Paradox Bound: A Novel

by Peter Clines

  Harry took a few deep, panting breaths and turned to the open door behind her, a heavy sliding plate at the back of the engine. “Come along, Mr. Teague,” she said, leading him inside.

  The engine’s cab bordered on hot, even with the door open to the outside. The steel circle of the train’s boiler dominated the front of the small room. Hoses and pipes draped across it like thick strands of hair framing a face, each one dotted with a brightly painted lever or twist handle. Needles trembled on a double handful of brass gauges and dials that sat scattered across the boiler’s surface. Orange-yellow light flickered around an iron hatch at floor level.

  A tall slab of a man stood in the corner and leaned into a long lever arm that stretched across the cab. A shirt and vest pulled tight across the lean V of his body. The cuffs of his shirt sat folded above the elbows, revealing lean, powerful arms that flexed on the lever. He could’ve been a statue come to life, carved from a block of dark stone to represent work and industry.

  Despite the man’s large presence, his eyes met Eli’s on an even level when he turned. Creases surrounded his dark eyes, and his black hair and beard were cut close to his head. Just enough gray peppered his chin and scalp to give him character without making him look old.

  The top button of his collar hung open. Rather than a scarf or bow, the man wore a long twentieth-century necktie, the knot pulled loose and the end tucked into his vest. Small stars dotted the blue-black silk, along with an odd white shape that repeated across the tie. Three parallel lines and an oval, all threaded with finer details.

  “We’re away,” he boomed over the rumble of the engine, eyeing Eli but directing his words to Harry. “I heard bullets hitting my train, woman. I felt it.”

  “Don’t be melodramatic,” said Harry, pitching her own voice over the noise. “You’re making an awful first impression.”

  His face split into a broad smile. “Come here and say hello.” He scooped Harry into his arms, and she wrapped herself around his torso. “When are we now? How long’s it been?”

  “About seven years, for me,” she said, squeezing him harder. “Right after the funeral.”

  He patted her back with a large, scarred hand. “I’m so sorry,” he said. “I still miss him.”

  “So do I.”

  “And I’ll never forgive him for proposing to you before I could.”

  She pushed herself away and slapped his arm. “You’re still a daft fool.”

  “So every woman tells me.” He set his knuckles against his waist and turned his gaze on Eli. “And who’s this, then? Picking up strays now, Harry?”

  “In a manner of speaking,” she said. “John, this is my new partner, Mr. Eli Teague. Mr. Teague, may I present my dear friend, Mr. John Henry.”

  21

  John took Eli’s hand in his own. He had powerful fingers. Eli had never thought of fingers as muscular until the other man’s grip surrounded his hand.

  “John Henry,” echoed Eli, taking his hand back.

  The other man put his arm across his waist and gave a slight bow. “In the flesh.”

  “The John Henry?”

  “I would assume over the centuries there have been a few,” he said, “but I think I can safely say, yes, I am that John Henry.”

  Eli glanced at Harry and waited for her to laugh.

  John chuckled and turned back to the engine. He adjusted the overhead lever and reached out to twist one of the round handles half a turn to the left. The floor rattled beneath their feet, then settled back to a low vibration. “So, you led the faceless men right to the Bucephalus,” he said over his shoulder. “Sloppy, Harriet. Very sloppy.”

  “If they hadn’t been there,” she said, “I wouldn’t have called in the favor.”

  “If you hadn’t gotten sloppy,” said John, “they wouldn’t have tracked you there.”

  “I wasn’t sloppy.”

  He tapped a gauge and snorted.

  Harry scowled at him. “I wasn’t.”

  “Lord only knows how much damage they did to the exterior,” muttered John. “It’s a miracle we got away.”

  Eli looked around the train’s cab. His eyes focused on the piece of glass above the boiler. The top of the boiler showed in it, along with a few hundred feet of track in front of the engine, rolling toward them like a conveyor belt. It reminded him of the big television at the bar he’d visited with his friends on the night he’d seen Harry again. His gaze drifted to the side of the screen and he saw bolts, brackets, and the edge of another piece of mirrored glass.

