by Ed Gorman
"Can I hold your hand and just sit here for a minute, Robert?"
"I'm afraid I'll have to charge you."
"How much?"
"At least a dollar thirty-seven."
"How about a dollar three?"
"How about a dollar twenty-two?"
"You know, Robert, you're almost as much of a dipshit as I am."
"'Almost' being the operative word there."
We sat in the car holding hands for five minutes. I got two frustrating little erections but spoke to them in nice gentle paternal terms and they went away. I was here on business.
Then we got out of the car, still holding hands, and drifted down through a dusty field toward the bridge. The creek beneath the bridge was shallow and dirty. The trees on either side ran to willows and birches. The narrow shoreline was a city dump of pop cans, beer cans, fast-food wrappers, and the occasional spent condom. I walked over on the railroad tracks and looked a long quarter mile down to where the tracks curved out of sight. The tracks sparkled silver in the waning sunlight. As a boy, I'd always wanted to be one of those old men who sat in the swaying red caboose with one arm cocked out the open window. They always wore OshKosh work caps and smoked pipes. I'd add one thing to that when I got to be one of them: I'd be reading a Ray Bradbury paperback.
I decided the best way to handle this was to leave her alone unless she asked me to be with her. She'd be less self-conscious that way. I was starting to get this crush on her; it was starting to feel funny without her small, fine-boned hand in mine. But I spent a few minutes just walking the tracks. A squirrel looked me over pretty good and didn't seem impressed. A garter snake slithered beneath an oily railroad tie. A number of flies were picnicking on some dog turds. I thought of Henry and felt like hell. Maybe I really should have killed his master instead of him.
Finally, I drifted back toward her. I stayed out of sight, off at an angle and hidden by some white birches.
She walked the shoreline. Facing me. Her eyes were closed and she lightly touched her fingers to her temples. She was mouthing something. Prayers, I imagined.
She walked up and down the shoreline several more times. Birds sang and cried; in the distance a dog barked and yipped. At one point, she sat down on a log and raised her face to the sky.
I wanted to help her. But of course there was nothing I could do.
This went on for a half hour, her sitting there on the log. Then she got up abruptly and looked around and saw me and climbed the angled shoreline to the field.
"Nothing," she said.
"We've got three more to go."
"Nothing," she said again. Then, "Maybe I need to start smoking again."
"What's smoking got to do with it?"
"I was a cigarette fiend during the time I was helping you and the other cops."
"You were also wearing your hair long."
"I guess I didn't think of that."
"And you weighed a hundred and twenty pounds more."
She gave me a sarcastic look. "I take back what I said, Robert. You're more of a dipshit than I am."
"And that takes some doing."
Without warning, she slid her arms around me and started crying softly. "I just can't do it anymore, Robert. I just can't do it."
We didn't spend much time at the next two bridges.
The first one was over a leg of river that twisted westward. It was a long span bridge whose construction marked it as built in the thirties. We tried both ends of the bridge. No vibes whatsoever.
The second was what they call a king-post trestle bridge. It was wood and at least eighty years old and spanned an old section of a highway that had fallen into disrepair since the coming of Interstate 80.
For a moment, she got excited. Her eyes rolled back. She appeared to go into a brief convulsion, shaking. But it passed quickly. Her eyes came open and she said, "Shit."
"Nothing, huh?"
"I was just starting to feel something. Not see it. But feel it. And then—" She shrugged her frail shoulders. "You hungry?"
"I could stand to eat something. Eight, nine thousand calories maybe. But not any more than that."
"How do you say 'dipshit' in Spanish?" Then, "We passed a Perkins on the way here."
"My stomach and I noticed that."
"Why didn't you say something?"
"I was waiting for you to start apologizing for yourself. I figured you do that three, four times, I could afford to buy dinner."
Perkins was crowded at dinnertime. A diverse group. Moms and pops, our time's version of Ozzie and Harriet, with their vans, credit cards, and little plastic cards that instructed them how much fifteen percent of their bill was. Truckers. Bikers. Native Americans from a nearby reservation. Young people who looked to be in love; young people who looked to be breaking up. Old isolated people eating alone and staring out the window at the past.
"Actually, breakfast sounds good."
"Good. Then have breakfast."
"I shall."
"Nice word, shall."
"Yeah," she said, "I heard Myrna Loy use it in one of the Thin Man movies and I've been working it into the conversation every chance I get."
While we were waiting for our food, and enjoying our coffee, and both reveling in the fact that she seemed inexplicably happy for the moment, they came over. Two of them. Mom with a camera, son with a grin.
Son said, when they arrived, "See, I tol' ya."
"Oh, God, it is you!" Mom said.
Tandy had been getting a lot of glances. A lot of people here recognized her right away. They'd whisper to their mate and mate would turn and look over here and a little explosion of recognition could be seen in his eyes.
"Tandy! I love your show!"
Tandy blushed. It was a real, true, little-girl blush, too. Sweet. "Thanks," she said.
"My husband isn't going to believe this. He loves your show, too!"
"Well, tell him thank-you for me."
