Two Trains Running

by Andrew Vachss

  “I was still . . . not in shock, but stunned, like. Whatever he said, I just nodded ‘okay.’ We got in the station wagon; I drove him to the crossroads, and I never saw him again.”

  “Did you go to his aunt’s?” Tussy said.

  “I didn’t know what else to do. I just kept driving and driving. I was scared to be in that station wagon, but I was scared to steal another car, too. It was still dark when I got close to where I was supposed to go. I buried the car in the swamp. Just opened all the windows, put it in neutral, dropped a heavy stone on the gas pedal, reached inside, and threw the lever into drive. It disappeared; the swamp swallowed it. Then I started to walk.

  “It took a long time. I didn’t have anything to eat. The bugs were fierce, and I was in a panic over everything that moved out there. Like being back overseas. All I had was the landmarks Lewis had given me. But they were good ones.

  “Even once it got light out, the swamp was dark. I finally found the house. It was right where Lewis said it would be, and it had the bottle tree outside.”

  “What’s a bottle tree?” Tussy said, bending forward to stroke Fireball’s head.

  “It’s just a regular tree, with all kinds of bottles attached to the branches. Like fruit. When there’s a breeze, you can hear it tinkle. I’d never seen anything like it.”

  Tussy started to speak, then clamped her lips together.

  “Tante Verity was an old woman,” Dett said. “Real old, like a hundred, maybe. She was just sitting on her porch, watching me come out of the swamp. I came up to her real slow, so I wouldn’t frighten her. But when I got close, I could see that nothing would ever frighten her. She acted like she was expecting me.

  “I told her what happened. From the very beginning, like I just told you. She didn’t say a word, just sat there, rocking in her chair. But I knew she heard me.

  “I remember telling her about dropping Lewis at the crossroads, and then I must have passed out. When I came to, I was inside her house, lying in some kind of hammock, with netting over me. The old woman gave me something to drink. It was in a mug, but thick, like stew. I remember it was very hot, burned going down, and then I passed out again.”

  Dett got to his feet, rotated his neck, giving off an audible crack. Seeing the expression on Tussy’s face, he returned to the couch.

  “I don’t know how long I stayed with Tante Verity—that’s what she told me to call her, too—but every day, I got stronger. And every day, she taught me things.”

  “What kind of things?”

  “Like roots you can grind up, to keep the inside of your body clean. About the things in the swamp, how you can live among them if you know how to make peace. But, mostly, she taught me what I had to do.

  “ ‘Two trains coming, son,’ she said to me. ‘Headed for the junction. You can’t stop either one. But you can slow the dark one down. You can put a log across the tracks, make Satan late enough so that the righteous train gets by clean.’ ”

  “What does that mean?” Tussy demanded, her voice caught between anger and dread.

  “It means I kill people,” Dett said, dead-voiced. “You can say they’re bad people, but that’s not why I have to do it. Those three men out in that field that night, they were bad men. And whoever sent them there, to do what they meant to do, they’re worse. But the worst of all are the people who sent me there.”

  “The FBI?”

  “Not even them, Tussy. Not even them. I don’t think I’ll ever know who makes things the way they are. And it doesn’t matter. My job is to roll that log across the tracks in time. It doesn’t matter who hires me, because they’re all guilty or they’re all being used by those who are. It’s like being surrounded. Wherever you shoot, you hit the enemy.”

  “You came here, to Locke City, to—?”

  “Beaumont hired me,” Dett said. “He wanted something done about Dioguardi. And I did that.”

  “You were the one?”

  “Yes. And I left things set up so that there may be more. A lot more. What I do is like throwing a rock into a pool. The splash doesn’t matter, only the circles it makes.”

  “But Mr. Beaumont isn’t a—”

  “Yes he is, Tussy,” Dett said. “He’s just smarter than other men like him. He knows you do better being nice to people than stomping all over them. He owns this town, top to bottom. And what he owns, he can deliver. He brought me in here to make sure he could keep his power. But I never really work for any of them, even though I take their money.”

  “Walker—”

  “That’s not my name,” Dett said. “I don’t have a name, anymore. Just one I use. Even this face, it’s different from the one I started with. There’s people who can do that. There’s people who can do just about anything, if you pay them.”

  “You only . . . kill white people? Because of what—”

  “No,” Dett said, making a harsh sound in his throat. “I kill the people I get paid to kill. You think it’s only whites that run gangs?”

  “But if they’re all criminals . . .” Tussy said, desperately searching.

  “I’m not a vigilante,” Dett said. “I’m not out doing justice. I’m just trying to slow that train down. I was given seven years.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “When I left, Tante Verity told me my time started in that field, when I killed those three men. And it would run for seven years. By then, the first train would be through the crossroads, no matter what. If I’m not already dead, I can start walking my own road, that’s what she said. I’ll be clean then.”

  “That’s not for another—”

  “About four years,” Dett said.

  “It’s too . . . horrible,” Tussy said, sobbing.

  Dett sat with his fists clenched, unable to look away.

  * * *

  1959 October 11 Sunday 02:21

  * * *

  “Why did you tell me all this, Walker?” Tussy asked, an hour later.

