Sol interrupted. “It knows names, it takes things from you. That’s what it does. But it can’t touch you, Baz. It can make you be in the wrong place at the wrong time,” and he smiled, winced at the same time. “But it can’t lay a hand on you. Doesn’t mean it’s not dangerous. But don’t give it more credit than it’s owed.”
They shared a long stare and then Baz nodded. “It says that it don’t really care about the singing, that it cares more about the company the singing brings.” Then he looked at Lutie. “I think that thing’s after you, Lutie, and I brought you right to it.”
Sol shook his head. “It didn’t say that last night. It’s not after Lutie. It was pretty obvious it was after you, Basile.” He sat up, but slowly, like an old man, tenuous, as though he didn’t trust his body to do what he asked of it. “Luetta,” he said as he swung his legs over the side of the bed.
Lutie’s chin came up. “No,” she said.
“Luetta,” he repeated, coming to a stand. “Please. Take Baz to my place in Denver. Then get the hell away from us. This is dangerous.”
“No,” Baz echoed, and Sol didn’t seem remotely concerned that both of them were not backing down. “I’m not going anywhere, not until we get rid of this thing.” Rattling in the shower, the ability it had, just to appear. Baz didn’t want to be more than a dozen yards from Sol. “You think I want it showing up in Denver? Hell no.”
“It’s not going to be showing up anywhere,” Sol assured him, and Baz remembered this voice from his whole life, Sol taking care of things. It was so easy, it would be so easy to believe him, except—
“No.” Not a question, not a refusal. Just Lutie, being firm. “I mean, yeah, I’ll drive Baz wherever he wants to go, but not before we figure this out.” She seemed on the verge of saying something else, but shut her mouth, pulled weird dimples to either side of her mouth as she frowned.
Sol shook his head like she was six and arguing bedtime. “I can handle this. Baz,” and he looked at him, at the fiddle on his lap, “this thing’s after you. I don’t think it wants you dead,” and that hung strangely, and Baz knew that the devil sure as hell wanted Sol dead, and that a devil’s murderous intentions didn’t scare his brother, “but that don’t mean it wants you happy.”
“So, what are you going to do?” Lutie asked.
It took him by surprise, that question. Baz could see it. Maybe their father had asked him these kind of questions, but Aurie had been out of Sol’s life for a long time. “Dad was hunting a ghost when le diable killed him. These two, they’re connected. There’s a drifter living on the tracks near Brule I gotta talk with. He might know more about the ghost. Railroad bull named Jack Lewis. I know what to do with a ghost. So I start there, push the same buttons Dad pushed.” He opened his hands wide. “I piss off le diable, it shows up. I deal with it.” He stared at Baz, and Baz felt the hit before Sol delivered it. “I don’t make a deal with it.”
“Have you done this before?” Baz demanded. Sol sounded like he knew what he was talking about, but experience told Baz that wasn’t always the case. Sol was good at faking things—excuses to teachers, lies to probation officers, dodging social workers.
But Sol had said as much as he was going to on the subject of devils, apparently. He rooted around by the desk and found his phone, opened it, and had a conversation that was all about work, and trading shifts. Behind where Sol was conducting his business, Lutie stared at Baz, who stared back.
It was pointless to argue, but she looked like she was ready for the next bell, so Baz shook his head. She scowled and Baz thought that maybe this was the best birthday present they could give her, getting her out of this.
So they packed. Nothing for it. Lutie returned to her room, and Baz could hear her through the thin walls, banging things, around, outside to the car, trunk slamming.
“Hey,” Baz asked, his duffle bag on the bed, the box they’d retrieved from Aurie’s room still on the desk: it was for Sol, after all. Baz wondered if his brother had seen the photograph of their parents, but he wasn’t going to bring it up, not now. “What should I tell Robbie?”
Sol opened the door; he had on his parka already, which smelled like a Havana distillery, lit a cigarette and leaned against the worn aluminum siding in the brazen light of noon. They’d let Lutie’s room go, but Sol had taken theirs for another night.
Their eyes met. As usual, Baz had no idea what Sol was thinking. “I’m just looking into Dad’s death.” It would be worth Baz’s life to open it up more than that.
