The Insane Train

by Sheldon Russell

  Before she could answer, Roy came in with his arms loaded with blankets.

  “Lordee, the law is here,” he said.

  “It’s only the unlawful fears the law, Roy,” Hook said.

  “It’s only the unlawful knows how fearful the law is,” Roy said. “I thought you’d be on your way to civilization by now.”

  “Soon,” Hook said. “How are you doing?”

  “Thing is,” Roy said, pushing back his hat, “I’m getting used to these boys, and that’s a right scary thought.”

  “Maybe you have a lot in common.”

  Roy dropped the blankets in the corner. “That’s just it. Me and these boys see eye to eye on a good many things, including our estimation of yard dogs.”

  Hook turned to Helms. “About Doctor Baldwin?”

  “He’s in the officers’ quarters,” Helms said, adjusting her skirt. “Doctor Baldwin is not doing well, as you know.”

  “I’ll stop by,” Hook said. “Maybe cheer him up.”

  Doctor Baldwin lay in a makeshift bunk, his arm drooped over his eyes.

  “Doctor Baldwin,” Hook said.

  At first Baldwin didn’t answer. But then he groaned and turned onto his side.

  “It’s you,” he said, wiping at his face with his hand. “For a minute, I thought we were still on the train.”

  Hook knelt at his side. Baldwin smelled of sweat and sick. “How are you feeling?”

  “I can’t get enough sleep,” he said. “I’m worn out.”

  “Is there anything I can do?”

  He pulled himself up on an elbow and then lay back down. “Nothing,” he said. “Doctor Helms brought me soup earlier. How’s the transfer going?”

  “We’ll have utilities on soon. In the meantime, everyone is trying to get the place cleaned up. This fort has been empty for a good many years.”

  When he looked over, Baldwin had fallen asleep, so Hook slipped on out.

  Andrea had sent Seth to grub out the ordnance sergeant’s quarters, and she had put the women to sweeping out rooms in the barracks. Santos, Oatney, and the boys had nearly completed their cleanup and were picking up stray limbs from the sidewalks.

  Hook helped Andrea set up the bunks that Helms had located in the supply shack. The heat mounted throughout the day, and a hot wind blasted in from the southwest. Years of dust had settled into every cranny, and scorpions scurried about, their pinchers raised in defiance. Spring storms had loosened boards from porch roofs and scattered them about the grounds.

  After Helms managed to get credit at the local bank, Roy walked to the village, where he bought a truck from Shorty to bring in groceries from the nearby city of Woodward. He returned with sacks of potatoes, slabs of bacon, and a dozen crates of eggs. Much to Helms’s chagrin, he’d purchased three five-gallon cans of milk, which were already tainted from the heat by the time he returned.

  At noon they ate egg sandwiches and swilled tepid milk. By that afternoon their lips cracked from the dryness, and their eyes burned against the hot winds.

  Andrea and Hook took a break under the shade of an elm while the girls finished up the cleaning.

  A scream suddenly issued from out of the barracks, and they both stood, looking at each other.

  “Oh, Lord,” Andrea said. “Something’s happened.”

  When they reached the barracks, they found Seth bent over Anna. Her wails reverberated in the barren room and sent chills down Hook’s spine. He knelt next to Seth.

  “What’s happened?” he asked.

  Seth pointed to the porch board that was firmly attached to the bottom of Anna’s foot. The nail had exited between her toes, and blood pooled on top of her foot.

  “Oh my God,” Andrea said.

  “He stuck me with his hook,” Anna wailed.

  “We’ll have to get it out,” Andrea said.

  “I can’t stand hearing a woman cry,” Seth said.

  “He’s killed me,” Anna wailed. “Oh, oh, oh.”

  “How do we get it off?” Hook asked.

  “Put your foot on the board, and I’ll pull her leg up,” Andrea said.

  “I think I’m going to be sick,” Seth said.

  “Go call a doctor, Seth,” Andrea said.

  “The hook did it to me,” Anna cried.

  “Okay,” Hook said, placing both of his feet on the plank. “But do it fast.”

