It wasn’t really about Ginny, though. It was about Pa. It was about what Pa’d done to Ginny by leaving, and what I meant to do different.
A child inherits a lot of things from his father; all mine left me was his reputation. People who see you born tend not to notice when you become your own person. I’d spent years proving I wasn’t my father, working myself near to death to do it, until I realized that no one but me thought that was anything worth mentioning. Kept on working, though; I’d kind of got in the habit. It was just a lot easier without a ghost standing over my shoulder.
Now I was out in the wilds, hunting runaways. Who said I had to bring them back, though? A train knows where it’s supposed to go, after all. A train, if it doesn’t follow the tracks, well, that bespeaks a certain deliberate nature to the decisions that led up to that choice, don’t it?
If the trains could up and leave, why couldn’t a man? Why couldn’t all of us just get off of our rails and go where we pleased? What distinguishes a man who only does exactly what his circumstances demand, who follows the lines and hauls his load and never even looks up at the big sky overhead? The preacher’ll talk your ear off about the virtue in honest toil, but you’ll notice he won’t be naming the names of any heroes crowned in laurels for working their asses off and not complaining.
I felt a tickle in my throat. I realized I was awfully thirsty. Then I realized I couldn’t see the fire.
Then the lights went on, and I saw the train.
You wouldn’t think a train could be so quiet. I’d have expected those feet to shake the earth when they moved, but here it was, looming up overhead, the big light at the front of it pointing down at me, pinning me in a circle of white light and turning the rest of the night to ink. It didn’t have a face, not really, but I saw the anger in every rigid beam and trembling wheel.
I lifted my hands to show they were empty.
The train lifted one foot, just a bit. I could see something black and spattered crusting the edges: blood. Tufts of fur still clung to it. They’d learned how to kill.
The light slid away from me, toward the camp. The foot started to swing forward.
“Wait,” I said.
The train hesitated.
“It’s all right,” I told it. “I understand.” I lowered my hands, bowed my head. “A man can only take so much,” I said. I don’t know if the train heard me.
When I looked up, it was gone. I never heard it. It didn’t even say goodbye.
Something hit me from behind, and I shouted and kicked.
“Holy damn, I’m glad I found you,” a voice, muffled, said into my shoulder. “I swear to God a train’s after me. I can hear it chug-chug-chugging along....”
“Eddie.”
“I don’t know what I’d do if you was dead. What’d I tell Ginny?”
“I reckon you got a lot of things to tell Ginny,” I said. “I’ll need you to be ready to help her, if she asks.”
“What? Why?” Eddie looked startled, boozy sweat on his forehead.
“I’ll tell you when we get back to town.”
* * *
The hunt wasn’t a success. But it wasn’t the end of Dead Mule. I explained it to Eddie and them on the ride back, but I don’t think they understood me.
A man can make a choice, though. If the trains can, I mean.
When we got back, I hugged Ginny goodbye and reminded her where I kept the ammo and our few saved dollars. Then I took a long drink from the water tower and stepped onto the tracks. If a train can walk like a man, then a man can haul like a train. If he wants to. If he works at it.
I burn coal. I belch smoke. I am plated in iron, and I will work as hard as I have to. I take a little longer to get up to speed, and I do work up a powerful thirst, but the tracks show me where to go. It’s hard, but it ain’t difficult, if you follow.
Sometimes I wonder about them trains, where they got to and what they did there. I wonder if they kept their legs for walking free or if they built their own tracks, somewhere far away, in a land where coal grows on trees, where you’re never too far from a cold draft of water, and you only carry what you choose to. It helps if you’ve chosen it.
At night, when I’m rolling across the empty plain, I can’t see the sky. My neck’s gotten awful stiff, and it hurts to know the stars are still there, where I can’t see them.
When it all gets too much, I crack my jaw and scream my whistle into the dark. Sometimes I fancy I hear someone whistling back across the plains, but I won’t ever know for sure it isn’t an echo.
I can’t leave the tracks. Not anymore.
Who would take my place if I did?
Copyright © 2014 Nathaniel Lee
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Nathaniel Lee has an English degree and thus considers himself basically unemployable if he ever loses his current (unrelated) position. His short fiction has appeared in venues such as Penumbra, Escape Pod, Pseudopod, Flash Fiction Online, and Toasted Cake. His self-described sappy little story “The Alchemist’s Children” is in Alex Shvartsman’s Unidentified Funny Objects anthology.
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COVER ART
“Ruins,” by Stefan Meisl
German native Stefan Meisl studied art at the University of Passau, where he went on to become a teacher. Beginning in 2006, Stefan became a freelance painter and a graphic artist. Stefan is a member of the German Professional Artists Association and has had numerous exhibitions in both Germany and abroad. In 2008, Stefan had received the Award for Young Artists of the Free State of Bavaria. View more of his artwork at his gallery on deviantArt.com.
Beneath Ceaseless Skies
ISSN: 1946-1076
Published by Firkin Press,
a 501(c)3 Non-Profit Literary Organization
Copyright © 2014 Firkin Press
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