Pelican Road

by Howard Bahr

  “I don’t want to hear about it,” said Smith. He shook his head again. “Jesus Christ,” he said.

  * * *

  The truth was, Mister Dunn was not all right, and he was not running the engine now. When the brakemen got off, he had given the engine to Eddie. He sat in the fireman’s seat, leaning out the window, thinking.

  He was tired now, all at once, and he found it hard to keep his mind on what was happening. Snatches of early morning had been returning to him: how he had fallen, how he had spoken strangely to Bobby Necaise, how Frank Smith had looked at him in the yard. He remembered Nettie’s voice in the dark of the bedroom. One after another, these things broke across the moment he was in, drawing him away into another time where he still seemed to have business. He was so bothered with remembering that, when the engine whistled for the first crossing, he was shocked. Beyond the tender, he could see Frank and Necaise walking along. He could see a line of boxcars leaning in a curve, a rusty open knuckle at the head of the cut.

  Suddenly, Mister Dunn was on the ground too, in two places at once, watching himself from the engine cab. He saw himself stop walking alone. The engine squealed to a halt beside him. Mister Dunn stood by the frost-rimed tender, listening to the clank and breathing of the locomotive, the slosh of water in the tank, the sudden throb of the air pump. The whistle had ceased, but the bell went on ringing.

  Mister Dunn crossed the frozen dirt road and summoned the engine. It backed slowly. Mister Dunn beckoned, moved his arm in a circle slower and slower, dropped his hand to signal stop. The couplers clashed together, and the pins fell. He knelt between the cars and wrestled the air hose couplings together and turned the angle cocks to let the air flow. When he stood out again, the engine was vanished, and the cars, and all of his crew, but the bell was still tolling somewhere, and he was not alone.

  From the backyards, through leaning gates and cattle gaps, came a crowd of women all in black, heads bowed, their hands clasped before them, all silent but for their slippered feet in the snow and the rustling of their dresses: white women, colored women, old and young. A great round silver moon cast the women’s shadows before them, long shadows that fell across the snow in dark imitation as the women approached. Mister Dunn could not move. The women flowed around him, and as each one passed, she raised her head and spoke a man’s name. Mister Dunn knew them for the names of the dead, though he did not know them all, there were so many.

  Some shaped the name bitterly: the old fat wife of Rodney Felder whom he knew, and Marquette’s lean, battered consort. There was a yellow woman with a hard face and long red nails like a harlot who was a stranger to him. Some names were offered with gladness, as if it were a relief to let them go; some were uttered with tenderness and regret. The young bride, Bruce Herrington’s, could barely speak; she let the boy’s name pass away in a whisper, like the vapor of breath.

  They all looked at Mister Dunn, spoke the names, then turned away, drawing their black shawls over their heads and vanishing into the cold mist. The last one came slowly, as if she did not know her way. Mister Dunn felt he knew her, and he wanted to hear the name she bore to speak. She was almost by, almost gone, when she lifted her face.

  Nettie? he said.

  Eddie touched his shoulder, and he jerked awake. The familiar confines of the cab came in sharp focus all at once and he stood so quickly that he nearly fell over. “What?” he said. “What is it?”

  “We all coupled up,” said Eddie. “We ready to go.”

  “To follow?” said Mister Dunn.

  “Come on, now, Mist’ A.P.,” said Eddie. He guided Mister Dunn gently. “The captain is comin’. We best swap places.”

  Mister Dunn was just in his seat again, his hand settling on the brake lever, when Necaise clambered up the gangway and the conductor close behind. Necaise sat down without speaking, still holding his sprig of mistletoe. Eddie Cox took up the coal rake and clanged opened the firebox door and peered inside, muttering to himself. Frank Smith stood in the cab, in the glow of the fire, tapping the folded switch list against his leg. He looked at Mister Dunn. “A.P.,” he said.

  “Come in and warm yourself,” said Mister Dunn.

  “Sir, we have a long way yet,” said Frank Smith.

  “Not so long, sir,” said Mister Dunn.

