Tracks

by K. M. Tolan

  He eased out of the park and kept to side streets, skirting the Cisco rail yards and chancing one of the canal bridges. Caution dictated detours and a slow drive, turning a two-hour trip into a nervous exodus costing twice the time. The state of Indiana begrudgingly surrendered stores and residential areas to more rural surroundings until settling on the dark silhouettes of cornfields beneath a May moon.

  He pulled over onto a gravel swath and gave himself a chance to catch up. The only thing to worry about out here was bugs in his teeth. The sky was cool and clear, allowing an audience of stars to applaud his latest screw-up in silent derision. His shoulders sagged under the realization of how two years of shit jobs hadn’t improved his worth in anyone’s eyes. Go to the big city. Carve out a new beginning. Now look at me. Mom would have herself a good laugh before spitting Katy in his face again.

  Cursing, he revved up the Indian and kept speeding southward until he crossed the Will County line in the pre-dawn’s pearly glow. Even his duster couldn’t keep the teeth-clenching chill at bay. Never mind. Wind was good. It kept him awake and cast an illusion of freedom around a future caged by his past. Sure, keep traveling and maybe find himself some obscure yellow-dog town. Sink into anonymity by becoming someone’s field hand. Amounting to nothing was easy, but even being a nobody came with a cost. He didn’t have enough money to get out of state. Heading home didn’t mean he was walking up to Mom like a beggar, he reasoned. This was honest pay for giving her a little extra satisfaction.

  Roosters heralded a wan sun as the Indian’s tires negotiated ruts along the old gravel road where he grew up. His neighborhood was a slight rise of sandy clay overlooking a brushy field. Another year wrought only slight improvements along the irregular row of small houses. Some folks got around to replacing drab asphalt sheets with new siding. Such wasn’t the case with the gray three-bedroom home capped by a non-descript brown roof. Vincent pulled into the yard, frowning down at what once had been a flowerbed until crabgrass overwhelmed it. The small barn in back looked more like a decayed deck of collapsed cards, the sagging roof having given way. Dad would’ve hated seeing how rundown things had gotten here.

  His key probably still worked, but he decided instead to rap his knuckles on the screen door’s peeling brown paint. He glanced at his watch. Just past seven. She should be up.

  The inner door squeaked open. For a moment, Vincent looked upon the woman’s graying hair and hard lines without attaching any meaning to them. The faded green-and-blue patterned dress hanging off her slight frame reached out and wrapped him in heavy memories. “Mom.”

  Her brown eyes sank into wrinkled slits. For a moment she looked about to slam the door in his face. Her voice was a thin drawl of country life dipped in bitterness. “What do you want?”

  “Something to eat and a little gas money. I’ll be out of your hair after that.”

  She peered around his shoulder. “Police after you again?”

  “They’re always after me,” he threw back, following her into a small kitchen. The yellow cabinets looked freshly washed, and judging from the delicious smell, she was baking bread. Yeah, there was a loaf already cooling on a long wooden table. He helped himself to a thick slice, the crust still hot.

  “You get yourself a new table?” he ventured, hoping to steer conversation into warmer climes.

  “You’d know that if you’d come around other than when you’re asking for a handout. It’s Katy’s anniversary. Go out and pay her respect.”

  He drew in a long breath. “It’s not for a couple months, Mom.”

  Vincent jumped as his mother slammed an iron pan down on the counter. “It’s Katy’s anniversary, damn you!” She twisted to face him, her venomous expression no less potent now than during those tortuous years after his father had run out on them. “You go out there and tell her you’re sorry. You promised your father you’d take care of her when you took her, so get out there.”

  “Yeah, I promised,” Vincent muttered, trying to keep his temper in check. As if a twelve-year-old kid was going to deliver on such an oath. Didn’t matter. Apparently, every damn day was Katy’s anniversary these days, so he’d best play along. He needed the shuteye, not to mention money and breakfast. He’d get nothing if he kept pissing her off.

  “I hope the police find you. God knows you deserve prison.”

