Mercenary

by David Gaughran

  Lee knew it was a shot across the bows, but he couldn’t catch a break. The railroad was the only real job he’d known. Apart from a youth spent on the schooners of Lake Pontchartrain, it was all he’d ever done. Waiting tables in McComb station after his father died, making enough to support Ma too. Working the rails as a brakesman once he turned eighteen. Fireman’s apprentice. Baggage master at Vicksburg. Then, finally, an engineer at the throttle of his own locomotive.

  Twelve years climbing the ladder, all for nothing. All wasted. And for what? As long as he was blacklisted, Lee knew his life would never change. He’d drift from job to job, drinking his life away.

  13

  Sheriff Remy Klock finally came through with his patronage, even if it was too late to save Lee from being kicked out of the family home. He didn’t even mind that it was real labor, part of a gang cleaning the open sewers, which were invariably blocked by the flotsam and detritus of the good citizens of New Orleans. Being Remy’s friend had ancillary benefits, too, so one October night in 1894 found Lee sleeping off a heavy night in the warden’s office of the Orleans Parish Prison on Gravier Street, rather than in a cell.

  He was still sprawled on the floor, putting off the inevitable piss while he struggled to clear his head, when a kid burst in the door.

  Lee bolted upright, grabbing his pants. “Shit, boy, you done scared me good.” He shook his head. “No one ever teach you to knock?”

  “Are you Lee Christmas?”

  “Last time I checked. Just let me get my britches on.” Lee rubbed his eyes.

  “You better hurry,” said the kid. “Your wife’s about to give birth.”

  Lee jumped up and pulled on his pants. “Find my boots. Quick!” He swore. “She wasn’t due for another two weeks.”

  “She’s in the hospital on—”

  “I know where it is,” he growled.

  Twenty minutes later, Lee was remonstrating with a nurse. “Her name is Mamie Christmas. Brought in a few hours ago. She’s gotta be here somewhere.” He thought for a moment. “Check under Mary Christmas too. That’s what’s on her papers.”

  “Is this some kind of joke?”

  “Goddammit,” said Lee. “Where’s my wife?”

  His bellowing attracted the attention of a passing doctor, who tried to calm him by promising to help. To Lee’s embarrassment, they eventually found his wife registered under her maiden name: Mamie Reid.

  “East Wing,” said the nurse, while he scarpered down the corridor. “Second left, first right.”

  He reached Mamie’s bed just as the nurse handed over the newborn. Mamie’s mouth tightened momentarily when she saw her estranged husband, before she allowed herself a smile. “Want to meet your new daughter?”

  “A girl?” Lee beamed. “It’s a girl!” He grabbed the nurse next to him and planted a sloppy kiss on her cheek. Wiping his eyes, he strode to Mamie’s bedside and leaned in, cooing. “Almost as beautiful as her mother.”

  Mamie snorted and offered up the child to him. He took the blinking baby into his arms, adjusting the blanket under her tiny chin. “To be fair, you’ve had a few years head start.”

  His wife put a hand to her mouth in mock horror. “Did you just make a joke about my age?”

  “No … I…”

  She interrupted his stammering with a laugh. “I’m kidding, Lee.”

  But he was already back gazing into his daughter’s eyes and kissing her cheeks. He looked up at his wife. “What are we calling her?”

  Mamie thought for a moment. Just as she was about to respond, Lee cut her off. “What about Mary, like her mother?”

  She smiled. “That might suit her, actually.” Mamie held out her arms and he placed young Mary in her care, as gently as he could.

  Mamie looked down on her serene face. “Sometimes I wish they could stay like this forever.”

  Lee watched them for a moment. “I almost forgot.” He snapped his fingers. “I’ve got some big news.”

  “Bigger than this?”

  He chuckled. “Well, no. But I think you’re gonna like it.”

  “We’ll see about that,” she said.

  14

  “What do they mean by amnesty?” Mamie squinted at him suspiciously then handed her newborn to the waiting nurse.

  Lee waited until she had left the room before replying. “The slate’s wiped clean. All sins forgotten. I start from scratch.” He smiled. “What do you think?”

