In the Still of the Night (13 page)

“I should’ve saved it,” he said, returning. “Did I ever tell you about the time in Iron Mountain when the radiator went dry?”

“You did, you did!” One night every week after the show they would find a friendly tavern, drink beer and eat fried fish, French fries, and cole slaw. They’d play the jukebox and dance until the place closed. Christopher told several versions of his life story. She still didn’t know his last name unless it was Christopher. In which case she didn’t know his first name. One of his stories made her cry the first time she heard it—how he had wanted to be a pianist when he was a kid. His mother stole from the family food allowance to get him lessons and then somehow managed to buy a piano. His father made him play for him one day while he sat beside him on the piano bench. All of a sudden, without any warning, he slammed the lid down on the boy’s fingers. Three of them were broken. It was the doctor who got him doing magic tricks to make the fingers nimble again.

Maggie climbed back into the front seat, kicked her heels against her books, and tried to rub warmth into her arms. There was a heater but it leaked engine fumes and Christopher was afraid they might kill his doves or the rabbit.

According to a road sign they were forty miles out of Bluefield. Maggie said she was getting hungry. Christopher offered her a Milky Way. She had given up mushy chocolate in high school.

“How about half an onion?”

“No thank you,” Maggie said and started to sing “Stormy Weather,” her all-time favorite song.

They had almost made it to the top of a long climb when the car began to chug. The smell of alcohol grew stronger and stronger. Steam was escaping from the radiator. Christopher kept coaxing the hiccoughing car, “Come on, gal, I’m your pal …” He managed to pull off the road before the engine gave out. The “sealer” hadn’t worked, he said and cursed the garage man who had sold it to him with a money back guarantee—in Bluefield.

They searched the roadside, Maggie on one side, Christopher on the other, for a promising-looking house, then for just any house. There didn’t seem to be one. Christopher worried about his props, his twenty thousand dollars’ worth of equipment, more or less, a priceless white rabbit, and a pair of turtledoves.

Below them and running roughly parallel to the road was the railway track, even more sparsely traveled than the highway. Christopher was carrying a two-gallon milk can he hoped to fill with water. He waved it overhead and shouted as a pickup truck went by. It didn’t stop.

A metallic glow appeared ahead, illusive at first as a will-o’-the-wisp. It turned out to be a mailbox. They followed the rutted road that wended downhill from it. The road soon divided and still they could see no buildings. But from where they then stood they saw a railroad crossing and the crossing guard’s house. The light in it was like a beacon of civilization. Christopher figured that it had to be where the highway they were on crossed the tracks. If they could get the Chevy to the top of the hill they could coast all the way down. A raucous shriek shattered the stillness. It hit Maggie like a bolt of pain.

“It’s a goddamn jackass,” Christopher said. And to prove itself the animal gave several long hee-haws. That started a dog barking nearby. “Let’s get the hell back to the car,” Christopher said.

He talked to the car and patted the radiator before getting in.

“I’m praying,” Maggie said when he put his foot on the starter.

“Can’t hurt.”

The motor turned over, sputtered between life and death, took more gas, and when Christopher shot the car into gear it leaped ahead. Alongside the mailbox it began to chug again. “You can make it, baby. I know you can.” When it was on the verge of conking out, he threw it out of gear, revved the motor, and thrust it into gear again. It leaped a few yards more. They made it, cheering, to the top and began the long, winding descent. “Now you better pray we can stop,” he said.

The first thing Christopher noticed when they pulled off the road a few feet their side of the tracks was a well pump, a cup hanging on a chain alongside. The light in the crossing guard’s house seemed dimmer close up than it had at a distance. In fact, there was no window this side, what they were seeing was reflected light. “You go in and ask him if we can get warm and have some water,” the magician ordered. “But just in case he’s ornery, I’m going to fill her up right now.” He left the engine running and took off his scarf to muzzle the steam when he removed the radiator cap.

Maggie approached the little house through the stubble of a railside garden. The guard’s STOP sign hung beside the door. She wondered why women couldn’t be railway guards: all that time to read and a cozy rabbit hutch of a house. She rapped on the door and observed in the reflected light trackside that there was also a coal bin there. No one answered her knock. Sleep, she decided, must be a terrible temptation. Christopher was pumping. No water yet. The pump sounded a little like the donkey. She knocked again and thought of the poem, “The Listeners.”

