by Dorsey, Tim
“Two tickets to Miami, The Silver Stingray.”
“It’s sold out,” said the clerk.
“What about cancellations?” asked Ivan. “Standby?”
“Doesn’t matter,” said the ticket man, pointing down the tracks. “It just left.”
“Why didn’t you tell us in the first place?”
The pair dashed out of the depot and jumped back in the Charger.
Zigzag pulled the map from under his seat and flicked a lighter to see.
“What now?” asked Ivan.
“We might be able to get on in Fayetteville, or maybe Charleston.”
“You heard the man. It’s sold out.”
“That’s never stopped me and Louise here,” said Zigzag, producing a shiny .380 automatic from the glove compartment.
“We can’t just go in there blazing! We don’t know where he is on the train. If we cause any commotion at all, he might jump off and we’ll never see the money.”
“You got a better idea, mon?”
“Well, if we try to get on at a depot, we risk problems from the Amtrak people, and they’re the last ones you want to mess with. Plus, the train will be stopped, so it’s easier for him to hop off. Which means we’ll have to get on the train between cities, while it’s moving. It’s the only way we can…” Ivan stopped and stared at Zigzag, who was lighting a joint the size of a bowling pin.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
“Hopping on board the ganja train.”
“Look at the size of that fucking thing!” Ivan glanced around in traffic to see if there were any cops. “Are you nuts?”
Zigzag exhaled, a small cloud enveloping their heads. “You’re the one who wants to jump on a moving train.”
“It’s possible.”
“It’s suicide.”
“I’m not talking about shooting ourselves out of a cannon at the thing. There are ways to trim risk. I just haven’t figured out the right method yet.”
Zigzag grinned. “I have an idea, mon.”
The sleeping berths were wide enough for sex, if you had the right motivation. But there wasn’t remotely room for a couple to sleep together.
Serge was in the top bunk, Sam on the bottom. She had fallen off fast after the lovemaking, but Serge was still wide open. He was way too wound up from being on a train. Plus, Sam snored like a lumberjack.
A little after two in the morning. Serge lay on his back, head propped with two pillows, looking sideways out the window as The Silver Stingray rolled through the backside of Virginia, rhythmic clacking, a faint train whistle ten cars up, then the crossing guard, the red-and-white bar across the road, caution lights flashing above a metal sign with buckshot dents, two pickups waiting on the other side of the gate. America was on the move, and it was moving away from the train tracks. Serge saw what was left behind, the late-night scenes repeating, Virginia becoming North and South Carolina. Raleigh, Southern Pines, Hamlet, Camden. Crime light, barbed wire, warehouses and liquor stores, alleys, a flashlight in the face of someone pulled over by police, then another tiny train depot from the 1940s hanging on for life, bleary travelers under the cantilevers. Serge hit radio buttons until he found jazz. Perfect. Watching America go by. Homeless people rubbing hands over oil-drum flames to the melancholy of Thelonious. He got out his new digital camera and rested it on his stomach, switching on the tiny monitor, replaying scenes from the last twenty-four hours. The gray Philly switching yards, the Maryland slums, the upscale parks in D.C., the Marine Corps hangar with the president’s helicopter, the blur of a freight train passing the other way, a citadel, a rocky trout stream, a riverboat, a carnival, a fire station, a little girl with pigtails skipping rope in front of a church, a restored Victorian home in an anonymous town with train tracks running down the center of Main Street, and everywhere, smiling Americans waving back at the train like a Ford truck ad. Serge finally came to the last picture in the camera’s memory and stopped: An old guy with a long white beard standing next to the tracks in the middle of nowhere, operating a big Hasselblad camera on a tripod, taking a picture back at Serge, his own future.
A loud scream startled Serge, and he bonked his head on the ceiling.
It was Sam. “You bastard!”
Serge hung his head over the side of the bunk. “What’d I do?”
“You bastard!” she yelled again, talking in her sleep. There were more words, but he could only make out a few of them, and most of those were bastard. Then something about final exams.