  She squeezed his hand, her eyes watering over. “I think that’s a swell idea.”

  He went straight from the hospital to the station, hoping to catch Mr. Baldwin, the night yardmaster of the Illinois Central. The evening before, Boyd had tipped Lee off that the freight business was picking up—to the point where blacklists were being ignored. As long as Lee was content putting in his time at a switch engine in the yards—and he kept his nose clean—he would be back at the throttle soon enough. Of course, Lee was prepared to do anything to get his old job back. His family too. There was just one hurdle: the railroads had brought in a medical test, and all new hires had to be certified. Luckily, the testing car from Chicago was in the yard, so Lee could be examined that afternoon.

  As he stood in line to see the doctor, Lee had no real reason to feel nervous. He knew he drank too much, and he probably didn’t eat right, especially during the past three years of tramping and roughhousing, but aside from that, he was in perfect health. Thirty-one years of age. Fit. Strong. This was his chance, no more moving from place to place, getting paid at the whim of the boss. No more lumber camps or cane fields, and no more sewer work. But as each man in front of him left the car, smiling and waving their slips, his unease grew.

  It was his turn. He knocked then pushed open the door. A wiry man sat behind a desk. “Mr. Christmas?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I’m Dr. Allport.” He indicated to a stool. “Please, sit. I believe you are last.”

  “There was no one behind me.”

  “Very well. We’re going to conduct a series of tests, but they’re not invasive in any way. In other words,” said the doctor, smiling, “you won’t feel a thing.”

  These words failed to reassure Lee; his throat was dry, his palms clammy, and he had a sinking feeling he just couldn’t shift, or explain.

  “Ever had any problems with your vision?” asked the doctor.

  “No, sir.” A lump formed in his throat.

  “No blurriness, tiredness of the eyes, unusual discharge, strange sensations, anything like that?”

  He shook his head.

  Dr. Allport scribbled on his pad and then opened a small box. He removed three tiny skeins of silk yarn, laying them out in front of Lee before swiveling the open box around. Inside were thirty or forty more woolen threads. “You can see the green, blue, and rose yarn in front of you there. What I need you to do is match the rest of the wool in the box to the colors on the table, or as close as you can.”

  Lee froze.

  The doctor looked puzzled. “Let me show you. This greenish one here would go with—”

  “Doc, I don’t think I can do this.”

  “What’s the matter?”

  He picked up two of the samples. “I can’t tell them apart.”

  Dr. Allport nodded, and then resumed taking notes.

  “What’s wrong with me?” demanded Lee.

  The doctor fixed his glasses, and placed his hands back on the desk. “You’re color-blind, Mr. Christmas.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean that you can’t tell the difference between red and green. More importantly, for the company’s purposes, you can’t distinguish between a danger light and an all-clear.” The doctor stood.

  “What about the rest of the tests?”

  “That won’t be necessary.” The doctor walked around the desk and held open the door. “You seem like a strong fellow,” he said with a smile, “you’ll find other work.”

  Lee pushed past the doctor. He stepped down out
of the car, his legs a little shaky, glad there was no one around to see the state he was in. Taking a deep breath, he began walking with no particular direction in mind. He decided to avoid the saloons, at least until he calmed down a little. He was liable to knock someone’s block off if they so much as glanced at him the wrong way.

  Color-blind. What a stupid name.

  It wasn’t as if he saw the world in black and white, or gray for that matter. But he did have some trouble with colors. He could never tell when his steak was cooked, or whether a tomato was ripe, or, more importantly, the difference between a blue-eyed blonde and a green-eyed redhead. But what did it matter? So what if an orange was yellower than a banana or if spinach looked like cowshit, he still knew how to drive a damn train. It was a trick, he reckoned, feeling anger build inside him. Remembering the frosty exchange with Captain Sharp, he figured the railroad’s amnesty mustn’t have extended to Lee Christmas. He wandered over to the roundhouse to seek his friend’s counsel.

