Pelican Road

by Howard Bahr

  He didn’t know how she got out, or when, but there she was coming toward him through the veil of snow. Her hair was dark, but her face was ghostly white, the blood on her clothes bright red. She was shoeless, walking up the track in her stocking feet, seeming unmindful of the rough slag, the shards of glass.

  George Watson stood up. He wanted to flee, to be gone before she noticed him, but he couldn’t make up his mind to do it. Meanwhile the girl had come closer until he could hear the ragged sound of her breathing. Something was wrong with the shape of her, and at first he couldn’t grasp what it was. Then she stopped, walked in a little circle as if trying to determine her way, and he saw that her right arm was gone at the shoulder. He cried out then—he couldn’t help it—and the girl turned toward the sound of his voice. “Oh,” she said, and sat down in the snow.

  A moment passed, and George Watson spent it trying to make up his mind. He wondered if he would ever know what he should do, and if he had ever known. He looked at the girl again, who seemed to have forgotten him. She was sitting with her bare legs straight out, her face twisted in a puzzled frown. As he watched, she began to move in a curious way, jerking her right shoulder, panting with the effort. Somehow, he understood. The girl was trying to pull her dress over her knees with the hand that wasn’t there.

  So George Watson made up his mind, or had it made up for him, no matter. A shallow ditch ran alongside the road, and Watson crossed it and came to the place where the girl sat. He put out his hand. “Let me help you, missy,” he said.

  The girl was still frowning. “Get away,” she said. “Don’t you touch me.” Then her face relaxed, and she brushed absently at her hair with her good hand. “Can Ihave some water?” she asked.

  He went back to the ditch and scooped up a double handful of snow. It was like carrying live coals, but he made his way back to the girl, and knelt, and held the snow just under her chin. “See can you take some,” he said, but it was no use. He watched the light go out of her eyes, and just that quick, in the time it would take to turn down a lamp, she was past all wanting.

  He rose and brushed the snow from his hands. More people were around now, climbing from windows, dropping from the open diaphragms where once the cars had come together. In fact, the wreck was crawling with movement all down its length, and George Watson knew it was time to go. Still, there was one more thing he could do, and to this he gave no thought at all. He took off his checkered wool suit coat and laid it across the girl’s bare legs. Then he backed away, across the ditch, across the road, to the wood line.

  A man shouted at him. “You boy! What you think you’re doin’!”

  George Watson realized, too late, that he had left his pistol in his coat pocket. Well, no matter, he could worry about that another day. Right now, he had to get through the woods and out to the highway before he froze to death. He looked one last time at the girl where she sat alone, bent forward at the waist like a broken doll. “You be all right,” he said. Then he was gone.

  * * *

  When they got outside, away from the dense smoke, Frank Smith found he could breathe easier. He sat down on the platform of the X-630 and pressed his back against the cold handrail. He was trying to put in order all the things he had to do, but they were swimming around in his head like fishes in a pool. Twenty-one years he had traveled up and down Pelican Road, and he had been in all manner of bad situations, but this was the first one where he couldn’t remember what happened.

  He told himself they could not possibly have hit the Silver Star. They had an order, crystal-clear, to meet the passenger train at Lumberton. The last station they had passed was Talowah, and he could see that they were not far past it now. Lumberton was five miles to the south. “Sonny, why would you say we hit Number Six?” he asked.

  The brakeman was slumped against the door frame. “Can you think of any other reason A.P. would dynamite this train way out here?”

  There were many reasons, Smith knew, but he could not seem to think of any. In fact, he could hardly think at all. He shook his head to clear it, and suddenly he remembered what they had to do—the first thing they always did when something bad happened. They had to flag behind, had to protect the rear. The marker lamps were still burning on the caboose, but that was not enough. “Where’s Dutch?” said the conductor. “We got to put out a flag.”

  Leeke did not seem to be injured, but his face was gray, his hands shaking. He coughed violently and spat over the steps. Smith thought the man might be hurt inside where it didn’t show. He was about to remark on the possibility when the brakeman said, “Dutch is still up in the cupola.”