  “So where’s that beautiful automobile of yours?” John finished adjusting the lever and turned back to Harry. “You haven’t lost her, have you?”

  “Never,” said Harry. “If you’ve got room in your storage car and can swing around, I was hoping we could bring her on board.”

  “ ‘Swing around’?” He turned to stare at her from beneath a furrowed brow. “Harriet, my dearest, do you know how much work it takes to turn a train around? Even one as magnificent as the Steel Bucephalus? As it is, it’s going to take me a week to hide her from them again”

  “You’re honoring your favor, aren’t you?”

  “Of course I am.” He straightened up and glared at her. “How dare you suggest otherwise!”

  “Then you need to turn around anyway,” Harry told him. “You’re heading west and you need to take us south to New Orleans.”

  “I’m doing no such thing.”

  “I called in my favor. You’re here, we’re on board, you’re taking us to New Orleans.”

  “I just saved you from the faceless men,” said John. “We’re even.”

  “I didn’t ask you to save us. I asked for passage. To and from. Rescuing us was just a fortunate benefit of your timely arrival.”

  John opened his mouth, then shook his head and sighed. His annoyance fell away, and a wry smile blossomed in its place. “You should’ve been a lawyer.”

  “Excuse me,” said Eli. “I don’t mean to sound rude but…well…”

  John shifted his attention. “Yes?”

  Eli carefully selected a few words. “Aren’t you…made up?”

  Harry sighed.

  John straightened up. “Regarding my existence, Mr. Teague, if I may use the phrase Samuel stole from me after an otherwise pleasant breakfast, the report of my death was an exaggeration.”

  Harry coughed. “John, before you launch into your speech about how history has wronged you—”

  “Is it so wrong for a man to want his accomplishments—”

  “—and it is a wonderful speech, please don’t misunderstand me, but I was wondering if you could confirm we’ll be picking up my car.”

  John sighed again. Loudly. Theatrically. “There’s a good wye in Kansas City, 1995, that I was already prepared to use. We can be back to pick up your automobile”—he checked four of the gauges and tapped one of them a few times until the needle settled—“an hour before I found you?”

  “That should be fine,” Harry said with a nod.

  “Excellent,” said John. He reached up and nudged the long handle. “We’re about twenty minutes out from the turnaround. I made up the guest rooms for you, if you’d like to refresh yourselves.”

  “You,” said Harry, “are the most wonderful of hosts.”

  “Yes,” he mused, “I really am.”

  The shapes on John’s tie resolved themselves in Eli’s eyes. The starship Enterprise, the classic one. Another repetition of the pattern was half-hidden by his waistcoat.

  He looked back and forth between Harry and John, still half-convinced a punch line lurked somewhere just beyond his sight.

  John chuckled again. “I think we may have stunned your companion with my very existence.”

  Harry reached out and squeezed Eli’s hand again. “Mr. Teague,” she said. “You’re fine, aren’t you?”

  Eli looked at her and saw the concern in her eyes. “Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, I’m fine. It’s just…this is a bit much.”
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br />   “If you’ll pardon me for a moment, then,” she said, “I shall leave you to John’s hospitality and stories while I go freshen up.”

  “Okay.”

  She vanished through the heavy sliding door.

  John gestured up at the rectangle of glass. “Clever, yes?” he said. “One of the big problems with steam trains is that the bulk of the boiler sits between the engineer and the tracks ahead. This is, at heart, a simple, broad-view periscope like the ones Mr. Lake used on his submarines. It gives me a full view of the tracks without exposing myself or extensively modifying the cab of the Steel Bucephalus.”

  “The Steel Bucephalus,” echoed Eli. His eyes wandered around the engine’s cab. Three long steps would carry him from corner to corner. A trio of hooks held a single long coat between them. Dark wood and brass fittings made up the rest of the room.