  The gray sky seemed to lower, and a little wind came and stirred in the branches. The locomotive breathed softly beneath them like a woman in her sleep, while blackbirds left tracks across the snow, among the frozen laundry and barren hedges of the yards. The birds had a curious way of walking, too much like men for comfort. In the world out there, people moved about their houses, moved across the light, and motorcars puttered in the streets, and way off a mill whistle blew.

  Frank Smith reached up and took the bell rope and sent a pealing through the morning. He listened to it dying away, as if it were a sound he had never heard before. “Fuck it,” he said at last, and turned away. He was almost down the ladder before he said, “When you are ready, Mister Dunn.”

  * * *

  Thanks to Mister Dunn’s fast running, the 4512 was close to time into Hattiesburg. A northbound passenger train occupied the main line at the depot, so Necaise lined them into a clear yard track, and they crawled along through a canyon of snow-covered boxcars and gondolas and tanks. Near the south end, they were stopped by the conductor of a switch engine whose cut was blocking the lead. They sat there, the minutes ticking by, until the track was clear again. When they pulled up to the yard office at last, the order board was down.

  Necaise took the order on the engine. When Frank Smith got the order on his end, he pulled the air and stopped the train and got off.

  The yard office was hot, dim, smoky, littered of papers and ledgers and hulking black typewriters. On the walls were the usual collection of bulletins and calendars and job notices, the call board for switch engine crews, and the cartoonish safety posters everyone ignored. Festooned from the ceiling fans were some garish dime-store Christmas decorations that only made the office seem more dreary.

  The telegraph was clattering away, but for someone else apparently, for the operator, Mangum Fentress, sat with his feet up on his desk, smoking a pipe. When Smith entered, the telegrapher swiveled around in his chair and smiled and got to his feet. Mangum Fentress was a tall man in vest and shirtsleeves and spectacles, his hair parted neatly in the middle.

  “Hello, Mannie,” said the conductor. He was suddenly embarrassed, unsure how to proceed. Fentress had just copied an order instructing Extra 4512 to meet No. 6, the Silver Star, at Lumberton. Smith had expected the meet to take place at Talowah, a matter of only a few miles, but a world of distance in the operation of trains. Something about it seemed wrong, and Smith was bothered because he could not say what it was, and he did not want to lay it off on Mangum Fentress.

  The telegrapher laughed. “I know what you came in for,” he said. “Number Six is late. You want some coffee?”

  “No,” said Smith. “I want to make a phone call.”

  Fentress pushed a squat black telephone across the counter. Smith dialed the dispatcher in Meridian. The voice on the other end was one he did not recognize.

  “Yes, Number Six is late,” said the voice testily. “That happens sometimes.”

  “Six is never late,” said Smith

  “Well, he is today,” the voice said, tightening with irritation. “You can make Lumberton easy,” it said, this time with the confidence of a man in a warm office, his train sheet neatly inscribed before him and the yellow lights lit on his board.

  “Are you sure?”

  “You think I made it up?” said the voice.

  Frank Smith hung up on the man. “Fuck you,” he said.

  The clerks looked up. Fentress said, “Beg pardon?”

  “Not you, Mannie,” said the conductor. He pointed to the telephone. “Who is that dispatcher?”

  “His name is James Harris,” said the operator, and lifted his hands. “I don’t know him. He
’s just trying to get you over the road, I guess.”

  “Ah,” said Smith. “Well, we best get on then. Merry Christmas.”

  “Hold on,” said the operator, pulling on his overcoat. “I’ll walk out with you.”

  The two men stood a moment on the narrow wooden platform, watching the snow where it blew in clouds off the roofs of standing cars. It covered the stone-gray slag and the dark cinders, was drifted against the sides of oil drums and the pale yellow flank of a maintenance shed. A switching cut was passing deep in the yard. A man riding the tops, his hands shoved in his coat pockets, drifted by like a revenant. The air smelled of hogs and smoke and grease. Meanwhile, the X-630 waited on the main line, slightly canted, with a plume of smoke rising from the stovepipe. The whole train was in sight, down to the foreshortened locomotive in its cloud of steam.