People were watching us now. I was self-conscious suddenly, embarrassed. I hate being the center of attention, or even anywhere near it.
"In fact, a friend of his was abducted last summer and was going to call your show to see if you'd like to do a bit on him. He said the inside of the mother ship was different from what he'd expected. He said it looked more like the inside of this big huge tavern than anything else."
"Well, you can just call the eight-hundred number at the end of the show and talk to one of our scheduling staff about it."
The woman leaned forward. She was prairie stock, hardworking skin-and-bones at fifty sharp angles, and mad, lonely eyes. Whatever she'd spent her life looking for, she hadn't been able to find. Religion had likely failed her, so now she turned to UFOs. She wore a faded western shirt and faded Levi's. The camera was a small ancient Polaroid. Son, who was tubby in his western getup, said, "Could I get my picture taken with you so I can bring it to fourth grade show-and-tell?"
"Sure, honey," Tandy said. "We'll take one with you and your mom and me and then one with just you and me. How's that?" I took the pictures.
People watched, whispered, pointed, smiled, smirked.
This was my one and only brush with celebrity and I hated it.
I snapped the photos Tandy told me to and then finally Mom and Son were gone, after belatedly cadging an autograph on a napkin.
"I'm sorry," she said. "God, you looked mortified."
"I hate having people stare at me."
Then, in light of the fact that her first reaction to the fans had been to blush, she said, "I actually like it, Robert. I always feel a little funny at first, but then I really get into it."
The food came. We ate. It was good. I had breakfast, the best-tasting meal of the day. Pancakes and eggs and hash browns. You can't go wrong with such a meal. Ever.
She said, "You know what this is all about?"
"What what's all about?"
"My powers and the show and everything? So I won't feel so inadequate around Laura. She got the beau
ty and the brains."
"I think you're going to owe me five bucks. I think you're trying to sneak an apology for yourself past me."
"It's true, Robert. God, look at her. Listen to her. She's gorgeous and she's brilliant."
"This one may cost you ten bucks."
"So my power and my celebrity—when I have those things I don't feel so inadequate around her. And I can appreciate the fact that she's always taken care of me. Loved me and protected me and tried to help me. Which she has."
"And maybe exploited you a little, too."
"Yes, true. But if she hadn't, I'd never have gotten my own television show."
Or lost your power, I thought.
But I sure wasn't going to say that. I sure as hell wasn't.
SIX
The last trestle was deep in the woods and spanned a dry creek bed. A coyote on the rim of a small hill watched us approach, its scrawny and patchy body aglow with moonlight. I'd cadged a small shovel from the motel office and brought it along.
The woods were heavy, thick, noisy with night.
Steep day and shale cliffs rose sharply in the air, lending the area an isolated sense. Fir and pine stretched deep to the west. To the east was the grassy barren hill where the coyote crouched.
"My last hope," she said. And gave my hand a squeeze.
"I'll leave you alone. In fact, I think I'll climb the trestle."
"Second childhood?"
"Exactly."
So I climbed the trestle. Which was not as easy as it sounds. The brace I used was at a seventy-degree angle. Tandy watched me for a time. "God, be careful."
"You're talking to Tarzan."
"Yeah, right. I can see that. The way you slipped just a minute ago."
I didn't know she'd noticed. So much for my Tarzan image.
I reached the chord, stood up, dusted my hands off on my pants, and took my first good look out at the night. King of the hill. Untouchable. Impregnable. Velvet dark blue sky. Crisp silver moon. A big commercial jet far away, probably heading for Cedar Rapids. The autumn air, cool and melancholy and erotically inspiring. I hoped she'd be beneath my covers tonight, snuggling against the jack-o'-lantern chill, all warm and silky and sexy and still a little sad-faced even in sleep, our bodies entangled and her sweet little mouth against my shoulder, lover and daughter and friend and mystery.
She went about her business and I went about mine.
I'd been up on the chord ten, fifteen minutes, walking back and forth like the ten-year-old I'd always be, when I felt the train coming.
Didn't see it. Didn't hear it. Felt it.
There's a story about Genghis Khan that has always stayed with me. How villages miles from his thundering horseback army, sometimes numbering in the thousands, would literally feel the ground shake with his approach.
And this would give them time to flee before his terrible horsemen reached them.
The train was sort of like that. I had a straight look down maybe a half mile of shining silver track in the vast prairie shadows...and I still couldn't see it. Or hear it.
But feel it, yes.
There was still plenty of time for me to climb down, and I just assumed that's what I'd do as soon as the train came into sight.
As for Tandy, she had suddenly vanished. That didn't trouble me. She might be forming images, and the images leading her somewhere down the creek bed. I sure didn't have to worry about her drowning.
Then the train was sliding around the distant bend, and it was an imposing ghostly figure in the Iowa night, a long freight of jerking rumbling boxcars and tanker cars and lumber cars, and one big golden boogeyman eye scanning the countryside for anything that displeased it. Roaring, rushing toward me.
There were all kinds of stories about people who stood on trestles when the heavy trains came through. How they fell to their deaths and were ground to bloody fatty hamburger after several train cars had passed over them. So the sensible man would quickly work his way down the brace and stand in the dry creek bed and watch the train go by.