“What year is it?” asked Serge.
“1973.”
She twisted violently, a few more bastards, then: “It’s our secret, girls.”
“What’s your secret?” asked Serge.
The sunrise sparkled through the trees as The Silver Stingray rolled into the quiet South Carolina morning. There was still a cover of snow, but now patches of ground poked through.
A bunch of tuxedos sat around the booth in the front of the dining car.
“Tanner find the scripts yet?” asked Andy.
Spider shook his head.
Dee Dee came back from the rest room.
“Hey! Who ate one of my bananas?”
An empty peel sat in front of Preston.
Dee Dee snatched her hat off the table. “If I ever catch you doing that again, I’ll fuckin’ kill you!”
Passengers at nearby tables perked up. They put down their forks and began writing in notebooks.
The BBB walked forward through the sleeping compartment.
“Is it me, or does this train seem to be going faster?” asked Teresa.
“Feels the same,” said Maria. “The important question is why Rebecca won’t tell us where she disappeared to last night. And why she’s grinning so much.”
“I just had a dream, that’s all.”
“What kind of dream?”
“A Brad Pitt dream. We’ll leave it at that.”
The BBB left the sleeper and entered the dining car. The people having breakfast turned around and applauded.
“You were great last night,” said a woman in a sun hat.
“They didn’t tell us more cast members would be hidden among the passengers,” said her husband. “What a performance!”
“What are you talking about?” said Teresa.
“I got it all on video if you want to see.”
“We do,” said Sam.
They crowded around. The man adjusted the tiny crystal screen on his camcorder and played back Preston’s hypnosis show. Sam quacking, Paige scraping her shoe and so on. The BBB began to boil as they watched. But it was nothing compared to Maria’s reaction when she saw herself with the blow-up doll.
“I’ll kill the son of a bitch! Who’s got a gun?”
Passengers took more notes.
Suddenly, yelling and a struggle at the front of the car.
Dee Dee had demanded an apology about eating from her hat, and Preston had told her to go fuck herself with one of her precious bananas. Andy and Spider had to separate them. Passengers scribbled furiously.
“Preston, enough’s enough!” said Frankie. “Sometimes it’s just not funny anymore. Like back in Bridgeport when that mob chased us out of Private Ryan. I was ready to strangle you with my bare hands.”
More writing in notebooks.
The book club marched angrily up the aisle, ready to read Preston the riot act. A woman in a red dress pushed by them and stormed to the front of the car.
“Preston?”
He turned around. “Yes?”
“You don’t remember me, do you?” said the woman.
Preston squinted at her face. “Should I?”
“Albuquerque.”
“Let’s see…Albuquerque, Albuquerque…oh, Albuquerque! I remember now. Wait, don’t help me…”—snapping his fingers—“…Helen, Helga, Heloise…”
“Betty.”
“I was just about to say Betty.”
“I finally tracked you down, you worm! H
ow dare you take advantage of me like that!”
“Take advantage of you how?”
“Hypnotizing me to think you were Brad Pitt so I’d have sex with you!”
“Moi?”
“You!” said the woman, pulling a gun from her purse and pointing it at Preston.
Some passengers ran out of space and had to break out new notebooks.
“Hold on a second! I can explain! I, I was trying to help you…”
“Help me! How was that helping me?”
“You obviously have a problem with men…”
Mistake.
Just before she pulled the trigger, Spider grabbed her arm, and the bullet flew out an open window. Andy and Frankie helped wrestle the woman to the ground, kicking and screaming.
Preston looked around with a fake grin. “Those blanks sure sound real!”
They got the gun away and hog-tied the woman with Andy’s belt and waited to hand her over to authorities at the next stop.
The BBB looked at each other.
“Did she say ‘Brad Pitt’?” asked Rebecca.
“Yes, she did,” said Sam.
“Something’s not kosher in Denmark,” said Teresa.
