Pelican Road

by Howard Bahr

  As he was learning in solitude, Donny began to look at the men around him in a new way. Having decided that honor was a virtue after all, he began to learn its cousin, humility. It was impossible, he found, to take his pants down in a privy in deep August and go on feeling he was better than anyone else. He discovered that the loggers’ stink on a hot day was his own stink. He began to listen to the men’s talk, and he saw the way they accommodated themselves to a hard and unforgiving world that he, Donny Luttrell, had always imagined had nothing to do with him. He watched the Southern trainmen, how they stepped down from their engines, their cabooses, and went about their job with careful ease. He studied their hand and lantern signals, and, once he found the courage to ask, they let him help with the switching. They taught him how to get on and off an engine or a moving car. They showed him how to throw a switch and how to “drop by” and how to set a hand brake. They taught him all the myriad rules that a man must follow if he were to stay alive and quick.

  Once Donny had chosen this direction, the ultimate trial followed naturally: a boy his own age, in overalls and a felt slouch hat, strode out one afternoon where Donny was pretending to measure a load. He threw his hat down and said, College Boy, you are a god damned pussy, and I am a-fixin’ to whup yore ass. Donny replied by breaking the boy’s nose with the measuring stick. They fought a good fifteen minutes while the men shouted encouragement. They rolled and slugged and bit in the dust of the lumberyard until Donny’s ass was comprehensively whupped, until he was unable to stand, until he was bleeding from his mouth and nose and ears. He had to be put on the local and taken up to Purvis for repairs, while one of the lumbermen, an old Western Union telegrapher, watched the station for him.

  They still called him College Boy after that, but at noontime, they invited him to sit with them under a shade tree and take of cheese and crackers and Red Devil potted meat, and of good spring water that came from back in the woods somewhere. One man showed him how to make pancakes on the stove. Another showed him how to keep the chiggers off with rags soaked in kerosene. When they told stories, he was allowed to laugh along with them. Though he had no stories of his own to tell, he began to adopt the others’, as if they were part of him, too. They showed him the right way to inspect a load, and they let him ride in the cab of a Shay locomotive so that he could see what went on back at the cutting.

  Autumn came all at once with a sudden frost that shriveled the blackberry vines and turned the sky a deep and cloudless blue. By then, Donny had developed a signature, what telegraphers called a “fist.” No longer did he have to ask for a repeat or for slower transmission. He went up to Meridian one day and charged a gold Waltham watch and chain to his father’s account. He went to the stores department and talked them into giving him a cap with a brass plate:

  SOUTHERN RAILWAY

  AGENT

  Finally, he finished a letter to Rosamond Lake and posted it on a passenger train. He received no reply.

  One afternoon in October, a local stopped at Talowah to pick up some cars. While the brakemen were switching out the empties and picking up the loads, the conductor came up to the depot to sign the register and pick up the waybills. He was a man Donny had seen before: not a tall man, but compact, with long hair and a sharp handsome face. Under the bill of his cap, the man’s eyes seemed to miss nothing, though they ignored the telegrapher standing in the boxcar door. The conductor took the bills out of the box and signed his register ticket, then stood for a while, thinking. Finally, he looked up at Donny Luttrell. He said, Have you ever tried to imagine the universe without you in it?

  I beg your pardon? said Donny.

  Think about it, said the conductor, then walked away down the main line toward his caboose.

  Donny thought about it, and the next time the conductor came to sign the register, the boy said, There can’t be a universe if I am not in it.

  Why is that? asked the conductor.

  Because, said Donny. He waved his hand at the woods around them. Because nothing ever dies.

  The conductor nodded. All right, he said.

  Now you tell me an answer, said Donny. What is the difference between being a coward and being afraid?

  Are you talking about yourself? the conductor asked.

  Yes, said Donny.

  Well, said the conductor, if you were a coward, I’d be talking to somebody else right now.