“C’mon,” Lutie said as she brushed past. “Daylight’s wasting.” But she turned and looked at Sol, same steady stare.
“Take care, Lutie,” Sol said to her. He licked his lips, unsure for once. “Don’t be a stranger, now you know where we are.”
“You too,” Lutie replied, hesitated, then got into the car. Baz stood for a moment longer, but Sol didn’t say anything else.
“I’ll see you when?”
“J’sais pas, gars. A day? One week? Whatever it takes. I work the case.” Eyes up. “I work the case. This thing thinks it has a deal. It has no deal. This can’t drag on. The trou d’cul knew Papa for a long, long time before it killed him. It don’t get to do that with us. Not with us.”
And Sol meant all three of them, of that Baz was sure.
Sol drove a few miles west, past the tiny outpost of Brule itself, saw that the open sign on the Coffee Caboose Museum was on, thought about stopping by, but knew that was a distraction. He wasn’t really hunting a ghost and Bart wasn’t going to be able to tell him anything he didn’t already know. Lewis had died at the Megeath crossing, burned alive in his own house. What Bart didn’t know was that Lewis’s ghost was coming in this direction, would get stronger the closer it came. Might be made stronger by the presence of a devil, for all Sol knew, and that was the only thing he cared about, that the devil seemed to be wherever the ghost was.
He didn’t know where the Megeath crossing was; not much seemed to be between Brule and Big Springs. Some abandoned homestead, a dirt road. He’d have to check all of them. He parked by a rise in the road just west of Brule, slowly made his way down to the tracks. He bent down, bare hand to the ground. He tried to call the devil just like he had last night, used his memories of Baz singing as a lure. Nothing came. Maybe these assholes don’t like coming out in the daytime.
Somehow, Sol didn’t think that would matter.
He hadn’t been drinking, maybe that was it, he wasn’t loose enough to be seeing devils. He didn’t see any ghosts, either. All he accomplished was to freeze the crap out of his hand. It would just come when it wanted, Sol presumed, was operating on its own perverse timetable.
The westbound from Lincoln slowed coming through Brule, and Sol checked over his shoulder as it approached; it hadn’t picked up a whole lot of speed yet, and it fished something out of him like a worm on a hook. He stared up-rail, feet on the gravel, stopped walking, watching the train come, one moment of indecision, almost instantly shifting down, abandoning the leap of his heart. It would be so easy to catch out, to haul himself up on that train as it slowed coming round the corner, get the hell out of this town, leave it all behind.
Instead, the train blasted by him, and he had only a brief spasm of regret, watching it go. He had work here, and Baz was in danger and his father had told him not to negotiate with the damn things. If he knew how to kill it, he would. But last night, he’d been talking with it, and no good would come of that—it would just run circles around him, or trick him into a senseless death. He had to find another way.
His shadow fell short as he strolled in the track’s ditch, sun high and bright and cold in the endless blue sky, the prairie silence only interrupted by the sound of the wind through grass. Sol hunched into his collar, cold now, gloveless, mais, he had not thought this through, had left his gloves in the Wagoneer, parked some distance away. He kept walking for something to do. To keep warm. Collect his thoughts.
The bank beside the track
s rose, and Sol could see the Brule watertower in the distance, saw that there was an access road a few hundred yards to the east. Immediately before that, though, he spotted a huddle of garbage, pallets and boards piled up in a loose interpretation of walls, an old blue tarp frayed and ragged, held down with coarse yellow rope. He could see a thin trail of smoke now; he’d thought it only a dump, someone’s bright idea to avoid removal fees, but now he could see that it was a dwelling, a small fire spluttering in a makeshift ring of stones to one side.
Sol paused, took two steps towards the hovel.
“Man, what’s the matter with you? Lost your balls? Can’t catch out anymore?” The mocking voice surprised him, because it was close. Sol stopped, peered into the darkness of the tent flap. It didn’t sound like the voice from last night, but who the hell knew what these things were capable of? He was level with the scrap heap, the embankment a shadow overhead.
The darkness of the shelter was impenetrable. Sol took a step towards it. Slowly, details emerged from the pit beyond a fall of tattered blue tarp covering the hut’s entrance: a soft fold of worn army surplus jacket, a cap pulled low. A light-colored beard, hands gnarled around a bottle. The man came halfway out, stared at Sol.
