The Mechanical Mind of John Coggin (11 page)

J
OHN LOOKED AT
Boz's pants. A bright and merry flame was tickling his left hem. But that wasn't all. A thin and whispering trail of fire had followed Boz up to the back door.

“Boz!” John shrieked. “You're on fire!”

“That appears to be the case.”

“Then put yourself out!” John yelled, grabbing a bowl and rushing to the sink. But Boz was already rolling around on the floor.

“Stop, drop, and revolve. Repeat until extinguished.”

“What's going on?” Page was standing at the foot of the stairs in her pajamas and slippers. She held her bear in one hand while she fretfully rubbed the sleep from her eyes with the other.

Boz explained while John doused the flame that had
come in through the back door. “Well, you see, as I was fetching various inflammatory substances to try in the oven, I seem to have dripped some on the ground and, it appears, on my trousers. I imagine this happened in the transit of materials. Naturally, when I accidentally dropped a match, this had the effect of lighting both the trail and the hem.”

John gulped. “Boz, you didn't drip any near the oven, did you?”

Boz considered this for a minute.

“Boz!”

“My dear boy, my profuse apologies, but I'm rather afraid that I did.”

John rushed out the back door with Page close on his heels. The tongue of fire that had followed Boz into the house had died out. But a sinuous flicker was now making its way toward the oven. And a nearby pile of cans.

“Boz, are those gasoline cans?” asked Page.

“Not all of them,” Boz said. “Some of them are much more powerful.”

The tongue was beginning to lick at the bottom part of the oven.

“Boz, you didn't put accelerants on any pellets, did you?” demanded John.

Boz tugged at his hair. “It is difficult to remember such things in times of imminent crisis, but if I were to put
my hand over my heart and take the oath of office—”

“Boz!” the Coggins both shouted.

“I may have placed some coated pellets inside the oven. Naturally, I wasn't planning to light them without your consent.”

The flame was crawling up to the mouth of the generator.

“But I'm sure you have nothing to worry about,” Boz said. “That bottom compartment is built like a rock—it can easily withstand a diminutive explosion. Once the pellets have blown, we'll have a nice little fire generating heat for Maria's morning loaf. I can almost taste the honeyed notes of—”

BOOOOOOM!

In all his life, John had never heard such a noise. The blast knocked a hole right through the top of the bake oven, sending a volcano of smoke and flame into the sky. An enormous shock wave slammed into the chicken coop, causing the wall to crumple slowly inward. Plumes of white feathers rose up into the air as the chickens fled through the windows to safety.

John, Page, and Boz were thrown onto their backs. When John looked up, he could see that most of the backyard was being engulfed in a bonfire. It looked almost festive.

“I knew it!” cried a voice from above them. “Criminals! Hooligans! I'll have you arrested!”

It was Leslie, leaning out of his window. His face flashed orange in the flames, making him resemble a hog with a suntan.

John would have responded, but at that precise moment his mouth was full of chicken wings. The frantic birds were streaming past the back door of the house, clucking and squawking in terror.

“What's happening?” screamed Page.

“Can he really have us arrested?” John shouted to Boz, who was wrestling with not one but four chickens.

Boz removed a beak from his pinky finger and nodded.

“Afraid so!” he yelled back. “Malicious destruction of property, arson, not to mention an unlicensed bake oven. I'd say ten to twelve years' hard labor or an identification parade for the benefit of the Hayseed constabulary. It may not be opportune for us to linger.”

There was a slam as Leslie banged his window down.

“What's he saying?” Page cried.

There was no way John was going to wait around for his great-aunt to pluck him out of a lineup. He bolted for the side of the house, where a narrow lane led into the street. Boz and Page followed—Boz skipping and Page clinging to John's sweater. Away in the distance, fire-engine sirens began to wail.

“I have to run, Page.”

“Where are we going?”

John pulled his hand from hers. “Not you. You stay with Maria.”

“No!” Page yelled. The sirens were growing louder and louder with each step up the lane.

“You didn't have anything to do with this,” John insisted. “You need to stay here.”

“No!” she said as the fire engines came roaring around the corner. “I'm going!”

“May I recommend a little expediency?” Boz interrupted. “We appear to be facing a crisis of exothermic proportions.”