  “Yeow!” Anna screamed. “It hurts. It hurts.”

  Andrea took hold of Anna’s leg and on the count of three yanked her foot free from the board.

  Anna slumped onto Hook’s shoulder. Together, Hook and Andrea dragged her into the officers’ quarters. When they came in, Baldwin lifted onto an elbow but then turned back to his sleep.

  By the time the doctor and Seth arrived from town, Anna’s toes had swollen into a strut, and red streaks shot up her leg. The doctor, a man in his fifties with glasses thick as milk bottles, administered injections. He took a pill from his stock and peered up at them.

  “Puncture wounds can turn nasty,” he said. “It’s hard to say where that nail’s been. I’m sending an ambulance out to pick her up, so we can keep a watch on her for a few days.”

  He closed his bag and walked to the bunk where Baldwin lay. After a few moments, he went to the door. Hook followed him out.

  The doctor turned. “About that man in there?”

  “That’s Doctor Baldwin, owner of this place, and he hasn’t been doing well.”

  “So I can see.”

  “Perhaps you could take a look at him while you’re here?”

  “Well,” he said.

  “He’s been under considerable stress,” Hook said. “He isn’t coming around like he should.”

  “Sure,” he said. “I guess I can take a look.”

  Andrea and Hook waited on the porch steps. When the doctor came out, he sat down on the railing. He took off his glasses and wiped them clean with his handkerchief.

  “I can’t quite make it out,” he said. “There’s some confusion and malaise, and his heartbeat is irregular. The odd thing is that his body temperature is low.” He slipped his glasses back on and folded his handkerchief into his pocket. “There’s no obvious underlying cause that I can see.”

  “What should we do?” Andrea asked.

  The doctor picked up his bag. “I would recommend a few days in the hospital. We could run some tests. Perhaps it’s nothing more than stress, but I think it prudent to check it out. I’ll have the ambulance pick up both him and the girl.”

  “Thanks, Doctor,” Hook said. “I’ll inform Doctor Helms.”

  “What?” Helms said, peering over her glasses. “And who is supposed to run things around here in the meantime?”

  Hook shrugged. “The same person who’s been running things all along, Doctor Helms. Doctor Baldwin has hardly been able. Anyway, the doctor felt it necessary.”

  Helms walked to the window, which was covered with hand-forged bars.

  “I should have been consulted,” she said.

  “I had no idea you would object to his medical care,” Hook said. “That’s not the issue. There were a great many things to consider. This place doesn’t run itself, you know.”

  “Perhaps it was inconsiderate.”

  “The fact is, I think it’s time that Doctor Baldwin be removed from his responsibilities so that we can move on with things.”

  “Perhaps with medical attention, he will improve?”

  She turned. “I simply don’t have the time to attend to this institution and address Doctor Baldwin’s personal problems.”

  Hook reached for the door. “I told the locals a job interview schedule would be posted.”

  “And so it will be,” she said.

  “Oh,” he said, “the personnel records were left behind in the supply car. I have them stored in my caboose.”

  “See that they are delivered. We’ll need them for the interviews.”

  Hook closed the door behind him.

  When the water and e
lectricity came on later that afternoon, a shout went up from the barracks. Baths were in order, and clothes were washed and dried. The women scurried about with their hair stacked on their heads and towels under their arms. And as evening fell, the locusts hummed in the cool, and the inmates laughed from their rooms.

  When the hot winds had abated, Hook and Andrea walked about the old fort. Shadows stretched from the ancient buildings, and ghosts from the past whispered in the treetops. Mixer roamed out, sometimes disappearing from sight, only to race back from the prairie at full speed, his tongue lolling from his mouth.

  At the far side of the grounds, they came upon a spring. Water bubbled up from its sandy bottom and spilled into the rocks below. They sat on the bank and put their feet into the frigid waters. Andrea leaned against him and laughed, her toes curling with the cold. Her hair shined in the red of sunset.

