by K. M. Tolan
Not knowing what to expect, Vincent brought the cart to a screeching halt, saving enough forward motion to make the sidetrack after Timepiece threw the switch. Then he was off and running down the roadbed after the conductor. A boxcar loomed out of the darkness.
Timepiece got there ahead of him. The conductor cussed up a storm while searching in the ballast. “Damn those sons-of-bitches!”
“What?” Vincent asked, skidding to a stop.
“You see a caboose on this thing?” Timepiece pulled up a sizeable chunk of granite and bashed it down on what appeared to be a yellow breadbox bolted next to the freight car’s coupling. “Train’s been shackled. Bastards tore off its caboose so they could turn the engine into little more than a zombie.” He swung the rock repeatedly against the device until it crumpled in a cascade of sparks and foul vapors. “Damn them to hell.”
A whoosh of gray coalesced into Freedom’s panic-stricken face. “He’s dying. We’ve got to get him to Lima. Now.”
“Who?” Vincent demanded. “What?”
“Stop asking and start helping,” she fumed. “Timepiece, hook the cart up in case I need a push. Brass, follow me. The firebox hasn’t gone cold. We can still get him moving.”
Vincent ran along a line of boxcars with thrown-open doors. He knew the smell of yegg enough to recognize the noisome cargo this train had held. Most likely, this was how the baron got down to Blue Island, but obviously, the return trip hadn’t gone as planned. Torn brush and stamped-down weeds pointed to a path eastward toward Lima. A passenger car caught the last of sunset’s glow along its grooved steel sides. “Wait a second.”
He ran through an opened door, catching a whiff of old tobacco and brandy. The upholstered seats along the isles sat empty, even though a built-in bar still sported an array of fancy bottles and glasses lining a beryl counter. Green curtains sported the yellow “E” for the Erie Railroad. “Samantha?”
Nothing.
Knowing luck didn’t owe him favors, Vincent left the car and made his way alongside a tender decorated in lustrous green paint. Ahead, a slight curl of steam drifted above the locomotive’s squat stack, as if someone was having a smoke. Otherwise, the engine looked dead.
“See any crew?” he shouted, coming up on the engine’s ladder.
“Long gone,” Freedom returned, her apparition emerging from the cabin. There was no trace of a child in her commanding voice. “We have to get him moving or he’ll die here.”
Timepiece ran up behind Vincent, his words interspersed with deep breaths. “Figure the baron would lose control of him. That happens when you cut loose a train’s soul.”
Vincent hauled himself up the ladder’s steel rungs. “Why would someone do that?”
Timepiece followed him. “Think a locomotive would pull yegg if it had a choice?”
First souls, and now they can make choices? Mindful not to bang a knee against unforgiving iron, Vincent entered an empty cabin much like the cars behind them. The only sign of life was a faint red flicker from behind the boiler’s firebox. Expecting a spartan interior covered in sooty grime, he was surprised to discover walls as plush as any passenger car. The engineer and fireman’s seats were robust versions of executive chairs, and the myriad gages looked straight out of a lead crystal factory. Not a sign of soot smudged the cabin’s black-and-green tones.
Even the pipes caught his reflection in a high polish. “Somebody’s toy,” he guessed.
“Hardly,” Timepiece replied upon entering. “This is a Baldwin Consolidation out of Maryland. Meant only for short runs. Guess the baron’s running short on engines if he has to bring something like this so far from home.” He tapped at meters and dials along the top of the boiler; each instrument looking like it belonged in a maritime museum. “She’s got some fuel left. Atomizer looks set right.” He spun open a red valve and grunted at the bubbling water rising in a glass vial. “Got everything but pressure. Just doesn’t want to run anymore.”
Vincent shook his head. “Run? This thing looks more like a showpiece.”
Timepiece waved a dismissive hand at the remark. “Comes with being made by people who give a damn, not some Taylorist assembly line drone. This is how it’s supposed to be, Brass. This is what’s been taken from where you came from.” Timepiece raised his voice. “Freedom, you out there? Can you get inside this thing and raise some steam?”
