by Brian Toal
Up front, the shorter man routed in his ear with one dirty finger as he moved to the side of the cab and stuck his head out, looking back to ensure Charlie had successfully boarded the train. "All-a-board", he called out in the time-honored railway tradition, feeling the train lurch as the engineer disengaged the brakes.
"What are you going to bring her up to." He asked as he joined his companion inside the cab.
"I figure I'll run her up to about sixty."
"Yeah, that should do it." He sat down on a bench seat attached to the side wall. But we’ll shake the shit out of that first, long bridge across the river."
"Yeah well, I'll slow her down a bit as we cross that, but it’ll still shake like a bastard. Anybody still suffering from a hangover ain't going to like it." The tall engineer laughed as he increased the fuel flow to the dual engines.
Charlie stood on the steps leading down from the rear platform as the train lurched and diesel exhaust rolled by him. Slowly the train began to move, the squeal of metal upon metal increasing as the pine trees began to march by, one by one. Charlie leaned out, holding on to the railing for support. He judged the train was moving at no more than five miles per hour and certainly no more than ten. Tightening his grip on the railing he swung his body off the steps, then leapt to the ground. Landing on his feet running, he quickly slowed his pace, as the train continued to gain speed. Identical black ore cars marched by him as he backed away from the tracks.
The train's speed continued to increase and eventually the last ore car passed him, rocking slightly on its suspension - and Charlie was alone.
He stood for a moment listening to the rapidly diminishing clatter as the rail cars grew smaller in the distance. The buzz of insects and the chatter of birds settling in the nearby trees, eventually replaced the sound of the train as it disappeared from sight around the long curve towards the lake. Only then did Charlie move, turning towards the camp and the pickup truck parked beside his trailer.
Twenty gallons of gasoline, which he had pumped from the underground fuel tanks into four five-gallon-jugs this morning, were secured in the back.
On the train, Jason's six-year-old son climbed into his lap, his black eyes sparkling with the excitement of the day. "Daddy, I can see the lake!"
"Yes, doesn't it look nice?" His father commented. "That's the lake I took you fishing at."
"The place we caught the real big fish!"
"That's right, maybe we’ll even see the bay where we caught it."
"Wow!" Jason and his son had only gone fishing once. Jason was usually too tired in the evenings and the Sundays, the only day he got off per week, had all seemed to pass too quickly for him to make time to take his son fishing more often. But they had gone once and his son had caught a good-sized Pike. A feat, he still continued to talk about.
"Daddy, can I see?" His four-year-old daughter asked, reaching up with her arms, to be pulled into his lap as well.
"You’re big enough to stand." Jason said to his son, easing him off his lap to stand on his own feet with his face pressed against the lower portion of the window. "Up you go!" Jason said, as he pulled his daughter up to the window, his wife smiling beside him.
"See the lake?" He asked, his face beside his daughter's as they looked out at the lake sparkling in the morning sunshine. "And just up there, at the end of the lake is a big bridge."
"Do we go across it, Daddy?"
"Yes, we do. Last time we crossed it, it was dark outside and we couldn't see anything. Remember?" His daughter nodded solemnly, remembering their nighttime arrival, a month ago. "But today we’ll be able to see the whole lake."
"Is the bridge really big?" His son asked.
"Yes, it’s really big. Your daddy even worked on it a bit and it is really tall, maybe two hundred feet high. We’ll be able to see a long ways as we cross on top on it."
"Wow!" His son exclaimed again as his daughter nodded in solemn agreement, both of their faces pressed to the window in anticipation of crossing the bridge their own Daddy had helped fix.
At the front of the train the two engineers were far less enthused about the passing scenery or the upcoming bridge crossing. They spent their entire lives thundering through forest-lined canyons and over innumerable bridges, some small and others immense. Besides slowing the train down slightly - they were doing sixty-five currently - the bridge held little other interest to them. The shorter engineer continued to dig the wax from his ears as he complained about his recent transfer to the freight division of Ontario Northland, from the passenger division - where he had worked for two years - until three weeks ago when he had spit on a paying passenger.
"...so I tell the asshole, you ain't bringing a poodle on the damn train, you got to get it shipped up separate, I says. And the wife says, that's not what the ticket agent said, he said we could take it with us. And I says, I don't give a shit about what he said..."
"Shut her down just a bit." The tall engineer interrupted, "we’re getting close to that first bridge and I don't want to be doing more than sixty when we cross it."
"Okay." The other man reached forward and reduced the fuel to the engines and then continued. "And I says, I'm the one that got's to scrape the shit up if the mutt decides to take a dump. And she says..."
The train continued down the tracks, the clack of the wheels loud and fast as it pounded towards the bridge.
As Jason's family peered out of their rectangular window, the two children leaving greasy nose prints on the glass, and the engineer continued his story of Mr. Asshole and Mrs. Asshole, the bridge waited ahead.
Silent in the morning sun as sparrows soared and swooped above it, their nests among its wooden support beams and girders. The steel rails shone brightly. Two silvery bars crossing from the firm ground onto the wooden deck, blue water sparkling far below, where the wooden supports met concrete foundations imbedded deep into the mud of the river bottom or rising from the thick brush on either side.
