Tracks

by K. M. Tolan

  Something inside him sagged into a spent heap. Katy should have let him go aboard. Anything was better than the emptiness pooling inside him. He gingerly felt his forehead. Wincing, he withdrew fingers stick with blood. Pain was one thing he could believe in—the one assurance amid the lies spun around him by King Willy, Samantha, and even Freedom. Of course, they knew Katy was dead, but that didn’t stop any of them from waving her in front of him like a God damned carrot.

  He found his feet with effort and braced himself against a tree to stop the spinning. “I’m done!” he shouted, his head pounding with each word. “Everyone’s fucking dead.” And I might as well be.

  He saw little sense in continuing, and none in going home. Home. Now talk about a joke. Wanted for killing his own father. Any protest of innocence would evaporate with the first phone call to his mother. No, his only choice was to disappear like Dad had, and he was in the right place to do it. Best to walk away.

  He put his back to the tracks and followed a small creek nosing its way through thick brush. There was no deep ravine, only the treacherous footing provided by a mushy bank. Timepiece will chug his way to Lima just fine without me.

  Timepiece. Swearing, Vincent turned on his heels. What in hell was he thinking? For all he knew, the conductor lay bleeding among those wrecked cars. Letting Dad die was bad enough without repeating the same sin. Timepiece had to be the only one in this God-forsaken fantasyland who kept to the truth.

  Vincent picked up the pace, staggering and splashing his way back up the creek to the wreck site. Only to find nothing there. No crumpled engine. No tracks.

  Fists clenched, he stomped a foot down on where he figured the roadbed ought to be. “Son of a bitch.”

  “You left the tracks, silly.”

  He spun around, nearly falling as the world tilted and swayed in booming waves of pain. The little girl’s voice. “Katy?”

  A curl of mist flowed toward him from the stream, blooming outward to form the little child from his vision. “I heard you back there,” she explained in a wisp’s voice. “We’re still alive. That has to count for something.”

  He spread his arms, feeling like part of a bad horror movie. “We? Katy, I can see right through you.”

  Her voice deepened with an adult resignation. “You’ve been doing that from the start, Vin.” The spirit sighed, her small shoulders slumping. The child’s body expanded, filling out into elfin curves with an impish face and top hat.

  “Freedom,” he spat. “Another of your damn games? You think this is funny?”

  “Dad remembers me best when I was still a little girl. That’s why he listened and kept you from opening the door. Neither of you belonged there.”

  Vincent stared at her, seeing traces of his sister in Freedom’s cheeks and eyes. “I wasn’t imagining things.”

  “You were about to take the Westbound,” Freedom affirmed. “You didn’t give me much choice, brother. You weren’t supposed to know who I was, because I knew what would happen when you found out. You’d turn your back on everything happening here and take me home.”

  “Take what home? As far as I know, you’re still a ghost. Look at you. If you didn’t die, then what happened?”

  She shrugged. “Same thing happening to every gandy dancer’s daughter when she finds her first train. She rides it. Girls become steam children. Boys end up like their fathers. That’s the way things work.”

  “Work? Guess who gets the blame for killing you. That’s how it works, Katy.”

  “I was the one left alone and enslaved. You called those tracks, stupid, even if you didn’t realize it. That’s what gandy dancers do. If it wasn’t for Samantha finding me, I would be as dead as you thought I was. Wasted to nothing in Erie’s slave boilers. Samantha heard me crying and stole the bottle I was in. Snuck me into the house’s heating system. She wasn’t exactly lying when she claimed to be my sister. We were, for a while.”

  Gray vapors drew around him in serpentine coils, Freedom’s words equally sibilant. “Don’t worry, Vin, there’s blame enough for everyone these days, myself included. That’s how it works. You saw Dad. He’s still on the Westbound. He’s not at peace. Something’s keeping him there, and I bet we both can figure out why.”

  He thought his answer an easy guess. “They killed him before he cut the tracks heading out to Detroit?”

  “No, silly. I didn’t go home with him.”

  “He should’ve told Mom what was going to happen when you saw that train, damn it.” Vincent batted at the encircling fog. “You mind?”