“Eureka!” Christopher cried and she heard the splash of water.

She did not like to try the door. The guard might be doing God knew what. She went around to the window. It was bleary with dust. A halo surrounded a naked light bulb hanging from the ceiling. She rapped on the glass and cleared a place to look in. A gray-haired man was slumped in a rocker, his legs sprawled toward the stove, his back to the door. His chin was on his breast and a newspaper lay on the floor at the side of his chair. A fire glowed in the potbellied stove. She rapped again on the window, this time with her class ring. He made no move. She ran back to where Christopher was lugging the can of water.

“There’s something wrong with the old man in there. I think maybe he’s dead.”

“Dead asleep,” he said. “Get in the car.”

“We can’t just drive off and leave him.”

“Why not? That’s what people have been doing to us all night,” Christopher shouted, pulling back from a burst of steam. “I’m going to get another can of water and move on.”

“Chris, I’m going back and see what’s wrong with him.”

“What do you think you are, a doctor? And don’t call me Chris.”

Maggie ran back to the house. This time she opened the door. The big railway clock over the desk said 3:10. Every tick sounded as though it was going to be the last. The old man was in the same position as he was when she’d seen him from the window. “Mister …” She approached him tentatively and touched his hand. It was terribly cold although the room was warm.

Christopher came in muttering about putting a beggar on horseback. “Holy Christ,” he then said reverently. He walked slowly around the chair, stepping carefully over the old man’s feet. He stopped and pointed a trembling finger to where a thin trickle of blood dribbled from the man’s ear onto his shoulder. “That means he was hit in the back of the head. Have you got a mirror?”

“In the car,” she said. “Should I go get it?”

“Never mind.” Christopher went to the desk and picked up the phone. It was dead. He hung up and tried it again. Quite dead. A telegraph signal began to rap out of the apparatus on the desk. They just looked at one another. Neither of them understood Morse code, but the staccato transmission made the message sound urgent.

“If there’s a train coming through we can flag it down,” Maggie said.

“Like we did the cars,” Christopher said.

“Look, this can’t have happened long ago. If we saw the light from way up there it had to be through the open door, right?” She hurried outdoors in time to see a change in the colored signals alongside the northbound track, green off, yellow on. The train gave a long series of whistles and the automatic warning lights began to blink at the roadway crossing, the bell to ring furiously although there was not a car in sight. Maggie caught up the guard’s sign from alongside the door. The great white eye appeared from the south; clouds of steam billowed up and fell back over the engine to shroud the cars behind. The track signal switched from yellow back to green. For just an instant Maggie caught sight of an automobile parked on the other side of the northbound track. The oncoming engine blocked it out. Then, a man jumped out of the darkness nearly opposite to where she had seen the car. He stood on the southbound track and waved at the oncoming train. Someone in the cab threw a sack down to him. Maggie lost sight of him in a billow of smoke.

“Christopher?” She called out as though he might do something.

He was right behind her. “No!”

The engine came abreast of them. Maggie waved the sign and shouted, “Man dead, man dead!” and pointed at the house.

The trainman waved at her, but heard nothing, she was sure, what with the grind of the wheels, the warning whistle, and the accelerating
chu-chu-chu-chu—chu-chu-chu-chu …
The train plowed on leaving them, too, in a spray of smoke.

She turned her back to the smoke and saw the man again, running toward the rear of the train; he had to get around it to get to the car. She started after him. Christopher brought her down with a flying tackle. Struggling to get up she saw the lights go on in the car on the other side of the train. “They’ll get away,” she shouted.

“You’re damn right they will!” Christopher headed for the Chevy.

Maggie took a last look down the tracks. Now the man was running toward her alongside the train. A few yards before he reached her he jumped for the ladder on the side of a boxcar, caught it, and swung himself onto the steps. For just an instant she thought of trying to grab hold of him but he was too soon past. The train picked up speed. Between the passing boxcars she saw the other automobile drive along the tracks as far as the road and then turn north. She caught sight of the man with the packet in the light of the crossing. He was clinging like a barnacle to the side of the boxcar.

