trees, sometimes so close to the houses that the engine seemed to be passing through the yards themselves. Dogs came running and barking. Children threw snowballs and ran away, and people waved from their back porches. The air was filled with the smell of coal and wood smoke and of dinners cooking, and through the windows, the men could see the lights of Christmas trees. Out on Pelican Road, a train went whistling by, and another whistled on the M&O line, and still another downtown in the yards.

  Necaise and Smith walked together, the snow crunching under their shoes, the engine moving close behind them. They worked their fingers inside their leather gloves and touched the palings of fences. Necaise picked up a handful of rocks and threw them one by one at a Nu-Grape sign on a barn. They drew deeply of the air, the vapor of their breath mixing with the steam. The cold, brittle rails rang sharply and
groaned and creaked as the wheels passed over them. Once Necaise had to run ahead and pull a child’s Radio Flyer wagon from the engine’s path.

  The cut lay strung out in a curve and was broken over three crossings, which meant that four separate couplings had to be made. Necaise flagged the crossings and made the joints. Frank had to pass signals to the head end, meanwhile checking numbers against his switch list. When everything was together, they came out, with Necaise and Smith riding the top of the last car.

  They had to sit down to get under the tree branches. No word had been spoken between them until now when Necaise began, “Frank, I’m sorry you had to come up here—”

  “Don’t misunderstand,” said Smith. “It takes two to make this switch. I could’ve sent Sonny, but I just like the ride.”

  Necaise said, “You know, A.P. is doing all right. He let me run the engine a while. He and Eddie was learning me—” Then he stopped, knowing from the look on the conductor’s face that he had told too much.

  For a moment, Smith said nothing. He sat cross-legged on the wooden walkway that ran along the top of the car. In his cap was the pigeon feather he found at Pachuta. Finally, he said, “You need to learn how to run an engine, that’s good. But not on this trip. You understand me?”

  “But, Frank—”

  “God dammit,” said Smith, shaking his head, “I’ll put you back on the shanty, I swear to God.”

  “Yes, sir,” said the brakeman. He snatched at a branch and came away with a sprig of mistletoe. “But it’s not A.P.’s fault. He was—”