“Does it matter?”
“It bothers me. It’s like an open wound … that needs to be sewn up.”
“What do you remember?”
“I’ve told you everything I remember,” he said.
“Let’s walk through it again. Start from the last thing you remember, before the blank hours.”
“You … at the cemetery … after Billy’s funeral.”
“You really remember that?”
“What you mean?”
“Like you said, do you remember details because you were told them, or because they are your actual memories?”
“It’s a memory, I know it now. I can see all of it, from my point of view. We separated, you and me, and after that it goes blank.” McCloskey rubbed his face with his hands and sank back further into the chair.
“And what is the very first thing you remember after that?”
He reached over, picked up Clara’s cigarette case from the end table, and got one going. He exhaled at the ceiling. “Sitting in a wheelchair on the grounds of the hospital. It’s sunny. There are other patients. Everyone’s in white. There’s music playing on a gramophone.”
“All right, let’s back it up again. You don’t remember leaving the cemetery?”
McCloskey stood up and started pacing the room again. “I know I got in my car.” He sat down, this time in a little wooden chair that was part of the dinette outside the kitchen. He turned the chair around so that he was facing Clara. He gripped the arms, then relaxed, took a deep breath, and closed his eyes. He was quiet for a moment.
“I’m driving …” he said.
“Where?”
“Downtown.”
“Keep driving,” she said softly. She was being careful not to prompt him, not to fill his head with any images that were not his own. She wanted all of it to come from him, naturally.
“The river,” he said. “But I see people … and the skyline of Detroit … I must be near the ferry docks.”
“Are you sure?”
“I think so.”
“That’s good. Have any ideas what you might have been doing down there?” Clara let him concentrate. Maybe a minute passed.
He shook his head. “No, no I don’t.” He opened his eyes and straightened up. “I need a drink.”
“I think I have some rye.”
“Ginger ale.”
That stopped Clara in her tracks. “Did you take the pledge?”
“No, I’m just not feeling like it.”
Clara disappeared into the kitchen. McCloskey heard the icebox door open and the pop of the bottle top. “Do you want a glass?”
“No, thanks.”
She reappeared and handed him the Vernor’s.
“Let’s go for a walk,” he said.
“Don’t you want your drink?”
“I’ll take it with me.”
They bundled up. McCloskey wrapped Clara in her raccoon coat. “Do you have to feed this thing?” Clara tied McCloskey’s muffler snug around his neck. He donned his wool fedora and she slipped her feet into her late husband’s, Jack’s brother’s, galoshes. McCloskey grabbed his bottle of Vernor’s.
They headed down the stairs and out, pausing at the street corner. “Well,” said Clara, “where to?”
“Let’s just go around the block — this way.” McCloskey gestured down Erie Street toward Victoria Avenue.
There was a footpath worn through the snowdrifts. Some residents had apparently already given up on shovelling. The two were silent for a while, McCloskey stealing the occasional swig of ginger ale from his bottle. Walking the short block along Erie, they then turned north down Victoria.
Clara was waiting for McCloskey to speak first.
“Maybe I should just forget about it.”
“It doesn’t sound like you can,” said Clara. “Did you ever go back? To the train station, I mean.”
“No.”
She let that go for a while before she asked if he’d like to try that, see if it triggered anything.
“Will you come with me?”
“Sure,” she said.
“Can we do it now?”
She looked at her watch. “I think so.”
“Let’s go.”
They were already at Anne Street, so they just looped down Pelissier and walked straight to his car, which was parked near Clara’s. They piled into the Light Six and McCloskey wiggled it back out of the ruts. It actually handled well in the snow, better than Studebaker’s Big Eight or any of the other heavier cars.
“Do you remember the route you took to the train station that day?”
“Sort of.”
“Okay, try not to think too hard about it. Just drive.”
McCloskey pulled over before he got to Giles Boulevard and parked the car. He closed his eyes and rested his head back.
“Are you all right?” asked Clara.
“Yeah. I’m just trying to clear my mind first.”
They sat in the car, silent. It was freezing cold. Wind whistled through the bare branches of the trees. Clara looked around and saw a rug folded behind her. She grabbed it, unwrapped it, draped it over her legs, and waited for McCloskey to collect himself. When he finally did, he put the car back in gear, turned right onto Giles and then left at Victoria, following it all the way up to Tecumseh Road. He turned right, merging into the traffic.
Driving to the train station with a girl sitting next to him. This felt familiar, he thought, but he didn’t say anything.
Turning right at McKay, he found the road surface slightly better, probably from being so heavily travelled by commuters. He could tell Clara was waiting for him to say something. He could feel her eyes on him.
He was letting his instincts, or whatever it was, take him over, to the point where it no longer felt like he was in control of the car. The Light Six seemed to be ignoring the available ruts and was plowing through the half foot of snow to get to where it thought it needed to be. McCloskey parked between the entrance and the south end of the building, where the track was still visible.