Maggie looked into the flagman’s house from the door. He seemed more dead, as if that were possible, and she didn’t even know the telegraph code for S.O.S. She galloped back to Christopher’s car and clambered in. The caboose was rolling by.

“You kicked me in the teeth,” Christopher said. “I think you’ve ruined my needle act.”

“Sorry,” she said, although she wasn’t. The needle act was disgusting. “Christopher, could we try and catch up with that other car and see where it goes?”

“What about getting help for that poor old man back there?” Pure sarcasm.

“We can send it. And if he’s dead, he’s dead, isn’t he?”

A snowball had a better chance in hell than they had of catching the other car, so Christopher said he’d try.

Maggie studied the road map under the flashlight. “You know what? We’ll be coming into Williamson soon. I’ll bet the train stops there and that’s where they’ll meet up. I’ll bet I’m right.”

“And what if you are? What do we do then?”

“I wish we had a gun,” she said.

“What?”

“I told you once, my father’s a deputy sheriff. He’s a farmer, but he’s also a deputy sheriff.”

“I don’t like guns and I don’t like deputy sheriffs,” Christopher said. “Process servers, that’s all they are.”

“All the same,” Maggie said. Then: “I’ll bet that was a mailbag they snatched. The way he waved his arms—that could be how the old man did it every night.”

“Okay, tell me something if you’re so smart,” the magician said. “Why bump the old guy off first? Why not grab the mailbag from him after the train’s gone through and nobody’s around? If it was a mailbag.”

“Because …” Maggie said slowly, “they didn’t mean to kill him. He was asleep and they just wanted to make sure he stayed that way and didn’t see who they were. I’ll bet they live around here. It’s Christmas and they’re broke. There was bound to be money in the mail. Christopher, can’t we go any faster?”

“You make me nervous every time you say Christopher. We got about five miles left before she boils dry again.”

“There could be a reward, you know, and we’d split it,” Maggie said. “Hey! Where’s your stage gun, the one you shoot the rabbit with?” It was another of his tricks that Maggie didn’t like. She was pretty sure he had a deaf rabbit because of it.

“It’s in the green metal box with the silks,” he said. “Just don’t upset the goddamn livestock.”

Maggie, her knees on the seat, flashlight in hand, began the search for the green box. A car passed, going the opposite direction.

“That’s your guy going back to pick up his buddy on the tracks.”

“No,” Maggie said. Through a small space between boxes she saw the train running parallel to them, sometimes quite close. She prayed they wouldn’t have to cross the tracks again before Williamson. They’d never make it to the crossing first. She also prayed she could find the green box. She shone the flashlight into the sad, pink eyes of the rabbit where he stared out the window of his case.

“Williamson’s a ghost town since the Depression,” Christopher said. “The train won’t stop there.”

“Want to bet?” She spotted the green metal box on the floor. It was underneath three suitcases and the Chinese Head Chopper. She had to change places with the rabbit to get to it. Talk about Alice in Wonderland. It took a long time but she got the box out. By then her fingers were numb.

“Williamson, three miles,” Christopher read a road sign.

“Any sign of their car?”

“I can see a taillight if that’s what you mean.”

“It’s theirs,” she said with conviction, changing places again with the rabbit. She got out the gun and four blank cartridges, wedged the box between the rabbit and the cage of turtledoves, and loaded a cartridge. That was all the starter’s pistol would take at a time.

“I must be crazy to give you that,” Christopher said. “What do you think you’re going to do with it?”

“Just have it.”

They were losing ground to the train, running even at the moment with the caboose.

“Try and keep up, Christopher. Maybe I’ll catch sight of him.”

Christopher swore at damn-fool women who thought they were Annie Oakleys.

Williamson
was
a ghost town, to judge by the outskirts. The streetlights were dead—empty, broken globes. Houses were boarded up. Even the billboards were bare. But the train was slowing down, its whistle sharp and measured, a distinct signal. A trainman came out onto the caboose platform and began to work what seemed to be levers. A noisy shudder ran the length of the train.