  “Well, get his ass out here,” said Smith.

  The brakeman shook his head. “He’s dead, Frank. He went through the window and broke his neck.”

  Smith looked away, feeling the anger rise in him. They had so much to do, and here was Sonny Leeke fucking around. “No—” he began, but Leeke was rummaging around inside the caboose. Presently, he emerged with a handful of torpedoes and a fusee. “I’ll set out the flag,” he said.

  “No,” said Smith. “Ladner is the flagman. You need to go up and see—”

  “Listen to me,” said Sonny Leeke. “Dutch has gone west, and there is not a god damn thing we can do about it. I’ll put the flag out, then I’m comin’ back here. Understand?”

  Leeke pushed by and went down the steps. Smith watched him stumble away like a drunk man, saw him stoop to bend the torpedoes around the rail a quarter mile up the main. Then a fusee blossomed bright and red in the snowfall. It would only last five minutes, then Ladner would light another one, and another, and stand out in the cold as long as he had to—

  But no, Ladner was dead, and that was Sonny Leeke out there. Smith knew he had to accept that, had to get his mind in order. He knew that pretty soon he would have to accept other things as well, but right now there was too much to do. He crawled a little way into the caboose, cursing the bones that God had made too fragile. “Dutch!” he shouted, but there was only the soft whisper of the stove and a hiss of air from the brake line.

  Time passed. Smith’s watch was shattered—the hands were stopped at twelve twenty-six—so when Sonny Leeke returned, Smith had to ask what time it was. One thirteen.

  Smith refused to lie on a cushion as Sonny Leeke suggested. Instead, he sat stiffly in his conductor’s chair and watched as Leeke pulled the flagman’s body down from the cupola. Leeke dragged the man outside, where he laid him in the slag and covered him with a blanket. Frank Smith could not help at all. Then the brakeman went back and lit another fusee and returned once more, shivering with cold.

  Leeke stood now with his back to the stove. He said. “We got one car still coupled ahead, the rest are spread out all over the main and up in the woods. I couldn’t see past that.”

  Smith tried to remember. He had been at his desk. Sonny Leeke was sitting on a seat cushion, reading a comic book. Ladner had just climbed into the cupola. Ladner must have seen what was going to happen, but he couldn’t tell about it now.

  “It’s bad,” said Leeke. “Worst I ever seen.”

  Frank Smith wished he could go back to the place where he had been, to the quiet dark where everything was peaceful and he had nothing to do. He said, “You got to go up there. You got to see what happened.”

  “In a minute,” said Leeke. “In a minute, I’ll go.”

  Smith wanted him to go right now, but it was not in him to insist. The two trainmen waited a while in silence. The second fusee burned out, but Leeke made no move to go out and light another. It was just as well; the brakeman had other things to attend to. The torpedoes and the marker lamps would have to do for now. Presently, Leeke said, “I had a thought out there, about Sweet Willie Wine.”

  Smith made no answer. He had forgotten about the rider, but he remembered now, and remembered how he had considered bringing him back to ride on the caboose, then hadn’t.

  “Well, most likely he would of froze to death anyhow,” said Leeke
. He stood up then, and pulled on a rain slicker. “Guess I’ll leave my umbrella this time,” he said, and grinned in his old way. “If you want to take a stroll, you can use it for a cane.”

  “I might,” said Smith. “Willie Wine was in one of those Maryland boxes.”

  “I’ll look in on him,” said Leeke.

  “No,” said the conductor. “No, you got to get to the head end.” He thought for a moment about what that meant. He said, “It don’t matter if you’re afraid to go. I’d be afraid myself.”

  Sonny Leeke looked down at his hands. “I’m not afraid,” he said.

  “I meant there’s no shame in it,” said Smith.

  Leeke nodded. “I know what you meant,” he said. He put on his gloves, and took up a lantern that wasn’t broken, and then he was gone. Smith heard him go down the steps, heard him pause at the place where Dutch was lying. Then Sonny Leeke’s footsteps crunched on in the slag, and after a moment, they died away.