“You used me!” the woman screamed from the floor. “You made it so every time I heard the word harmonica, I’d think you were Brad Pitt.”
Rebecca began jumping up and down. “Look, it’s Brad Pitt!”
“The trigger word is probably a toggle,” Sam told Teresa. She grabbed the shrieking Rebecca by the arm. “Harmonica!”
Rebecca stopped jumping up and down. “Why are you holding my arm, Sam?”
“I think we need to have a talk.”
The women stood in the aisle explaining things to Rebecca. Rebecca’s head shook side to side. The other women nodded. Rebecca shook her head harder. The others nodded sadly.
Rebecca broke from the group and ran to the front of the car. “Wait!” yelled Teresa.
Too late. “Did you have sex with me last night while I was under hypnosis? I’ll kill you if you did!”
“Moi?”
One passenger leaned to another. “That Preston’s finished.”
The second passenger nodded, still writing. “Too many enemies, plenty of motive. Now it’s just a matter of creating the opportunity for murder.”
The train slowed at the next depot. Only a few little patches of snow left. The Savannah police boarded and carried off the woman in the red dress, still kicking and screaming. “I’ll kill you, you bastard! I’ll cut your fucking dick off if it’s the last thing I do!”
A passenger turned to a fresh page in her notebook. “This is the best mystery train I’ve ever been on.”
36
The dining car began filling up again shortly after noon.
Waiters circulated, dropping off drinks, opening order pads. “Chef’s salad or Caesar?”
It was a sunny day on the train; warm light poured into the dining car through the glass skydome.
Serge was sitting with the book club. “Chef’s salad,” he told the waiter. “Extra dressing on the side. Double-chop the lettuce. That is all.” He still hadn’t seen any sign of Eugene Tibbs. Surely he hadn’t missed the train.
Paige pointed out the window. “Palm trees!”
They crossed the Florida state line as Tanner Lebos stood and clinked a glass of water with a spoon again, signaling the official start of the author’s luncheon.
“Thank you once again and welcome.” He shook his head and chuckled for effect. “This already has been quite an action-packed trip to say the least. And we have one person to thank for that! The author who thought all this up, Ralph Krunkleton!”
The audience began applauding. Ralph didn’t know what the hell Tanner was talking about. He had no idea what was happening—this was the craziest damn train he’d ever been on.
Passengers began standing up, five, ten, twenty, until it was a solid standing ovation.
“Speech!” someone yelled.
“Don’t worry,” said Tanner. “The problem will be shutting him up.”
Everyone laughed.
Ralph stepped into the aisle, and the crowd quieted.
“First, I’d like to thank the best agent money can buy.”
More laughter. Tanner pointed at Ralph and smiled: Ya got me!
“Seriously. What a weird business. What a weird life. I still haven’t figured it out. I’m getting to associate with a better class of people by writing about a worse class of people.”
More laughs.
“But I’m glad to see the mystery genre finally getting its due. For the longest time, people automatically thought there was no meaning. That’s simply not true. In my case, I’m on an internal journey, the crime plot just a pretext for me to explore the spiritual side of existence. Like when I used the urinal guy as a metaphor for Christ…”
The audience looked puzzled.
“…pure humility, serving others,” said Ralph. “And the tribulations of the people developing the first orange harvester are straight from the Twenty-third Psalm. I also borrowed some Eastern elements of cleansing and rebirth for the reunion of that women’s book club after all those lost years…”
The audience exchanged glances. Were they reading the same books? Tanner saw what was happening; he gave Ralph a slashing gesture across his throat with an index finger.
Ralph saw him and nodded.
“…Uh, and then I killed a whole bunch of people.”
“Hooray!” the audience yelled.
Tanner stood up and slapped his hands together. “What do you say we sign some books?”
The passengers quickly formed a line in the aisle.
Ralph’s little speech had been especially comforting to Serge. So he’d been right all along about the religious imagery in the book—it wasn’t just more hallucinations. “After you,” he told the BBB, who got up from the table and joined the autograph line. Then Serge stood and bumped into someone who didn’t recognize him.
