by Howard Bahr
Then the weight and the closeness and the expectation all lifted off them in a second as if they might leap skyward, high as the hidden sun, the invisible stars. Time folded into its accustomed shape again, and the old men stood panting and bleeding among the jumbled logs, staring at Bobby Necaise climbed halfway up a cedar tree, clinging to the limbs like a possum.
“Holy Jesus’ name,” said Necaise. “Holy fucking shit.”
BELLE ROMAN MEET
In the Pachuta depot, the coal stove hissed, and now and then a clinker fell down through the grates. The agent’s chair in the shallow bay window creaked monotonously as the man pecked at a typewriter wide and heavy as an upright piano. Tat. Tat-tat. Tat. The agent’s desk was piled with papers and great cloth-bound books. Above it hung a Union Pacific calendar adorned with a color print of a long bright-yellow passenger train winding through the western mountains behind a matching quartet of diesel locomotives. Frank Smith thought the picture beautiful and romantic. He had always wanted to go out West and see the mountains and the deserts. For years, he and Artemus had planned a motorcycle trip out there, knowing all the while they would never have time for it unless they lived to retire. By then, of course, they would be too old and stiff, their spines too far gone, their joints too frozen, to ride motorcycles anywhere, but they agreed to try it anyhow. Surely it would not be a bad way to go out—a pair of broken-down ex-trainmen lurching off on their antique machines into the kind of sunset they often saw in cowboy movies. That would be a proper end, far better than a pair of iron beds in a ward of the Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Home.
The picturesque setting of the calendar was a long way from this dismal village in Mississippi. Smith wondered if the UP men ever took note of their surroundings, and if any of them ever dreamed of riding motorcycles to view the moss-draped oaks and brown bayous and New Orleans street scenes depicted on Southern and Illinois Central calendars. What would they think of Pachuta? No doubt they had Pachutas of their own out there.
Smith studied the picture and wondered what it was like to work on a diesel engine. He imagined they were smooth and quiet and comfortable, like riding in a Hudson Hornet. He was calculating the trade-off between diesel and steam power when it occurred to him that his crew had been gone a long time, too long to fetch a single car from the sawmill. Apparently, the agent had the same thought, for he looked up from his typewriter and said, “Where’s your boys, Frank?”
No sooner were the words spoken than Bobby Necaise stumbled through the door like a messenger from Roncevaux. The boy was excited, breathing fast, blood smeared on his face. At the sight of him, Smith felt the warmth evaporate from the room, and all notions of romance fled with it. Something bad had happened, and all at once Smith was cold with fear. He thought, Somebody’s killed, I should have been there, I should have gone with them…
The news, once Necaise settled down and delivered it, was not so bad. The log car had turned over, but the engine and boxcar were still on the rail. Nobody hurt.
The agent was already telegraphing the dispatcher that the main line was blocked by the 4512. Smith and Necaise stepped outside where they found Sonny Leeke come up from the caboose with his umbrella. When Leeke heard what happened, he looked at Frank Smith. Then he said, “Bobby, go tell Dutch. Tell him to move the flag back a ways and be careful.”
Necaise took his hat off. “I’m sorry,” he said. “Maybe if you—”
“Never mind,” said Leeke. “That’s a bad place in there.”
The boy nodded and walked away. He was half a car length away when Sonny Leeke spoke again. “Bobby?”
“What?” said the boy, turning.
“You didn’t fuck up, did you?”
Necaise looked from one man to the other. “I did everything I knowed to do,” he said. “I swear to God.”
“Then let it go,” said Leeke. “Get your head back on. And stay with Dutch on the flag.”
Necaise nodded again and turned, stumbling a little in the slag as he walked. Smith knew that Sonny Leeke was right: the boy’s nerves were touchy, and the walk back would do him some good, and Ladner would make him laugh. He also knew that the boy would not let it go, not right now, and that was good, too. That would make him careful.
“Do I have time to take a piss?” said Leeke, tilting his head at the depot.
“Piss away,” said Smith, “then hurry on down.”