  Frank Smith sat alone in the quiet caboose. His mother’s picture still hung beside the lamp, and he reached up and straightened it. In a little while, he took his orders out of his overalls pocket. He thumbed through them and found the one they had received at Hattiesburg:

  EXTRA 4512 SOUTH WAIT AT LUMBERTON FOR

  NO. 6 UNTIL 2:01 PM.

  He smoothed it out on the desk, knowing that sooner or later somebody would want to see it. Then he tried to think about what he needed to be doing right now. There was nothing. He had done all he could, and he could only wait while others acted out their parts. The fact was, Frank Smith was no longer in charge of anything.

  He was glad Leeke had fixed the stovepipe. If he’d had to wait in the cold, his back would have set up like concrete. He slept a while, though he tried not to. When he awoke, Roy Jack Lucas was standing at the stove, warming himself. “Hey, Jackie,” said Smith in surprise.

  The detective jumped as if he had not known anyone was there. “Hello, Frank. How you feelin’?”

  Smith’s initial surprise turned uncomfortable all at once. He was usually glad to see Roy Jack, but he was not glad to see him now, for his presence boded ill. “You came all the way from Meridian,” Smith said.

  “Yes,” said the detective, “in a car with no windows. The chief let Hido drive, so we made good time.”

  Smith had no idea what that meant, but it didn’t matter. He said, “What happened, Jackie?”

  The detective’s overcoat and pants and shoes were caked with yellow mud. His eyes were red, his face lined with fatigue, dark with two day’s growth of beard. When he spoke, it was barely above a whisper. “Well, it’s pretty bad,” he said.

  Goddammit, thought Smith. “Just tell me,” he said. “Did we hit the Silver Star?”

  “Yes, Frank, you did,” said Lucas.

  Smith felt the words like a physical blow, even though he had expected them. “But how?” Smith asked.

  Lucas shrugged. “I can’t say yet. Sonny told me you couldn’t walk. Are you all right?”

  “Never mind,” said Smith. “Just tell me what’s going on.”

  So Lucas told what he had seen, and all that had come to pass in the hours since the news went out over Donny Luttrell’s telegraph. He described the wreck of the Silver Star and how, right now, the sandy road was crowded with curious spectators. The Army was coming over from Shelby, he said, bringing a hospital tent and doctors and military policemen. The big hook was on the way, and section gangs were already working on a temporary track so that trains could pass. Frank only half-listened, for he had seen all that before at other wrecks. He knew that the night, when it came, would be lit by searchlights, by the blue arc of cutting torches, by the headlamps of work trains. Men would build fires to warm themselves, and the smoke would drift through the lights. It was what Lucas wasn’t saying that ate at him.

  Then Lucas mentioned that a special train was to run out of Hattiesburg to carry off the dead and injured. “He ought to be showing up pretty soon,” said the detective. “I need to go back and flag for you.”

  “No,” said Smith. “I’ll do it.”

  Once he had something to do, Smith was able to move around a little, though slowly, carefully, mindful of the live nerves that would bring him to his knees if he made the least misstep. He pointed to the corner of the caboose. “Fetch me that umbrella, if you please,” he said.

  With Sonny Leeke’s umbrella for a cane, the conductor found he could stand upright as a proper man should. He said, “Jackie, I have not asked you yet, but I am asking you now.”

  “I know, Frank,” said the detective. “I’m sorry. Can I sit in your chair?”

  Smith had to smile at that. It was an old-time courtesy, a deference that new men hardly ever understood. “Of course, Jackie,” he said.

  Lucas sat, and rubbed his face with his hands. Then he took a notebook from his coat pocket and turned the pages until he found the one he wanted. He stared at the page for a moment. He said, “Somebody else has the passengers’ names. All I got are the railroad—”

  “Please, Jackie,” said Smith. “Just read.”

  “All right,” said Lucas, and began. He read reluctantly in a low, inflectionless voice, tolling the old, familiar names, pausing over some as if he wanted to remember them before he went on. He read a long time, so long that Smith thought he would never get to the end, so long that he would not have been surprised to find his own name among them.