He cut the engine and then just stared ahead, his hands gripping the wheel. Clara remained quiet. She could hear a passenger train to their left coming out the tunnel that ran under the river. It approached the station sluggishly, trying to make its way up the slight grade. Cold steel against cold steel. Probably ice and snow on the tracks too. McCloskey turned to look, but from where they were parked there was no view of the train.
“Looks pretty quiet in there,” he said, referring to the station.
“Yeah.”
“I wonder where it’s headed.”
“Did you want to go inside and warm up for a bit?” she asked.
“No, let’s just sit here until the train pulls out. I want to see that.”
She hesitated and then asked if that meant something to him.
“I don’t know.”
“Mind if I smoke?” she said.
“No, go ahead.”
She pulled a small package of cigarettes and a box of matches out of the inside pocket of her coat. A car pulled quickly into the lot, too quickly for these driving conditions. It pulled right up to the entrance of the station. Doors opened and slammed shut.
“Just in time,” she said.
He stared at the car for a while. Something else was echoing in his head.
“Are you sure you don’t want to go inside?”
“Yeah, I mean, no. I never went inside. Listen — I think it’s getting ready to pull out already.”
And it was. He could hear the shouts and whistles on the platform, followed by the sound of the wheels grinding the frozen track. Smoke and steam above and around the station, and then finally the locomotive. He watched it pull away and slowly disappear into a gust of blowing snow that seemed to twist around the cars, creating another tunnel.
“Did you see their faces?” he said.
“Yeah,” she said. “I saw their faces.”
“Okay, let’s go.”
&
nbsp; “You sure?”
“Yeah.”
“Where to?”
“Back to your place,” he said. “I could use that rye now.”
McCloskey started the engine, checked his mirrors, and did a U-turn in reverse, aiming the vehicle hard at the road. “Do you think you could work my shoulder again?”
“If it’ll help.”
“Great. I’ve been thinking I’m ready to hit the gym.”
She looked at him. “Are you sure that’s such a good idea?”
“I need to do something.”
They were heading back down McKay.
“Okay, but do me a favour and start slow.”
“I’ll try,” he said.
“While I’m working your shoulder, maybe you can tell me about what you experienced at the train station just now.”
“That’s exactly what I was thinking. I think I need to loosen up a little.”
— Chapter 5 —
RUNAWAY TRAIN
Dusk
The young fireman had no sooner closed the door to the fuel car than there came a pounding from the inside. Impossible, he thought, I must be imagining things. He turned his back on the door, leaned on his shovel, and continued watching the two engineers work the controls. He still had a lot to learn.
Bam bam bam.
This time it was loud enough for the engineer and his assistant to hear over the engine. They had their hands full so they instructed the fireman to go investigate. The boy unlatched one of the swinging doors, and out came a big man wrapped in an overcoat and brandishing a sawed-off shotgun. He looked like he’d just climbed through a coal mine.
“There’s a cow on the tracks,” he said.
This was his opener. He said it loud enough that he wouldn’t have to repeat it, probably thinking it was too good a line to waste. The engineer and his assistant pulled their eyes off the grimy wall of dials and gauges and faced him.
“Who the hell are you?” demanded the engineer.
“I gotta make a transfer; you’re going to stop this thing.”
The engineer hesitated, considered his assistant and the fireman who, with his thin, coal-smeared face was staring blankly at the gangster, bootlegger, or whatever he was.
“But we only just stopped at Maidstone — we’re up to speed now.”
“Do it,” barked the big man, and he raised the shotgun so that it was eye level with the engine cab trio.
The engineer wised up quick. “Like you said, mister.” He and his assistant started pulling this and turning that — all the things they needed to do to make a sudden, unscheduled stop. The fireman stood aside and waited for further orders.
It was quickly becoming dark. The bootlegger kept his shotgun fixed on the railmen while he looked outside for his markers: Three oil-drum fires in a farmer’s field.
“Is that Sexton Sideroad coming up?” he asked the engineer.
“Yep.”
“Okay, you’ll be stopping somewhere before you cross Middle Road, so get ready. Is that cord the train whistle?”
“Yes, but —”
The bootlegger gave it a couple pulls and continued to check for his markers.
Four men in black sitting two-by-two and facing each other in the back corner of one of the passenger cars felt the train slowing and checked their wristwatches. One of them immediately got up and started making his way through the car in the direction of the engine. Another followed very shortly. The third remained seated while the fourth took up a position at the back door of the car. They moved in silence, with ease and precision.
The car was dimly lit, making it even more difficult to see their faces beneath their wide-brim hats, to judge the cut of their clothes, or to understand their intent. They were like shadows; rather than reflect light, they actually seemed to absorb it. After some murmuring among the passengers, the car fell silent again and no one interfered or so much as mentioned them. To many of the passengers they were invisible, and to others they seemed to represent something otherworldly. Those passengers looked away.
The train was slowing to a stop. The side of the first baggage car opened to a blast of swirling snow. A man in a big coat leaned out and started swinging a lantern. A much larger man came to the door dragging a couple of heavy suitcases. He staggered like a drunk but it was just the rhythm of the train that was throwing him off.
