The Railroad

by Neil Douglas Newton

  The next thing I knew, I was being shaken awake. I jerked my head up in time to see the bartender giving me the evil eye. “We don’t like people sleeping in here, mister. If you’ve had too much, you have to leave.”

  In my haze it seemed like he was speaking to someone else and it took me a while before I could digest what he’d said and make some sense of it. I considered my options; I wasn’t even sure that if I left, I’d be able to make it back to the D-Ron; I wasn't exactly sure where it was. Then I remembered why I came and I began to tear up. It wasn’t even that I felt sad at that point; what I felt was a kind of dreamlike state where every stray feeling I had took on greater meaning—the meaning of a dream.

  The bartender looked like he was a little afraid of me. “I’m fine,” I told him and ordered another drink. He stared at me for a moment then shrugged. “Your funeral.”

  “What’s that mean?” I asked him. I must have looked crazy; he said nothing and walked off to get my drink. When he brought it back, I decided that my wired state of mind could only be improved by more alcohol. I downed it in one gulp.

  I sat there as I let the next installment of alcohol hit me. Rather than calming me, it made me feel even more detached and more drugged—it was almost like the absinthe high I’d experienced years before at a friend’s house. Things seemed to pulse with an inner light.

  I stared at my hand like it was some reference point to some place I’d once been but could barely remember. I could see the bartender eyeing me from down the bar. I nodded at him; it seemed like there was some unspoken communication between us. He stared at me strangely.

  I sat there drifting, listening to the jukebox and watching my thoughts as my mind wandered. I looked at my watch and saw that it was 12:30. Once in a while I remembered that I’d have to drive back to my room at the D-Ron and I dreaded it. Then my mind drifted off again.

  I decided that it was time to go to the bathroom. I stumbled off my stool and walked back toward the front door where the bathrooms were. I felt people’s eyes around me, most notably the man in the hunter’s cap who’d spoken to me before, telling me to go back to Piedmont. As I passed him our eyes locked. Then I turned away. Immediately, I heard the name Megan spoken.

  Looking back, I’m not sure if I can be certain that I’d really heard it. But somehow that seemed to set me into action before I was even aware of it.

  I swung around to the man. I walked to his table and sat down across from him. He stared at me with some fear in his eyes, his red cap askew on his head.

  “Okay,” I said. “You said Megan’s name. How do you know her?”

  He took the hunting cap off his head and set it down in front of him. “I don’t have nothin’ to say to you.”

  “I think you do,” I informed him. From the reaction around me I realized I’d shouted.

  “Why’re you crying?” the man asked me. I put my hand to my face and found he was right; there were tears running down my cheeks.

  I wiped my face with the back of my sleeve. “If you don’t tell me where my friends are, you’ll be responsible for their deaths if they get killed. Do you understand?”

  His mouth moved as if he had something to say, but he just kept silent. “I’m not going to let you be responsible for me losing the only two people I love in the world,” I added. I heard my voice break on the word love.

  I could see my new companion and everyone else in my field of vision jump up suddenly, out of their chairs. I heard the scraping of chairs and the sound of feet, but I didn’t take my eyes off the man I’d decided to talk to. “They came to me. I was the only one who could help them. And I didn’t. I…” I felt my mind begin to wander slightly. Someone moved to my side.

  “Why don’t you shut the fuck up and get out of here?” I felt a hand on my arm. I grabbed it and put both my hands around it, one on top, one on the bottom. I twisted hard to the left. I heard a grunt and the sound of a body hitting the floor.

  I stood up and whirled to look down at my attacker. “Where’s Megan?” He didn’t answer.

  Turning back around, I faced the man with the red cap. “Sit down,” I told him. He sat. I raised my hands for emphasis. “Just tell me where they are.” I slammed my hand down again. Mr. Red Cap practically fell out of his chair in an attempt to get away from me.

  “I said sit down!” He sat again. “None of you wants to help because you think you’re protecting someone, the same people who want to hurt Eileen and Megan.” I leaned towards the man in front of me. “I heard you say her name. Say it again.”

