“Naw, it don’t.”
She looked up at me. “Why’d you wanna risk it?”
“Pretty much the same reason,” I lied.
I pulled her into an embrace. Her hair smelled of lavender, and her breasts crushed against me. I touched them on the sly. They were firm and full, and just the thought of them could make me steamy. I felt the heat stirring in her by the way she arched against my hand. Then she drew back and pushed my hand away. Her eyes were filling.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
She shook her head, but I suspected she was thinking how pitiful it was that the good thing we made with our bodies had so little vital truth behind it, as if it were just a clever trick we could perform.
The whistle sounded high and forlorn, and as the train lurched forward, a fat woman in a black cloth coat with a fur collar half-staggered, half-dropped into the seat across the aisle.
“Goodness!” she said, and beamed at us. “That ’un almost threw me back into Culver County, it did.” She flounced about, settling the folds of her coat; she was wearing white gloves that made her hands appear tiny by contrast to the voluminous sleeves from which they emerged. And her feet, too, appeared tiny, like a child’s feet stuck onto swollen ankles and bloated black-stockinged calves. Her pasty chins trembled with the motion of the train. Eyes like currants stuck in the dough of her cheeks, and a Cupid’s bow of a mouth painted cherry red. Looking at her, I imagined that she was an immense pastry come to life, her veins filled not with blood but with custard cream. She leaned toward us, bringing with her a wave of cloying perfume, and said, “This your first trip, ain’t it? I always can tell. Now don’t worry…it ain’t so bad as you heered. I mean it’s bad, I won’t deny that. But it’s tolerable.” She heaved a sigh, causing the wrinkles in her coat to expand like a balloon plumping with gas. “Know how many times I crossed?”
“Naw, how many?” asked Tracy. By the edge in her voice I knew she was put off by the fat woman.
“Thirty-two,” said the woman proudly. “This un’ll make thirty-three. I ’spect you might find that curious, but when you get my age”—she tittered—“and you love good cookin’ much as I do, and ain’t no man in your life, you gotta find somethin’ to take your mind off the lonelies. Guess you might say travelin’ the Patch is my hobby. When I first started I was feelin’ kinda low, and I didn’t much care whether I made it to the far side or not. But it ’pears I’m immune to the changes like Roy Cole.” She hauled a leather-bound diary out of her purse. “I keep a record of the trips. I figger someday it might be valuable to some explorer or somebody like that.” She shook her head in wonderment. “The things I seen, you just wouldn’t believe it.”
I was a touch dismayed by the idea of someone traveling through the sickness and dark of the Patch for fun, but the look on Tracy’s face was one of pure disgust. She turned to the window, wanting no part of the conversation. A fellow in striped overalls came along the aisle, lighting the gas lamps in the car, bathing us in a sickly yellow glow.
“It’s a horrid place,” the woman said. “I won’t try and deny that. But it’s a mystery, and things that’s mysterious, they gotta beauty all their own. ’Course”—she adopted a haughty expression—“it ain’t the mystery to me it once was. I ’spect I know more ’bout it than anybody ’cept Roy Cole.”
I couldn’t help being curious about her experiences; it would have been unnatural not to be after having lived near the Patch for all those years. Like everybody else, I’d heard stories about how it had come to be, how Indian wizards had been warring and stray magic had transformed a stretch of land that cut straight across the country. And how it had been fiery stuff falling from a comet that had done the trick, and how it was a section of hell surfaced from under the earth. But though the stories all differed as to its origins, they were unanimous concerning its nature: it was a place where everything changed, where things out of nightmares could appear, where time and possibility converged.
I asked the woman what she knew concerning the beginnings of the Patch, and she said, “This fella I know claims the Patch is like that place out East where you can see seven states from the top of a peak…’cept it ain’t states you see from the Patch, it’s worlds. Hundreds of ’em, all packed in together. He claims that what with all the pressures on the Patch, y’know, from them hundreds of worlds crowdin’ into each other, the place just plumb give way like a dam will in a flood, and the worlds got all mixed together.”
I favored the story about Indian wizards, but I said, “Uh-huh.”
“It don’t really matter, though,” said the woman. “Things is how they is, and knowin’ why they got that way don’t change diddley.”