  “One moment,” said John. He stepped through the rear door and returned a few moments later with an armful of split logs. The toe of his boot caught the low door on the boiler and swung it open. Crackling flames and heat rolled out, but John ignored them as he fed the logs into the firebox. He kicked the door shut and brushed a few splinters from his sleeves.

  Eli cleared his throat, feeling a desperate need to say something. “I thought all these old trains were coal powered?”

  “Many of them were,” agreed John, “until diesel became the standard. I designed the Bucephalus as a wood burner because whenever I go, there’s always fuel to be had.”

  Eli looked around the cab again, then back at John. “You designed the train?”

  “I did.”

  “All of it?”

  “Modesty forbids me from taking too much credit, Mr. Teague. The boiler is a stock model from 1871, as are the wheels. Many of the fixtures, fittings, and pistons were acquired in the 1930s, just after the stock market crash. The gearing itself is my own design, an enclosed variable-gauge system for the assorted tracks I encounter as I travel through history.”

  “The train travels through time?”

  “Through history.”

  “Right. Still getting used to that.”

  “And yes, she does.”

  “A time…history-traveling steam train.” Eli felt a smile blossom on his face.

  “Yes,” John said, one corner of his own mouth curling up, “I know. I’ve been told several times. And seen the film twice.”

  Eli shook his head. “But you built all of this.”

  “I hired some laborers now and then, but mostly me, yes. Over the course of about nine months. A good time period to give birth to a creation.”

  “I just…”

  “Yes?”

  “Well, if you’re John Henry—”

  “I am.”

  “—all the stories make you out to be…well, just a guy with a hammer. Who isn’t too fond of machines.”

  John sighed and shook his head. “Mr. Teague,” he said, “as I started to say earlier, I have been the victim of one of the most determined smear campaigns in history.”

  “You can just call me Eli.”

  John studied his face, then smiled. “A confident man, willing to go right to a first-name basis. I admire that, Eli. Please call me John.”

  “Thanks.”

  “As I was saying, Eli, the stories and songs have cast me as some brute Luddite who hates all progress and machinery. This couldn’t be further from the truth.” He stretched out an arm to take in the gauges and hoses covering the wall of the boiler. “I love machinery, technology, gidgets, all of it.”

  “Gadgets.”

  “Yes, thank you. The point is, I believe in machinery—with people behind it. A better drilling machine. A faster loom. A stronger engine. But these things don’t get rid of the need for people, and they can’t work without them.

  “I’d worked on the railway for fourteen years. Half of my life. First as a digger, then as a steel driver in West Virginia. I knew the ground, the rocks, where to plant the charges to do the most work.” He looked at Eli. “Do you know what my original wager was?”

  “The one to race a drill machine, right? To dig the tunnel?”

  “Not precisely. It was a steam hammer. A large but portable machine. They were trying to sell it to the railroad managers in 1871. Three drops of the weight, four tops, and it could plant a charge anywhere you wanted it.

  “We all gathered around to watch a few demonstrations, and it was true. The rig could drive steel three times as fast as any man. It made them sloppy, though. They could place a hole anywhere, and they did. The stone and shale and clay didn’t matter anymore, so they assumed the other aspects of the job also didn’t matter. They were working faster, but not smarter.”

  John turned his head to check a few of the gauges. He pulled a dangling rag from one of the hoses and gave a dial a quick polish. Then his attention returned to Eli.

  “So I told the salesman if he let me run his portable steam hammer, I could dig the tunnels three times faster than his crew. He wouldn’t hear it, naturally. The machine made everyone a master driver, you see, and it certainly wasn’t going to work better with a black man running it. Mind you, at that point in history, he was a bit more explicit when referring to my skin.

  “So I made him a bet. The one you’ve heard stories about. I bet him I could beat his machine. First crew to dig one hundred yards of tunnel wins.”

  “And you won,” said Eli.

  “I did,” said John. “So you can imagine my surprise when, over the next few years, word reached my ears I’d fallen over dead trying to beat the steam hammer. As it turned out, he was using our contest as a sales pitch.”

  “With a different ending.”