  Boyd watched him approach, all hunched over. “What’s wrong, Lee? Ain’t you coming to work for us?”

  Lee frowned, his bushy eyebrows near meeting in the middle. “That doctor from Chicago says I got the color-blind.”

  “Aw, you don’t believe all that nonsense. Ain’t no such thing. Come inside. Let’s talk.” Boyd took him into the roundhouse and sat him down. “I’ll be back in a minute,” he said. “Wait right here.” He headed to the testing car, reaching for the keys in his pocket. Once inside, Boyd fumbled around in the darkness until he located the testing kit. He grabbed a pile of the floss, and returned to the office.

  “Let’s put an end to this right here,” Boyd said as he laid the wool out on the table and separated out a red and green skein. “Tell me straight. Do those colors look the same to you?”

  Lee scrunched up his face. “Ain’t they the same?”

  “The same!” Boyd yelled. “Can’t you see one of ’em’s greener than the greenest grass and the other is redder than the reddest blood?”

  Lee shook his head slowly. “Before God, Boyd, you ain’t fooling me now, right?”

  15

  Lee sometimes liked to while away time down at the port, just before the bend in the river at Algiers, watching the steamers ferrying bananas in and people out.

  “Join the railroad, and see the world,” he boomed, drawing sharp looks from passersby. He took another swig from his hip flask, glowering at the rubberneckers. “Mind your own damn business,” he slurred.

  The slogan that had drawn him in now served as a bitter reminder of what his life could have been, if things had turned out different. In truth, even before the crash, the railroad had never taken him much further north than Memphis.

  Memphis, he thought, Mamie’s on her way there right now.

  That he hadn’t done right by her or the kids weighed heavily on his heart. They had sold the furniture in their rented New Orleans house for the princely sum of twelve dollars, and he had sent Mamie north with all of it. He wondered when he would see her again, and the kids: Ed, Hattie, and Sadie—the name Mary not sticking after all. But he knew it was the right thing to do. He couldn’t put Mamie through any more pain. The boys said there was money to be made down in the Tropics—banana trains, no less. Although Lee still wasn’t sure it was the right move.

  “Why go all the way to Memphis? It makes no sense,” he had asked Mamie.

  She had ignored him at first, continuing to empty drawers onto the bed. “Makes plenty of sense if you’ve half a brain.”

  “But we don’t know anyone there.”

  She picked up a frame that had been knocked to the floor: a picture of their wedding day—the only picture. No one they knew had been in attendance. They only had a photograph at all because a reporter from the Picayune had telegrammed Memphis and got a stringer to the church, desperate to add a picture to the paper’s juicy headline. She removed the photo and tossed it at him. “Frame’s worth keeping anyways,” she said, as she dumped it in her case.

  “But Memphis?”

  “Darn it, Lee, my mother’s there. And she’s been looking after us for three years now, while you…” She spread her hands.

  “It’s not my fault I got the color-blind.”

  His wife sighed. “Do you always have to see things in black and white?”

  “That’s not how it works,” he said. “It’s more like I can’t see the little differences you can see.”

  Mamie had stepped toward him then, brushing his face with her hand. Tears welled in her eyes. “I know,” she said.

  Then she continued packing.

  The memory of that conversation hit him hard; Lee cleared his throat, looking to the sky, blinking away tears. A storm rolled in off the Gulf, right up the Mississippi River. The jostling crowd at the end of the pier caught his eye, passengers taking the place of bananas on a vessel to his left. Boyd told him all sorts were heading south now, trying their luck. Fare was next to nothing too, given that most steamers went back empty after dumping their crop in New Orleans. Lee strolled down to the boat, more curious than anything.

  He paused at the gangplank, his right leg tapping.

  He stepped aboard.

  An hour later, Lee wiped a tear from his eye as the boat cut through the Gulf of Mexico. He took the last swig of whiskey from his hip flask and then balanced it on his palm, tracing his finger across the inscription: To Lee & Mamie. Remember this day—Boyd.