  When all the names of the dead were spoken, Lucas closed his notebook. The two men sat in silence a while. “Well, thank you, Jackie,” said Smith at last. “I’m going out now. If you want to make some coffee, the pot’s layin’ around here someplace, and there’s some French Market in the locker there.”

  Lucas put his notebook away and sat looking at his hands. “Sure,” he said. “I can do that anyhow.”

  Smith took up a clutch of fusees and went out the back door and lowered himself carefully to the ground. He did not look at the place where Dutch Ladner lay, but northward where soon the relief train must appear. He was surprised to find that evening had come. The snow had stopped, and the sky was clearing from the west. A smear of lavender clouds hung over the tree line, and Smith caught a glimpse of the sun as it slid behind them. Apollo and his chariot were falling away into the sea somewhere, leaving behind the illusion that time meant something. They had made so much of time, with their watches and train orders and timetables, and now it had tricked them in the end and lured them down to the place where everything must go at last, where hours and years meant nothing.

  Smith remembered how he had seen the sun that morning, and how he had taken it as a sign. Now another sign presented itself: the evening star, bright and solitary in the twilight. Whatever meaning it had, Smith would leave to the gods who placed it there. Instead, he spoke aloud the names Lucas had read, in case the gods were interested.

  He had a good deal yet to do, he thought, as he followed the star up the main line. He had to stay quick so that, when he got back to Meridian, he could start Artemus Kane’s motorcycle and ride it to the house on 7th Street and put it safely in the shed next to his own. He had to call Gideon before the papers came out in the morning, and he had to call Anna Rose. Surely Artemus had her number around somewhere, and Smith did not want her to hear the news from a stranger. Of course, he had to think of what he would say to them both; he would do that on the train going north. He would write it down, in fact, so that he could be sure it was the right thing. Then, when all that was in order, he would waken Maggie in the middle of the night and tell her what happened, and maybe she would let him stay the night, just this once. Maybe tomorrow, they could all have Christmas together after all.

  He would ask Maggie to have his suit cleaned so he could go to the funerals. Later, he would go see Mister Dunn’s old wife, and Bobby Necaise’s mother, and try to explain how they came to be where they were when death took them. He would go down to Jumpertown and search until he found Eddie Cox’s wife, and search until he fou
nd somebody kin to Sweet Willie Wine. In time, he would sit before boards of inquiry and show them the order from Hattiesburg and try to explain that they were supposed to meet the Silver Star at Lumberton. After that, he would lie on steel tables in Meridian and New Orleans while company doctors poked and prodded him, and he would have to figure out something to do when they told him that his back was too far gone, that he couldn’t work as a trainman anymore. Maybe they would let him be a crossing guard. Maybe he could be a yard clerk. Maybe the Army would take him, who would take anybody, it was said.

  So much to do, and so far to travel yet on the journey. He would have to learn not to look around him, not to expect the same company he had known so long. This would be hardest of all, for right now he could see them all plainly, just as they were before, all laughing, all in movement through time. But not with him. He had to learn that. He had to learn that he could no longer follow where they had gone.

  So much to do, but that was all in the future, near and far. Right now, he had to protect the rear of his train. In the last of light, he spotted a prize between the rails: a crow’s pinion, black and shiny. Slowly, painfully, he bent and picked it up. When he was straight again, and balanced on the umbrella, he turned it in his fingers. In time, if he listened closely, he would know why it came to be here. That was something else he could do tomorrow.

  Smith popped a fusee and stood waiting in its red glare. In a little while, the headlight of the relief train appeared from the north, coming slowly, circumspectly, feeling its way down Pelican Road. Out of the darkness, a flagman appeared, a walking apparition in the cone of the headlight.

  “Hello, Frank,” said the flagman when he was close enough. “My God, how you feelin’?”

  “I’m all right,” said Smith. “I just fucked up, is all.” Then he turned away and walked slowly, carefully, back to the X-630 where Roy Jack was making coffee.