Tracy was looking strained, and I decided to change the subject. “You been livin’ in Lorraine awhile, have you?” I asked the woman.
“I moved there once’t I started ridin’ the train. ’Fore that, I was over in Steadley for a number of years.”
Steadley was a large silver-mining community on the other side of the Patch, and if I’d had a proper stake, that would have been my destination and not Glory. “S’posed to be a world of opportunity in Steadley,” I said.
“Yes, indeed! A body can make hisself a fortune…if he’s got the will and the wherewithal. That where you headin’?”
“I got plenty of will,” I told her. “But I’m a bit shy of the wherewithal. We’re bound for Glory. I’m hopin’ I can get a stake there.”
She clucked her tongue in sympathy. “Ain’t that the way of it…when you get a bushel of ’taters, that’s when you run outta stew meat.” She shot me a coy look. “Y’know, I bet there’s folks in Steadley who’d be willin’ to help out a young fella like yourself. God knows, they do enough for the refugees.”
“Refugees from the Patch, you talkin’ ’bout?”
She nodded. “They pitiful devils, the ones that make it out.”
“I hear there’s a lotta trouble with refugees…on the train, I mean.”
“Lord, yes! Ain’t a trip when some don’t try and board.”
“I don’t wanna hear ’bout none of it,” said Tracy, but the woman made a gesture of dismissal.
“Your man’ll protect you, hon,” she said. “Don’t you fret. But them refugees, Lord, they can be fearsome! More’n fearsome. They can purely freeze your heart.”
“I told you I don’t wanna hear about it,” said Tracy, her voice tight.
“Yes, Jesus”—the woman’s tone became exultant—“when they come aboilin’ through the doors, bringin’ all that foul air and magic with ’em, and it ’pears they grinnin’, ’cause their lips is drawed back to show their teeth, they so desperate, and you can feel the power clawin’ at ’em…”
“Stop it!” Tracy shrilled. “You just stop, y’hear?”
She was gaping at the woman. Shivering, transfixed by some sight or feeling. Her cheeks were hollowed, and her eyes were aswarm with crazy lights; they looked like broken glass scattered on black velvet, like the eyes of a woman I’d known once who’d just gotten out of the looney bin. It was those eyes as much as anything that made me realize we had entered the Patch and that the changes had begun.
“Tracy?” I said, confused, reluctant to touch her for fear I’d disrupt the tension that seemed to be holding her together.
“You can’t help but feel it,” the woman went on, showing her teeth in a manner redolent of the poor souls she’d just finished describing. “It comes off ’em like the stink from an open grave. Sometimes their flesh just goes to saggin’ off their bones.”
“Hey,” I said to her. “Leave it be, will ya?”
“Won’t be long now ’fore we see ’em,” she said, pointing out at the smoky blue twilight and the snow. “Sometimes their faces gets to glowin’ like dead fish bellies, their teeth turn black and drop out, and they grow old right ’fore your eyes. They feel the strength ebbin’ from ’em, and they go to their knees and pluck at ya with hands shrunk to skin and bones, and they beg for he
lp in languages you can’t understand. Devil languages. Their cheeks bulge, and the gut-strings come out of their mouths.”
Tracy began shouting, and the woman’s face reddened and looked to be crimping in on itself like a rotten apple; her white-gloved hands gripped the armrest, and she spat out the words as if they were poisoned daggers. I pushed Tracy back and told the woman to shut up, but she only got louder, her imagery more vile. The pictures she conjured made me shrivel inside, and I was tempted to hit her. I think I might have, but then the door of the car opened and Cole stepped in. He walked slowly down the aisle and stopped beside us, letting his shotgun angle down to cover the woman’s breast. She stared wide-eyed at the double barrels and fell silent.
“’Pears you havin’ some trouble, Marie,” he said in a voice like iron.
“Naw,” she said weakly, “naw, I just…”
“Way you gettin’ all puffed up and red-faced,” he said, “looks to me like you ’bout to change. How you feel? Little shaky inside…like maybe somethin’s shiftin’ ’round in there?”
