Pelican Road

by Howard Bahr

  “I do,” said Artemus, and gave the boy a match, which he lit expertly with a flick of his thumbnail. He puffed great clouds of acrid smoke, then rested his elbows on his knees and squinted into the twilight. “That’ll do for the ’skeeters,” he said. “They can’t abide Injun terbaccer.” Then, after a moment, he looked at Artemus and asked, “What’s your name?”

  Artemus told his name, and the boy put out his hand, and they shook. “Pleased to meet you,” said the boy, then pointed with his pipe stem as an old man might. “The river’s pretty, ain’t it?”

  “Yes, it is,” said Artemus. On the sandbar, a green heron—Artemus had not noticed him before—posed motionless, one foot raised. In the yellow sky, swallows darted and chirped to one another. Artemus and the boy could smell the warm creosote from the bridge, and the old rank smell of the slow-moving water. They heard the secret voices in the long grass, the voices of night, and a bull frog tuning up, and his lesser cousins making a loud chorus: the leopard frogs, the spring peepers, the trilling of toads courting on the muddy banks. Here a kingfisher came darting down the tunnel of trees, there a flight of egrets crossed the sky. Silver minnows flicked and dodged in the shallows, and a snake traveling upstream scattered them. A big snake doctor came and perched on the pigtail whistle of the cab and watched them with his quick, bulbous eyes.

  “Say, can I see your watch?” asked the boy.

  Artemus was wearing overalls, and his watch chain was looped across the bib. He took out the gold Hamilton and showed it to the boy who said, “I wish I could have one like that.”

  Artemus was suddenly aware of the piece, the weight of it, the delicacy of the numbers and the fine deep blue of the hands. The watch was ticking away, and time was passing, and right now Anna Rose was maybe going to Mass, passing through the doors of Immaculate Conception with her hat on and a little veil of netting over her face. Artemus could see her dip her hand in the holy water font, make the sign of the cross, walk down the nave alone with her head bowed.

  “You will, one day,” said Artemus, and slipped the watch back in his pocket.

  “Huh,” said the boy. “It’s always One day this, and One day that—I’d like to know what day you all are talkin’ about.”

  Artemus laughed, for he knew the feeling well. He said, “Well, Sturgis Montieth the Third, what you doing out here on the Pearl River with night coming on?”

  “Well, I was scoutin’, sir, mostly,” the boy said. “Too much fresh water to fish. We live on the county road about a mile upstream. My daddy is the game warden. I pretend a lot, to exercise my imagination. This evenin’, I am a Royal Canadian Mounted Po-lice.”

  “I expect that is a good trick in Louisiana in the summer,” said Artemus.

  “Well, it’s summer in Canada, too,” said the boy. “I guess they got muskeeters, too, and they speak French like Daddy. I learned that in school.”

  “All right,” said Artemus. “I see your point.”

  “So why are you-all settin’ here on the bridge?” asked the boy.

  Artemus explained that his train was delayed by another train, and sitting on the bridge was all they could do at the moment. He said, “I cannot begin to tell you how much I am disappointed by this state of affairs.”

  The comment was lost on the boy. He said, “How you know to do it? How you know to stop?”

  “We got a train order at Picayune,” said Artemus. “It said to stop at the south switch of the siding, so that’s what we did, and here we are.”

  “Huh,” said the boy. He smoked for a moment, then said, “I hear you-all in the night, and I hear the engines whistle for the crossin’ down at Gant’s store. Such a lonesome sound in the dark.”

  “Yes, it is,” said Artemus. “You don’t ever get used to it.”

  * * *

  Artemus Kane, at least, never got used to it. He loved to be out on the car tops on a warm day while his train rambled through a town: cap cocked over one eye, hands in his pockets, posing in the same careless, infuriating way that sailors have. He never missed a chance to lean from an engine cab or the cupola of a caboose and wave at the poor mortals down below—citizens in motorcars huddled like sheep at a crossing; children racing the train on their bicycles; pretty girls hanging laundry in their backyards—as if to say, Why, this is nothing. I do this every day. He believed he saw the envy in all their eyes—the longing for motion and speed, for freedom, for the privilege of walking always on the edge of doom that could make even ordinary moments of life a sweet possession. And late on a moonless night, when the lamplit windows of houses winked across the fields, and the whistle of the striding locomotive drifted back from some nameless crossing, Artemus thought of himself and his comrades as the last tragic heroes, traveling forever into the darkness, forever apart, with nothing for their passage but a hint of coal smoke borne away by the wind, the glow of their marker lamps fading and gone, and this: a deep silence that embraced all the sorrow and mutability of a race that had owned Eden once.

