Also looking reduced to gloom was Dortmunder, who had ridden along in the truck cab with Stan, allegedly to give him directions, since this was Stan’s first trip up here to the north country, but actually just to rest and be by himself and brood about the fact that he was going underwater again; Stan, in any case, followed the beige Cadillac driven by Kelp and containing Tom and Tiny.
“Ppphhhrr-AHG!” said the airbrakes, and, “We’re here,” said Stan.
“Yeah, I guess so,” Dortmunder said.
“Which side do I want?”
Dortmunder looked around. Everything was different at night. “The left,” he decided.
“Good,” Stan said, “that’ll be easier. I’ll just back it up short of that guard rail, right?”
“That’s it,” Dortmunder said, and sighed, and climbed down out of the cab. This was one time when planning the job was a lot better than actually going out and doing it. A lot better. What haven’t I thought of? Dortmunder asked himself. Sssshhhhh, he answered.
Kelp had pulled into the side of the road beyond the crossing, and now he and the other two walked back to join Dortmunder, Kelp saying, “Nice and smooth, huh?”
“If traffic came along right now, it could really screw us up,” Dortmunder said hopefully.
“Nah,” Kelp told him. “Don’t worry, John. There’s no traffic along here this late.”
“That’s good,” Dortmunder said hopelessly.
“This hour of night, all these people around here are in bed,” Kelp said.
“Uh-huh,” Dortmunder said, thinking about his own bed.
Stan, backing and filling, had turned the big semi now, putting it crossways on the empty road, its rear bumper two feet from the rusty white metal lower crosspiece of the barrier. Leaning out his window, Stan called, “Let’s hurry it up, guys. Somebody comes along here, he could broadside me.”
“Nobody will come along,” Dortmunder said bitterly.
“The bars up here even close at midnight,” Kelp explained.
Everybody but Stan went to the back of the semi, where Tiny opened the big rear doors, and then he and Kelp climbed up inside while Dortmunder and Tom went around to the other side of the barrier, Tom shining his flashlight here and there, Dortmunder waiting for the planks to come out.
This part was going to be kind of tricky, and yet simple. The upper crosspiece of the barrier was about ten inches higher than a standard loading dock, and so the same height above the floor of the semi. They had a vehicle to pull out of the truck and over that barrier, and so a normal ramp wouldn’t do the job. They’d had to invent.
Tiny and Kelp pushed out the first plank, a long and heavy two-by-six. When it thunked into the barrier, Dortmunder called, “Hold it,” and he and Tom lifted it up to the top of the barrier and helped slide it on out. It was very heavy.
“Here comes the tricky part,” Kelp called from inside the truck.
“Right, right,” Dortmunder said. “Just let it come down.”
“It isn’t let,” came Tiny’s voice from inside the truck. “It’s coming down.”
And it did. Overbalanced, the plank abruptly seesawed on the fulcrum of the metal barrier and, as Dortmunder and Tom scampered out of its way, the end of the thing crashed down to the ground in the general vicinity of the railway tracks. The other end of it, still just within the truck opening and angled up to about the height of Kelp’s head in there, was now shown to be hinged to another two-by-six plank slanted down into the dark interior.
“You guys ready?” Kelp called.
“Sure, sure, just a minute,” Dortmunder told him, and said to Tom, “Shine the light around, will ya? Where’s the end of the board?”
“Here it is,” Tom said, standing over it, pointing the light down.
Dortmunder joined him, and the two of them moved the end of the heavy plank farther along the trackbed, lifting it, swinging it, dropping it, repeating the cycle until Dortmunder noticed he was doing most of the work, since he was using two hands and Tom only one. “Use both hands, Tom,” he said.
“I gotta hold the flashlight.”
“Hold it in your mouth.”
“No way, Al.”
Tiny called from the truck, “What’s the holdup?”
“Give me the flashlight,” Dortmunder said.
Reluctantly, Tom handed it over, and Dortmunder stuck the other end of it in his mouth, clamping it with his teeth, aiming it by moving his head. “Rurr,” he explained. “Gar rurr gar-gar.”
“Whatever you say, Al,” Tom said.
It went a little easier with four hands at the task, and finally Kelp called, “That’s it!” and they lifted the plank one last time, putting it on one of the rails, before going back to the barrier.
The hinge holding the two planks together now straddled the barrier, the second shorter plank angling back and down into the truck. Kelp and Tiny were already pushing out the plank for the other side, and this one seemed to go easier, now that they’d all had some practice.
Next came the car. Kelp was heard puffing and grunting (no sounds from Tiny), and then the eyeless noseless face of the green Hornet came into view, its half-flat tires waddling up the slope of the planks, Kelp and Tiny pushing from behind.
Up and over the hinged plank the abused little vehicle went, tires squlging along, its human servitors patting and prodding it along its way like circus roustabouts unlading a baby elephant. When the front tires hit the rails, the soft treads sagged around the shape of the metal, making a loose grip, keeping the tires firmly in place as the rest of the car continued on down the planks. When all four wheels were on the rails, momentum pushed the Hornet another dozen feet, before it drooped to a stop.
The planks wouldn’t be needed again. They were pushed sideways and dumped onto the ground behind the barrier, parallel to the road. Then the rest of the gear was unloaded from the semi and stowed into the roofless Hornet: diving suits, tanks, trash bags of Ping-Pong balls, winch, rope, shovels, poles (for pushing), wire cutters, and all the rest.
When that was done, Kelp and Stan got back into the vehicles that had brought them here and drove away to abandon the truck, which was too big to hide and in any event was no longer needed. Then Kelp would drive Stan back, and they’d stash the Cadillac in a nearby dirt road they’d noted earlier.
Meantime, Dortmunder and Tiny and Tom started pushing the Hornet along the track. They’d thought they might need somebody at the wheel, but the softness of the tires made that unnecessary; the car rolled right along, the overhanging bulge of tires keeping them from veering off the rail. On the other hand, the soft tires also increased friction and made the car harder to push; the best they could do was a slow walking pace.
If the work hadn’t been so hard, it would have been a pretty trip, strolling along the cleared railway roadbed through the forest, with the starry sky far above the trees in the pollution-free deep-black up-country sky. Their flashlights beamed this way and that through the tree trunks and shrubbery, making aisles of light in the dark forest, the green of spring’s young leaves standing out like wet paint. Now, at nearly two in the morning, the forest was silent and peaceful, the only sounds the scuffling of their feet on the gravel and their occasional grunted remarks: “Son of a bitch bastard,” and the like.
By the time Kelp and Stan caught up, the trio with the car had reached the chain-link fence marking the boundary of reservoir property, in which Tiny was in the process of wire-cutting a huge opening. “No problem,” Kelp announced.