  As dusk fell they walked through the fort cemetery, the old headstones leaning with age. They read names long since forgotten to the years. Andrea knelt at each, running her fingers over the time-worn letters. At a young corporal’s grave, she paused for the longest moment, counting the years between birth and death. They walked on through the evening then to find Hook’s caboose, still sitting on the crossing loop.

  Hook lit the kerosene lantern while Andrea settled in among his books. She picked them up, thumbing through their pages, stacking them to the side.

  “This is the first time I’ve been away from the women for days,” she said. “I didn’t realize how exhausting it’s been.”

  “You’ve done a great job,” he said.

  Andrea leaned back, her face aglow in the soft light of the lantern.

  “I was doubtful of you at the start, you know,” she said.

  “Why so?”

  “Railroaders enjoy a rowdy reputation, especially yard dogs.”

  “And now?”

  “Now I know why.”

  Hook slipped down on the floor next to her, the first stars of evening winking through the windows of the cupola.

  “I’ll make it up to you,” he said.

  He turned the lantern down, and she nuzzled into him, her fingers falling cool and delicate on his ear. He kissed her mouth, the soft pockets of her throat, her heartbeat tripping beneath his lips.

  Slipping from their clothes, they pushed aside the books. “Hook,” she whispered, her voice like a warm spring rain in the coolness of the evening.

  Afterward, they lay together. They dozed and then dressed in the dim light of the lantern. Hook smoked and whistled Mixer in from the darkness.

  Andrea buttoned her blouse and combed her hair back with her fingers.

  “We really must be getting back,” she said. “They will be wondering.”

  “I nearly forgot,” he said. “Helms wants the personnel files brought to the guardhouse.”

  “Files?”

  “These,” he said, sliding the box over. “They were left in the supply car.”

  Mixer stepped into Andrea’s lap, and she pushed him back. “Look, it’s Doctor Helms’s personnel file.”

  Hook opened the first page of the file. “It says here she graduated with an undergraduate degree from Moorehead State University, summa cum laude.”

  “With honors, of course,” Andrea said.

  “Should I go on?”

  “The files are confidential, Hook.”

  “And I suppose we mustn’t break the law?” he said.

  “No,” she said, putting the file back into the box. “We mustn’t.”

  32

  The locals showed up for the interviews in force, a line stretching from the guardhouse to the fort gate. The mayor and Shorty led the way. By the end of the day, the Baldwin Insane Asylum was once again fully staffed, albeit with people who didn’t have a clue what awaited them.

  Santos and Roy asked Hook if he could arrange for them to stay on. Both Oatney and Seth were undecided. Seth did not sleep well, sometimes not at all, roaming about the fort like a lost ghost. Oatney, on the other hand, found her job less exciting and less profitable than what she was accustomed to.

  Hook spent his days with whatever needed to be done. While arranging rooms in the barracks, he discovered a complete set of fort records dating back to the end of the Indian wars. Looking for a place to store them, he discovered a door under the stairwell that led into a basement room.

  Working his way down the steps, he pushed away the spiderwebs that crisscrossed the stairwell. Silence reigned behind the thickness of the stone walls. A forged ring with a single skeleton key hung on the wall next to the door.

  Dank, cool air drifted up from the darkness, and crickets leaped about like popcorn. He shined his light around, finding two cells, each no larger than a crypt. Hand-forged bars enclosed the cells, and iron beds hung by chains from the walls. Graffiti filled every available space, and black mold grew from between the stones.

  Such a place could have had only one purpose, to punish. Even now in all its neglect and dilapidation, it reeked of loneliness and grief.

  He stacked the boxes on one of the bunks and made his way back up. Once outside, he dusted the webs from his front and breathed in the sun-warmed air. In a hundred years so little had changed. Upstairs, men still sat in closed cells, their soulless eyes like pools of stilled water, and the guardhouse still stood indifferent to the pain it bore within.

  A week in, Doctor Helms returned from the hospital with Anna, whose toes had turned green as copper patina. Anna’s eyes widened when she saw Hook. She hunkered behind Doctor Helms and then moved into the group of women who greeted her with restrained enthusiasm.