Fire engines were pulling up to the bakery, men leaping from the side with ladders and hoses in hand. A crowd was coagulating, attracted by the sirens. With remarkable grace, Boz sprinted across the road, zipping and nipping between the engines, and vanished down a street.

“Let's go, Johnny, let's go!” urged Page. The smoke from the explosions was beginning to sear John's eyes, making it almost impossible for him to see. He had no choice but to give his sister the lead.

Through the chaos they flew, over hoses and under rearing horses. When they reached the entrance of the opposite street, John paused long enough to look at the bakery. Leslie was near the front doorway, pointing wildly toward the backyard, and the firemen were already storming down the lane.

From up above the chimneys rose a cloud of white birds singed black by the smoke. One chicken's tail was on fire, and it seemed to rise higher and higher into the night. Until, quite suddenly, it plummeted to the earth.

“C'mon, Johnny!” Page yanked him hard. They caught up with Boz at the end of the street, where it forked into two dark and dismal ends.

“Where should we go?” John gasped as they paused to catch their breath.

Boz ran his fingers through his hair, leaving a trail of soot in the red.

“I am always amused at the role that coincidence plays in our manifest destinies. Who would have thought a fire engine would be both the source of our salvation and the cause of our downfall? Thus does the wheel of fortune turn, leaving us but a prey to time—”

“Boz!!”

“Left,” he said, startled. “It's almost a straight shot to the depot.”

“The depot?”

“We have a freight train to catch.”

It was a sprint of Olympic proportions. In three beats, the trio was there, on the edge of a scrubby wasteland covered in rusting carriages. A square building lay to their right and fields of early crops to their left.

“What do we do now?”

“Attend here and keep your head down,” chirped Boz,
his eyes glinting as he hopped from side to side. “The railway guards are distantly related to Accipitridae. I'll proceed to divert their attention. When you hear the whistle, begin your hundred-yard dash to the depot. I will await your company in the black boxcar!”

And with that, he was off again, a firefly of volatility blinking in the night.

For a time, John and Page said nothing. With all the excitement, John had not been aware of the cold, but he knew it now. He could feel Page shivering next to him.

Then, through the dark, he heard a mewling, whimpering sound. He looked around, expecting to see a wounded animal. Instead, he saw water glistening on Page's cheeks.

“Why are you crying?”

“Because I'm hungry!” Page spat at him. “Because I'm scared. And because you took me away from the one person who felt like home.”

John reached out his hand but she batted it away. “Don't touch me!”

“But Page, I didn't make you come.”

“Yes, you did! You're my brother. I told you, Johnny. I will never leave you. Not even if they chop my head off.”

John felt the tears prickling in his eyes, and he swallowed hard to hold them back. “I'm sorry, Page. I'm very, very sorry.”

“I don't care.”

John had no energy left to protest. The air was so sharp that he could feel the pores in his skin freezing, one by one. Soon they'd be able to break little pieces off each other—noses and fingers and toes. This was the second time he'd led Page into a calamity, and it looked like it might be their last.

“Johnny, what's that?”

John listened for a moment. From far, far away he caught the faint whiff of a sound.

Shuguwugahshuguwugahshuguwugah.

The sound swished across the wasteland. It was a sound he had heard before. If only he weren't so cold, he might be able to remember . . .

Woooooiwiwiwiwooooooiwiw!

“It sounds like one of your dragons,” Page said, clutching his coat. “Do you think it will eat us?”

Suddenly an icicle melted in his brain.

“That's not a dragon, Page! That's a freight train!”

John grabbed Page's hand and started running toward the depot. He could see the outline of the building growing larger and larger, but he could also feel Page tiring, her steps shortening as they drew closer.

A billowing cloud of white, a huge belch of steam, rose from the flatlands, and the dragon screamed again.

Woooooiwiwiwiwooooooiwiw!

“Hurry, Page! It's almost there!”

They tore through the scrub as the iron creature
came charging up to the depot, looking as if it would blast straight through. But at the last moment, the beast groaned to a walk, then a crawl, and then, letting out a deep and weary sigh, a complete stop.

Their shins bruised and scraped, John and Page hurtled toward the boxcars. It was not nearly fast enough. The goods had been unloaded. The dragon was already stirring back to life.