  “I had to. Tante Verity told me I could never have a friend, not for seven years. I could never be close to anyone. But she promised I would find a pure woman. And when I did, I could tell her.”

  “But how could you possibly—?”

  “She said I’d know. And she was right. The second I saw you, I knew.”

  “I can’t . . . It’s like it’s too big to even think about, what you said. That’s really you, Walker? A man who goes around killing people?”

  “I have to do it,” Dett said. “I just have to. I did my best to explain, but I know how it sounds. Like I’m insane. Chasing ghosts. Trying to slow down some train. I know. But every word I told you is the truth, Tussy.”

  “I . . .”

  “You know it’s true,” Dett said, relentlessly. “You know I’m true, true for you, or you never would have told me what you did. About your . . . about your life.”

  “But . . . what’s going to happen, Walker?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You’re just going to disappear? And then do another . . . ?”

  “Yes. Until the time has passed. Or until I get killed.”

  “You sound like it doesn’t matter to you at all.”

  “It can’t matter, not until the seven years has passed.”

  “What are you saying?” she said, struggling with tears.

  “I’ll come back then, Tussy. If I’m alive, I’ll come back.”

  “For me?”

  “If you would have me.”

  “How can you even—? I . . .”

  “I’ll just call. On the phone. If you hear my voice, and hang up, I’ll have your answer.”

  “Walker . . .”

  “I’m gone, Tussy. If you ever see me again, I won’t be Walker Dett. I’ll be . . . I’ll be clean. I thought of just . . . telling you a story. About some secret mission or something. Hoping that you’d wait for me. But if you’re going to have the truth of me when I come back, you had to have the truth of what I am now. What I was before that, too.”
>
  “I can’t . . .”

  “I know,” Dett said. He got to his feet and walked out into the night.

  * * *

  1959 October 11 Sunday 09:30

  * * *

  “Yes. I’ll get him,” Cynthia said.

  She handed the phone to Beaumont, mouthing, “It’s him,” as she did so.

  Beaumont picked up the receiver, a determined look on his face.

  “This is Royal Beaumont,” he said.

  * * *

  1959 October 11 Sunday 13:21

  * * *

  “I thought you said he was going along with everything.”

  “That’s what he said,” Lymon answered Shalare. “And I still think he is.”

  “You didn’t know he was going to hit Dioguardi?”

  “I don’t know who knew that. Sammy didn’t, that’s for sure. And him and me and Faron, we’re the senior men.”

  “But it’s that young one, Harley, that you said Beaumont had picked out to be next in line, not any of you, isn’t that right? Isn’t that why you came to us in the first place, Lymon?”

  “Yeah. That’s right. Harley’s just a kid, maybe twenty-five. I don’t see why Roy would—”

  “Never mind that now. Give me something I can use, Lymon. If Beaumont did it—and I can’t see anyone else—why would he make such a move?”

  “For Hacker.”

  “Hacker?”

  “One of our guys. A collector. He disappeared a while back, and Roy always said it was Dioguardi’s work.”

  “Yeah,” Shalare mused. “He’s that kind of man, is he?”

  “That’s one of the things that kept us together, all these years. We’re not a gang, we’re more like a . . . family, maybe. And Roy, he’s the father.”

  “And you, Lymon, you’re his brother, then?”

  “And my name should be Cain, that’s what you’re saying?” Lymon snarled, his voice thick with fury. “You fucking swore there was to be no blood. I came to you—”

  “You came to me to betray your brother,” Shalare said, pronouncing judgment. “And now it’s time for you to fulfill your contract. I want the exact layout of the—”

  Lymon lunged for Shalare, an unsheathed hunting knife in his right hand. Shalare took the first thrust on his left forearm and rolled to the floor as he lashed out with his boot. Lymon sidestepped the kick, got in one of his own to the ribs, raised his knife, screamed, “You won’t make dirt of me, you—” And then Brian O’Sullivan had him from behind.

  * * *

  1959 October 11 Sunday 16:22

  * * *

  Mickey Shalare’s white Chrysler slowed at the guardhouse. Seth strolled to the lowered window, shotgun in hand. When he saw Brian O’Sullivan behind the wheel, his face opened in a smile of greeting. A man in the back seat shot Seth in the chest, the silenced pistol inaudible past twenty yards.

  As the Chrysler sped forward, four more vehicles followed. Armed men spilled out, shooting.

  Return fire from the house sent Shalare’s men running for cover. Two didn’t make it. Brian O’Sullivan leaped from behind the Chrysler and ran to one of the fallen men. Udell cut him down with a single shot to the chest, worked the bolt on his deer rifle, and put another round into the man he had wounded. From his perch on the second floor, Udell calmly scanned the scene, then began firing methodically at the scattered cars, hunting for gas tanks.

  Faron slithered around a corner of the stone house, dropped to one knee, and aimed his rifle at a clump of three men crouched behind one of the cars Udell was firing at. The men bolted for a safer spot. Faron dropped the first two; the third made it.