  Fentress pulled up his coat collar. He said, “The road is emptying out. There’s nothing ahead of you, and nothing against you but Number Six all the way to the Pearl River. If you’re doubtful, wait in the hole at Talowah. Nobody will be there.”

  “We can make Lumberton all right,” said Smith. “I didn’t mean to insult you in there.”

  “You didn’t,” said the other. He lit his pipe and flicked the match away. “I get tired of this shit sometimes.”

  Smith nodded. “I know,” he said. The smell of the pipe tobacco made him want a cigar. He waved a highball and was glad to hear the whistle make answer; if the day got any gloomier, they would have to break out the lanterns. “Goodbye, Mannie,” he said.

  “Be careful,” said Fentress, and turned back into the office.

  They set out the hogs on a house track at the packing plant. A row of lightbulbs burned under the shed roof, and the whole place reeked of blood. Sonny Leeke made the switch, and when he returned to the caboose, he arranged his gloves on the stove to dry. “Poor sons of bitches,” he said. “Tomorrow is Christmas, and all they got to look forward to is getting knocked in the head.”

  Dutch Ladner looked up from his copy of the Police Gazette. “You was raised in the country,” he said. “Since when was you sentimental about livestock?”

  “I ain’t,” said Sonny. “I’m just saying.”

  “Well, don’t,” said Ladner. “Them hogs don’t know it’s Christmas, for Christ’s sake.”

  “How you know they don’t know?” said Sonny Leeke.

  Frank Smith lit a cigar at his desk and went over his orders one more time in the glow of his Aladdin lamp. They were perfectly clear, indicted in graphite on the green 19 forms and signed by the operators in Meridian and Hattiesburg, and no matter how many times Smith looked at them, they read the same. The 4512 would not leave a register ticket at Talowah. The 4512 would wait for the Silver Star at Lumberton.

  Smith thought about Artemus Kane and Mister Nussbaum, who were out there somewhere in the snow. They would chafe at being late, and they would try to make up the time. Well, so would the 4512. Their train was longer now, but it was all empties, unless you counted George Watson as a load.

  The Bergeron’s Auto Repair girl smiled down from the calendar, reminding everyone that it was Christmas Eve. Frank wished he did not know about George Watson in the boxcar. He wondered again if the man knew how his brother June was killed. The man would be cold and hungry, like the hogs.

  Frank Smith was conductor. If he wanted, he could pull George out of his boxcar and let him ride in the warm caboose. Every instinct told him that was the right thing to do, but the right thing was not always the right thing. It might put a colored man in an uncomfortable situation, and the other boys might not appreciate the precedent. Moreover, Smith had Mister Dunn to worry about.

  In the end, it was better to let things alone, Smith thought. George Watson was out there by his own choice, and it was unlikely he would die of the cold, and if he did, it was his own fault. Mister Dunn would keep his wits, and the crew of the Silver Star would follow their orders and be careful. The 4512 would get over the road this one last time, then Frank would sort it all out in New Orleans. The worst that could happen was that they would be caught by the law out in the marshes, and over this, Frank Smith had some control. Today, he decided, they were going to run. No more pickups, no more stopping to switch out a bunch of god damned empty cars that could wait for tomorrow. If he was called on the carpet, that would be all right, too, for Frank Smith had gone a long while, since summer, without any time off. Maybe he could lay up at Gideon’s house in the Quarter and drink some real whiskey and smoke a little dope. In any case, Smith told himself, the train they had now was the one they would drag into New Orleans.

  The conductor pushed back his chair. “Grab a handhold, boys,” he said.

  “Fuck ’em, let’s run,” said Sonny Leeke, rubbing his hands together. “It’s Christmas Eve on Basin Street.”

  “Way down in New Orleens,” said Ladner.

  Smith climbed into the cupola and leaned out the window and gave an exaggerated highball signal. The whistle answered, the train jerked into motion, and Frank Smith settled back into the worn leather seat to watch the country go by. Out on the main again, the wheels hammered over the rail joints. Smith looked at his watch: it was straight up noon, and Lumberton was thirty minutes away. Don’t let me fuck up, thought Frank, turning the watch in his fingers. Just don’t let me fuck up.