On his way up the train, Smith forced himself to accept his own circumstance. Most likely he would not get back to Meridian before tomorrow evening when his children would be tired and worn out with Christmas. The overtime pay would be a consolation, however, and it would have to do. As he was adjusting to this new reality, Smith came upon a pile of feathers where a hawk had slain a pigeon. From the scattering, he picked out a long gray wing pinion and twirled it in his fingers as he walked.
* * *
George Watson had a sense that something had happened. The drag was sitting too long on the main, and he could hear no sounds of switching. He eased up to the boxcar door and peeped around just in time to catch a glimpse of Frank Smith passing forward. A bad sign. They were stuck in some cracker town south of Meridian where a strange nigger would be slapped in the jailhouse the second he appeared. He stepped out into the frame of the open door, thinking he might tell where they were, when he came face-to-face with another man passing up the train.
Ah, shit, he thought. He had violated the rider’s cardinal rule: stay out of sight.
The man was carrying an umbrella. A burned-down cigarette dangled from his lip. He said, “Well, if it ain’t Sweet Willie Wine. What the fuck you doin’ out here, Willie?”
George recognized the man in return, but couldn’t remember his name. “Oh, just riding south, mister,” he said, dragging off his cap. “I ain’t hurtin’ a thing, I promise.”
The brakeman had dropped his smoke and was lighting another with a silver Zippo lighter. George said, “I hope nothin’ bad’s happened.”
“Naw,” said the brakeman. “We turned over a car in the woods, is all.” He laughed.
“Meanwhile,” he said, “they’s a load of hogs back in the train. Maybe you smelled ’em. One of ’em already froze to death.”
“Well, sir, that’s some bad luck,” said George, trying to keep the cold shiver out of his voice. “That’s just some bad luck for a hog.”
“Hogs ain’t got any luck,” said the man. “How about you?”
“I’m fresh out myself,” said George.
“Stay warm, Willie,” said the brakeman. Then he laughed and passed on, and George thought maybe he had some luck after all. He remembered the man’s name, Sonny Leeke. He wished he had asked for a cigarette; Sonny Leeke would have given him one. Frank Smith would have, too.
Pretty soon, the trainmen came walking back. As they passed, one of them—George didn’t see which one—tossed a Prince Albert tin in the door. It banged against the bulkhead and came to rest in the far corner. He picked up the tin and popped open the lid and looked inside. The tin was half full of tobacco. There was a book of matches, a sheaf of OCB wrapping papers, and a folded dollar bill. George Watson laughed. That Prince Albert tin was as good as a first-class ticket to the promised land.
* * *
The log spill was a mess, but it was well clear of the main line. The lumber company would try to blame the incident on the train crew, of course, but Smith was certain they could beat that. Mister Dunn explained in detail what happened, then mixed up some salt water for Eddie’s bitten tongue, and gave Smith a vial of Mercurochrome from the first-aid kit to daub on Necaise if he needed it. When the train was together again, Smith called in the flag and had them back into a clear track in the Pachuta yard. Smith expected to be held at Pachuta for Number 65, a reefer train hauling bananas out of New Orleans. The green fruit was high revenue but perishable, and the profit was balanced against the per diem charge on the refrigerator cars that carried them. Every second the reefers stayed on the property, the bananas g
rew riper, and the per diem tipped toward the red, which meant that the Southern Railway Company wanted to get rid of the whole affair as quickly as possible. No wonder, then, that Number 65 was a train so hot that it had superiority over everything but the extra-fare Silver Star.
The crew gathered around the front of the engine, warming themselves in the steam from the cylinder head, waiting for the official order that would hold them at Pachuta. They had been lucky, and they all knew it, and the knowledge subdued them. Nobody, not even Sonny Leeke, complained about the wait. Smith sat on the pilot and took out his trip book, a little bound notebook where, in the course of a trip, he wrote down everything that happened. Every conductor did this, the information later recorded on the conductor’s wheel report, and finally on the dispatcher’s train sheet. Smith wrote,
Pachuta 845 AM. IC 61708 derailed @ sawmill
acct bad rail turned over. Waiting for orders re. 65.