  An armored car suddenly roared up to the front door. The small-arms fire from inside the house bounced harmlessly off its reinforced steel plating. A small, runty man with three fingers missing from his right hand jumped out of the driver’s seat and ran back toward Shalare’s men, his body hunched over. “Down!” he screamed.

  The truck mushroomed. The entire front of the stone house crumbled, replaced by a wall of fire.

  As Shalare’s men charged, Luther walked through the flames, a pistol in each hand, no expression on his slack-mouthed face. The first three men who saw him died.

  A shot tore the sleeve of Luther’s gray flannel suit. A pistol dropped from his useless left hand.

  “They’re after Roy!” Faron shouted to Luther. “Go back and cover him.”

  Luther turned his back on the gunfight and ran through the house. When he got to Beaumont’s office, he yelled, “They’re all around!”

  “Come on, Beau,” Cynthia said, calmly. “We have to get to the car.”

  “No!” Beaumont said, as Cynthia reached for his wheelchair. “There’s no time to push this goddamned thing out the long way, and it won’t fit through the escape hatch. Go out the back way, like we planned.”

  “We can carry you—”

  “Not a chance. Luther’s only got one arm. Now, get going!”

  “Not without you,” Cynthia said, grimly.

  Beaumont turned his iron eyes on his childhood friend. Luther’s beloved gray flannel suit was dark with blood; one arm dangled at his side, useless.

  “Stay with her, Luther,” he ordered. “No matter what, understand?”

  “Yes, Roy,” the slack-mouthed man said.

  “Beau! Come on!” Cynthia pleaded.

  “Get out!”

  “No!” she cried.

  “Yes, honey,” Beaumont said. He took a revolver from his desk drawer. “I love you, Cyn,” he said, stuck the pistol into his mouth, and pulled the trigger. The wall behind him turned red.

  Cynthia stumbled toward her fallen love.

  “Roy said!” Luther yelled. He grabbed Cynthia by the hand and pulled her toward the escape door.

  * * *

  1959 October 11 Sunday 22:12

  * * *

  The field phone sounded in the warehouse.

  “Team One,” the man behind the binoculars said.

  “Subject RV fifty-six minutes. Behind the abandoned building at 303 Drexel. Copy?”

  “Roger.”

  * * *

  1959 October 11 Sunday 23:06

  * * *

  “We’re not done,” Harley said. “Shalare knocked off the roof, but he can’t touch the foundation, like Roy always said.”

  “What’s our move?” Sammy asked, his question passing the torch as no ceremony could have.

  “For now, we stay low and we wait. We have to see if Shalare already got what he wants. If he just wanted Roy, because of that whole election thing, well, he got that. So he may lay back for a while. But it doesn’t matter. Tomorrow or ten years, he’ll never take what’s ours.”

  “That Irish fuck should have finished us when he had the chance,” Udell swore. “Now he’s going to have to deal with some dangerous damn hillbillies.”

  “Mountain men,” Harley told him, his voice pulsating with the strength of command. “We’re mountain men.”

  * * *

  1959 October 11 Sunday 23:08

  * * *

  “Sixty yards,” the spotter said, peering through his scope, then glancing at a photo in his right hand. “But that’s not our man.”

  “It’s not time yet,” the sniper said, glancing at the luminous dial of his watch.

  Mack Dressler came around the corner of the abandoned building, walking toward the figure waiting in the darkness.

  “Yes?” the sniper said.

  “Confirming . . . Yes.”

  “There’s two, then.”

  “We only got orders on—”

  “The man said ‘RV,’ right? ‘Rendezvous,’ that’s a meet. More than one.”

  As the shadows of the two figures merged, the sniper’s rifle cracked. Mack Dressler dropped. The other man immediately dove for cover, but a second shot caught him between the shoulder blades. Procter reached for his reporter’s pad, Have to write . . . headlining through his mind. Then the sniper’s next shot spiked his last sto
ry.

  * * *

  1959 October 11 Sunday 23:29

  * * *

  “Where are you going at this time of night, Carl?”

  “I thought you were asleep, Mother.”

  “I suppose I was,” she said from the darkness of her bedroom. “I can’t imagine what would have awakened me—you didn’t make a sound.”

  “Go back to sleep, Mother.”

  “But you haven’t told me where you’re—”

  “I’m going to work,” Carl said. “There’s something I have to do.”

  * * *

  1959 October 11 Sunday 23:31

  * * *

  “This is our time,” Rufus said, urgently. “White men killing each other like it’s a war zone out there.”

  “Our time to do what?” Darryl asked. “Lay in the cut?”

  “No, brothers,” Rufus said, addressing everyone in the room. “Our time to cut the cord.”

  “What’s that mean, Omar?”

  “The guns, K-man,” Rufus said. “We got another shipment coming. The biggest one yet. Those crackers we’ve been buying from? They’re the only ones who can connect us to the guns we’ve been sending out to all the units.”

  “Gonna kill white men, now’s the time,” Moses said, casting his vote. “Couple more bodies in this town won’t even be noticed, the way things been going.”

  “That’s right,” Rufus said. “And I got just the man for the job. Don’t I, Silk?”

  * * *

  1959 October 11 Sunday 23:47

  * * *