  John leveled a finger at him. “Precisely. I hunted the man down, found him in Alabama, and challenged him again. Right in front of an audience of buyers. He hemmed and hawed, but in the end it was race me or lose all his potential sales.”

  “And you beat him again.”

  The other man sighed. “I did, and it didn’t make a difference. He made his sales. They twisted the story. Said I died. Again.” He reached out and set one of his well-used hands against the wall of the cab. “About a year after that, I first heard about the dream. Two years later, I started work on the Steel Bucephalus.”

  “So, how do you travel through…history with it?”

  John’s brow went up. “Harry hasn’t explained the basics to you?”

  “No, she has, sort of,” Eli said. “Not really. I just don’t understand how you do it with a train. It’s kind of…limiting, isn’t it?”

  “Before 1830, tracks are spotty,” agreed John. “Almost nonexistent before 1826. Fortunately, there isn’t much history before 1826 either. Fifty years. Barely a seventh.”

  “But I thought…” Eli looked at the boiler and then out at the trees passing by them. The train had been in motion for over ten minutes, at least, and they hadn’t reached the end of the brief span of track around Independence station. “I thought you needed to use these, the slick spots, to move back and forth in history.”

  “Indeed you do,” said John. “And what better enduring symbol of the United States is there than the railroad? Trains, Eli, are the symbol of America’s reach across this continent. That’s what these tracks represent. There’s not a man, woman, or child from 1826 to 2046 who doesn’t look at a set of train tracks and remember that era. There are so many spots along every set of tracks where the dream became focused. Towns and cities and bridges where the railroad meant things were getting better, that things were amazing. The Golden Spike. The Great Change in 1886.”

  “Must confuse the hell out of people sometimes. A train appearing on old tracks.”

  “The Steel Bucephalus is the source of at least seven ‘ghost train’ stories I know of,” said John, the edges of his lips turning up. He turned his smile to the boiler. “She can go almost anywhere and anywhen in America. And much faster than any of the other searchers in their little automobiles. No offense, my dear.”
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  “None taken.” Eli turned to see Harry standing in the door. Her cloak, coat, and hat had vanished, leaving her in the shirt and vest he first remembered her in. She looked relaxed, probably owing to her scrubbed face and damp brow. “At least, none while I’m riding your cumbersome beast of an engine.”

  “John’s been telling me his history,” said Eli.

  “ ‘John,’ is it?” she asked. “Thick as thieves in just a few minutes. Should I be worried, Mr. Teague?”

  “Worried?”

  “You’re not going to leave me for the soft life of a train, are you?”

  “What?” Eli shook his head. “No.”

  “Of course he isn’t,” said John. “What man would? But I’m being a poor host—dominating the conversation and talking about nothing but myself. Truth be told, I’m intrigued to hear how the two of you became partners.”

  “We kept running into each other,” Eli said. “And then a faceless man came looking for her and found me instead. After he left, I went looking for Harry to warn her.”

  The other man frowned and glanced at Harry.

  “Mr. Teague,” she said, “is from Sanders, Maine.”

  “Oh?” said John. “Oh! Is he? Well, then, that explains it.”

  Eli blinked. “Explains what?”

  “Never made it up to Sanders, myself,” continued John. “There are some wonderful tracks running through York around 1907. A beautiful stretch across the Cape Neddick River, as I recall.”

  Eli looked at Harry, then at John. “Explains what?” he asked again.

  John paused. “I was wondering how you kept running into each other,” he said. “It’s so unlike Harry to visit the same place twice if she doesn’t need to.”

  “But she did,” Eli said. “A few times. That’s how we met.”

  “Of course it is,” he said. “If you’re from Sanders, it makes perfect sense.”

  Harry made a quick side-to-side movement with her head. John caught himself in mid-gesture, one hand rising up. His eyes darted from her to Eli, back to her, back to Eli. “Oh,” he said again. “I just assumed…” His voice trailed off and two of the boiler’s gauges grabbed his attention. He studied one with intense focus.