by Richard Peck
I was half asleep at my post when Tom said, “Have I made my girl unhappy?”
Lucille murmured something in reply. “I wouldn’t do anything to hurt my girl. She knows that, doesn’t she, because she is the sweetest, most generous girl in the world?”
Oh this is pretty disgusting, I thought to myself. More murmurs from Lucille.
“But what does it matter what other people think? At most times I can hold my liquor and I always sober right up,” said Tom, gaining confidence. “My father could buy and sell everybody in town except maybe the Van Deeters who weren’t even there to see me when I’d had a drop too much.”
Oh, I thought to myself, I wish there was an extra bowl of punch I could fling down on their heads. “You know,” said Tom, “my intentions regarding you are strictly on the up and up and as far as I am concerned we are already engaged, married even.”
Oh, Lucille, you think you have him where you want him again, and it’d serve you right if you did, is what I thought.
“So let us have a kiss to show we aren’t mad, and then some more,” said Tom. Then later, “Yes, Lucille, but let’s not rush into any public announcements until after you graduate from the high school. It wouldn’t do if the word got around that I was robbing the cradle.”
Then Lucille’s voice came up quite strong. “You will not slip through my fingers, Tom Hackett,” she said. “Never think it.” Oh, this is more than I can stomach, I thought to myself, and crept off to my room.
I guess if the conversation passing back and forth between Tom and Lucille had not been so sickening, the whole history of Bluff City would be different. Because I would not have gone on back to my room when I did.
Chapter Eleven
The room was so bright I could almost make out the colors on my patchwork quilt. There looked to be a million lightning bugs glowing outside the window. I walked over to it and stared out to the barn. The dormer window was ablaze with candlelight. “Blossom is outdoing herself,” I said. But the words stuck in my throat.
Why I didn’t yell to raise the house I don’t know. The light slanted down from the window and threw a long patch of yellow across the yard. It was all as quiet as a tomb. Then a flock of roosting birds stirred in the elm. They flapped their wings with a sudden noise and wheeled off into the night. So did I.
When I got out back, the birds were gone, but the light wasn’t. I cut across the yard and fetched up by the hitching post, not thinking too far ahead. There beside the barn, I looked back at the long shape on the lawn, bright as electricity but not so white.
The barn door opened to darkness, but there was plenty of light leaking around the doorframe at the top of the stairs. It pulled me on like the moth to the flame. Oh, Blossom, I will wring your scrawny neck, thought I. Then I was in the loft and not alone.
There was a girl standing there, near enough to touch. I could see her plain, though the loft was not as bright as I expected. And no wonder, since there was not a sign of a candle. She was a girl about my age, working her hands in front of her. She had on an odd outfit. A long green dress right down to the floor. Toward the bottom, it was limp and dark, as wet as Tom Hackett’s trousers. I studied this costume considerably rather than to stare fixedly into a face that was not Blossom’s and never could be. Not Blossom in disguise. Not anybody I ever knew.
First a damp dog and now a damp girl, I thought, but did not say aloud since a lot of the spunkiness had left me.
Then the loft was full of her voice, though so quiet it could have come from inside my head. “My hoops!” this girl said, clutching at her sopping skirts. I looked right at her face. It was heartshaped and very woebegone. She put a hand up to her neck where there was a brooch of the old-fashioned kind. It looked to have a glass covering over flowers made of human hair, which was a decoration done in days gone by.
“My hoops, my hoops,” she said looking through me. “I am lost. All is lost,” she went on, and in an accent I could not place. Foreign, certainly. She was altogether such a novel type that I gained a little courage.
“What is your business here?” I challenged her. And this is the time when history decided my voice was to start changing. So what I really said was:
Then she looked at me, boring holes in my head with her eyes. “Oh!” she said, “The dead and the dying! The boilers gone, and the black water!” Her voice rose by the minute to a shriek. And just before she buried her face in her hands and her wet hair fell forward, she howled out, “THE DEAD ARE ROBBED AND CANNOT FORESTALL IT!”
This is madness, I thought to myself and felt capable of running. I never moved, but she knew I would and put out a trembling hand that came too near touching me. “Stay,” she said, very clear and low. “Time is nothing to me, and the past contends with the future. But I know you, even in my loneliness, though I was here before you.”
“What is your name?” I croaked.
She looked surprised at that and quite human. “Why, Inez Dumaine,” she said as if I should have the sense to know.
Then another change came over her, and she balled up both her fists to strike the air. She set to moaning, but somewhere off in the corner of the loft there was another noise, the sound of Trixie whining.
“More death!” she said in a heavier accent. “More, if you do not stop it. Others lost, like me in the black water. Save them!”
Wind began to blow through the loft, though the window is sealed. It was brighter everywhere except for Inez Dumaine, who darkened to a silhouette. I was wrapped up in a nightmare. And like in a dream, I only watched.
Her face was in shadow before she spoke again. “Listen to me, time matters to you. The bridge is a killer. The train—without a locomotive—the train will be lost. On the bridge. Stop it. The man with one hand. The tracks lead to ... nothing.”