His answer was a quivering rumble, as if the engine shuddered awake from a nightmare. Gauges came to life, the orange glow inside the firebox’s observation window brightening.
“Just hold on, big fellah. Been awhile since I had to do this.” Timepiece jammed a large red lever closed and pushed a copper valve handle sideways.
Vincent looked back toward the main line. “What about the other train you said was coming up this evening? Can we get ahead of it?”
Timepiece consulted his watch, and nodded. “Got a couple hours, assuming we can keep a head of steam in this rattler.”
They both gave a start when the steam whistle erupted in a horrified shriek. The engine lurched, nearly throwing them off their feet.
Freedom arrived on a boiling cloud of steam vented from the cylinders. She drew herself up on foggy hands along the windowsill next to Vincent. Torment etched itself into the steam child’s eyes. “He was hijacked in Erie’s yards in order to carry the yegg attacking Blue Island. The baron’s men ran off the crew and replaced the caboose with that…obscenity. The locomotive is forgetting both himself and the lives of those who built or rode him. He might get a few memories back if we can get him to Lima. I’m sure they’ll make him another caboose.”
“Just like that?” Timepiece broke in with an unconvinced frown. “You really think it’s easy to start over again?”
Her moan matched the hopelessness in the steamer’s whistle. “We have to try.”
Timepiece nodded. “Cart’s hooked up. Maybe it can stand in as a poor man’s caboose long enough to keep this rattler together.”
“You’ll need to stay with Teapot,” Freedom added. “You’re the anchor, Timepiece.”
“Don’t have to tell a conductor his job. Can you help Vincent get this thing rolling down the tracks?”
Vincent glanced at the sparkling array of instruments, and then back at the two. “You’ve gotta be kidding.”
“We’re just one big joke, today,” Timepiece spat, turning to slide down the cabin’s ladder. His feet made quick crunching noises in the roadbed, the man hurrying to the cart beneath a twilight sky.
Freedom extended a steamy finger toward a black rod affixed to a gear on the right side of the cabin. The lever was as long as Vincent’s leg. “We’ll start with that. It clears water from the cylinders during stops.”
“There’s always minding our own business and getting down the road,” Vincent ventured.
“Would you leave your sister?” Freedom shot back with a rebuking breath of hot steam. “This isn’t the world you came from, Brass. Come on, you can do this.”
Squeezing the release handle, Vincent pulled back on the lever, eliciting a boil of steam from each side of the engine. “Damn right this ain’t my world.”
Vincent spent the next half hour trying to keep his heart in his chest. He pulled levers, open and shut valves, and tried not to end up knocked senseless when the cabin bucked and kicked. Tortured sounds erupted unbidden from the locomotive’s whistle. Freedom swirled around him, vanished, returned, and otherwise seemed no less in control than he was. One thing became clear, by from both the spasmodic jerking of controls and ragged chuffs. The engine was determined not to budge. Vincent was equally set on showing Freedom he wasn’t about to walk away after her last jab about his sister, and bore down on a reluctant throttle while the steam child kept pressure running through the pipes. Perhaps it was brute force, or the locomotive simply surrendering out of exhaustion, but finally the driver wheels began rolling.
Clamping down on the throttle bar, Vincent allowed the conductor time to run ahead and throw th
e necessary switch to get them back on the main line. Only when Timepiece jumped back on board the steam cart did Vincent give the locomotive some headway. The rumble of empty freight behind him was pure music. He sagged back on a thick leather chair and watched the dark landscape rush by at speeds the little cart could only hope to match. A bright yellow light shone down the tracks toward Lima, Ohio where he hopefully would recover Samantha and take a step closer to Katy.
“Not bad.” Freedom’s voice was soft and wispy within the surrounding steam. “You make a fine engineer, Brass.”
Vincent centered his eyes on a wisp of steam clinging to the window. “So what would’ve happened if the locomotive stayed put?”
“The same thing that happens when someone gives up on life,” she returned. “Imagine knowing you had friends, loved ones, but now you can’t remember them. The secret yearnings, the warmth of hands putting you together and keeping you running. The small amusements and shared sorrows. You know they were there, but now they’re not. How hollow would you become?”