  I could feel the fear coming off him. “Say it again,” I repeated, my voice beginning to rise.

  “You get the fuck out of here,” a voice said. I stood up and turned to see the bartender standing less than a foot from me, a baseball bat in his hand. When I didn’t make any move to go, he inched forward. “I mean it. Now.”

  “Fuck you,” I told him. Then I pulled the pistol out of my jacket and pointed it right at him. “Fuck you,” I said. “I’ve been letting other people make decisions for me and Eileen and Megan for too long. Now things are going to be right.”

  The bartender’s jaw tightened. “We don’t want any trouble. Nobody’s going to do anything to you. Just go.”

  “You ever hear of a man named Benoit?” I asked.

  His eyes widened. “What?”

  “Nothing.” I turned back to Mr. Red Cap. “I want you to take me to the barn that looks like Noah’s Ark.”

  I saw him exchange glances with some of his friends. “Okay, mister. Whatever you say. I think you should put the gun away. You’re just going to scare everyone. All you have to do is to put ...”

  “Shut up! No more bullshit.”

  His face got pale. In my mind that seemed to make sense—I was on a quest of some kind.

  “Stand up. We’re going to see the barn.”

  “My friends aren’t going to let you take me out of here.”

  “Your friends are murderers.”

  “I don’t give a shit what you think you know! I’m not going to leave this bar. I have twenty friends in here and...”

  The gun moved directly between his eyes, the barrel touching his skin. “You’re going.”

  He surveyed the room for help and saw none. We moved to the door with me a few steps behind him. Someone said something I couldn’t quite make out; Red Hat turned around once and gave a look to someone behind me. No one else moved.

  We got outside and he turned to me. “Look, mister. There is no barn that looks like Noah’s Ark. I’ve lived here all my life and I’ve never...”

  “Shut the fuck up! No more of this shit!” I gestured with my gun toward my car. He moved in that direction, slowly.

  I tried to think. What was I supposed to be doing just then? If I drove I wouldn’t be able to hold my gun on him. So I’d have to get him to drive. That made sense to me. “You’re going to drive,” I told him.

  “Let me just get you some help, buddy. There’s no reason for you to be standing out here in the middle of the night. We can go back in, get you some coffee and work this out.”

  I swayed a little. His words seemed very persuasive but I knew that he was with Benoit and I couldn’t listen to him. “Get in the car,” I told him.

  “But there is no barn like that! How many times do I have to tell you?”

  “Get in the car.”

  “I’m not getting in any damn car with you! All you’re going to do is get yourself arrested or something. My friends are all back there. Do you think they’re just going to stand there and wait while you take me off somewhere and kill me?”

  I considered what to do and how to get him to do what I wanted. Talk hadn’t seemed to work. So I slapped him.

  It seemed like just the kind of thing they do in the movies and it felt right. His head snapped to the side and I saw him blink. “I’m tired of this,” I said. “Get in the car.”

  He fidgeted, clearly indecisive. I turned around on a sudden instinct and saw som
e of his friends advancing slowly toward me. Without thinking I fired a shot into the air.

  “Oh shit!” Red Hat moaned. His friends moved back a step.

  “We’re going,” I told him.

  “Mister, I...”

  I hit him this time, fist closed. He stared at me in fear and nursed his jaw. “I’m trying to save two people’s lives!” I screamed. “Get the fuck in the car!”

  He hung his head and complied. I was feeling very tired, trying to keep my mind from wandering. Somehow I couldn’t quite keep the next step I needed to take in my mind. For a second I just drifted. Some part of me screamed an order to myself to get in the car. I walked awkwardly around to the passenger side and stood dumbly next to the door. Move! my mind told me. I blinked back tears and started to get into the car.

  Out of the corner of my eye I detected some movement to my right coming out of a small stand of trees only a few feet away.

  Sorry Eileen. Sorry Megan.