Then her eyes blazed up like some creature at the side of a dark road. And I was standing down by the hitching post with my hand hanging onto the cold iron ring. The soles of my feet were sore from pounding down the stairs. The yard was dark, and the barn was darker. There was a twittering up in the tree where the birds were resettling. And all I had in my head were words.
More death ... black water ... the killer bridge ... the train without a Locomotive ... the tracks that lead to ... nothing...
And the man with one hand.
I darted past the brushpile behind the barn and barely noticed there was a dim light from the Culps’ kitchen beyond the tracks. I was right there between the rails on the trolley line with the wind whipping me when I remembered I was in my nightshirt.
Before I had to deal with second thoughts, a streetcar came rattling out from town. It made the turn a block away, and the headlamp beam swung around and caught me in the eyes. The car always speeds up after the curve, especially on the last run of the night. It kept coming, but I was rooted between the rails.
The motorman’s outline stood up against the inside lights. But the headlamp was like Halley’s Comet. I hoped the driver would see me clearer than I saw him. I did my best to flag him down with my nightshirt, which set me to dancing on the splintery ties. He commenced clanging his bell, which he never does on a late run.
I was so dazed by the light and recent experiences that I’d have let myself be run down. But the motorman set his brakes, and sparks sprayed out on the right of way. He was stretching out the side window and waving his fist.
Then he ripped out a couple of oaths. And said if I wanted a ride, I’d have two things to do. Put on some decent clothes and wait at the trolley stop like anybody else.
“There’s trouble on the line,” I told him, wondering if there was.
“There’ll be trouble for you for making mischief!”
I swung up into the car. He said that as I was entering, I had better have a nickel in my nightshirt. This brought a laugh from the passengers who stared at me a little like I had stared at Inez Dumaine. They all looked to be late workers or people who’d been to a show at the Empress Opera House.
/> “That is the Armsworth boy,” somebody said, like I was a point of interest they were passing.
“Off, boy, before I drag you up to your house by the ears,” said the motorman, a tough customer with big knuckles.
I got a good grip on the pole by the coin box. “Listen, there’s something wrong on the trestle—over Snake Creek.” This brought a few of the passengers to their feet. The motorman pushed his cap back and looked put upon.
“If this is a prank,” he said, “your bottom will burn for it.” But the passengers were crowding up front to see if they could read truth in my face.
One of them said, “Take it easy to the bridge and then have a look.”
“Siddown, all of you’uns, especially you,” he nodded to me. “You’ll have a free ride and a long sorry walk back if you’re a liar.” Under the circumstances, I figured this was fair enough, though the vision of Inez was fading fast under the glare of this motorman. Here was a man who would never believe anything told to him in a barnloft. The streetcar jerked once and rolled. I looked over my shoulder out the window, across to Blossom Culp’s back porch. Her mother was standing there, with her hair in a braid. She was holding a hurricane lamp up by her face, staring out into the night.
We hummed along a mile or so to where the town thins out. The motorman kept up a steady conversation with himself about his plans for me. And I tugged at my nightshirt which continually pinched in between the slats on the seat.
Then we were among the trees and high weeds along the creek bluffs, slowing to a crawl. The headlamp shone straight along the trestle. There were the two gleaming rails and the sheer black drop on either side. I lost considerable heart at the ordinariness of the view and wished I was back in my bed.
“Let’s get out and have a quick look,” said a rider. “Better safe than sorry.” But as he walked to the front of the car, he gave me a look of deep suspicion.
Another passenger piled out behind him as people will to get in on something. But the motorman stuck to his place like I might make off with the streetcar and go Halloweening with it. We all watched the two of them walk out on the trestle, looking first on one side and then the other. I didn’t see how a couple of middleweights could test a bridge for a trolley car’s weight. But then I figured I might have said too much already. So I composed myself in silence.
“What’s that down there by the creek on this side?” yelled out one of the strollers to the other. Everybody in the car surged forward to see those two looking down a drop of maybe a hundred feet. Then they started back to the car, shading their eyes against the headlamp.
“There’s a fire down there at the base of the bridge support,” said one.
“A tramp’s campfire, very likely,” said the motorman, offhand.
“Amory Timmons’s campfire if anybody’s,” I said out loud. That made everybody turn my way. I guess there wasn’t a soul in the county who didn’t know about Amory Timmons and his grudge against the streetcar company.
“What do you know about it?” said the motorman, taking a step in my direction.
“Amory Timmons is running wild in the creek bottoms,” I said. “It’s common knowledge.”
“He goes crazy sometimes,” one of the passengers said.
“All right,” said the motorman like this is the last straw. “Let’s shinny down the bluff and have a look. I’m not taking responsibility for this car if something irregular’s going on.” I doubt if he meant for everybody in the trolley to follow, but we did. There were about fifteen of us, including some courting couples who didn’t mind a lark in the dark.
So we all scrambled over the gravel shoulder and started down into the treetops. It’s steep going, but people were chuckling as they went. Some of the girls let out little squeaks. I trod on a stone that liked to lay my bare foot open. But after a few steep yards we came to a path that zigzagged down.
