Lew had already propped the piece of rail on the cab’s windowsill, and now he lowered it gently onto the throttle bar. The engine roared, the wheels spun, and before he had the thing balanced they were already rolling toward the cliff. Quickly he lifted the rail, but the locomotive wasn’t pulling any weight now, and saw no reason to stop.
Hell and damnation. Feeling the pull of that gorge, Lew dropped the rail onto the throttle, turned, and dove headfirst out of the moving cab.
He landed in a lot of sharp nasty branches, rolled over, sat up, and watched the front wheels of the locomotive run off the end of the track and dig a plowlike furrow into the ground.
The locomotive slowed; it strained; the rear thrusting wheels bit in hard against the rusty rails; the front wheels sliced slowly through that final five feet of earth toward the gorge.
Isaac had come running, squawky walkie-talkie in hand. “Are you all right?”
“Just look at that son of a gun.”
Lew clambered to his feet, and he and Isaac stood and watched the locomotive doggedly commit suicide. It pushed, it strained, the tender patient and obedient behind it, until all at once chunks of earth gave way at the lip of the gorge, and the locomotive shot suddenly forward. “There it goes!” Isaac cried.
But not yet. Lew had had all the time in the world to climb in a dignified fashion down out of that cab. He and Isaac ran through the scrub to the edge of the cliff as the locomotive ground slowly forward, the front wheels now dangling free in space. The nose very gradually drooped downward, as though the locomotive were reluctant to see where it was going. Then it spurted forward, the front half stuck itself black and huge and defenseless out into the air, the wheels lost their traction on the rails, the rear lifted, the nose turned down, and with a sideways lurch as though acknowledging defeat, the great monster slid over the edge.
Thruston Bay was narrow and crooked and very deep, almost more a river than a bay, with steep clay cliffs on both sides, covered with tenacious shrubbery. The locomotive, immediately looking tiny and weightless when it was in the air, plummeted straight down, hit the cliff face a glancing blow midway, and then spun crazily the last fifty feet, shaking itself loose of its tender and hitting the water with a huge, satisfying, craterlike splash, into the bull’s-eye of which the tender dropped like an unimportant afterthought.
There was an underwater explosion when the cold water hit the roaring-hot boiler, and the already roiled surface of the bay seemed to lift in a body, like bread rising. Then the surface ripped apart and the giant cough of the explosion was released, along with a great gout of steam. The steam fled away up into the air, dissipating, and the torn water fell back to form a surface again, which rapidly smoothed itself. The locomotive was gone.
Lew and Isaac stared at one another, their faces delighted and awed, like children on Christmas morning. “That,” Isaac said, his faint and dazzled voice seeming to come from the tree branches above his head, “that, that was the most satisfying sight I ever did see in my entire life.”
“What is so beautiful as a falling locomotive?” Slowly nodding, Lew said, “No matter what else happens to me in my life, that made it all worthwhile.”
“Oh ho ho!” Isaac laughed, staggering backward. He might have gone over the edge himself if Lew hadn’t grabbed his arm and pulled him back. “And Mazar Balim,” Isaac cried through his laughter, “Mazar Balim said don’t volunteer! Ho ho ho ho ho!”
A sudden thought left Lew stricken. “Oh, my God,” he said.
Isaac’s laughter cut off. “What’s wrong?”
“We didn’t take any pictures.”
Isaac gave that serious consideration, then shook his head. “They wouldn’t have come out. Something like that never does.”
“You’re right,” Lew said, relieved. “In a photograph, it’s just a toy train.”
“We have the pictures here,” Isaac said, tapping his head.
“Forever,” Lew agreed.
Reluctantly, they turned away from the placid bay, to see the rest of the train rolling slowly toward them. Letting gravity do the work, the ex-railwaymen atop the front two cars turned the brake wheels, making tiny adjustments, permitting that great weight to inch slowly down the gradual slope but not to build up momentum.
“I hope they know what they’re doing,” Lew said. “After all this, I wouldn’t want to see six million dollars of coffee go crashing into the bay.”
“We wouldn’t want a camera for that.” Isaac said.
47
When the goddam cars at last began to roll forward, Frank knew they’d gotten rid of the locomotive. He’d yelled himself hoarse into that goddam walkie-talkie, and all he got for his efforts was a sore throat. But now at last the cars were moving, though awfully goddam slow.
Up toward the main line, the work crew was already busily pulling spikes from the temporary track. The engineer and the fireman, trussed with ropes, sat to one side, their backs against trees, and watched with unflagging astonishment. Charlie had been put back to work as Frank’s translator, and was capering around in his usual style, while down the line Young Mr. Balim had been put in charge of the earphones, to spy on the railroad station at Jinja. Frank hated to have to admit that Young Mr. Balim could be useful, but there it was. At least Young Mr. Balim, unlike Charlie, could be counted on to report anything he might hear of interest.
The cars stopped. That was too soon; most of the last car was still on the rails that had to be moved. Frank yelled into the walkie-talkie, “Move the damn thing!” He waited an eighth of a second and then bellowed, “Is anybody goddam there?”
It was Lew’s voice that responded, not Isaac’s. “You don’t need the walkie-talkie, I can hear you without it.”
“Then move the goddam train!”
“We did. The locomotive’s gone. It was a very pretty sight, Frank.”
Frank had no time for pretty sights. “I’ve still got wheels on the main line.”
“The only thing we might do, Frank, is throw the first car over.”
“Do it!”
“We won’t have time to unload it.”
“One fucking car? Don’t be greedy, throw it over!”
“It’s done,” Lew promised.
Shaking his head, Frank stuck the walkie-talkie under his arm like a swagger stick and walked up to where the men were pulling spikes. Every spike was thrown away over the bushes and every tie would be dragged off out of sight, and all the digging would be smoothed over. If there was time.
Two of the ex-railwaymen were up at this end of the work. One of them now came over to speak very earnestly at Frank in that goddam Swahili, all the while pointing at the end of the spur track. Probably wanting to know when they could separate that joint. “We’re working on it,” Frank assured him. “I hope to Christ we’re working on it.”
The ears moved. They stopped. They moved again, inching along, the rear wheels of the last car creeping toward the joint and the start of the rusty spur track. They reached the joint, they flowed over it, they went on another two or three feet, and then they stopped.
“Now,” Frank said, and the happy ex-railwayman went purposefully to the joint, carrying several tools.
Frank walked down the track to Young Mr. Balim. “Anything doing?”
Young Mr. Balim pushed one earphone back onto his head so he could listen simultaneously to Frank and Jinja. “Not a word,” he said. “Most of the calls are about missing freight, not missing trains.”
“It’s early yet,” Frank said. “They’ll push the panic button, don’t you worry.”
“The missing train,” said Young Mr. Balim, and smiled. “What a wonderment.”