He cocked one barrel, burning her with those otherworldly black eyes, and she froze with her pouty red mouth open and one hand to her throat; a whistly guttering of breath came from her throat.
“Please, Cole,” she said, putting real effort into sounding out the words. “I’m all right, I swear. You must can see that.”
“You fuckin’ sow,” Cole said. “I’m ’bout sick to death of you searin’ my passengers. You don’t shut your hole, I’m just gon’ assume you changin’ and blow your heart out through your damn spine. Ain’t a soul here who’d blame me for it.” He pushed the shotgun into the pillowy softness of her breast and worked it about as if fitting it to a socket. “How ’bout it, Marie? Don’t you reckon I can get away with murder?”
“Naw, Cole,” she whispered. “Please don’t.”
“You gon’ leave these good people ’lone?”
Her eyelids fluttered down, and she nodded.
Cole made a disgusted noise, but he lowered the hammer. His eyes swung toward me; the scar along his jaw bunched like a sidewinder. “Keep your gun in reach, son,” he said. “There’s gon’ be trouble in this car. Do the best you able, and if I can get back to you, I will.”
He set out along the aisle, but I went after him and caught up as he was about to enter the next car.
“I think you just better lemme in on what’s goin’ on!” I said, grabbing his arm.
He nailed me with a fierce stare. “Take it easy, friend.”
“You don’t go tellin’ a man to keep his gun handy and then walk away without sayin’ why.”
“I figgered it wasn’t no mystery why,” he said. “But awright. Let’s you’n me have a talk.”
He pulled me toward the door, away from the others. The window beside us was sectioned into four narrow panes, each enclosing a rectangle of blue darkness with a single star low in the right-hand corner, like a block of mystical postage stamps. It was such a symmetrical configuration, so subtly improbable, it made me realize how at sea I was.
“This here’s gon’ be a bad trip,” Cole said. “I can’t cover all the cars, so I’m leavin’ you in charge of this ’un.”
I was not eager for responsibility. “Why the hell you let ’em start out when you knew things was gonna be bad?”
“Son, I do the best I can makin’ them judgments, but I ain’t never claimed to be a hunnerd percent right. Now last time things was this bad, I lost me nine passengers. I’ll leave it up to you. You wanna help out, or you just wanna stand around and watch it happen?”
“Tracy,” I said, “the woman with me, is she gonna be…bad off?”
Cole kicked at the iron bar that attached one of the seats to the floorboards.
“Sometimes the changes ain’t so bad, and you can get ’em through,” he said. “Other times you gotta stop ’em. That’s why I want you in charge here. Be better for everybody, you make that decision.”
“You are talkin’ ’bout Tracy, ain’tcha?”
“’Fraid I am.”
I touched my holstered pistol; it felt as snug and dry as a snake in a skull. “Naw,” I said, “naw, I couldn’t do nothin’ to her. And I ain’t no good with a gun, anyhow.”
“I’m gon’ be busy,” Cole said. “Whatever happens here, it’s gotta be your call.”
I studied his weathered face, his strange eyes, wondering if he was telling me everything. He met my stare without any sign of dodginess. The rattle of the train seemed to be sounding out the tension between us, giving a voice to all the violent acceleration of our lives. I had a strong sense of his character then, and I understood that while the job had tied a few black twists in his soul, he was not especially good or evil, not wonderfully courageous, not mad with fear or a stone killer; he was just a man who had reached a difficult pass that was half his own making and half the sorry luck that comes with being born. He was simply doing what he could to get along. Knowing that he was like me, someone with no special magic or destiny, gave me confidence in him. And in myself. I’d never had to use my gun against another man. Now I believed I could.
“What I gotta do?” I asked him.
“There’ll be refugees,” he said. “Always is. They’ll try and board a coupla hours from now, this place where the train slows on a steep grade. Don’t ask no questions if they get inside. Just do for ’em quick. And don’t waste no bullets.” He inspected my gunbelt. “Y’see that squarehead back in the corner?”
He indicated a middle-aged blond man in a gray suit with a brooding Scandinavian face and told me to keep an eye on him. And on Tracy. The remaining seven were Marie, an elderly woman in a green print dress, and five dirt farmers—gloomy, roughly dressed men who had lost their holdings in a land grab and were, like me, aiming for a new start.