Not a devil, but that was okay. More than okay, because Sol didn’t know what to do with a devil, not really. In fact, it felt like this ought to happen, that this was the reason he’d come down here in the first place. Not for a devil, but for this. You’re not ready for a devil, gars.
“It’s been a while,” he explained. “And I’m getting a little old for it.”
The man pulled over a plastic tub that had once held mayonnaise and sat on it, eyes never leaving Sol, bright and light beneath seams of scarred skin and grime. “You’re either old enough to do it, or dead.”
Sol held the stare. “You’re DJ. Claude told me to come lookin’.”
DJ’s eyes narrowed, then he gestured with the bottle to a crate. “Have a seat if you want.”
Sol took the bottle when it was passed to him. It was rum, or something like it, and it burned going down, hit his stomach with a pleasant bang. He made a face though, because DJ laughed, brittle and hard and so like a crow Sol grinned back.
“Then I still must be the right age,” Sol sighed, feeling his side with his fingers. “’Cause I don’t think I’m dead yet.”
The grin didn’t leave the man’s face. “Don’t leave it too long. Man can get stuck in one place.” The bottle came back again, and Sol drank with ease this time.
DJ wasn’t much older than Sol, turned out. He’d be here for the winter, goddamn Nebraska, because his dog was sick and it was probably going to die and it couldn’t take much more travel. The others had left, had gone to where the wind was mild and the skies sunny, but DJ was okay, was doing okay.
Although the rum-alcohol was warming Sol’s stomach, he stretched his legs out toward the fire, trying to get what little heat he could. He heard a whimper from the hut, and DJ turned his head sharply. “You be quiet there, love.”
DJ was from out east, he said, from Maine of all places, but that had been a long time ago. He’d lost what French he’d had, and Sol commiserated without sharing beyond having a Cajun father.
“This stretch okay?” Sol asked, exchanging a smoke for another slug of booze.
DJ checked on his dog, shuffled back to the fire. His face was superbly creased, like a sculpture in wet slab clay. It bore the signs of every day lived like this. So too did his eyes, which never rested, which traveled over Sol’s face like it was a map to somewhere interesting. “Nah, it’s garbage. Shitty to be stuck here, but what can you do?” And he shrugged, looking back at the dog, a small black speck huddling in the shadows. “Weird stretch of track. Bad. Bad stuff here.”
No kidding, Sol thought. “What bad stuff?”
DJ’s mouth twisted. “You should talk to the suits. Suits think they know the story. Fuckin’ bulls. Deserve what they get.” Bright eyes that missed little. Crazy or not, DJ was observant. “You don’t look like a suit.”
Sol smiled. “That’s what Claude said.”
DJ chuckled. “How’s that old bastard doin’ anyways? Haven’t seen him for awhile. He got spooked a while back, don’t come up this way no more.”
Sol told DJ what he knew of the old-timer, which was apparently the same as ever. “Claude don’t look like he spooks easy,” Sol finished, returning the conversation to where he wanted it, practiced at talking with ramblers and drunks and the unhinged. “But he’s no liar, either.”
DJ took a long swig of the bottle. His pants were tied up with a length of rope, and his heavy boots were laceless, two or three pairs of socks peeled down from pants too short. He ignored Sol so hard it was the same as staring at him.
Sol shifted on his crate. “What scares someone like Claude?” That was a direct question, which were the worst kind with guys like DJ, who never liked the feel of an interrogation, of being penned in. And asking questions of crazy drifters sometimes took you in circles, and sometimes it gave you all the truth you needed. Often, both.
DJ looked away, removed his soft-brimmed cap and scrubbed a hand over his matted hair. “Shit.”
Sol gave him room.
“Shit,” DJ repeated. “You see ashes flying, you see that coming, the blackness, you run. Inside it,” and he took another slug from his bottle. Sol looked at the fire, waited for him to continue. “Inside it, that’s some nasty shit. Crazy stuff.” He coughed. “You run, man, you see something like that.”
After a minute or two, Sol asked, “Only on this stretch of track?”