New rail spikes held the tracks firmly to the wooden rail bed, the tracks running in gleaming parallel lines to the center of the bridge, where the left rail continued, unbroken. The right rail, one sixty-foot section, lay one hundred and seventy-five-feet below, resting on the muddy bottom of the river. The spikes that had held it in place, scattered around it.
The sparrows cried in annoyance as the train, reduced to fifty-eight miles per hour, thundered around a bend and towards the bridge.
The smaller engineer finished his story of persecution and leaned his head out of the side of the cab, gripping his nose between the knuckles of two fingers and hawked mightily into the slipstream, watching as the two chunks splatted against the front of the second engine. Wiping his hand across the bottom of his nose, he turned his head forward in preparation to ducking back inside the protection of the cab and stopped.
His mouth fell open, his cheeks billowing outwards in the fifty-eight mile an hour wind as his eyes fixated on the bridge ahead of them, one long rust spot marking the previous placement of the track.
"Stop the train!" He screamed as he flung himself back inside.
Jason had just drawn his son’s attention to the long bay where they had gone fishing, when the abrupt, solid squeal of the brakes, precipitated his violent forward motion. He clutched his daughter protectively in his arms as he flew from his seat, twisting his body to the side to try and avoid crushing his son, who was standing between his legs. He heard his wife cry out as her face impacted the rear of the seat in front of her. His son screamed below him, as Jason’s knee dug into the boy's small back, crushing him against the plastic back of the seat before him. The train shuddered and shook, the endless screech of the brakes drowning out all but the loudest screams. A suitcase, piled above the retaining straps, slid off the rack above him, and thumped into the curved neck of his wife. Her body sagging limp between the seats. His son screamed again, as with a jolt, the train seemed to hit something solid, driving his knee further into the boy’s spine. Then the motion ch
anged. A sickening roll. The long passenger car tilting before him. Still, he held his daughter protectively in the strong grip of his right arm, hearing her small, frightened voice whimper in his ear. Even now, although he knew that they were hundreds of feet above the water, he hoped, he believed, that there would be some salvation for his family. As the train rolled from the bridge and his daughter's young voice screamed in his ear, Jason reached down for his son.
THREE - FOUR
Two hawks circled over the bridge, again scattering the sparrows, a group of which spiraled upwards to engage the much larger birds and pester them into leaving their territory. The train lay below the bridge, the last twenty-five ore cars, crumpled on the steep bank, the linkages twisted and broken. The two engines, two passenger cars and the first fifteen ore cars were invisible, laying in the depths of the river, their broken and smashed metal bodies hidden from sight. Surprisingly little wreckage drifted downstream with the current. A widening patch of diesel fuel, several wooden pieces of the bridge superstructure, a brown suitcase, an inverted boot, a mostly empty bottle of scotch, and several other unidentifiable objects, moved slowly downstream towards the Moose River and, a hundred miles further on, James Bay and the Arctic Ocean.
Charlie stopped the pickup at the end of the bridge and climbed out, stretching his back from the unaccustomed rough ride over the railway ties. Then stepping onto the bridge, his rifle slung over one shoulder, he continued to where one twisted steel track hung over the side. Long gouges of white wood indicated where portions of the train had dragged across the wooden deck before plunging off the side and into the river, far below. He stood at the center of the bridge, rifle in hand, carefully searching the water and the riverbanks below. Several times he raised the rifle and peered through the scope, inspecting a piece of flotsam or human-sized object on the steep bank below. For an entire hour he stood, like a living gargoyle, looking for signs of life.
There was none.
The sun was hot on his back and sweat dripped from his face as he turned and made his way back to the pickup. He was satisfied, but he felt no desire to smile, there was no one he needed to impress.
Inserting a long pole, between the handles of two, five-gallon containers of fuel, he moved out onto the bridge deck. Then pouring the fuel down the wooden sides, he watched, as it soaked into the aged, dry wood. He returned for the other two five-gallon cans and repeated the process, working further and further out onto the bridge. Then, returning to where the pickup was parked, he broke off a dry Pine bough from a tree by the tracks. Sniffing the air to determine that the reek of gasoline was not strong enough to ignite where he stood, he lit a match, pressing its flame against the dry needles. The small flame grew, licking at the dry needles. Charlie waited, ensuring that the bough was fully ignited, the flames crackling as they ate at the dry wood, then heaved the branch as far as he could onto the rail bed, overtop of the first area he had soaked with fuel.
For a moment there was nothing, the flames continued to lick at the small twigs of the branch and then other, blue-white, almost invisible flames swept down the side of the first wooden girder and under the rail bed.
THUMP. Charlie rapidly backed down the tracks as a blast of warm air pushed at his clothing. He continued backing away from the bridge, retrieving the four cans and his rifle laying by the tracks. There was little smoke yet and few flames either. But a hot haze hung over the bridge, distorting the background as the heat ate into the wood and the sparks fell into the brush below.
Charlie reached the pickup and throwing the gas cans and rifle into the back, he climbed into the cab for the long drive back to camp.