  She reformed in front of him, her top hat discarded for a corona of wispy curls. “He tried explaining. Dad told me Mom threw him out the moment he started talking about steam children, so he gave up and came back to get me. He swore he could make me human again with a piece of the Rock Candy Mountain. I refused. I prefer who I am, Vin. I don’t want to go back. Now Dad’s dead. I’m why he’s still on that train. I don’t want you joining him for the same reason.”

  “So you’ll come back? Come back human?”

  Her nod was anything but enthusiastic. “Yes, but it won’t be so simple. Gandy dancers can lay track from anywhere, even from the Rock Candy Mountain. You’ll have to catch the Westbound again, preferably without nearly killing yourself. If Dad figured it out, you can too. Samantha is willing to take you to another gandy dancer who might help, but in return, she’ll want you to finish what Dad started. Stop her father before he enslaves us all.”

  “Do I look like one of Willy’s knights to you?”

  She shook her head, her words softly sinking into his soul. “Actually, Vin, you look a lot like Dad.”

  Remnants of the little girl he remembered still echoed in her misty eyes. Katy always looked up to Dad. So had he, and now their father needed them both. An eternity stuck aboard any train would be a hell in itself after a while. Dad tried to do right and deserved better.

  “Okay, Katy, we’ll do things your way.”

  “I promise, if you complete the last thing Dad tried to do, I’ll grant the first thing he wanted and come home. If neither of these things gives him peace, I don’t know what will.”

  “Fair enough,” he agreed.

  A tentative smile brought back some of the steam child’s whimsy. “They call me Freedom, now. I’d rather you did too.”

  “Freedom, then. From what I’ve heard, you earned your moniker. I’ll fix this for Dad, and then you’ll fix things for Mom. Deal?”

  She extended a vaporous hand, her fingers cool to the touch. “Deal.”

  He glanced around. “Assuming we can find those tracks again.”

  “You left them, remember? Look up.”

  Wincing from a sore neck, he did and immediately wished he hadn’t. There was a reason the sky was so bright. There was more than one moon up there.

  “Where the hell is this place?”

  Freedom swirled over him. “Haven’t you ever ridden on a train and felt as if the world rushing by outside belonged to someone else? It’s something like that.”

  Dread rose in his throat. “So what? We wait another ten years until those tracks show up again?”

  “You’re such a baby, sometimes,” Freedom breezed. “Just start walking. The track to Lima isn’t temporary like the one you made. You simply have to find it again. With me at your side, it will be easy, see?”

  His toe caught on a wooden tie. He nearly fell face-first into the ballast.

  “And mind you don’t trip over yourself,” Freedom added with a giggle. “I’ll go get Timepiece. He’s been looking for you.”

  Vincent straightened, heartened by the news. Timepiece survived the wreck in one piece. He looked to his left. Yes, there were the stricken steamer’s remains where they should be, vapors still curling up into the night sky from the dead locomotive’s ruptured boiler. Behind him came urgent chugs from the steam cart’s engine.

  “Hello!” Timepiece’s voice bawled out.

  “Up ahead,” Vincent returned, w
ishing his head wouldn’t pound with each shouted word.

  Teapot rolled into view along the curve, the conductor waving a railroad lamp he must have taken from the train. “You okay, Brass?”

  “Head took a bang. Train left the tracks. Wouldn’t slow down. The locomotive jumped just ahead of the bridge.”

  “Ain’t no bridge in these parts.” Timepiece set the cart’s brake, letting the vehicle come to a squealing halt before jumping off. “Figured we had a runaway and decoupled before the bend.” He inspected Vincent’s wound. “Got some bandages in the box along with the makings of a good mulligan stew. We’ll haul the cart off the tracks and inspect the rails before turning in. One train coming to grief is bad enough without adding to it.”

  Vincent helped him pull Teapot safely away from the roadbed, no small chore due to the engine’s added weight. He sagged against the cart while Timepiece pulled a roll of wrappings from the box behind the bench.

  Timepiece uncorked a small flask. “This is hobo medicine. It’s going to sting.”

  It did. “Damn, what is that stuff? Pure alcohol?”