  He never got used to sixteen-hour days, pitch-black nights, clouds of mosquitoes, surly hoboes with knives and guns lurking in empty cars. He remembered slipping on ice-caked ladders and stirrups—once trying to grab a hand hold but feeling the grab iron slip away, falling between the cars, catching himself at the last possible instant before the wheels had him—and how it was to look for car numbers in the dark, and switch in the blinding rain, and walk the tops at fifty miles an hour against a wind that slashed like a razor and blew your lantern out, or what it was like to work the head end, to be in the engine cab on a hundred-degree day with the firebox doors opened and a gasoline truck racing you to a crossing.

  The world the railroad men inhabited was an alien masculine world with a language all its own—the runic timetables, the peculiar idioms, the complicated rules. Hecate was real, and death was real, and the landscape was wrought of solid things, of iron, steel, gravel, piney woods, weathered freight offices and scale houses—a lonely, complex, unforgiving place.

  One night. One day. One afternoon. That’s how the men told their stories, every incident a particular moment in time, captured forever, immortal, always dressed in weather, in light or dark, full of voices and the quick, moving shapes of men. It was sleeting, raining, hot, cold, pitch-black dark; trains were always moving, wheels groaning, the clock in the freight house ticked for no one, and something was about to happen—something was happening. Ghosts spoke, laughed, did mischief, got hurt, were stupid or clumsy or annoying—but in the telling they were not ghosts, for you could see their faces, see their arms move, see the pencils in their pockets, the grease on their pants, see the rain running off the bills of their caps, smell the whiskey on their breath. You could see a black yard engine coming down in the blinding rain, all the crew in sou’-westers so it looked like a shrimp boat, but never mind the rain, for the trains had to move just the same. Here a man grinned at you from the line of a story, and you knew he was real, no matter he died two decades ago from too much drink. You saw a man sitting amazed in the welter of his own blood—a man lying dead, cut to pieces, among the tall spring grass—men shambling up the yard in circles of lantern light—or running, taking a leak, choking on a chaw of Red Man, hanging off the side of a car—a man framed in the window of a locomotive cab or riding the footboard—bending to throw a switch, stepping off a moving engine or caboose, setting a hand brake, climbing a long ladder, walking the tops—each one real, all real in their grace, their sweat, their stinking in the heat, their noses running in the cold, their hemorrhoids and hangovers. Here a man flings his cap down and stomps on it in frustration. There a man throws a cup of water in another’s face, and everybody tenses for a confrontation that never comes. A man curses, one fires a pistol in the air for no reason, another vomits bootleg liquor out the cab window, another cuts you with his meanness, then an hour later says something kind that saves you.

  This is what he might have told the boy, but he didn’t for there was no time, and no words to
tell so a boy might understand. He wanted to tell Anna Rose, too, and maybe he would, for he hoped to have the time for that. Someday pretty soon, anyhow, if he didn’t lose her.

  * * *

  “Sometimes I like to come up here to watch the trains go by,” said the boy, and pointed with his pipe stem. “I stand right over yonder.”

  “Well, you must be careful,” said Artemus. “These things will hurt you.”

  “Oh, I stand ’way back in the grass. I always give the fellers on the engine a highball.” He waved his hand in the way that signified a highball, the universal signal to proceed. “They always like that,” he said.

  “All right, I will teach you something,” said Artemus. “When you watch a freight train by, you always look for sticking brakes and hot journal boxes.” He pointed out the journal boxes on the caboose, and the brake shoes against the wheels. He said, “One makes fire around the wheels, the other makes smoke, maybe fire, too. You see something like that, here’s what you do when the shack comes by.” Artemus showed the boy the hand signals for sticking brakes and for a hot box. “Then the boys will know they have trouble,” he said.