  Hook put out his cigarette. “How did you find Doctor Baldwin?” he asked.

  “Quite the same, I’m afraid,” Helms said. “His condition appears more mental than physical, though the doctor is determined to administer every possible test.”

  “Well, if that’s what’s needed.”

  “I’ll be assuming his duties, though for all practical matters, I’ve assumed them for some time now. It’s quite perfunctory at this point.”

  “But unfortunate for Doctor Baldwin,” Hook said.

  “We are fully staffed now, so I see no reason that you should have to stay on longer, Mr. Runyon.

  “Training sessions will be starting for the new staff. I’ve asked Andrea to assist with the security ward. She’ll be quite busy.”

  “I have to be in Topeka in a few days,” Hook said. “I’ll be catching the bus out. Roy and Santos have asked to stay on. I hope you can find room for them.”

  “I see no reason why not. And what about Seth and Oatney?” she asked.

  “I don’t know. I’ll find out,” he said.

  Oatney and Seth sat under an elm drinking from a pitcher of springwater. Oatney had unbuttoned her blouse, and perspiration glistened between her breasts.

  “Helms asked what your plans are,” Hook said. “She says you can stay on if you’ve a mind to.”

  Seth tipped up his glass. Water dripped from his chin as he drained it. He rolled over on his side and hooked his arm under his head.

  “My plans are a bit unsettled,” he said.

  “You want the job, it’s yours,” Hook said. “If you don’t, she’ll hire out a local.”

  “I’ve been thinking on it,” he said. “I’ve been thinking maybe I ought give Tulsa another go.”

  “This time you could knock on the door,” Hook said. “Let your wife make up her own mind.”

  “What if she says no?”

  Oatney took off her shoe and poured sand from it. “Maybe you should think about her instead of yourself for once, Seth.”

  Hook nodded. “It’s easy to build things in your mind, Seth, things that don’t exist anywhere else.”

  “I was just so damn scared of what I’d see on her face.”

  “Men are scared of everything,” Oatney said. “Scared that they won’t be brave enough, or that their dicks are too small, or that they won’t rise to the occasion. Sca
red that they can’t stay in the game or that someone will play it better. Scared that they will be loved or that they won’t be loved. I swear I don’t know how the species ever got started in the first place.”

  “It’s women like you makes us that way,” Seth said.

  “If you men knew what we know, you’d blow out your brains,” Oatney said.

  Seth looked over at Hook.

  Hook shrugged. “It’s like standing naked in a cold shower, isn’t it?”

  “I’m thinking I might give Tulsa another run,” Seth said. “If I stay here with this woman much longer, I’ll be sitting in the corner rocking.”

  Oatney pulled her skirt above her knees and fanned herself. “I’m figuring on leaving, too,” she said. “I can’t stand the quiet and the thought of the world moving on without me.”

  “What about you, Hook?” Seth asked.

  Hook lit a cigarette and wiped his forehead with his sleeve. The wind blew hot as scalding water out of the southwest.

  “I’ve got to go to Topeka. Division wants to kick someone around. I’m up.”

  “When you leaving?” Oatney asked.

  “There’s a bus to Wichita,” he said. “I figure to be on it.”

  “Wichita,” she said. “My kind of town.”

  Seth got up and walked to where the shade ended, and the sun beat down on the parched earth. He rubbed at the scar on his face.

  “Count me in,” he said, turning. “I can catch a bus to Tulsa from there.”

  Andrea, who was preparing medications in Doctor Helms’s office, pushed the hair from her face with the back of her hand and looked up at Hook. She had tanned to a deep brown from the prairie sun, and the tips of her hair were bleached.

  “When will you be back?” she asked.

  “Soon,” he said. “Soon as possible. Will you keep an eye on Mixer?”

  She moved against Hook. “You will come back?” she asked.

  “Yes.”

  “I’ll miss you.”

  “Listen,” he said, taking her chin. “Keep your eyes open.”

  “For what?”

  “I’ve been following a trail that always comes back to water. There’s no beginning and no end. Call it an old yard dog’s intuition, but things don’t feel right.”