  Boom. Boom. Out go the lights.

  Chapter Twenty

  Somewhere there were birds. They were chattering and making bird noises. There was something deeper that sounded like barking. Maybe a dog. I couldn’t tell.

  My first inkling of the world outside my head was a growing awareness of pain. That pissed me off—I might have gone on sleeping if it wasn’t for the nuisance of the pain. The more I tried to make it go away, the more it asserted itself. Soon it started to throb. I wanted it to go away and I wondered if the birds had anything to do with it.

  I passed that threshold where you know that you’re human and that you’ve been dreaming. There was something real out there. There were voices. They were talking about me. Some of them sounded familiar.

  I opened my eyes and I saw what some part of my mind had known all along. It should have been obvious. I laughed. It really was funny.

  Megan looked up at me, her eyes wide and full of worry. “I didn’t want you to die,” she told me.

  I leaned towards her and I knew it was a mistake; a jolt of pain shot through my head and I felt immediately nauseated. “I’m not going to die,” I croaked at her. I was leaning forward but I knew what I’d see if I lifted my head. Considering the pain, I figured I’d let them come to me.

  A hand took mine. A face moved into my field of vision— a precious face. Eileen smiled and said nothing.

  “Give him this,” a voice said. Eileen took the glass and passed it to me.

  “Drink it in one gulp,” Moskowitz told me. “It tastes bad. I’ll give you a glass of water once you finish.”

  I downed the drink and immediately regretted it. My stomach did the kazatzka for a few seconds while I prepared myself to drink the water. A couple of minutes later I felt the world stop jerking. I lifted my head slowly.

  There were other faces, some smiling, some frowning, some without any emotion. Elena was smiling, shaking her head. I saw Felice Hammon looking at me plain as day, an unreadable look on her face. Another one looked like Sally Brodman but I wasn’t sure. There were a few more I didn’t recognize.

  “Not all of them were part of the Chapter and Verse thing,” Moskowitz told me. He gave me a look that held no pity or compassion. “That was a recent invention of mine.”

  I nodded. To my surprise my head didn’t hurt as much as I thought it would. I felt used up, but oddly awake. I started to laugh softly.

  “Why are you laughing, Mike?” Megan asked me.

  “I guess I’m happy, honey.”

  Eileen looked at Megan and shook her head. “She did it all. She sent the postcards or she got other people to send them. I didn’t know. She said it was a secret surprise.”

  Megan showed an odd half smile. I had to guess she’d been yelled at about this before but I don’t think she cared.

  “Do you know she called,” Eileen continued. “Just to see if you were okay. She was sneaking away and using any phone she could get.”

  I remembered all the silent calls. “It makes sense now. But why did she send me the postcard at the McDonald’s? I thought she was in trouble.”

  Eileen closed her eyes and shook her head. “I didn’t know about that. If I had…” The others exchanged glances. Megan looked slightly upset.

  “Megan!” Eileen shouted. “What’s wrong with you…?”

  Megan looked stubborn. “I kept calling you but you…you didn’t answer. You answered for a while and then you stopped. I thought you were sick. So I sent the postcard to the McDonald’s. I thought they’d find you.”

  I nodded, feeling guilty when I knew I shouldn’t have. “I left Bardstown, honey. I didn’t know it was you who was calling me.”

  Someone stepped out from the other room. He smiled at me, saying nothing, making me feel that I should know him. “I am Franz Kafka’s The Trial,” he said finally, continuing to smile.

  `“Nice to meet you,” I countered, feeling pissy and not in any mood for a joke.

  We stood in silence for a few moments. “You’ve got a nasty stump about twenty feet into the woods behind your house,” he added. “You need to do something about it. I almost tripped over it”

  “I know all about it. And why were you in the woods behind my house?”

  That maddening smile again. A few of the others began to laugh softly. I thought about my backyard and the woods…

  “So that wasn’t some friend of Benoit’s in my woods looking back at me that night. He didn’t leave the book there with the words I am?”