“Excuse me,” said Eugene Tibbs.
The line began working its way down. The BBB finally made it to the front, and they heaped on the praise. “Your books have changed our lives,” said Teresa.
Ralph blushed. “Maybe that’s exaggerating a little.”
“No, it isn’t,” said Maria. “What a path of self-discovery!”
“Ahhhh,” said Ralph, nodding with satisfaction as he signed his name. “So you got my spiritual message.”
Teresa shook her head. “No, we went to all the bars. They were great!”
Next, a book critic from Miami.
“Oh, hi, Connie,” said Ralph, opening her book and writing. “Don’t you think you were a little hard on me in your last review?”
“It was more than fair. That one character you have who can never seem to score—he’s overstayed his welcome.”
Ralph finished signing and handed the hardcover back to her. “How’d you like me to pair you up with him in a book?”
“Ha, ha. Very funny.”
Next, Eugene Tibbs. He pumped Ralph’s hand. “I’ve been wanting to meet you for a long time. Your writing has completely changed my life.”
Ralph began signing his name. “Maybe that’s a stretch.”
“No, it’s true,” said Eugene. “I’ve patterned my entire existence after your last book. I took every one of your lessons and put them into daily practice.”
Ralph looked up, confused.
Eugene patted his chest. “I’m the urinal guy.”
“Ohhhh, that’s great! Thank you!” said Ralph, looking back down to finish his autograph. “You got my spiritual message.”
“No,” said Eugene. “I made a bundle in tips.”
Serge was next.
“Great book.”
“Thanks.”
“Especially the spiritual message.”
Ralph looked up. “What?”
“Your spiritual message.”
“You actually got it?”
; “Are you kidding?” said Serge. “The imagery was so vivid I could practically reach out and touch it. Screaming souls burning in a lake of fire. Drooling beasts ripping bowels out of the righteous, then avenging angels of the Lord chopping their heads off with big swords. A horrible blackness descending over the land. People running naked in terror, falling off cliffs and onto tall spikes. Manic little horned trolls scurrying about, slashing tires and sodomizing family pets…”
Tanner gently grabbed Serge by the arm. “Would you mind stepping aside? We need to keep the line moving.”
“Oh, sure. Sorry.”
Tibbs had retaken his seat at the back table, enjoying dessert and admiring the inscription in his book. Serge sat up front, keeping tabs on Tibbs in his peripheral vision.
Shouting broke out up front. Notebooks opened.
Spider bounced around in the aisle, throwing left hooks in the air.
“I know what you’re thinking—‘Just because he only has one arm, I’ll bet he can’t play the banjo!’”
“Who said anything about a banjo?” asked Preston.
“Okay, well maybe I can’t play the banjo, but I can still kick your ass!…”
One of the passengers pointed with a pencil at Spider’s right arm tucked behind his back. “Now that’s acting!”
“Hic,” said Preston. “Dammit, now you gave me the hiccups…hic…”
“Breathe in a paper bag,” said Andy.
“Drink water upside down,” said Dee Dee.
“Pull your earlobes and swallow,” said Spider.
“Boo!” said Steppenwolf.
Hic.
“I can cure hiccups,” offered Serge.
“Who are you?”
“Just a passenger. But I’ve studied this phenomenon for years, purely on an avocational basis, of course. All the cures you’ve mentioned are simply power of suggestion. The actual mechanics have nothing to do with it. It’s what you believe. So, Preston, do you want to get rid of your hiccups?”
“It’s worth—hic—a try.”
“Okay, focus on my voice. I want you to relax. Your muscles are getting loose. That’s better…”
“Hic.”
“Don’t worry about that last hiccup. The sound was a mile away. There will be a few more, but they don’t concern you. Each hiccup is one less until they end. Picture each hiccup being typed on a piece of paper as it comes out of your mouth, then mentally wad up the sheet and throw it away…”