“There they are. See?”
“But can you see the haystack?” said the one with the suitcases. “We don’t want to be waiting around here any longer than we have to.”
“It’s right there in front of you.”
“Hey, I’m not the one with the lantern, am I? And stop swinging it around like that.”
“Like what?”
“You almost hit me.”
“Would you relax?” said the lantern-bearer. “I swear you’re worse than my old lady.”
“Drop dead, Mouse.”
Barney, the one doing the heavy lifting, grabbed one of the suitcases by the handle and, with both hands, swung it back and forth to give it some momentum and then heaved it toward the haystack just beyond the narrow ditch.
The farmer got out of his Model T pickup and retrieved the suitcase. He opened it in the headlight beams. Inside the case were about a dozen bottles of rye packed in newspaper. The farmer gave his “okay.” Barney started tossing the rest of the order onto the haystack. Two younger men hopped out of the back of the pickup to help retrieve it.
“Why has this train stopped?”
The first man in black had reached the engine cab just as the train had come to a halt. He didn’t come by way of the fuel car but rather off the shoulder of the track, surprising the bootlegger.
“His orders,” said the engineer, pointing at the bootlegger.
The bootlegger couldn’t get a good look at the shadowy figure, couldn’t make him out. “You a cop?”
“No.”
A light flickered in the bootlegger’s head. “Hey, wait a minute — this is my caper. If you want in, you’re a bit late.”
“This train is scheduled to arrive at Michigan Central station in Windsor at 9:15 p.m.”
The bootlegger cocked his head at the shadow. “You’re not after the booze?”
“No.”
“Then why don’t you just go back to your seat and finish your crossword before you get hurt, okay?”
It got crowded in the engine all of a sudden: the engineer and his assistant backed up against the hissing wall of dials and gauges as soon as they saw that one of the bootlegger’s partners had appeared out of nowhere and was positioning himself behind the man in black. His partner was just as big, and in all likelihood just as stupid.
“Need any help finding your seat, fella?” he said.
Without hesitation and with very little effort, the man in black grabbed the fireman’s coal shovel out of his hands, spun, and bashed the second bootlegger across the face with it. An explosion of teeth, blood, and snot followed. The bootlegger staggered back and down onto the gravel shoulder, rolling into the frozen ditch that ran between the track and the farmer’s field.
The first bootlegger, stunned, pivoted his shotgun toward the man in black, but in one swift motion the dark figure grabbed the barrel with one hand and the bootlegger’s neck with the other. The bootlegger let go of the shotgun in order to better defend himself but the figure was already pressing the bootlegger’s face against the fire door. It made a sizzling sound and the bootlegger started wailing. The figure then picked him up effortlessly by his lapels and tossed him out the cab, landing him somewhere near his partner. The figure then calmly shifted his attention to the engineers and the fireman.
“You have some time to make up,” he told them and handed the fireman back his coal shovel. “Get stoking.”
The team didn’t ask any questions and got right to work. They noticed there was a second man in black in the cab now. They looked identical, but still indescribable. They were all shadow and seemed to blend together, moving
like a two-headed beast.
“Don’t stop until we get to the station,” one of them said. Or was it both of them?
“But Pelton —” started the engineer, pointing his thumb up the track.
“Don’t stop until we get to the station,” the voice repeated.
Just as Barney was preparing to heave another of the booze-laden suitcases toward the haystack, the train lurched forward and he staggered back, almost falling over with it.
Mouse obviously couldn’t see it, but the farmer’s face fell. He shouted something toward the baggage car that the bootleggers couldn’t hear and then ran back to his pickup. He told his boys plain and simple that the deal had gone south, but not to worry, he had an idea. He suspected that his suppliers either got cold feet or just needed a little help with the personnel on the train. He told his eldest boy to hide what landed in the haystack, and his youngest boy to accompany him. The farmer threw his truck into gear, mashed the pedal, and beat a path over to 9th Concession, where he dropped down and hung a right onto Middle Road. “It’ll take us out of the way a bit, but then we’ll shoot back up 8th and head them off.”
Barney and Mouse looked at each other. What happened? Were there Mounties on board? Mouse stayed put and kept watch on what was left of the shipment while Barney went to investigate. The big man reached outside around the still-open baggage car door for the ladder to the roof. He wasn’t fast but he was surprisingly agile; as a kid he was always the one elected to climb the tree to retrieve a kite. What he hadn’t bargained for was tonight’s near-blizzard conditions.
Everyone in the car heard the noise on the roof. The third man in black rose from his seat and walked to the front of the car. The fourth man followed, exchanging his position at the back door for one at the front. The third then made his way outside and onto the roof. The train wasn’t moving so fast yet, but the snow was blowing like mad and it was bitter cold. Also, ice was building up on the rungs that ran along the top of the car. The bootlegger didn’t see the man in black until he was practically face to face with him. At first he thought his eyes were playing tricks on him. Who the hell else would be crawling on all fours on the roof of a moving train in a snowstorm?
Border City Blues 3-Book Bundle Page 26