  God knows why I keep coming back here. Disgusted with himself for thinking this visit would be an improvement over the last; Vincent grabbed an apple from a bowl on the counter and turned for the door. He glanced outside at his bike, tempted to— Do what? Start walking somewhere near the state line when his tank ran dry? Stuffing the fruit in a coat pocket, he shouldered open the screen door.

  “Is that blood on your backside?”

  The sound of genuine concern made him pause. Even a precious moment’s glimpse at the mother she used to be was worth stopping for. “It’s not mine, Mom, and no, I didn’t kill anyone. There was an accident. I helped all I could.”

  “Accident,” she snorted. “I bet you helped. That was your father’s good work coat.”

  “I’ll get it cleaned.” Shaking his head, he walked down the dirt drive, thankful she didn’t blame him for Dad’s disappearance on top of everything else. Or maybe she did. One day Dad was there. The next…

  Vincent hated him for leaving, but Dad had stuck up for him the day Katy vanished. Said it wasn’t his fault. How in hell wasn’t it his fault? Obviously, Dad went looking for Katy. Why couldn’t his father have taken him along?

  How little the field across from the house had changed, though these days it looked a lot smaller than he remembered. Same half-hearted attempt at trees. Same Medusa’s hair of grass, burrs, and brambles. Same churn in his guts while tromping toward a line of undergrowth along a creek that should’ve dried up by now. Ages ago, the stream had been an adventure to reach, something to plan an afternoon around. It was easy to think the creek was a world away back then. Now, he needed a few minutes to reach the same area, with only old nightmares to lengthen the walk.

  Vincent stared down at the brief bank along a muddy bend, watching tiny shapes dart and wiggle beneath filmy water. A small frog plopped into the stream, chasing after a dragon fly. Sighing, he closed his eyes, his fingers closing around the coin in the pocket of his father’s coat. A gift from a dying bum to a stranger’s sister who was probably dead already. That was the worst of it. Not knowing if he had a sister. Or a father. He pulled out the nickel. It belonged here more than he did. His hand paused in mid-toss, catching something odd about the coin’s face. Ah yes—a hobo nickel.

  He studied the feminine features replacing Thomas Jefferson’s head. Carved into the gleaming coin with exquisite detail was a woman-child’s bemused face, her hair a swirling cloud beneath a fanciful top hat. The eyes were wide with an excited sort of innocence expertly captured in the silvery metal. The old man must’ve worked on the nickel for years. He wondered if the hobo also sought to leave a piece of his soul behind—a grasp at immortality, perhaps.

  He flipped the coin around. The image of Monticello was gone, polished down to a mirror finish. In its place was a bas-relief of two circles touching. A hobo sign like those his father taught him when Mom wasn’t around. This one meant something about not giving up if he remembered right.

  He stuffed the nickel back in his pocket. Bad enough to see the artist ending up thrown away with the trash. His art deserved a kinder fate. Don’t give up. A good piece of advice for any man, let alone a bum. He looked up into clouded skies. “You’ll get this when I find you, Katy.”

  He turned back toward the house, a quick meal, and if he was lucky, enough cash to get him as far away from Chicago as the old bike could manage. He pushed his way through a tangle of saplings and wild flowers, and then broke out into an open stretch of field divided by white ballast and gleaming rails. His heart did a belly flop into his stomach. He lurched toward the tracks with drunken footsteps, praying the vision would hold long enough for him to onc
e again feel the crunch of stones beneath his soles.

  The iron rail with its bright surface felt substantial enough to his tentative kick. Damn if the track wasn’t humming to him like the purr of a backstreet cat looking for scraps. Swallowing, he stepped between the rails and stomped hard on a tie. The metal beneath his feet was real. Actually real. He glanced over his shoulder, expecting another oncoming light. Not this time. There was only the line wavering into a distant shimmer. No matter. Facing west in the direction Katy’s train had disappeared into, he leaned into a steady trot.

  “About damn time,” Vincent muttered.