“Trust me, I can imagine it,” he replied with disgust. “How about having no loved ones anymore? Gone, or turned against you. Try that on for size and feel how it fits.”
“I can see it plainly enough considering how proudly you wear it,” she countered with an irate puff. “What about Timepiece? What do you think he saw here? He can’t find his train, and he lost his crew. If one runaway can be saved, then maybe there’s a chance for Timepiece’s engine too.”
“That’s the only reason he came along—to get his train back.”
The steam ball formed into a scornful miniature of Freedom’s face. “You came for your sister. Why question Timepiece’s motives when your own heart is so equally self-centered? What if Katy doesn’t want to come back? What then, Brass?”
“She can explain it to her mother after the fact,” he grated.
“Why? So you’ll be the one forgiven? Is this just for you?”
Vincent fought the urge to kick at the obstinate apparition. “Damn it, that’s enough. Like you said, we’ve got our reasons.”
“Your’s stinks.”
Red-faced, he pushed himself from his seat. “Look, what’s wrong with you? What’ve I ever done to keep you digging at me?”
“You made me have to sit up nights listening to Katy cry because you never came for her, never protected her when she needed you.”
“Jesus, I was twelve, and the damn tracks disappeared. Hey, how about you run off and tell her I’m here now, okay? I don’t need to hear your crap anymore. This engine can get us into Lima without you.”
“And you’ll never see Katy without me, stupid.”
She vanished with a zephyr’s brevity, leaving him to dwell on the heated doubts she left behind. What if Katy refused to come home? Being a baron’s daughter, adopted or not, had to be a fine life. Swearing softly, Vincent poked his head out of the window, letting the cool wind clear his anger. In truth, he needed this cloud puff more than she needed him. Someone would eventually have to tell him how to stop this thing.
The idea of bringing tons of iron to a gradual stop moved to the forefront of his mind when minor adjustments on the throttle revealed a slight problem. The lever only moved in one direction—the faster one. He tried a few determined jerks in the opposite direction to no avail. Brakes would be useless at this speed. He peered ahead of the engine’s lamp and blanched. Nothing like a sharp right curve to sweeten the shit pot he was about to step in.
Throwing finesse aside, he seized the red handle, braced a foot on the seat, and heaved with all his might. The throttle bucked in his hand, painfully bashing his knuckles against the side of the boiler before the lever slammed full open of its own accord.
Pride was the next thing tossed out the door. “Freedom, get him to stop!”
A gray fog filled the room, and this time it wasn’t the whistle shrieking at him. “I can’t! He’s soulless and knows it. I thought I could control him, but I can’t.”
“Get back to Timepiece and tell him to decouple. We’re not going to make the curve.” He kicked at the brake and found it, too, wouldn’t budge. “Hurry.”
The steamer’s whistle blasted out in one long throat-ripping scream. Even with the throttle wide open, the locomotive still accelerated.
Vincent kicked levers and closed valves to no avail. Pipes burst with volcanic fury. His own cry joined the cacophony of banging cars and screeching metal as the deck tilted. Protecting his head as best he could, he took a running leap out of the cabin, the wind nearly tearing his jacket from him.
He had time for a moment’s prayer, but couldn’t think of anything to say other than “Sorry”.
Seven
The crumpled engine lay on its side, gasping out its last steamy tangles. Vincent picked his way among the strewn confusion of wood and debris, the boxcars looking more like the aftermath of some schooner driven up on jagged rocks. The air smelled of oil and torn earth. He searched through the miasma for signs of the steam cart and Timepiece. Surely, the conductor had the sense to decouple ahead of the curve. He brushed his hand across the still-spinning wheel of a freight car’s twisted chassis, uncertain whether he was truly walking or merely dreaming about it. And where had this bridge come from?
Great stone arches spanned a ravine whose depth remained obscured by low mists and deep shadows. Bright moonlight allowed him to make out stains wrought by time and the passage of many trains, the gray streaks outlined against bleached white stone.