But as Tandy had hinted, I was having a second childhood experience. So I decided to stay right where I was.
You could smell the train coming. The hot oily engine. The friction of steel wheel and steel track. The taint of the various products the train was carrying.
And the whistle. I always thought of Jack London and Jack Kerouac when I heard train whistles like that, so lonely and longing in the Midwestern night those whistles, both men rushing their whole lives to a haven they never lived long enough to find, and probably wouldn't have found anyway no matter how long they'd lived.
And then the train was crashing through the tunnel the trestle had created. And the steel bridge jerked and swayed and bobbled as the roaring train seemed to explode beneath my feet. The noise of engine and steel and speed obliterated everything else.
I stuck my arms out for balance, the way I would on a surfboard. But it didn't help much.
I was being tipped off the chord.
The creek bed was sandy, true. But the fall was a good twenty-five feet. Far enough to break more than a few bones, no matter how gentle the landing.
The noise was starting to spook me now. I was inside it. There was no escape. I had one of those paranoid flashes that I'd somehow crossed over into another realm. And I was in this realm forever.
I did the only thing I could. I dropped to the chord, straddling it like a horse bent over and hung on.
I forgot about Tandy. I just clung to the steel.
It was a rough ride, so rough that a couple of times I wished I was wearing a jock.
The train was one of those spectral mythic unending ones you see only on the prairies, long as a country mile, and even rolling at eighty, ninety miles an hour, taking forever to pass by.
The whistle again. And the cold dead air created by the cars as they charged through the night. And the different shapes of the cars—boxlike, cylindrical, open and flat. I even glimpsed a hobo sleeping in a gondola, though God only knew how you could sleep in the belly of such a beast as this one.
I glanced up once and saw the moon and a kind of awe gripped me momentarily, all the things that had happened on this little nowhere planet beneath the moon, before the Ice Age when this prairie didn't even exist, and then water eventually becoming landmass, and since that time so many, many epochs and eras for the moon to indifferently note, culminating in this era of screeching train and girl with psychic power. The moon didn't give any more of a damn about us than it had the Vikings or the Indians or the pioneers from New Hampshire and Rhode Island, or the hairy, forlorn, utterly baffled creatures who'd trod these lands so many millions of years ago we don't even know what to call them.
And then it was gone. And there was this strange quality in the air called silence. And my first reaction was not to recognize it for what it was. My entire body had been shaken by the thunder of the train.
After a time, I heard the night birds and the coyotes and the horses in the hills. And feeling, human feeling, came back to my limbs and my crotch, and into my mind, too.
I looked for Tandy and didn't see her.
The creek bed was pale and shadowy in the moonlight. I followed her footprints westward. You could smell mud and wet dead leaves from the recent rains.
I listened for her, too. Light as she was, she had to make at least minimal noise as she moved.
I didn't want to call out for her. She might be in a trance. My voice could destroy whatever she was learning.
The creek narrowed at one point and became little more than a path. I had to duck beneath low-hanging branches. Moonlight glinted off beer cans and pop cans angled out from the sandy creek bed. A possum switched its lengthy tail, watching me.
In the tree-broken silver glow of the moon, standing perfectly still on a hill, fingers touching her temples, eyes crazed and raised skyward, she stood like some piece of mad statuary, a benign prairie Medusa, slight as a child, frail as an autumn flower, a song of some kind coming f
rom her lips, or what I mistook as a song, at first, anyway. It was really a moan, I realized, as I climbed the bank and started up the small hill toward her. In the sudden wind, the trees around her bent branches toward her, as if in supplication. Her crazed gaze was unwavering, and the moan grew only deeper and more disturbing.
I stopped several feet from her. I didn't want to scare her. She was completely unaware of me.
And then she started moving. There was a moment where her movement was almost comic, melodramatic and stagy as a zombie sequence in a bad, old late-night TV movie. Her arms weren't outstretched before her and she didn't plod as she walked, but still there was something overwrought about her, and I even wondered guiltily if she might not be faking all this for my benefit.
She answered my question by pausing halfway down the hill and throwing up.
Moaning ended. Eyes became real and focused again. And the throwing up was all too real.
She sank to her knees to do it, and I rushed to her and knelt next to her and held her as she finished her work.
And then I recalled another night. The first murder case we'd worked on together. Near the time when the image came clear to her and she was able to lead us to the buried body. Vomiting, then. Inexplicably. Me holding her.
Now she said, "I didn't get it."
"Get what?"
"The location."
"A body?"
"Yes. A child. An infant."
"Oh, shit." A child, let alone an infant, is always the worst to find. It changes you. You can never quite look at the human heart the same way again. In a very real way, you're no longer a virgin. In my FBI years, I'd lost my cherry early on. I'd worked a case in which a child had been mutilated and then burned. But Tandy still had her virginity. Until tonight, anyway. "Anything I can do?"
"No. Just please don't talk. In fact, how about walking back to the car? I'll come back when I'm through. Maybe—maybe something will come to me yet."
I touched her arm. "You've already accomplished something, Tandy. You've located a body."