Death Train to Boston

by Dianne Day

  He sat down on the ground right where he was, rather abruptly, because his muscles weren’t cooperating. He shivered and felt his face all wet with involuntary tears, which he wiped away with the back of his hand. He supposed he must be going into shock, if he wasn’t in shock already, but there wasn’t a damn thing he could do about it.

  The relatively unharmed passengers had begun to help those more seriously injured; Michael was not sure which category he fell into. For the moment he felt paralyzed. Yet still his eyes played over the wreckage both human and mechanical, searching again, still, always, for Fremont Jones.

  He had no problem recalling how she’d been dressed. An image of her as he’d last seen her was burned forever in his brain. She’d been, in a word, magnificent—in a dress bought new for this trip. The dress was a deep purple color, almost black; a color that had special meaning for Michael because she’d had a cape that same shade, which she had worn a lot the year he grew to love her. Aubergine, that shade of purple was called—and in this narrow aubergine dress with a teasing hint of bustle at the back, Fremont had left their table in the dining car and walked up the aisle with her back to him, tall and straight as an arrow. At the door she paused to wait while the porter opened it for her, and Michael waited too, to see if she would turn her head, sending an invitation to him with her eyes.

  They were traveling incognito to Chicago on a job for the railroad, living in separate compartments in different cars of the train. From Chicago, with the investigation presumably done, they’d continue on to Boston for a visit with Fremont’s father. Establishing the undercover ruse, they’d pretended to meet for the first time in the club car just the other side of Sacramento, and had begun a flirtation that excited Michael anew. Fremont too, he’d thought; yet she had not turned, did not so much as cast a glance over her shoulder, but had gone directly through the door.

  So Michael had sat there at war with himself, hardening with desire for her, yet bound by the rules of their game not to go to her until she let him know, in one of the many little ways women have of doing such things, that she wanted him. Just as if they really had met for the first time in the club car outside of Sacramento. No matter that for almost a year they’d been living together as if they were truly man and wife; no matter that he hadn’t been in her bed, or she in his, since the train pulled out of San Francisco—what was it, two days and nights ago? It seemed longer. Much longer.

  Michael Kossoff had been thinking how much he desired Fremont Jones when, without warning, the train exploded.

  I needed to use the bathroom. I opened my eyes, but then it took some time for them to focus. I was sick, very sick, sicker than I had ever been in my whole life. And I was completely lost. This room was strange to me, sparsely furnished, filled with shadows and a strange, reddish light.

  I groaned and moved my head to one side, seeking a window, worried that the reddish light might mean fire. Through the one window I could see the humped line of a mountaintop, and behind it a blazing sunset. No fire, then. But I was alone, lost, sick, and the sun was going down.

  I needed to relieve myself so badly I could hardly bear it. I tried to get up, but the pain was too great. I called out, ‘‘Is anyone there? Can someone help me?’’

  But no one came.

  I shuddered, first hot, then cold, then hot again. Finally I could stand it no more. I wet myself and the bed.

  After that, I did not so much go to sleep as give myself over to oblivion. In my head I whispered to the God I’d never quite believed in: Please take care of me.

  2

  THE SUN was going down behind the high mountains of Utah when Michael struggled to his feet again. Before darkness fell he wanted to have a look at the other side of the train tracks, to see if any passengers had been tossed off in that direction, though the damaged cars themselves had derailed on the side where he was standing.

  He turned his head and squinted into the low red ball of the declining sun. Its angle gave him more of an idea where they’d been when the explosion occurred: east of Salt Lake City, on the way to Denver, well into a range of mountains called the Wasatch. Michael was unfamiliar with the area, but as always when he traveled, he had studied and memorized the route. Now he called up a map of the railroad in his mind: The tracks took a dip toward the south soon after Salt Lake, so that what lay to the right-hand side of the train was no longer true south but, rather, southwest. Now from that direction spilled the blood-red light of sunset, dyeing deeper the reddish soil of these mountains. Appropriate, he thought. A rather routine investigatory job had suddenly become a serious, bloody business. Perhaps even deadly. He hoped not.