“What color was it?” John cried as the whistle blew a shrill warning.

“Black!” Page pointed her finger. “Look!”

There was a rumble of a door being rolled back, and there was Boz, grinning maniacally. “Greetings!
Hic sunt dragones
—time and mail wait for no man. Upsy-daisy, my little floret.”

He threw down a frayed bit of rope, and Page grabbed it. The train was on the move now, the wheels cranking slowly round and round as it picked up momentum. Boz pulled and John pushed and up Page scrambled.

“Why did you climb the monster?” Boz asked as he chucked the rope to John. “Why, because it was there!”

With one huge tug from Boz, John went flying into the boxcar, landing with an almighty thud on the floor. A stupendous cloud of dry dirt rose around him as the freight train raced into the darkness. They were safe.

But they were not alone.

“C
LOSE THE DOOR
!
Air's cold enough to skate on!”

Swaying merrily with the motion of the car, Boz bumbled shut the door, casting the inhabitants into further gloom.

A small flame burst into being. John watched a match arc through the air and land in a metal box. A welcoming surge of heat soon followed.

“Never seen a brazier light so quickly.” A tall, penitent-looking man materialized from the murk. “You young 'uns must be good luck with fire.”

“Good luck, hah!” A broad-shouldered gorilla lumbered into view. Thick hair burst from the cuffs of his shirt and the collar of his worn coat. “That's half a bottle of Holler's private supply.”

“I'm Tom,” the penitent man said. “And this is Cal.
Feel free to warm yourselves up.”

John took Page's hand and cautiously approached the brazier.

“Why, you're nothing but babes!” wheezed Tom as the glow caught the undersides of their cheeks.

“Babes in arms,” Boz said, throwing his arm around John's shoulder. “My little family.”

“What are you doing with this reprobate?” asked Tom. “You should be at home, tucked up safe in bed.”

“We would have been,” Page grumped, holding her fingers before the brazier, “if John hadn't messed everything up by—”

“Well,” Boz interrupted, his grin showing the gums of his missing teeth, “now that we're all snug as bugs in a Tyrolean rug, why don't we let these lice—I mean nice”—he corrected, as Cal glowered—“men talk among themselves?”

“Oh, no.” Cal seized hold of Boz's hair. “You don't leave us dying with malaria and get away with it.”

“Malaria?” queried John.

“Yes, well,” Boz ahemmed. “The unfortunate upshot of my salad days. I'm afraid these gentlemen and I made our acquaintance during the excavation of a canal.” He scratched at his cheek. “I was recruiting a few good men and true for digging.”

“You said it was the next gold rush. You said there'd be beer and women and dancing bands! And what did we
get?” Cal yanked Boz three times in the air for emphasis. “Jaguars and skeeters and dysentery.”

“My dear sir,” Boz replied. “If you choose to lead a rootless existence, you must be prepared to forgo fertilizer.”

A curious lump appeared in John's throat. He looked over at Page. She was shivering uncontrollably. “A rootless existence,” he repeated to himself.

“Leave him be, Cal.” Tom took a stick and nudged a few of the coals to the side of the brazier. “He was just doing his job.”

Cal dropped Boz to the floor of the train car and stomped off back into the black.

“I hate to bring it up,” Tom said to John, “but you two look done in.” He clamped the lid on the brazier. “And we need to save on fuel.”

“O-k-k-kay,” chattered Page. Tiny rays of light were still shooting from aeration holes near the coals.

“Here now.” Tom shrugged off his coat and handed it to John. “Wrap your sister in that.”

But Page would have nothing to do with her sibling.

“Go away!” She lay down next to the brazier and curled her body into a spiral around her bear. “I'm fine.”

“You don't want one of Dad's stories?” John asked.

“No!”

John peered into the corners. Tom and Cal were bedding down on the floor. Boz had found a perch on top of
a crate. The world felt cold and dark and rank.

When he could endure the silence no longer, John draped the coat over as much of his sister as possible, lay down next to her, and closed his eyes.

He awoke five hours later to a raw reality. Page was missing. And Boz, sound asleep, was sucking his thumb.

“Page?” he yelled over the
click clank clunk
of the train wheels. “Page!”