  Timepiece raised the brown bottle nearer to the railroad lamp he propped up on the bench seat. “Says it cures kidney stones and bladder problems too. Good stuff.” He applied the wrap. “I’ll scout ahead and see if we’ve bent rails to worry about.”

  “There is a bridge up there too. I’ll show you.”

  “You must’ve hit your head right good, kid, but okay. Let’s go find this bridge of yours.”

  Lantern high, they proceeded down the roadbed’s curve. Timepiece nodded toward the fallen locomotive after studying the unblemished tracks. “Engine left cleanly. It would’ve been pleased to know that.”

  Vincent stared into the darkness, following the rails as they shot through a non-descript patch of woods. “I saw a bridge. The thing was big and had these stone columns.”

  Timepiece eyed him. “White stone arches by any chance?”

  Vincent nodded.

  “Bostian Bridge,” Timepiece grunted. “Saw a train pull ’round? Old time passenger hauler?”

  “With a conductor flagging it down.”

  Timepiece crossed himself. “Damn, I guess you did hit your head. You saw the fast mail out of Salisbury up in Carolina. Took twenty people with it over that bridge many a year back and has been carrying souls ever since. Be grateful Number 9 didn’t board another passenger.”

  “The Westbound. Yeah, I got the idea quick enough.”

  Freedom appeared with a steamy sigh. “His father still rides her. He won’t get off, or can’t. Not until Brass finishes what he set out to do here.”

  “What everyone else set me out to do here,” Vincent corrected, folding his arms. “By the way, Timepiece, meet my sister. I suppose nobody let you in on her little secret?”

  “She’s your sister?”

  “Of course I’m his sister,” Freedom huffed.

  “Should’ve guessed,” the conductor grumbled. “Sorry, Brass. Now I understand why ol’ Willy made me swear not to talk about where riders come from. The king figured you to be a smart fellah and put two-and-two together.” Timepiece folded his arms. “So now what? We still need to head up to Lima?”

  Vincent nodded. “I have to finish what Dad started and take Freedom home. Doing those things should get Dad off the Westbound. That’s the deal.”

  Timepiece watched Freedom dissipate in a wordless puff. “She don’t seem too excited about it.”

  “Trust me, she’s not the only one,” Vincent confided.

  He would have to cheat death again for a piece of rock from a mountain only heard about in a dying hobo’s whispers. The only certainty was that he was fated to ride the Westbound before his time.

  Eight

  Vincent had his first look at Lima, Ohio the next morning, having chased away the last of his headache with a bowl of mulligan stew. The steamer huffed its way over a slight rise, breaking out of wooded pastureland above a shallow valley.

  Wrapping his leather duster tight against a brisk wind, he gestured toward a spread of low buildings to the north. “That where we’re going?”

  Timepiece shook his head. “That’s just the city. We get around this curve and you’ll see the Locomotive Works.”

  “And feel it,” a spinning whirl of steam exclaimed above the potboiler.

  Vincent eyed his sister atop her favorite perch. “Any idea where we might find this hidden diesel shop Samantha’s supposed to be at?”

  Freedom grinned. “Nope, but I can call you brother now.”

  “You could’ve started that way and spared me a few problems.”

  She switched subjects instead. “You’ve never seen the birth of an engine? This is going to be so much fun!”

  “Her ladyship’s back to her flighty self again,” Timepiece said, relief evident in his observation.

  In other words, keep things light. Freedom spent the sleepless remainder of last night sulking about her end of their bargain. He was hardly thrilled about riding the Westbound either, and envied her ability to change moods at the drop of a giggle. He offered his sister a smile and kept his attention on the road ahead. Several more tracks angled in to join his line in a growing confluence of steel.

  Timepiece rose from the bench. “There we are, Brass. Straight ahead.”

  A triangle of red brick factories and smoke stacks branded the Ohio countryside with the stamp of unrestrained industry. Rail lines formed thick arteries leading into the heart of the Locomotive Works. Bridges arched across silver rivers with power lines lacing rows of hangar-sized buildings alongside the tracks.