  Two

  He was lost. Vincent considered it a sign he was on the right path, even if he had no idea where he was going. Katy had managed to vanish into nothingness, so being out in the middle of nowhere suited him just fine. The country on either side of the tracks grew progressively wilder than any Illinois landscape ought to be, the cloudy morning giving way to clear skies. Several hours of trudging led him into canyons of heavy oak whose boughs deepened shadows and squeezed daylight into a thin blue line overhead. Even the smells testified of nature holding an upper hand, a heavy scent of old leaves and musty bark drifting across crisp air. No roads. Not even a glimpse of one through the dense foliage. There were only the humming rails stretching ahead of him He might as well be walking through a green tunnel.

  Until now he hadn’t seen any people either, and these two sitting at a makeshift camp made him wish he hadn’t. Rat Hair and Blondie. A tangle of blackberry bushes provided the only barrier separating him from the two thugs who glared at him from a cardboard lean-to. How in the hell had they even found this track, let alone gotten ahead of him? Were they looking for payback? Sure seemed like it.

  Rat Hair stood, rubbing his jaw beneath a pair of eyes promising more murder. Undaunted, he grinned back, hoping the punk enjoyed the fruits of their last encounter enough to not start another fight. No great believer in coincidences, Vincent kept walking, stuffing his fear down deep where those creeps wouldn’t be encouraged by its smell. So far, so good. He hoped they were too busy licking their wounds to bother him. Just the same, he didn’t dare look back until he was well away from the pair. Nobody appeared to be following, his footsteps marked only by an endless corridor of trees.

  Vincent increased his pace down the ties, not liking how the pieces in this puzzle were coming together. A growling stomach brought to mind the breakfast he’d missed hours ago. What would Mom be thinking about now? His bike still in the driveway, but him gone. Would she venture out in the field, calling his name over and over like she had Katy’s? Dad wouldn’t be there to drag her back this time. No, she’d probably be bitching about wasting a couple of fresh eggs. He smiled, grateful for humor enough to sprinkle over a sour situation. He still had an apple in his pocket. He stuck his hand into his duster, and then paused with his fingers curled around the fruit. Best wait. The way things were going, his apple might need to be lunch and dinner too. Okay, so he hadn’t thought this out. Nothing new there.

  He studied the tracks ahead of him. The forest seemed to go on forever, replete with birdcalls and buzzing insects. The last couple of hours were hardly enough time for all of Indiana to wood itself over. Yet, there was one thing ahead he hadn’t seen before. Hope. Hope Katy didn’t end up dragged to her death beneath a phantom steam engine. A chance, admittedly slim, for a seven-year old girl to make it this far along these tracks. Ten years. What did blood look like after ten years and repeated rains? Would there even be bones by now? He saw nothing to appease the morbid ghosts haunting his guilt. The ballast rock under his boots remained an oddly pristine mix of granite and quartz with a dash of limestone chips. Everything he needed to see lay ahead of him. Vincent kept repeating the thought to himself while plunging forward, his day transforming into a late afternoon.

  He came to a hesitant halt, feeling like he just turned a corner into the bad side of town. The dark spaces between trees and bushes took on an unsettling menace, sunlight diminishing as if shrinking away from a midday eclipse. Something ugly was coming with the chill of a woman’s scream. He dipped his hand into the duster’s left pocket and slipped on the brass knuckles, his pounding heart sensing a horror his eyes couldn’t fathom. Even the crows had fallen silent.

  A shadow erupted from the trees with the shriek of a soul on its way to hell. Backing away, he nearly tripped on a tie while bracing for the attack. What charged him was the shadow. He glimpsed talons within the black swirl. His assailant closed fast, the face becoming clear a moment before the thing was on him. Rat Hair. That brief recognition ignited his fury. He plowed his brass knuckles into its jaw with the desperation of one facing a nightmare in the flesh. The impact felt real enough. So did the rake of claws across Vincent’s arms as the dissipating tornado spun away to collapse on the rails in a more human form.

  Clenching back a cry of pain, he wobbled around to face a second roaring darkness. Slammed to the roadbed, he vaguely recognized Blondie amidst the claws and fangs. Some kind of fog erupted from the thug, enveloping Vincent within an awful black cloud. Teeth emerged, snapping hungrily for his throat. Blondie drove home his attack, jaws snapping inches away from Vincent’s jugular. Jolting agony from flaying talons sent him to the edge of oblivion.