Presently, the agent came down from the depot with their order:
EXTRA 4512 SOUTH WAIT AT BELLE ROMAN FOR
NO. 65 UNTIL 9:51 AM.
This was hardly the order they expected. Smith read it and shook his head. “This can’t be right,” he protested. Belle Roman was a passing track fifteen miles to the south. They might have waited there for 65 had they been on time, but they were not on time, and the dispatcher knew it because the agent at Pachuta had told him. They were delayed, and delay meant changes. What was the dispatcher thinking? “This can’t be right,” Smith said again. “He ought to hold us here.”
“I asked for a repeat,” said the agent. “I guess he wants to get you over the road.”
“But why?” said Smith. “All we got is some empty boxes and those god damned hogs.”
“Must be some valuable hogs,” said the agent.
“I can make it,” said Mister Dunn.
They all looked at him in surprise. At the derailment, Mister Dunn had behaved well. He had been professional and done everything right, and Smith had begun to hope that maybe he would not have to bring down the gods on A.P. Dunn after all. Now the engineer was proposing a risky fifteen-mile dash for no useful reason.
“I can make it, boys,” said Mister Dunn again.
Smith knew he could refuse the orders. He could still call for a relief engineer. He looked hard at Mister Dunn, searching for any trace of the brash intruder he had detected in Meridian. He saw only the old, good man in his starched overalls, watch in one hand, cap and goggles in the other.
“Let’s go, if we’re going, for Christ’s sake,” said Dutch Ladner.
“Okay,” said Smith, and turned toward the caboose. “When you are ready, Mister Dunn,” he said.
* * *
Now they were rolling, the white flags fluttering into rags on the pilot. Mister Dunn had abandoned the niceties of train handling and was flying along without regard for anybody’s sensibilities. He and Eddie Cox were trying to fit the fifteen miles into a ten-minute passage. They had the 4512 blowing black smoke, and the caboose was bouncing like a kite. The locomotive whistle blew for crossings with the high-pitched urgency of a passenger train. Smith held on and watched the snow slant horizontal past the closed window of the cupola. Whatever happened was out of his hands now; everything depended on the old man at the throttle of the locomotive. Smith had to trust his own judgment and that of his crew. Most of all, he had to believe that Mister A.P. Dunn, crazy or not, was a first-class engineer.
Across the aisle, on the other side of the cupola, Sonny Leeke was smoking one cigarette after another and drinking coffee from the Thermos jug he brought from home. Leeke could not abide Frank Smith’s coffee.
Leeke had not spoken since they left Pachuta. Now, all at once, he said, “They’s a nigger riding in one of them Maryland boxes.”
“I figured somebody was,” said Smith. He had to shout over the racket of the train.
“It’s Sweet Willie Wine,” said the other. “I saw him.”
“Well, I’ll be damned,” said Smith, surprised. “That was his brother was killed last night.” Sonny hadn’t heard about the incident, so Smith filled him in. “You reckon he knows?”
“He’s a bad nigger,” said Leeke. “You reckon it would make any difference?”
Smith thought that was a valid question. If you were a bad man, the whole universe must look different. He was studying the gray pigeon feather when Sonny Leeke spoke again. “Necaise might’ve got himself killed,” the brakeman said.
“The boy is doing fine,” said Smith. “I don’t know what you’d of done different.”
“I didn’t mean that,” said the brakeman. “Anyhow, I might call off when we get home.”
Again, Smith was caught by surprise. Men rarely laid off for no reason—money was tight, even for bachelors like Sonny Leeke and Artemus Kane. Experienced men, however, knew when they needed time. When a man got shook up, maybe he would quit paying attention. On the other hand, the derailment at Pachuta, though a close thing, was not unusual. Sonny Leeke had seen a hundred such incidents in his time. If Leeke was troubled, it was not what did happen, but what might have happened, that shook him. That was bad thinking.