  On Christmas Eve, Donny put a shovel of coal on the fire and made his coffee and listened to the chatter on the telegraph. The boys were talking out there, moving trains. During a pause in the traffic, Donny closed his key and tapped out 110, 110, 19, signifying that Talowah was open and asking for orders. From the dispatcher, he got the word Intelligent, an inquiry about cars ready to be interchanged. Donny was happy to reply that there were none. Merry Xmas, the dispatcher returned. Then the sounder, in its elevated wooden box, amplified by the customary Prince Albert tobacco can tucked behind it—the sounder was still, and Donny closed his key. Outside, the wind moaned around the corners of the boxcar, and a southbound train whistled for orders. Donny made sure the green board of the signal was displayed, then stepped out in his long flannel underdrawers and agent’s cap to watch the freight train by.

  DEVIL DOGS

  George Watson slept troubled under the cardboard in the empty boxcar, and there a dream came to him, full of ice picks and mean dogs and laundry flapping like ghosts in the yards of Jumpertown. He saw Lucy Falls naked, her skin slick and brassy in the lamplight, and he smelled her, felt his hardness grow, felt the heat of it. She said, Hey, baby, what’s this I been hearin’, and put out her hand. George said, Aw, I ain’t really leavin’, baby, and was about to come into her when the dream shifted. Lucy was gone, and there was George’s lost brother rising from the tangled weeds of a ditch by the cotton mill road. There was a low fog over the road and fields, but June was bathed in light like an angel might be. Music was all around him, like when the people used to sing at church when they were boys, all the people with sweat running down their faces even when it was cold, the fat women fanning themselves, singing and clapping.

  ’Fore God, said George. How long you been out?

  While ago, said June. I come all this way to find you.

  George didn’t know what to think, and he could hardly think anyway for all the singing. He put out his hand to touch his brother, but his hand went right on through, and all he felt was an icy coldness. He knew then. He said, You dead, ain’t you, June?

  It’s all right, said the other. I’m here, ain’t I?

  George thought it seemed all right, even if it shouldn’t. The singing made it seem all right. In the old times, George had never understood what the people were singing about. He said, I never did know what all that meant, June, and his brother said, That’s all right. It’s always there, bigger’n anybody. Bigger’n you, even.

  You talkin’ ’bout the devil, he can kiss my ass, said George.

  I ain’t talkin’ ’bout the devil, said June. He took a step closer, and George could smell cedar and linseed oil. What about mama? said June. How she doin’?

  George stepped back in the road, the mud pulling at him as if it didn’t want him to move at all. You dead, you ought to know, he said. Dead peoples know everything.

  The singing stopped then, and the light went away, and June stood before him cold and pale, solid as a statue in the fog. All at once, George was afraid. He tried to move again, but the mud held him fast. June Watson said, I do know. That ain’t what I asked you.

  I ain’t seen her, said George. Leave off with that.

  She never give up on you, said June. I ain’t either. I told a man last night, a police—

  You don’t be talkin’ to no police, said George, all at once angry. Ain’t you learned nothin’?

  You don’t know what I learned, said June. Now, look at you—where you think you goin’, anyway?

  George Watson made to answer, but found he could not. He could not see himself beyond the margins
of the winter day. At last he said, I swear I don’t know.

  Course you don’t, said June. You never did.

  Don’t say that, said George. Don’t you ever say that.

  The music came again, but softer now. June began to fade, to take on the color of the fog around him.

  Are you really dead, June? asked George Watson.

  I’m dead, George, said the other. I’ll see you on the other side.

  When will that be? asked George, but no answer came. The road was empty, and the singing now was the shrill of the cotton mill whistle, calling the people to work.

  When will that be! cried George again. Then he sat up and cried out the question one last time in his waking. The words echoed in the empty car. Sweat poured down his face in spite of the cold, just like the faces of the people in church long ago.