“Anything else happens,” Cole said, “chances are you’ll see it comin’. The Patch changes some for the worse and some hardly at all. Others like me and that fat bitch Marie—and you, maybe—it lets ’em see clear how bad things are for the rest. I don’t know which way’s more merciful. I come to see so damn much, I wish I was blind sometimes.”
“You said ‘maybe’ I’d see things clear…I don’t get it. Either I will or I won’t, right?”
“That’s the best I can do,” he said. “’Pears to me you ’bout a hair away from changin’ yourself, so it’s hard for me to read you. Tell ya one thing, though. If I was you I wouldn’t be makin’ this run too often. Sooner or later the Patch’ll take you. I can see that much.”
He squared his shoulders and settled his shotgun under his arm. He slapped my shoulder and flashed me a grin that didn’t have much juice to it.
“Luck to you,” he said.
I paced along the aisle, dismayed by Tracy, who was gone into some kind of fugue. And what I glimpsed out the train window dismayed me even more and made me fear for what I might see later inside the car. Once we passed a way station, an island of brilliance in the dark where sat a wooden building with a peaked roof and a peculiar bright white light stuck on a pole above a loading platform; ranked alongside the platform were rows of what appeared to be human figures wrapped in gray cloth, like rows of mummies. Then we hurtled past a snowy street lined with round stone buildings with glowing signs floating above them, spelling out words in a script I could not read. Then there came a time when all I could make out were thousands of lights ranging the darkness; we were traversing a smooth section of rail, and the noise of the wheels had diminished to a rushing sound, and it was as if I were traveling on a schooner under full canvas in a brisk wind, sailing just offshore from a jeweled coast.
More and more I came to regret my decision of risking the ride to Glory. All my life I had made the wrong or the too-hasty decision, and while I had always chalked this up to bad luck, now I understood it was a matter of weak character…or rather, of a strong character half-formed, one whose strength was sufficient to use the power it had, but not strong enough to seize power for itself.
As a result I had constantly leaped from one fix to another, reacting to trouble like a scalded cat, and it struck me as odd that I hadn’t seen this until now. Maybe, I thought, this was an instance of the clarity that Cole had said came to some who traveled through the Patch; but most likely it was just that I’d reached the bottom of my possibilities, and all that was left for me was to look back up and observe how I’d managed to fall so far.
At first I kept a close eye on Tracy and the Swede; soon, though, I began to relax, thinking that Cole must have overstated the danger just to make me stay alert. But as we passed into the Spring Hills, the Swede came to his feet, clasping his hands to his head and moaning, a hideous noise that issued from the black O of his mouth like a dozen voices all sounding the same tormented bass note. His fingers appeared unnaturally long, and to my astonishment, I realized they were growing longer yet, curving to encase the sides of his head like the bars of a birdcage. I could hear the skin and bone stretching, cartilage popping. His head, too, was elongating, becoming a caricature of Swedish despondency. Glints in his eyes flickered like lantern flames turned low, his fingernails were sprouting into talons, and his skin had pebbled like that of a lizard. Seeing this, I felt my guts clench, and for an instant I was too stunned to move.
Screams, and the passengers went crawling over the seats away from the Swede, scrambling along the aisle, blocking my line of fire. One farmer—a red-faced, round-bellied fool—made a grab for the Swede as he staggered past, and the Swede raked him with his hooked fingers, tearing away his cheek. I shoved somebody aside—the elderly lady in the bonnet, I think—and squeezed off a shot. The gun felt alive in my hand, its kick like a natural muscular reaction and not the uncontrollable spasm that usually resulted when I took target practice. The explosion cracked the inside of my skull, and the bullet painted the Swede’s coat with blood. A twig of red sprouted from the corner of his mouth, and he stopped, but he didn’t fall. He just came forward again, howling in that demon voice. My second bullet shattered his jaw. That dropped him to his knees, nuggets of scored bone showing through the gore. He stared daggers at me for a second, then his eyes rolled up and he keeled over onto his side. His chest lifted and fell. The blood was too dark for human blood, almost purplish in color, and was already congealing.
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