“Shaddup your face!” Cal gargled, and a cold lump of coal whizzed over John's head.

“I'm over here,” Page said quietly. She was sitting by the edge of the boxcar, the doors flung wide open to the clammy dawn.

“Get back, Page,” scolded John. “You might fall out.”

Page gave him a look that would kill spiders dead. “I don't fall out of things.”

John hung his head. His tongue felt like sandpaper and his body was aching. With considerable pain, he sat down next to his sister.

They appeared to be racing beside an endless river of fog. It lapped around John's ankles and knees, numbing his legs.

Then, very slowly, a glimmer of peach-colored light began to seep through. As John and Page watched, the light rose higher, growing stronger by the moment. Rocks began to emerge in the river. Only they weren't rocks, John realized, but the outlines of budding trees
and flowering bushes. A bed of green grass could suddenly be seen, the blades still flecked with white.

Finally the round ball of the sun emerged, riding high above the misty river, turning the fog from peach to gold. The gray retreated into the crevices of the trees, and a world of gentle hills stretched out before them.

Phhhheeeeeeewww
went
the train whistle, to greet the day.

“That was good,” Page said, and John knew he was forgiven, at least for the moment.

“Shaddup your face!”

Another piece of coal went zinging over their heads and bounced off into the grass.

“Johnny,” Page said softly. “What are we going to do now?”

John shrugged.

“I don't know.”

“We could go back to Maria's—”

“We can never go back, Page. Do you understand? I blew our cover. Great-Aunt Beauregard
and
the Littlemere police will both be looking for us now. We're fugitives.”

Page hung her head.

John glanced away. He hadn't meant to snap at his sister, but her words had brought every vivid detail of the nightmare back to life. Not only had he failed at his inventions, he had destroyed the dreams of the only adult who had given them love. Maria must despise him.

“Salutations, my little pipettes! And how do you fare
on this fine frosty morning?”

A fastball of coal whanged Boz in the ear. He shook his skull a couple of times and proceeded in a slightly lower voice. “Wonder of wonder, miracle of miracles—the glory of creation in all her finest linen. But I repeat myself. Did you sleep well?”

“I have to go to the bathroom,” Page said.

Boz coughed.

“Well, I'm afraid the facilities here aren't quite what you're used to. There is however, a tin receptacle . . .”

“A what?”

Boz coughed again.

“A bucket. Behind those boxes. We empty it every ten miles or so.”

Page wrinkled her nose, squared her shoulders, and went in search of the bucket. Boz sat down beside John. “And how about you? Feeling chip, chip, chippety, eh?”

“No.”

“Come now, don't be downhearted, my boy. The light at the end of the tunnel—”

“—is an oncoming engine,” John finished as the freight train yawned a whistle.

“You're sad.”

“I blew up the bakery!”

“Well, I admit, that is a bird's nest in the gears.”

“And now we're on a train bound for nowhere . . .”

“Actually, southwest, to be precise.”

“With nothing but a tin bucket. And I've let everyone down. Again!”

Boz appeared to have no answer to this. It was hard for John to tell whether his expression meant that he was sorry or that he had simply resolved not to make a bad situation worse. It was a relief when they both heard the clang of a coffee pot.

“Ah, breakfast,” said Boz, hastily retreating into the interior.

The scent of coffee couldn't quite mask the fumes that came from men who hadn't brushed their teeth or washed their clothes in several weeks. Page, still in her pajamas, was finding it hard to chew through the stale crackers that Cal had handed to her.

Eating wasn't a problem for John. All he could think about was the burned-out wreck of a business that Maria would currently be surveying. Being hungry didn't enter into the equation.

Since nobody wished to talk, it was left to Boz to try and make conversation.

“Fine morning,” he began.

Only the coffee spurting on the side of the pot answered him.

“Excellent pneumatic pressure being exerted in the upper strata of the hemispheric regions.”

Tom cracked his knuckles.

“And which golden vista of opportunity are you approaching?”

“Would someone stuff a stick in that catbird and have done?” Cal griped.

Surprisingly, it was Page who jumped to Boz's defense.

“He's only being nice,” she said, chucking her food on the ground. “You could try it.”

John tried hard not to laugh at the face of a hard-bitten man silenced by a girl wearing sooty pink slippers.