CHAPTER FOUR
ONE
Chris' first morning of school was like the first mornings of school for millions of children all over the United States. It was a time to model the new clothes your mother had just purchased for you. A time of renewing acquaintances one had not seen for a period of two months - a goodly portion of a lifetime, for twelve-year-olds. A time for picking teams for the endless baseball games that would be played during the sixty-minute lunch breaks as well as the mini-games during the fifteen-minute recesses, and generally a time for hearing new tales concerning the exploits of one's classmates over the summer months.
Chris would have had an excellent story to tell that would have mesmerized most school children and their parents too. Unfortunately, he couldn't remember the best part of it and, as yet he was unaware of his growing abilities and so most of his story went untold. However, many of his classmates had heard portions of the tumultuous events surrounding his departure from the mining camp in Canada. Parents and brothers and sisters are very effective gatherers of gossip and although no one family had heard all of the tantalizing news, many of them had heard some. Chris was a popular attraction, this first day of school and, although he often tried, unsuccessfully, to change the subject, someone new would come by and ask yet another question.
"How did he get unconscious?" Tommy Shillington asked, a member of a group of three children currently clustered around Chris. "Did he fall or something?"
"I don't know," Chris responded. "I was unconscious myself."
"Both of you were?" Two other children joined the group as Chris continued. They too, had heard Todd was dying, and Chris almost had, and both of them had been flown out by helicopter and they were understandably keenly interested in hearing this story for themselves. "What happened to you, then?" Tommy continued.
"I told you, I don't know. One minute I was awake, exploring this old building and the next moment I woke up in the hospital."
"But my sister says you found an Indian coffin.”
“No. There was something inside, but it looked more like a machine than a coffin.”
“Maybe there was a curse on it, like the Egyptian mummies had.”
“Maybe, but we didn’t open it. We were just looking at it.”
“And Todd’s brains came right out of his head - right?”
“No! Something happened to his head and that’s why he’s sick. But his brains didn’t come out. Geez... he’d be dead.”
“But you were unconscious and you’re okay.”
“I guess. But my hand and my neck still hurt.” Chris raised his bandaged hand up so those around could take a look. Others bent down to look under his chin where three Band-Aids still protected the deeper cuts.
“When’s Todd going to get better?”
Chris shrugged, just as the school bell rang announcing the beginning of yet another adventure - a new school year. “He’s coming back to Detroit, either today or tomorrow, but he still has to stay in the hospital.”
“Are you going to go see him?”
“Probably,” Chris answered, hiking his knapsack up onto his shoulders and moving with the rest of the children towards the open doors. "I've got Mr. Clifford," he said, changing the topic. "And he hates me. I stuffed a potato up the tailpipe of his car last year. I thought it would just blow out with a bang, like it did when I put one up the tailpipe of Mrs. Kopland's car, but it blew his muffler right off. Mr. Clifford hates me!" He repeated, grimacing at the thought of spending a whole year with someone he got caught pranking. Resigned to the fate that awaited him in the red bricked building, he walked inside.
Charlie stopped the bulldozer twenty feet back from the opening and shut down the engine. Then standing silent in the open cab he looked over and beyond the trees. In the distance the smoke was beginning to rise up and over the surrounding hills, white clouds of it rolling away to the east. It would probably be a few more hours before it was noticed or certainly before anyone could respond and by then it would be almost dark. Certainly by tomorrow, a spotter plane would arrive, which Charlie could ignore if he wished and even if it did buzz the camp, there was nowhere for it to land. He felt that he had the rest of the day and possibly all of tomorrow before anyone would attempt to contact him.
Certainly, plenty of time for him to pull the object out of its chamber and hide it aw
ay. A flat-deck trailer stood to one side, with a large winch at the front. If he could pull the long box out of the chamber with the bulldozer, he could then winch it up on the trailer. Then with the multitude of new roads NorthCan had built which he could pull it down, it would be safe in the thousands of square miles of bush, until he had to move it again.
Yes, it was a perfect plan. The forest-fire would disguise his involvement in the train wreck. The danger imposed by the forest-fire would keep the archaeologists away and because of the risk imposed by the fire, it would be reasonable for him to arrange for the arrival of a large helicopter in order to evacuate important items from the camp - although there was only one item he was interested in removing.
His biggest concern was the arrival of the forestry officers. They would know of the over-due train and probably would have discovered the burned railway bridge as well. Would he be able to express the proper emotions necessary to appropriately mourn the loss of his co-workers and associates? He would practice tonight, in front of a mirror. It had to be correct with the right amount of astonishment and sorrow. The typical emotions expressed by humans when confronted with unexpected deaths. Only typical, human emotions were no longer available to him. He felt nothing. The best he could do was remember how he used to feel, then construct the appropriate facial expressions. It was difficult and he would need to practice.
FOUR - TWO
"And since Mr. McCarter seems to have conveniently hurt his hand," Mr. Clifford said, his thick mustache overhanging and obscuring his upper lip as he spoke, "I will allow him to dictate his report. But, for the rest of you, five hundred words on 'The Developments Leading Up to The Civil War,' by Monday."