A blob of light, no larger than a small lantern, materialized along the bend. The illumination bobbed as if carried, though he couldn’t discern footsteps crunching along the roadbed’s ballast. A figure he first mistook for Timepiece emerged from the fog, the lamp’s owner too lean and bereft of glasses to be the man. Still, the newcomer wore a conductor’s cap and held a gold watch in his free hand.
Vincent pointed back toward the wreckage. “We, uh, jumped the track. You see a small steam cart hereabouts?”
The stranger said nothing. Instead, he set the railroad lantern down and glanced at his watch. When he did talk, the conductor’s voice displayed little concern for the mayhem around them.
“Think we’re all here.” He spoke with an unhurried drawl, suggesting a home well south of Ohio. The conductor’s watch snapped shut with a crisp finality. Retrieving the lamp, he swung the light in lazy arcs.
A long mournful whistle rebounded off the bridge columns in haunting echoes. The measured ring of an engine’s bell followed, accompanied by the telltale screech and chuff of a slowing locomotive. The arriving steamer looked to be a museum piece, right down to the big brass lamp bathing the track ahead in a pale yellow wash. Even the dimly lit passenger cars creaking behind the coal tender harkened to another century.
Vincent paid little mind to the vague faces staring out through the clouded glass as the locomotive ground to a wheezing halt. He just wanted to see the steam cart chugging up behind the train’s red caboose. Did Timepiece get out of the way? He turned to question the conductor once more when his eyes caught on one particular face pressed against the glass of a window seat. Someone whose appearance sent ice shooting down Vincent’s spine to freeze his feet into place.
The brief stubble around the passenger’s jaws no longer bore the matted results of a brutal beating. His slow smile was one Vincent knew from better times, even if the lips appeared weighted down by regret. Here was a man familiar with rail yards and their tales, and often shared them with his two children in the late hours of the evening despite his wife’s disapproval.
Vincent struggled to force something out of his drying throat. Words he should have said in that alley while there was still time. “D…Dad?”
The figure rose, wrapping a familiar brown leather duster about his workingman’s frame while heading toward the car’s rear door.
The conductor walked past Vincent and pulled down a stepladder. “Think this one’s yours, sir.”
A young girl’s shri
ek interrupted Vincent’s turn toward the door. “Dad, no! Don’t let him in. Vincent’s not ready, and you shouldn’t even be here. “
Something akin to a scalding geyser nearly blasted Vincent off his feet, but not before he saw his father through the glass panels—bracing the door shut from the inside. Eyes half-closed, the elder Maloney shook his head.
Another harsh jet of steam drove Vincent back. A little girl emerged from the billowing cloud in simple clothes as gray as the vapors around her. Eyes wide, she struck his chest, the force of her blow tumbling him off the roadbed. “No. You can’t go.”
“That’s my father,” he gasped, picking himself up. Jesus, the train is pulling out.
“He’s not supposed to be here either,” the child sobbed, raising a cherub’s fist to strike him again. “Go back, Vin. Go back!”
His jaw sagged. “Katy? Is that you?”
Her bottom lip stuck out. “It’s how Dad remembers me. I couldn’t let him open that door. Something’s wrong. He should be on the mountain.”
She was strong for her size, the girl’s tiny arms propelling him into an opaque swath of mist. He lost sight of the train, but not of the chugging sounds as the locomotive labored forward with a final blast from its whistle.
He pulled away from her grip. “Katy, you shouldn’t be here either.”
~ * ~
Vincent’s head hurt worse than after a bad bar fight, and the ache in his back didn’t feel much better. Groaning, he managed to sit up and take in his surroundings. No ghost train, only the hissing remnants of the suicidal Baldwin off to his left. No matter. He’d seen the Westbound with his father inside, and… God, Katy was there too. Both dead. He came all this way, and for what? There was no denying what he experienced. His brain hadn’t been that rattled. Katy looked like she did on the day he lost her. She must have died immediately and been dragged beneath that cursed locomotive, leaving nothing behind but his damnation.