  He cocked his arm back as far as he could, hurling the hip flask high and long. It hit the water in the distance, a wave rolling over it right away. As soon as the wave crashed, it bubbled up again, light bouncing off it for a moment before it sank beneath the surface, lost forever.

  Lee blew his nose, hiding tears from his fellow passengers, and then made his way to the prow. Nothing but endless blue sea, the water clearer now they’d left the industrial ports of America behind. He closed his eyes and tilted his head back, letting the sun fall on his face. Pinpricks of heat spread across his cheeks. Sweat trickled down his back. In the distance, a seagull called. Lee kept his eyes squeezed shut, right until the purser tapped him on the shoulder and asked to see his ticket.

  Rubbing his face, he turned and pulled all the money he had out of his pocket—two dollars and change. “This enough?”

  “Where you headed?”

  He smiled for the first time in days. “I was hoping you were gonna tell me.”

  16

  Puerto Cortés was supposed to be the largest port in Honduras, but it didn’t look like much. Lee couldn’t believe he’d landed somewhere even more humid than New Orleans, and this was only October. He stepped off the steamer, not even knowing what time it was supposed to be, and cursed the heat sticking the shirt to his back.

  The sleepy town he’d viewed from the boat sprang into life once they’d docked. Lee stood to the side. This part, at least, was somewhat familiar. A boat was just like a train, he reckoned. The longer passengers took to disembark, the longer them bananas went spoiling. Ripes weren’t worth half the price of nice green bananas that would stay fresh for days. But the giant, oblong blocks of ice, steam rising from them as they were dumped right in on top of the boat’s cargo, really caught his eye. One way to keep ’em fresh, he supposed. He waited by the steamer as the crew finished loading, and was still standing there as it puffed away into the distance, belching a trail of smoky breadcrumbs all the way back to America.

  Lee turned to face the town, such as it was. It had only one street to speak of, which bent down to meet the wharf. A narrow-gauge railroad track ran right down the middle, curving away from the coast at the end of the street. Dirt road, he corrected himself. Nothing was paved, not as far as he could see. He hunkered down and patted the earth, saying a silent prayer, then began walking.

  The line of tin-roofed, single-story buildings was punctuated by a sole structure, the Hotel Lefebvre; Lee figured that was as good a place to start as any. He managed to talk his way into a room on credit—thanks
to the intervention of the manager, who knew a few words of broken English. The manager was curious about his lack of luggage, but Lee talked his way out of it. “Bags went ahead on the Wednesday steamer. Don’t tell me they didn’t arrive! I bet Mr. Bluth didn’t pay for my room neither.”

  “No pay,” the manager said.

  “Damn it.” Lee struck the counter. “I knew these guys were amateurs.” He raised an eyebrow at the manager. “Say, you couldn’t spot me a room till we get this straightened out?”

  “You want room?”

  “Yes,” said Lee, slowing down. “Money … after.”

  “No hay problema, ven por aquí.”

  Lee followed him down the hallway.

  After a short nap, he washed up in the sink and dressed in the same clothes. Any notion of needing a fresh shirt was forgotten as soon as he stepped outside, sweating once more.

  “Hell,” he said to himself, “what’s this place like in summer?”

  Raucous laughter rolled down the street and Lee decided to find the source. He walked by a line of houses until he got to a set of buildings with Cantina or Estanco above the door; he walked into the loudest.

  Locals hunched over the tables, deep in conversation and gesticulating wildly. Their eyes went to him when he walked in, and then looked away.

  Friendly bunch. Feeling like a fish out of water, he marched to the bar and ordered a whiskey in the most confident tone he could muster.

  “No hay,” was the immediate reply.

  He shook his head at the strange bottle offered instead, scanning the shelf for something vaguely familiar. When the bartender offered something else, he thought it best to agree.

  Lee grabbed a scrap of paper from the counter and pointed to it. The bartender looked confused, doubly so when he reached behind the bar and grabbed the pencil from the man’s ear. He scrawled, “Lee Christmas, Engineer, Hotel Lefebvre, I.O.U. one drink.”

  The bartender read the note, nodding, pointing down the street in the direction Lee had gestured.