  Sturgis Montieth practiced the movements. “Now, that’s somethin’ like,” he said, pleased with himself.

  “Only,” said Artemus, “if you give those signals just for fun, the lord God will strike you dead with a lightning bolt. You understand?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You can’t be fooling around out here,” said Artemus.

  “No, sir.” The boy thought a moment. “What if it’s night?” he said.

  “You can signal with your lantern, but never mind that, because you better not be up here at night. Now, pay attention.” Artemus showed the boy the hand signals for coupling air hoses, cutting off, backing across, and the signs for numbers one through ten. The boy picked them up easily.

  “That’s good,” said Artemus. “You learn quick.”

  “One day, I would like to be a railroad man my own self,” said the boy.

  “I thought you wanted to be a Royal Canadian Mounted Po-lice,” said Artemus.

  “Shoot,” said the boy, “that was only pretend. Don’t you think I’d a whole lot rather ride up here like you, with a fine watch, on a fast freight train?”

  “You think so?” said Artemus. He wanted to tell the boy about Anna Rose, about the pain of craving her and how he wouldn’t see her tonight or tomorrow night, maybe not for a long time, because that’s how it was on the railroad, and you had to accept it or get out. However, this was only a boy, and he would not be moved by a sentiment of that kind. Artemus Kane would not have been moved when he was a boy, standing by the high iron, watching the trains go by and dreaming of travel and speed. In that distant time, Artemus believed in a future that owned no room for yearning, and speed was all that mattered.

  Far ahead, the engine’s whistle blew a series of long and short notes.

  “What’s that?” asked the boy.

  “The engineer is calling in the flags,” said Artemus. “It means the local is tucked away in the hole at last, praise God, and we are about to leave.” He dug in the pocket of his overalls and produced a rubber ring, its diameter a little larger than a dollar coin. “This is an air hose gasket,” he said, laying it in the boy’s palm. “You keep it. When you hire out, show it as a sign. You’ll be that much ahead.”

  The boy looked at the gasket as if it were the Holy Grail. “Mankind!” he said. “Thanks, mister!” Artemus laughed.

  From the rear, Max Triggs the flagman was trotting toward the caboose. The engine gave two quick notes on the whistle.

  “That’s the highball,” said the boy.

  “Time to go,” said Artemus. He helped the boy make the long step down. “Stay off the bridge, now. Maybe I’ll see you again sometime.”

  “I’ll watch for you,” said the boy.

  In a little while, the Pearl River and Gant’s store and the local in the siding were far behind them. Hubert Craft was still up in the cupola, reading, lifting his eyes now and then to watch for trouble along the train. Artemus and Triggs stood on the back of the caboose, holding fast to the handrail. They were making good time now, and the rails slid rapidly beneath them, the caboose wheels clicking on the joints. The air smelled of coal smoke and friction and rain. It was dangerous to linger this way on the narrow platform and the train racing along. It was against all the rules. Sometimes, though, and especially on a summer evening, you just had to do it, just for a little while.

  Triggs asked, “Who was that little feller you were talking to?” He was a droll man whom Artemus had never seen disturbed or agitated. Hubert Craft was the same way, and sometimes their calmness drove Artemus crazy. Neither Hubert nor Max Triggs ever raised his voice, and Triggs didn’t raise his voice now, so he was all but inaudible over the noise of their passage.

  Artemus shouted in return. “Just a boy, though a smart one. He has ambitions to be a railroad man.”

  “Huh,” said Triggs. “He ain’t that smart, then.”

  IN HOC SIGNO

  The roundhouse was not round, but octagonal. On six sides were the stalls where locomotives were serviced in preparation for their next runs. The seventh side held the office, the shop, and the trainmen’s washrooms. In the center of the octagon was a turntable, which was not a table but a section of track on inverted trusses set down in a pit. Southbound engines had to back out, those nothbound had to head out. If necessary, a locomotive could be set out on the table and turned slowly to the grind of electric motors and grease squelching in the gears and cogs. Thence it would head or back through the yawning doors that led to the maze of tracks in the yard.