  * * *

  At noon, the snow was falling heavy at Talowah. Donny Luttrell had seen all the morning trains by, and he had read the order releasing conductors from their obligation to drop a register ticket at his station. Donny thought this odd, but he had never worked a holiday before, and he supposed this was how it was done. In any event, he did not question the order; no doubt the dispatcher knew what he was doing. Donny also had the message reading

  Extra 4512 South delayed Pachuta acct. derailment. Main

  line not effected. Extra 4512 will wait at Purvis for No. 6.

  Purvis was six miles to the north. Donny would not have to watch for the southbound 4512 until Number 6 had passed going north, which gave him opportunity to go to the graveyard as he had planned. He was not worried. He always heard a passenger train from miles away, and he would have plenty of time to get back to the depot for the Silver Star.

  Donny took a ham sandwich and Thermos jug of coffee and made his way through the trees, through the ruin of the old town. Along the way, he cut sprigs of cedars, thinking to lay them on the lonely graves.

  He enjoyed how the snow crunched under the soles of the logger’s boots he had ordered from a catalog before Thanksgiving. He listened to the sparrows rustling among the pine needles, and the twitter of juncos and fussing of squirrels. He admired the scarlet flash of cardinals, and he watched for the hawk. Another thing to watch for was the pack of wild hogs that, in the last week or so, had taken residence in the woods. He hoped the hogs would show up, for just yesterday he had bought a chrome-plated .45 automatic from a brakeman who needed money. He imagined himself holding off an attack by the fierce razorbacks. In any event, the boots and the pistol made him feel as if he had finally become one with his surroundings. He thought himself ready for anything.

  And foolish, a little, strolling along with a bouquet of evergreens and a .45 stuck in his waistband. Moreover, he was thinking of Rosamond Lake, of what it would be like to make this passage through the snow with her. He tried to imagine what he would say to the girl he had betrayed, and who had betrayed him in turn.

  Once, Donny had taken Rosamond Lake to the Confederate cemetery that lay on the crown of a hill behind the university. The rotten wood markers had long since been removed from the graves and the sunken places filled so that the cemetery, surrounded by cedars, enclosed in a low stone wall twined with poison ivy, was smooth and featureless now, with no monument to speak its calling, and no one left to say which narrow parcels of ground held the bones of a man. It was a place much visited by students, but only because it was remote and peaceful, conducive to romance in a narrow, watchful world that offered
scant privacy. Beyond that, the students, most of them, found little purpose there, and no meaning at all. Being young, they could discern no connection between their own lives and the rumor of nameless men long dead, who had come out of Shiloh and Stones River, suffered their wounds in the old chapel hospital, perished in unimaginable ways, and been buried at last on a muddy hilltop—laid to rest far from home in the company of strangers, attended by strangers, strangers themselves.

  Donny Luttrell brought Rosamond to the cemetery at twilight in a bleak April. The trees were new-budded, the ground strewn with yellow daffodils, but too much rain had fallen, too much yet to come, and the woods around were gray and sodden and crowded of blackbirds. No matter. Donny spread a blanket by the wall, in a bank of nodding, glistening flowers, and there Rosamond gave of herself. When it was done—it was only a moment, less time than it took to be born—when the night was just beginning, and Rosamond was pressed against him in the damp, Donny could feel the quick beating of her heart. He could not know it was the last time he would feel it. In return, the ground beneath gave only of silence, save a fleeting whisper that might have been no more than the moving air: Don’t be fooled, it said. You are strangers, too, sine nomine, even to yourselves.

  They never spoke after that. When she refused to see him, sent word that she could not bear his company now, Donny Luttrell quit his classes and sold his books and, with his stipend, rented a room in town. All that long month, in every twilight, he returned alone to the soldiers’ cemetery and sat with his jug against the stone wall. No sign remained of his and Rosamond’s passing there: the grass had sprung upright, and the daffodils lifted their bells again, and the moss was green. All those evenings, Donny waited until the night was accomplished, listening for voices that never came. He listened while the daffodils faded and the trees came into full leaf, until the night in May when Rosamond summoned him at last and told him what had happened, and he began the journey that had brought him to these cold Piney Woods.