  Michael scanned the surroundings, looking dispassionately past people and debris as if they were not even there, committing the contours of the mountainous terrain to memory. He might have to find this place again, and once the broken track had been repaired that might not be as easy to do as one would now think. How many miles from Salt Lake City had the train traveled before the explosion? He recalled passing through a station at Provo. After that, he was afraid he’d been focused on the pleasure of trying to seduce his business partner; how many hamlets they may have passed through after Provo, he had no idea. They were high up in the mountains, no doubt about that—the air was thin, crisp, and quite cold for early October. And while there were trees and other vegetation, their growth in terms of height and thickness seemed lackluster, which suggested a struggle to survive at altitude.

  Michael walked slowly along parallel to the tracks, up toward the break. He moved in a kind of trance, focused on his search for only one face among the many, the dark purple of a narrow dress, particularly alert for a certain shade of auburn hair. Vaguely as he passed, he noticed that panic had subsided, and people were caring for their own injuries or the injuries of others, either murmuring or mutely.

  A new sight broke through his concentration: At some distance, beneath some trees, a volunteer brigade of men were lining up the dead in a neat row, one by one. So, the worst had happened. No more bothersome if not too costly accidents—now it was a matter of multiple murder.

  Michael turned his head away and marched determinedly forward. He would investigate these crimes, but not right now. And he might have to take his turn looking for Fremont in that neat row of the dead, but not just yet. Never, if God was merciful.

  You have a job to do, said a voice inside his head. ‘‘Bother that!’’ Michael responded aloud, under his breath.

  That’s not what she would say, the voice commented.

  He took a few more steps, realizing it was true: Fremont would say that while he was looking for her, he might as well be making observations as to the cause of the train wreck at the same time. Because the explosion might have a direct relationship to the job for which the Southern and Union Pacific Railroads had hired the J&K Agency.

  Two birds with one stone, said the voice, this time sounding rather self-satisfied, and quite a bit like Fremont Jones.

  Michael’s spirits picked up and his mind felt sharper, which was all to the good. Various details began to register: There was smoke in the air, he could smell it, and somewhere nearby, plaintive and weak, a baby cried. A conductor, his voice full of crisp authority, issued orders to galley cooks, whose aprons were no longer white but streaked with blood and soot.

  Michael stopped to watch them. Incredible as it seemed, a meal was in the making, with food being salvaged from the overturned galley car. He considered approaching the conductor, whose mind was apparently in good working order, and who, to judge by the state of his uniform, had not been harmed in the blast. Questioning would have to begin sometime, somewhere. But—

  Frowning, Michael fumbled with his good hand at his inside jacket pocket; but even as his fingers touched the flat wallet, he remembered that the identification he carried was false. The business cards that identified him as the Kossoff half of the J&K Agency, Discreet Inquiries (Fremont Jones being the other half), were in his train compartment, i
nside the lining of his suitcase. Other, more important identification papers, linking him to both United States and Russian secret service agencies, were locked away in San Francisco—in an office safe at the house he and Fremont owned on Divisadero Street.

  With a sinking sensation in his stomach and instant dryness of his mouth, Michael realized that Fremont most likely carried no identification at all. She routinely disdained reticules and other small purses, preferring instead a rather large leather bag she slung over her shoulder in most unladylike fashion. But on this train trip she was playing the part of an indulged, wealthy woman, a coquette, a fashion plate; clearly the leather bag did not suit the picture. So for the most part, as she moved about the train, Fremont had been going without whatever it was most women felt compelled to carry around with them, handkerchiefs and the like. Had she brought any kind of purse with her to the luncheon table? Michael thought not.