By then we could see where we were going. There was a fire below, and it was not for frying catfish. When we got near, it was licking up the side of one of the wooden trestle supports.
“My God!” the motorman said. Then he lost his footing, and there was the sound of small bushes giving out under him. A lot of smoke rose above the flames, and there was the stink of creosote used to treat the bridge wood. There was a smell of coal oil too.
“That fire was set a-purpose,” the motorman said where he got on his feet. We kept threading down and down. There was no turning back what with everybody slipping and sliding the same direction. The flames were licking up higher, lighting up the whole underside of the bridge. I’ve been swimming there many a time. It was bright as day down on the sandbar, and somebody pointed. “Lookit right there—and there too!”
We looked. All the supports lit up by the fire looked to be hacked at with an axe. Some of them were cut through with raw white wood showing like pencil points. It’s taken a one armed man a long time to manage it. He must have started at sundown and axed away while the earlier cars had passed over his head.
We stood there, all of us strangers, open-mouthed at the sight. The trestle was burning like tinder. Sparks and flaming splinters dropped off into the black water of Snake Creek which reflected the fire but couldn’t quench it.
“The fire department—” somebody said then. And somebody else started to turn like he would run for help. But nobody really moved.
Then from the opposite side of the creek came a sound like a giant featherbed busting open—one big whooof. A billow of flame went up over the treetops, and there was a stronger whiff of coal oil. The whole far side of the bridge, higher up, broke into flames. One of the girls began to cry, but nobody comforted her. We were all transfixed.
“Well, it’s done for,” somebody said quietly.
“So quick,” the girl sobbed, “Why, we might have—”
I guess we all saw the same thing at once, though my eyes were dancing with the flames. The other side of the bridge was wreathed around in fire. Even the ties were burning. And through that inferno a man ran.
I wonder now why we didn’t all yell and point him out to each other. But we didn’t. He was small in the distance, a black running figure, hopping along the ties right across the bridge, from one fire to the other. He was carrying a flaming torch, swinging it around and around as he ran. With the only hand he had.
All our necks craned up and all our eyes followed him across the trestle till he disappeared in between the bluffs we’d come across.
My pa is took especially bad, I could remember Bub Timmons saying not more than twelve hours before.
“Amory Timmons,” the motorman said, “That crazy old son of a—”
“He don’t know what he’s doing,” somebody murmured.
“I know it,” the motorman said mournfully.
“We better try to catch him,” came an eager voice. And like any mob, we all turned back to the path at once.
But then we heard a clanging over the crackle of the fire. The bell on the streetcar. It went on and on like a mad thing. And the car edged out onto the trestle. The flames were well up at this end of the bridge, and the streetcar’s orange paint glowed like a sunrise. The girls began to shriek at that, and they wouldn’t stop. I think I was shrieking myself. The trolley jerked across the trestle, picking up a little speed.
When it was above the first flames, we could see a man at the controls. His head was out of the window. And if we could have heard anything, I think we’d have heard him barking like a dog. Or laughing. I still think I saw a laughing face, though I was too far off to be sure.
One of the bridge supports cracked like a rifle. And the rest of them took up the report. “Get back!” the motorman yelled. “The whole thing’s going!” We all scrambled backward, and I fell on the wet ground cover and crawled up the bank into the trees. As I clawed the earth, I could feel other people’s hands doing the same.
If it hadn’t been for the spectacle behind us, I guess we’d all have gone to ground like moles. But up among the ferns a
nd willows I looked back, like Lot’s wife.
The streetcar was still rolling toward the middle of the trestle. And the track was sagging. The car began to dip. The bell clanged and clanged in fury while the supports fell one after another into the creek, landing with smacks.
Then it all gave out. The trolley seemed to miss its footing and stagger. The rails under it looped like wire. And the car heeled over. For a second you could see the dark roof as the car pitched sideways in a hail of scattered ties. And Amory Timmons dropped out of the motorman’s window. He fell the length of the flames, looking like a lopsided starfish, turning in the air.
The trolley went end over end and hit the fallen supports in the creek. It burst open like a crate.
And the bell ceased clanging.
Chapter Twelve
I walked a midnight mile on trolley track barefoot after that, with the sights and sounds of death running through my mind.
It was an easy matter to get away from the little band of watchers down by Snake Creek. The girls set up a lamentation, and the men moaned and muttered. I worked my way up through the brush, and no one marked my leaving. When I got close to home, I was walking mostly out of habit, and never gave the barn a thought as I went by. All I wanted was my bed.
Shortly, I was flopped belly down across it, too worn out to turn back the quilt. I was scared, but too tired to taste the full flavor of it.
Then the door banged back, and the light went on. I flipped over and pulled my nightshirt down. There stood Lucille in the doorway, every nerve on end and looking like the queen of tragedy. Her eyes were mean slits.
“You repulsive little worm!” she rasped out. “You hateful little meddler! I’ve caught you at last!”
What now? I thought to myself. This is entirely too much after a hard night. “Lucille—”
“Hush! Keep your voice down. This is between you and me!”