  The roundhouse was a monument to the age of heavy machinery. It reverberated with the clang of tools, the whine of motors, the thump of air compressors, the mechanical breathing of the locomotives. Its vast floor, and the floor of the pit, were of cinders and beds of ancient, petrified grease. Everything was under a common roof and lit constantly by electricity, since not even the white sun of August could penetrate the smeared and blackened skylights. Every surface was coated with a fine dusting of soot so that, in time, the clothing of the men who worked there was the color of soot and so deeply penetrated that no Oxydol or Clorox could redeem it. In rainy weather, water dripped through the smoke vents in the roof, the soot turned to paste, black tears coursed down the walls, and the old grease beds glistened with beads of moisture, each one an oily rainbow.

  Meanwhile the locomotives, large and small, yard and freight and passenger, brooded in their stalls, fussed over like thoroughbreds, gleaming and polished like nothing else in that ashen place. Engine wipers used their rags and brushes and steam hoses against the grime of the road. They shined headlights and gauges and sight-glasses. They raked clean the mud drums and fireboxes, and restored the white-painted rims of the great wheels. Oilers oiled and greased; machinists tinkered and measured; hostlers moved the engines to and fro. In the office, the roundhouse clerks bent like monks over maintenance forms and pay rosters and orders for parts and tools. The office in winter was always blue with cigar and cigarette smoke and blistering hot from the iron stove. In summer, the ceiling fans wobbled on their stems and stirred the smoke around and blew papers everywhere, in fact stirred everything but the heat thick as tar in the air. In living memory, only one woman had ever entered there: an aggrieved wife waving a little automatic pistol around. No one was injured.

  The men lived on the ground, but nothing else did: not a blade of grass, neither roach nor rat. Even jimson weed, which throve on concrete, could find no purchase on the toxic floor of the roundhouse. Yet life is persistent, and here it took hold among the timbers of the roof where lived generations of bickering sparrows and cooing pigeons. The rafters were white with droppings and dripped with the remnants of ancient nests. The birds seemed to enjoy the smoke and soot that rose at all hours around them. They seemed frantic to perpetuate themselves and mated and brooded even in the winter, so that, in an
y season, a man was likely to be shat upon or have a spindly, featherless nestling drop in his coffee. Hido Schreiber, on his days off, sometimes visited the roundhouse with his double-barreled rifle and boxes of rat-shot cartridges. He worked great slaughter among the birds, but when he left, they only seemed more numerous than before.

  * * *

  Bobby Necaise was a round, freckled, good-natured boy whose accent was that of the Gulf Coast, kin to the urban dialect of New Orleans, which in turn was kin to certain dialects found in New York City. Bobby did not know this. He had not seen New York City, but he hoped to during his adventures in the U.S. Navy. He wanted to see everything. He wanted to go to Europe, to Italy and France especially, and walk among the stuccoed, sunwashed villages of the Mediterranean. He wanted to steam across the blue waters of the Pacific and visit islands where coconut palms thrashed in the offshore breeze, where girls with naked bosoms cavorted in grass skirts and flowers. He had read about all these places in National Geographic, and they were set like jewels in the vast, endless future he was about to embrace. He could see himself clearly in an image informed by the recruiting signs at the post office: standing on the deck of a warship in his dress blues, a white hat cocked on his head, the wind whipping his neckerchief, the sea beyond marbled and foaming. For now, however, Bobby Necaise was a brakeman on the Southern Railway in a greasy barn coat and overalls and a polka-dotted cap with the brim turned up. He carried a cracked leather Gladstone bag and a lantern. His gloves were stuffed in a coat pocket along with a timetable and a ham sandwich his mother had made. The conductor had given him permission to swap with Sonny Leeke, so Bobby would be working the head end today, and he could talk to the enginemen about the mysteries of steam propulsion.

  They were in the crews’ washroom when he asked about swapping. At first, Frank Smith was reluctant. Necaise hired out at fourteen as a messenger boy, but, as Smith pointed out, he had only been on the trainmen’s board for a year, and this local was the first regular job he had been able to hold.