  He did think it more than likely that she’d been thrown from the train, as he’d been, when the explosion occurred. He could only pray she hadn’t been too near the actual blast point. He tried to keep the terrible images out of his mind, but he could not. He knew how dynamite could blow off arms and legs, slash a torso to bits, and scatter those bits over the ground in a roughly circular pattern that a knowledgeable person could read to determine the center of the blast. . . .

  Michael Kossoff was such a knowledgeable person. He was more familiar than he wanted to be with the various forms of violence and destruction that human beings could visit upon one another. He sighed heavily, wishing again that his life had been different, that he might have been a peaceful man.

  Michael had made his way now through people and debris to the break in the tracks where the explosion had occurred. Of course, he thought, I should have known. . . .

  The tracks broke off, and then continued again on the other side of a narrow gorge or canyon. They— whoever they were—had blown up a railroad bridge. The front half of the train had crossed over to the other side, where it had stopped with the engine almost out of sight, at the point where the rails curved around the mountain. Broken tracks dangled down into the gorge like a toy torn to pieces by a gigantic, bad-tempered boy.

  Michael tried in vain to moisten his lips—his mouth had gone utterly dry with apprehension. He counted the cars still connected to the engine, and tried to remember in exactly which one Fremont’s compartment had been. But he wasn’t sure. Moving forward through the train from car to car, of course he could find it, for she had been in the car just before his own. But counting, looking . . . no, no, he couldn’t, he didn’t know, couldn’t tell, it was impossible.

  Delayed explosion, his mind commented, and filed away the observation whether he wanted it at the moment or not. The engine had tripped a triggering mechanism as it crossed the bridge, then seconds had ticked by before actual detonation. This information would remain in his head, he knew, until he needed and called upon it. Such was the power of the human mind to behave in accordance with strict training, even—perhaps especially—under the most severe kinds of stress. Automatically he continued his observations.

  On this side of the gorge all the cars had been derailed and lay tumbled and broken on their sides: two passenger cars, the dining car, the galley kitchen, two baggage cars, and the caboose. But that was not all—a part of the train was missing.

  Michael smelled smoke again . . . and this time it stung his eyes. The smoke rose up out of the gorge, thick and black, billowing and curling in on itself. The nearer the edge he approached, the more acrid the odor became. Sulphur and brimstone, he thought, the fires of hell and damnation.

  Michael’s eyes watered. The toes of his black boots protruded over the edge of the gorge. He wavered, looking down, thinking, Hellfire. . . .

  A hand grasped his arm, the left, which he held close to his body so as not to jar the broken collarbone; and a male voice said, ‘‘Don’t stand there, sir, it’s dangerous.’’

  ‘‘I have to see,’’ Michael said gruffly, twisting his whole body violently to throw off that restraining hand. A pain shot through him, white-hot; the shock of it served to make him more alert. He was indeed perilously near the edge. He moved back, and then looked down again . . . a long, long way down.

  The explosives must have been placed on the timbers that supported the bridge. Those timbers no longer existed, they’d been blown to bits. But it was not the bridge that was burning. No. Rather, two train cars lay sprawled and broken in the bottom of the gorge, both spewing fire and billowing black smoke.

  Michael forced himself to look hard and long. A few scattered bodies had been tossed from the wreckage. Not one moved, not one called for help.

  The angle of the setting sun could not penetrate the shadows in those depths. He couldn’t tell if any of the bodies wore a dark purple dress—with such a lack of light, it was almost impossible even to tell the females from the males.

  ‘‘I have to get down there,’’ Michael said.

  Eons passed, or so it seemed, before I regained full consciousness. Much of this time I couldn’t tell if I was awake or asleep; in either state I was miserable. I was continually either shivering with cold or drenched with sweat. I had terrible, violent dreams, full of screeching, tearing noises, screams and fire and blood.

  In my better moments I saw faces I had never seen before, and heard voices I’d never heard before. I was afraid, and angry with myself for being afraid, but too weak and sick even to stay angry. I called for Michael, called and called, but he did not come. I called for Father too, and a man did come—but he was not my father.