“Why you need to know so bad?” DJ fiddled with his rolling papers like he couldn’t decide if he wanted another cigarette.
Another train whistle came on the incisive wind, and the question hung there right along with it. DJ decided another smoke was the thing to do, and Sol realized that the drifter was giving Sol time now. Gotta love the nutcases, crazy like foxes. He probably sees ghosts, same as me, but no one’s telling him it’s normal. Sol stared out across the prairie and touched his side with one hand, not pressing hard, small comfort to the hurt he’d taken the night before. Finally he said, “It’s what I do, cher. Chase down the crazy shit.” He shook his head, almost in disbelief. “Took over my dad’s business.”
“That’s some shitty business your old man left you.” DJ considered him, lit the smoke with an ember.
Sol took a long breath, released it, watched his breath cloud the air, then dissipate. “This ash cloud. Did it start up in the fall?” He wasn’t really guessing. He knew.
DJ spat, wiped his teeth with one grubby finger. “Yeah, maybe. Voices in the middle, batshit nuts. Something burning, flying around in the air like—” but he didn’t know what it was like. “Laugh like it wants you dead. Scared Claude down the line. Scared off some others. I got the damn dog.” His breath rattled a little, phlegm a permanent resident in his lungs. “But it kicks up sometimes. Don’t matter time of day, place. Nothing to say it’s comin’, or who it’s coming for.” His eyes were darting everywhere, he was getting agitated. If he’d been a patient, Sol would have changed the subject. “Regular folks don’t seem to notice it. But us, down here?” He stared at Sol, eyes a hard and broken blue. This was what happened when you were born with talent and had neither instruction nor meds. “You shoulda taken that train clear out of this place.”
He stood, threw the dead soldier way over the track and it caught the sunlight. “I’d be out of here myself, weren’t for the dog.” DJ hawked, spat on the ground. “Goddamn pets.” He didn’t sound like he meant it. Sol knew exactly how he felt.
“What do you know about Lewis? The bull that got killed?”
DJ’s face screwed up. “How old do you think I am? Shit,” shaking his head. Then, “Yeah, Claude told me. Some guys had had enough, he was the meanest bull in Bailey Yard. They killed him just up this track a bit,” he waved his hand to the west, “in Megeath. Not much left, there. Burned him alive in his o
wn place, Claude said. Probably deserved it.”
Sol got up and thanked DJ for the liquor and the talk. DJ told him to come back anytime.
“Except you won’t be here,” Sol smiled. “You’ll be in California.”
“That’s right, man, I’ll be gone. You should be outta here too, if you know what’s good for you.” DJ stretched. “I’m in need of some coffee.” He stared at Sol, and Sol grinned back, reaching into his pocket and pulling out some bills.
“It’s a cold enough day for it.”
“You’re going to check out the Megeath crossing, aren’t you? You really don’t know what’s good for you.”
Sol stared up track, to the west, away from DJ’s camp, away from Brule. He supposed he was, and turned to tell DJ as much, but the drifter was already walking purposefully down the tracks away from him, and so Sol sighed, started up the track in the opposite direction toward his vehicle.
The Megeath crossing wasn’t on any map, but it couldn’t be very far. There would be a burnt-out house, its foundations at the very least, maybe some other signs of habitation. It wouldn’t be the sort of place anyone would clean up, not in this part of the country. Rain and snow and wind would do the slow demolition; thirty years was nothing to Mother Nature.
He wondered how far Baz and Lutie had gotten by now. Wondered what story Baz would feed Robbie once they got to Denver, and couldn’t even entertain the thought of them standing in his kitchen, dog barking its head off, talking about him when he wasn’t there.
Finally, he stopped, tired, side aching. The Wagoneer was some distance away. He had no idea where the Megeath crossing was. Walking around pointlessly was a fool’s game, especially when it was this cold. And that was the moment that he saw the clouds roiling in the sky, between himself and the village of Brule, down by the tracks, too close to the ground to be cloud, too horizontal to be a tornado, a moving entity, muddy unnatural gray. One moment only, then he was running for the rise, still in the distance, where he’d parked the Wagoneer. The cloud blossomed across the horizon like blood in water, and it wasn’t a cloud at all.
Deadroads Page 23