  Vincent pointed out a marble edifice rising from the center of the Works like a fairytale centerpiece. Fifteen marbled stories stair-stepped toward a peaked roof. Gold shingles threw back the sun in waves of reflected fire. “What’s this place?”

  “House Baldwin,” Timepiece returned. “They run the Works. Their captain serves the baronies of Baltimore and Ohio, Southern Pacific, and even the mighty Santa Fe. You won’t find any Taylorists here. Or diesels.”

  “Save for this renegade shop Samantha’s at,” Vincent reminded. “Who is that union guy Boss Shannon wants us to meet?”

  Freedom jetted beside him. “Robby Fergusson. I’ll go find him.”

  “Not yet. I don’t want to push this steam cart into the yards, sis.”

  “Hmph. Give me a minute and you’ll have all the pressure you need to coast in.” She vanished inside the boiler.

  “I don’t want to just coast in,” he complained to thin air.

  The conductor rubbed his grizzled chin. “We’re going to need a little discretion in order not to spook the baron if he’s in the area. I’ll head over to my Order and get us some rooms. You help Freedom find this union steward we’re after.”

  Vincent stared at him. “Order? You some kind of knight, too?”

  “Order of Railway Conductors,” Timepiece clarified with a derisive snort. “I’m a rail man, remember?”

  Waving a dismissive hand, Vincent glanced at pressure gages creeping nearer to the red line. He raised his voice. “Hey, try not to blow us up before we get there, okay?”

  Timepiece rolled his eyes. “Don’t be telling a rider her business.”

  The remark barely cleared the conductor’s lips before a spat of hot steam blew back Vincent’s hair.

  Vincent grinned. “My sister hasn’t changed a bit. Still the obnoxious little…”

  Freedom erupted from the glass chamber’s vent, her eyes dancing with mischief. “Little what?”

  “Lady,” he finished with a laugh. “You know, when this is over, you and I need to sit and have a long talk. We’ve lots of catching up to do.”

  “Steam children don’t sit. Oh, and by the way, there’s a train coming.” She flew back up to the boiler, her hair racing out behind her in a billowing stream.

  Vincent peered at the behemoth thundering toward them, his heart racing until he realized the locomotive was on an adjacent tr
ack.

  “She’s a Berkshire,” Timepiece supplied. “Orange-and-red lines of the Southern Pacific barony.”

  The roadbed’s ballast danced in the machine’s presence, a pounding vibration rising through Vincent’s feet at the mighty engine’s approach. Heavy pistons drove the locomotive’s main rods in a thunder of motion. The boiler was longer than most people’s houses and the coal tender nearly equal in size. He couldn’t see the end of the boxcars behind the giant.

  Freedom greeted the Berkshire’s passing with a spirited toot from their comically small potboiler. A roaring blast of air horns answered her salute. The whistle echoed along the track, to return ten-fold by a chorus of horns from within the approaching yard.

  “So much for a discreet arrival,” Vincent grumbled with a sour look at the grinning steam child.

  Freedom returned a laugh and doffed her top hat as more train whistles took up the call of the passing freight.

  “Your sister is known in these parts,” Timepiece said. “She’s probably freed half the riders running around this place.”

  Freedom vaulted skyward. “I’ll see to our welcome.”

  Her contrail dove through the crowded yard, weaving among cars and engines with the exuberance of a playful otter. More wisps joined her from passing locomotives. Vincent caught glimpses of other lively feminine shapes in the twists and vortexes dancing overhead.

  The steam cart lurched through a series of switches, unseen hands guiding them toward rail sidings spreading deep into the factory narrows. They passed beneath a bridge’s iron trusses. Vincent eased back on the throttle, Teapot rolling deep within a labyrinth of brick and smudged glass. Buildings rose around them, each monument to industry crowned with tall stacks and bulwarked by loading docks. He slowed the cart further on arrival at a concrete pier where a cluster of dungaree-clad workers waited among pallets of spooled steel ribbon.

  “Best secure your nickel,” Timepiece advised as Vincent applied the brakes.

  Nodding, Vincent fished the coin from its drawer beneath the cart’s glass chamber and returned it to the zippered pouch stitched into his coat’s inner lining.