“You were not on the head end,” said Smith. “If you had been, the rail would have turned over just the same.”
“I told you,” said Leeke, “that’s not what I meant. Bobby might’ve—”
“I know what you meant,” said Smith. “Don’t start thinking too much. You can’t stand the strain.”
The slack ran in with unaccustomed violence as Mister Dunn began to slow for Belle Roman, now a bare quarter mile away. The brakeman drained his coffee cup and screwed it back on the Thermos jug. He opened his window and put his head out into the cold wind, and Smith knew that, up ahead, Leeke could see the green lens of the passing-track switch.
“Are we going to make it?” asked Smith.
The brakeman laughed. “Look yonder,” he said.
Smith slid open his own window and leaned out. Sixty-five’s light was already in view, jiggling with speed. Jesus Christ, thought Smith, he expects us to be in the clear already. There was no stopping now. They had to get in the hole, off the main, out of the way, or there would be dramatic results when the two locomotives collided.
Sonny Leeke was enjoying himself. “That A.P. Dunn is a high-rolling son bitch,” he laughed. “I take back everything I ever said about him.”
“You’re a pussy if you lay off,” said Smith.
The brakeman pulled on his gloves, a fresh cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth. “Fuck you, boss,” he said as he swung down from the cupola. “We fixing to die anyhow.”
Smith’s instinct was to get up, find his gloves and coat, start being in charge. In fact, all he could do now was watch. The boys knew what they were doing, and no order Frank Smith could give, no instruction or advice, could change whatever was about to happen.
* * *
Like Sonny Leeke, Mister A.P. Dunn was having a good time. His head had quit hurting—indeed, his whole face was numb from the cold wind—and the locomotive cab was filled with excitement. Necaise and Cox were speculating on whether they would beat 65 to Belle Roman, and what would happen if they didn’t.
“Man tell you to jump,” said Cox, “you best be jumpin’.”
Necaise looked out the window. “Hell, I ain’t jumpin’ from way up here.”
“We’ll see when the time comes,” said Cox.
They made the fifteen miles in eleven minutes by Mister Dunn’s watch, but when the green switch target came into view, there was the headlight of the opposing train just topping the hill.
“God Almighty,” said Eddie Cox. “He thinkin’ we in the clear already.”
“He won’t stop that big train now,” said Necaise.
“You got that right,” said Eddie.
“Then we better do this smartly,” said Mister Dunn. “Bobby, I am not stopping. You’ll have to beat me to the switch.”
The boy looked up in surprise. “I
can’t do that,” he said. “What if—”
“There is no ‘what if’,” said Mister Dunn. “You’ll just have to do it.”
“That’s what I’m talkin’ about,” said Eddie Cox.
Necaise pulled on his gloves. In a moment, Mister Dunn pushed the throttle forward and drew off a little air and said, “Now, Bobby.”
“Aw, shit,” said Necaise, but he launched himself out the narrow front door of the cab and began the long, slippery walk down the boiler gangway to the pilot. In a moment, Mister Dunn saw Necaise on the engineer’s side, watched him drop off the pilot and run for the north switch to line them in.
Eddie had crossed the cab to look. Necaise was lifting his knees high, arms pumping. Eddie laughed. “That boy is round, but he sho’ is fast,” he said.
They watched the boy grab the tall switch stand and key the lock and shake loose the chain and line the switch red in the last possible instant before the 4512’s lead truck entered the points. Necaise didn’t need to signal “come ahead,” but caught the pilot step as the engine went by.
Eddie went back to his seat and leaned far backward out his window. “Now we get the back end in,” he said.
Number 65 was passing the south switch, and the engineer was blowing his whistle in frantic bursts, by way of saying that he couldn’t stop now. The 4512 curved into the siding and Mister Dunn pulled back a notch on the throttle, praying to clear the north switch in time. 65’s headlight was a dozen car lengths away when Sonny Leeke dropped off the caboose and unlocked the north switch and lined it green, jumping back as 65’s engine, whistle shrieking, thundered through the points an instant later.