  “Oh he was there with his friends. But so were we. All the time. Steve takes care of his friends. Sorry about the book. I was careless and let it fall out of my jacket pocket. Steve wasn’t happy with me.”

  “You were watching me?”

  “Who do you think kept calling the police?”

  “I am Franz Kafka’s The Trial,” I repeated. I turned toward Moskowitz. “So The Book People are real.”

  Moskowitz continued to look grim, ignoring our conversation. “You’re a big pain in the ass, Mike.” There wasn’t any humor in his words. I suddenly got an inkling of the kind of problems I’d caused. The more I thought, the more I saw the implications of what I’d done. We locked stares and I had to look away.

  Megan watched the exchange between us and she put on the mad little girl face I’d come to know so well. Without any announcement, she climbed up into my lap, slowly, as if she was afraid I’d break. I put my arms around her and squeezed her gently. Eileen pulled over a chair and sat down, beaming at us.

  The room looked like the main room of some community recreation center. The floors were cracked linoleum; the ceilings pitted and yellowed acoustic tiling. The chair that Eileen sat in was a regulation bridge chair, the kind I was given on Thanksgiving when I was a child. There was a pile of toys underneath a large cheap metal table that had been pushed against the far wall. An old coffee pot sat on the table, surrounded by bags of paper plates and Styrofoam cups. In another room I could see an old stove and next to it a sink with dishes soaking in it.

  “Well organized,” I told Moskowitz. “I can see where your money went.”

  He grunted. “Not just mine.”

  “The people in town?”

  “Some. Some from other towns. We don’t advertise.” A thin smile slid across his face.

  “Who are they? Are they your friends?’

  He paused. “I don’t know them all that well. But we understand each other.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I guess I mean that you were right before. The Book People are real.”

  He locked eyes with mine, dead serious. “I’m Of Mice and Men,” I said quickly.

  He nodded. “Okay. Thanks for answering me.”

  I nodded back. I’d answered the question he’d asked me weeks ago in my living room.

  “I guess I’ve been seeing Book People all along on the way up here.”

  “You have. You leave a trail like a tank. No one could miss you.”

  “I…what can I say?”

 
Eileen leaned a little closer. “I didn’t think you’d try to find us. If I thought you would, I would have…I don’t know.”

  “You thought I’d given up on you, didn’t you?”

  “I left and you couldn’t help me. That would stop most people.”

  “I knew you had to go. It’s just when I thought you were…there was the whole Chapter and Verse thing and I thought you might be in trouble.”

  “Still. I didn’t expect it.” She smiled at me and at Megan. Maybe I’d done something right.

  “You’ve become sort of legend, Mike,” another voice said. It was Felice Hammon. I thought of her mother and the thought depressed me.

  “I’m not so sure I’ve done such a wonderful thing. I don’t think Steve is happy with me.”

  She smiled. “Steve likes to worry. We’ll be fine. What you did was wonderful. We need a little inspiration sometimes. No one else seems to care what happens to us.”

  A few of the others nodded. Elena stood up. “Mike the Knight. I’ve always known that about you.”

  Eileen got out of her chair and kissed me on the cheek. “I think Mike and I need to talk in private,” Moskowitz announced.

  Eileen reached for Megan who refused to budge. “I want to stay with Mike!” she bellowed.

  Eileen gave her a sad smile. “I know honey. But it’s really important that Mike talk to Steve. You’ll get to spend some time with Mike again.”

  “No! He’ll go away again.”

  “Come on, Megan. It’ll just be a little while.”

  Reluctantly, the little girl slid out of my lap and took her mother’s hand. The two of them joined the exodus out of the room. Megan gave me one backward glance before she left.

  “Come on, Mike. Let’s go into the kitchen.”

  I followed him into the other room, moving slowly to prevent another explosion in my head. There was another table there, this one much smaller than the monster in the big room. Moskowitz took two glasses off an aged shelf on the wall. Then he opened a cabinet and brought out a bottle which he placed in front of me.