  A sharp crack and the creature abruptly jerked back in a lifeless sprawl.

  Through pain-watered eyes he saw a twist of a girl about his age emerge from the tree line across the tracks. She looked wilder than the scenery, her shoulder-length hair draping narrow cheeks and a button nose in a spider’s weave of black lace. At least she was human, and not bad looking in a cute-meets-feral sort of way. A green pinstriped vest and cream shirt over dusty beige denims made it look like she couldn’t decide between business attire and vagabond. Her accessories were of more immediate concern—not so much the leather bandolier as the rifle she held against a slight shoulder.

  He flinched when she fired a round into Rat Hair’s prone body. Blondie’s corpse twitched with a second shot, the girl’s tight-lipped expression remaining constant in its indifference. A pair of cold brown eyes turned his way. He stiffened.

  Brown calf-high boots crunched across the ballast rock. The stranger set aside her weapon, her thin face frowning in obvious disappointment. “Did Cracker Jack come with you?” The tone in her surprisingly wispy voice suggested she expected bad news.

  “Who?” Vincent managed. He winced as she helped him to a sitting position.

  “Cracker Jack. Old hobo wearing a three-piece suit. Runs around with a cane. He went down this line looking for his kid.”

  There was his old friend coincidence again. He inclined his head toward his duster, his arms sending back shards of pain every time he tried moving them. “Coin in the left pocket. That his?”

  She drew out the hobo nickel, and then swore softly, her head bent. “They kill him?”

  “Yeah. Who was he?”

  He didn’t like the intense way she studied his face. “You took this off him?”

  “He gave it to me,” he hastily clarified, not wanting to be the next recipient of a bullet. He let his brass knuckles drop to the ground beside him, not needing to give her encouragement. “I chased those two off and…” He stared at the bodies. They looked normal now, right down to Blondie’s crappy jacket. “What the hell were they?”

  “Yegg, obviously.”

  “Yegg?”

  “Aren’t you the First of May,” she remarked. She inspected his scored arms, her smirk dissolving. “So, what’s your name?”

  Vincent’s reply caught on her hesitation ahead of the question. “What’s it matter to you?”

  The same scary impassiveness he had seen in her face now iced the girl’s tongue. “Your name.”

  “Vincent. Vincent Maloney.”

  She fingered the coin while letting out a slow breath, color returning to her voice. “So he did find you.”

  “What’s your name?” he demanded, beginning to see an answer to a que
stion he didn’t want to ask.

  “Samantha.” She hurriedly pushed the coin back into his pocket. “Your arms are a mess. I’m going to have to cut those sleeves of yours for bandages. I’ve made camp a little further down the tracks. There’s some stuff there you’ll need.”

  “Who was he? The hobo…this Jack?”

  A shadow crossed her face. Her eyes searched his, as if she either didn’t believe him or simply found too few words for a response. “You really don’t know? Vincent, he was your father. I was trying to get ahead of those two and warn him. I really am sorry.”

  He was too stunned to react when she pulled a wicked little knife from a sheath clipped to her bandolier and started cutting at his duster’s shredded arms. This was bullshit. Way too much bullshit. “You don’t know a damn thing about my father.”

  She gingerly cut the leather around his wounds, a sardonic crook on her lips suggesting he picked a bad time to be so demanding. “Katy told me. That name ring any bells?”

  “All of them,” he admitted, one revelation pile driving into another. “Where is she?”

  “That’s a story for when you’re not bleeding so much.”

  “Where is she?”

  Samantha finished cutting away his left sleeve, exposing several bloody gashes along his forearm. “She’s up in the Barony of Erie. Those two who killed your father were Erie Railroad assassins meant to stop your father from breaking the line between Cleveland and Detroit.” Samantha wrapped the worst wound and tightened the strap enough to stop more rivulets from joining a growing spatter on the rocks beside him.

  She paused to regard him with a droll expression. “Any of this making sense?”

  “No,” he managed to blurt through the sting of her ministrations.

  “Didn’t think so. Hold still while I tend your other arm. To answer another question, I know Katy because I grew up with her. We’re friends, which is why I’m out here at all. That’s another story. Now shut up before I leave you with those other two.”