“Sorry, lass,” Cal said finally. “We're not what you'd call morning people.”

“Hummph,” she answered. “I'm tired. I'm going back to bed.” She clomped off into the shadows.

“So where be ye bound?” repeated Boz, once he had assured himself that Cal was not within range of any coal.

“We're going south.” Tom's voice was quiet and sad.

“Like everything else in this world,” Cal chipped in.

“Good laboring jobs, we've heard,” Tom added, rubbing his fingers along his stubble. “In the copper mines.”

John leaned his back against a packing case near the open door, closed his eyes, and tried not to let the stench choke his lungs. Up until now, he hadn't had the courage to think about their destination. What if his only option at the end of the ride was a job in the mines?

He attempted to imagine what it would be like working underground. Never to see sunshine, always to be picking away at rock. A world without vision.

“Got the jiggers?”

John opened his eyes. Tom had sat down opposite him.

“I'm thinking about the future.”

Tom nodded. “Do that sometimes myself.”

John picked at a piece of ash on his sweater. He wondered what Page could do while he was stuck below the crust of the earth. He certainly didn't want her with him.

“Do you have any family, Tom?”

Tom paused. “I did. A brother. A mother.”

“What happened?”

“They died.” He struggled to make his tongue shape the words. “When I was in prison.”

“I'm sorry.”

“Me too.”

“What were you in prison for?”

Tom sighed and tugged on his cap. The stink from his armpit as he lifted his hand was gag inducing, but John made no comment.

“They call it breaking and entering. Getting in where I wasn't supposed to. Picking locks with knives and slicing windows open.” He sniffed. “Don't get yourself arrested, kid. God's creatures were never meant to live in cages.”

There was something in the twitch of Tom's jaw that reminded John of his father. So this was the flip side of a life of freedom, he thought. The worry and the uncertainty and the fear. This was what happened to men who decided to follow their dreams.

John pulled out Colonel Joe's jackknife. “Tom?”

“Yep?”

“Will you teach me how to pick a lock?”

Tom paused. “You going to steal?”

“Maybe.” John sneaked a sideways glance at his sister. “If I have to.”

“Well, if that's what you want.” Shaking his head a little, Tom slipped his hand into his coat pocket and took out a padlock. “You can practice on my good-luck charm.”

“May I join your merry band?” Boz interrupted, plopping himself down between their legs. “I do so enjoy improving my dexterity.”

Thus it was that John learned how to twiddle a lock with a jackknife. It was a remarkably smooth introduction to a life of crime. Boz was passable at the task, but John was a true engineer. Within a couple of hours, he could jimmy the gears open in ten seconds.

Even Cal was impressed. “That's a neat trick you've got there. Should've had you with me on the Simmons job.”

John almost found the courage to smile. Then he noticed that the men were snapping their suspenders and tying their shoes. The train was slowing, the
clickety-clack
turning into a
cl-ick-e-ty-cl-ack
.

“What's happening?”

“Engineers changing over in Riverton. We got about a quarter of an hour to scrounge for food.”

“I'll go,” John said, scrambling to his feet.

“No,” Tom said, laying a paw on his shoulder. “You stick to your sister. Hide behind the crates in case someone comes around. I'll get enough for the three of us.”

The train slowed to a chug, and Cal and Tom leaped out the door. John saw a flash of red streak past him . . .

Then a bolt of gold.

“Page! Where are you going?”

“To help!”

She hared off after Boz before John could protest. He was bracing himself to follow when he heard a dog bark, far too close for comfort. This was followed by a shout. John scrambled behind a crate.

Tromp
went the boots on the gravel. John held his hand over his mouth and tried to breathe through his eyelids. There was a
crinch
and
crunch
near the door of the boxcar. A man belched.

“All clear, Billy!” a jolly voice finally rang out. “Rats must have abandoned the ship. Give Sally a kiss for me!”

John couldn't catch the response from the engineer up at the front, but it was evidently funny, for the jolly voice chuckled. The boots shuffled away.

“Luck of the ladybug,” John muttered to himself. When he was certain the guard was gone, he scurried out from behind the crates and poked his head into the sunshine.

“JOHN PEREGRINE COGGIN!”