  * * *

  The cars ahead of George Watson were empty, and the cars behind, though riders had been in each once upon a time, and would be there again. Strangers to the world and each other, they had carved their names and their runic signs into the wooden bulkheads and built fires on the floor. In the last car stood the doomed hogs, grunting and shoving. They were miserable in the cold, but not so miserable as they would be when the train began to move. Now and then, one would poke his snout through the slats of the cattle car and sniff at the cold air.

  Finally, at the end of what was not yet a train—it would not be a train until the engine was coupled up and the marker lamps hung out—the caboose curled the usual black smoke from its stovepipe, and the window over the conductor’s desk glowed from the lamp.

  Whenever a caboose was shown in the cartoons or funny papers, it was always cute, red, and bouncy. Magazine illustrators usually portrayed it quaintly, a New England cottage on wheels. Among ordinary citizens, the word “caboose” evoked whimsy as if it were a childish diminutive like “horsey” or “moo-cow.” Perhaps for that reason, and unconsciously, railroad men hardly ever used the word. It was a cab, a shack, a crummy, a hack. On the Northern roads it was a cabin, a way-car, a van. You would see “caboose” written down any number of places—manifests, switch lists, timetables, train orders, and so on—but you would go a long time without hearing the word spoken.

  Frank Smith’s X-630 was neither cute nor red, but it was bouncy; in fact, the crew could hardly stand up in it when the train was at speed, and using the toilet underway required courage and skill. A.P. Dunn was a smooth engine driver. He was good to keep the slack stretched out, and when slack was inevitable, as on a descending grade, he used the air skillfully to keep it at a minimum. He was always mindful of the boys back there, especially when they were walking the car tops. But even the best engineer could not make the X-630 a Pullman ride. The crew accepted this and joked about it, as men will often do about a thing they cannot change.

  Mister Earl January sat by the caboose stove, drinking the last of his coffee, warming his feet, waiting around to give the 4512 its air brake test. When he heard George Watson cry out, Earl thought it was a hog at first, but decided at last that it was a man. He accepted without question that a man would be crying out somewhere in the cold morning. Earl January had seen and heard many odd things in his thirty years’ service, and he had long ago given up wondering.

  He had seen strange lights moving in the yards at night, heard voices, witnessed shadows following him on the other side of a cut. He supposed these were the spirits of those who had been on this ground before. They did not frighten him anymore, though once they had made the hair rise on his neck. He saw one strange thing this morning, just before daybreak, when he came out to the kitchen: sweet Pearl River lying naked in the corner, all curled up, her mouth bleeding and frothing, and a big orange-and-blue can of Gulf bug spray empty beside her. He had no doubt she was dead right then, but the sight of her did not fit with anything in the world he could imagine. That’s what he wanted to tell Frank Smith, to get his view on it, but in the end, he couldn’t tell. He didn’t want anybody else’s view. He wanted to hold on to his belief that when he got home, she would be all right again. In fact, he could see her clearly, making supper in the steamed-up kitchen, listening to Christmas music on the radio.

  Mister Earl had worked alone for a long time, but for a while he’d had a helper named Joe Chiney to work with him. Chiney was old, but nobody knew how old, not even Joe Chiney himself, and he was so black, and his clothes so greasy, you could hardly see him at night—his lantern looked like it was floating around all by itself. He had about twenty children, and a half dozen of these waifs would often trail along after their daddy, picking dewberries, asking questions, throwing chunks of slag at one another. Mister Earl liked when they did that, for it kept things lively. That was when Pearl was young, and sometimes she would come out, too, and play with the nigger children, and Mister Earl would buy them all cheese and crackers and Big Orange drinks for their supper. He and Chiney always watched them closely, making sure they stayed safe in the yard and the shop and the rip-track.