  At last I gave up wanting and calling. I stopped fighting the strangers. Fortunately, or so I must suppose, they did not stop taking care of me. And so, I did not die.

  A time came, finally, when I opened my eyes and saw clearly the woman who sat by my bed. She was a stranger, yet not a stranger; I knew somehow that she had sat in that chair many a time in the past days . . . not only that, she had done a great deal more than sit with me. By now the poor dear must have known my body as well as I knew it myself. At least on the outside of my skin.

  She was mending or sewing, with her head slightly bent, and had not yet noticed that I was awake. I lay perfectly still while committing her features to memory, for I had a sense that she was kind and that I might not have survived without her. She was certainly several years older than I, perhaps even approaching forty; her skin had a weathered look, full of tiny criss-crossing lines. Her hair, of an indeterminate color, neither brown nor blond nor yet quite gray, was skinned back into a knot or a bun or a braid, I couldn’t tell face-on. She had large hands with big-knuckled fingers, possibly arthritic, but they were nimble enough as she plied her needle, working some kind of garment by hand. I could not see her nether limbs, of course, but she appeared to be a large woman. Not fat, just big. Her manner of dress was simple and countrified: a plain gray dress covered by a pinafore apron, white with narrow pink stripes running vertically.

  As her fingers flew, she hummed tunelessly under her breath. Did I detect a slight tremor in her hands? Was she nervous? Or just worn out with looking after me? My heart went out to her.

  ‘‘Hello,’’ I said, or rather tried to say. I had to clear my throat and try again: ‘‘Hello.’’

  Her head jerked up suddenly, and she jumped as if I’d come up behind her in the dead of night and whispered Boo! She pricked her finger with her needle—I saw a drop of blood fall, not on her sewing but on the pinafore.

  ‘‘Saints be praised!’’ she said. ‘‘You’re awake, and talkin’ sense!’’

  I smiled, weakly no doubt, but sincerely. ‘‘Thank you for taking care of me. I know I’ve been very ill, but’’—I frowned—‘‘I’m afraid that’s about all I know.’’

  ‘‘Don’t you fret.’’ She put aside her sewing, sucked on her finger for a minute, frowned at it, then rose and came to the bedside. ‘‘No need for thanks, neither. Takin’ care of sick folks is our bounden duty.’
’ The woman laid the palm of her hand against my forehead and nodded in satisfaction. ‘‘Fever’s gone.’’ Her fingers explored my scalp, lighting upon an exceedingly tender spot.

  I winced, and raised my own hand to touch what I deduced from its sensitivity must be a healing wound, on top of my head and to the right, in line with the outer edge of my right eyebrow. Where there should have been hair, my fingers felt instead a bunch of prickles and coarse puckers. ‘‘It feels so odd,’’ I said.

  ‘‘That’s where the doctor shaved your head to put in the stitches.’’

  ‘‘He shaved my head? Oh dear!’’

  ‘‘Not your whole head, just where the cut and the blood was, where all the hair was matted up. He had to, so’s we could keep it clean, but the wound got ugly anyways. Festered some. You had a high fever.’’ She bent over me while pushing down gently on my chin with her hand, so as to see the top of my head better. I cooperated, listening with relief to her clucks and umhms.

  ‘‘The festering, I suppose that was what made me so sick,’’ I mused. ‘‘You’ve taken good care of me, and I do appreciate it. You probably saved my life. Thank you—’’ I stopped abruptly, once more caught up short by ignorance. ‘‘I don’t even know your name.’’

  ‘‘It’s Verla. Verla Pratt. I’ll say you’re welcome just because it’s mannerly, but it wasn’t me saved your life. ’Twas Father who did that. You’da died if he hadn’ta brought you home, he said so himself.’’

  ‘‘Thank you, Verla. This is your house, then? You live here with your father?’’ The name Pratt was dimly familiar to me, but I couldn’t for the moment call up its association.

  ‘‘You might put it that way, yes. You thirsty? Like a drink of water, Carrie?’’