  Joe Chiney didn’t show up one day, and the children quit coming. Pretty soon word came that he had died, but everything was kept down in Jumpertown, and Earl never knew where his partner was buried. Not that he would go there anyhow, for he did not think it appropriate to visit nigger cemeteries. In any event, it was of no consequence, for Earl knew Joe Chiney had come back from the dead. Earl had seen him a couple of times up around the scale house, and more than once had caught a glimpse of him in the yard. If an old nigger could do that, surely Pearl could. She would come back, and Earl would find a good man to help her and love on her.

  Mister Earl January bowed his head and prayed silently, his lips moving with his thoughts. Lord Jesus, he said, I have asked you a thousand times. I have begged and pleaded. Now you want me to think she is dead, that’s fine. Whatever lesson you want me to learn, I have learned it. You make her well again, and I promise I will look out for her.

  Mister Earl found himself weeping. Usually, praying made him feel better, but this time, he had the sense that no one was listening. He wiped his eyes and forced himself to remember that the Lord could fix anything. Surely, if he could bring a nigger back, he could resurrect little Pearl. Then he thought about how he had been on the jury that sent June Watson to Parchman. What if this was a Judgment for his act? What if it was a punishment brought down on Earl in his old age, and his own daughter to bear the pain? Oh, these god damned niggers, he thought.

  * * *

  Frank Smith left the depot restaurant and entered the crowded waiting room. The place smelled of damp wool and newspapers and an odor that belonged only to railroad stations. A blue cloud of cigarette smoke clung to the ceiling, and through it the globes of the overhead lights hung on their stalks like yellow moons. A porter leaned on his broom. A clerk was chalking in arrival times on the train board. So many people: mothers and fathers and sleepy children, soldiers, sailors, old women huddled in their heavy coats, a man in a wheelchair, another passing out tracts. The lines were long at the ticket windows, and Smith thought, Jesus, don’t anybody stay home for Christmas anymore?

  He had to stand in line at the newsstand to get his paper and cigars. While he waited, he thought of his conversation with the chief special agent. Mister Dunn’s circumstance was no secret among the men, but now the bosses knew it too, as they inevitably must. If something bad happened, E. Franklin Smith would be the first one they hauled on the carpet. Mister Smith, how long were you aware of engineer Dunn’s condition? Did you not think it detrimental to the operation of your train? Did it not compromise the safety of your crew and that of others? Yet you never reported Mister Dunn. Can you tell us why?

  The prospect was not funny, but he laughed anyway, thinking about it. Frank Smith owned one suit and tie, twenty years out of fashion, that he kept around for funerals and the like. He would wear that, borrow some eyeglasses, borrow one of Kane’s briar pipes maybe, and present himself to the board of inquiry at the trainmaster’s office among the spittoons
and typewriters. Gentlemen, he would say, I would like to point out that loyalty is not so much a matter of confusion, as Mister Granger says, but rather one of balance wherein the Railroad Company, the assholes who work for it, and the individual asshole each demands his portion. He could share these thoughts with the officials while he turned in his switch key and rule book and lantern. He could develop them further as he rode out of town in an empty boxcar.

  Of course, the bad thing hadn’t happened yet, and maybe it wouldn’t. Maybe Mister Dunn would straighten up, maybe he would be all right—probably he would, and the questions would never be asked. Meanwhile, Smith’s loyalties would go on being what they were.

  One thing was certain: Frank Smith would have to break camp in the X-630. It would be a simple matter of locking the caboose door and walking across town to Artemus’s house. He would do it tomorrow when he got home, and then he would go see the girls.

  Smith got his paper and his cigars and made his way through the crowd. He had never worked in passenger service a day in his life, and he expected to be able to say the same thing when he was old and retired, if he lived that long. He loved to be among people and talk to them, find out what they had done and what they believed in. He felt that everybody was a traveler on the same journey, and a person should be interested in what others had learned along the way. But the Public was a different matter. The Public was too delicate, too selfish and self-absorbed, a loud collective Voice clamoring with complaints, demanding attention. Freight service was better. The hogs in this morning’s consist might complain, but they would never report him to the company for offending their sensibilities.