The conductor gulped, nodded. “Back in forty-eight. You took us through Chicago.” He still got the nightmares.
“Right!” Johnny said, then laughed his big laugh. “Course, not everybody on that crew was all that polite.” He winked at the other two men. “A few of those boys had to be dropped off a little early, if you know what I mean. But we made it across the ol’ Mississip, didn’t we? Record time!”
The conductor tried to laugh with him. “Yessir, record time.”
“Right! Now let’s see about getting this iron horse moving.”
Johnny marched off toward the end of the train. The engineer looked at the conductor with fear in his eyes. He must have seen the pictures from the last time Johnny had ridden the Rock Island line, two years before: a hundred derailed cars flung over the bridge and onto a Missouri highway. The new kid, though, still didn’t seem to grasp the seriousness of the situation.
“Why don’t you go up to the head end and keep the engine ready,” the conductor told the engineer, loudly enough for Johnny to hear. The engineer knew who to talk to at dispatch.
The engineer glanced back at Johnny. “You sure?”
“Just go.”
The conductor and the brakeman jogged to catch up with the demon. Every few cars Johnny ducked under, took a quick look around, and sometimes rapped the air brake pipes with his knuckles. At the thirtieth car, a piggyback flatbed with a truck trailer latched onto it, he said, “I think I see your problem.”
All three of them squatted down under the car. It was still cold, but they were out of the wind.
Johnny stuck his finger into an ice-encrusted ventilator. “Your A-1’s frozen open. Musta popped when you dumped your air at the yard.” He turned to the young brakeman. “I need a pipe wrench, son, and a coupla fusees.”
The brakeman looked at the conductor, and the conductor nodded. A few minutes later the kid came back lugging a tool chest as big as a suitcase, and a smaller red plastic case. The stranger popped open the plastic case and took out a long red fusee.
“Watch your eyes,” he said, and broke off the butt of the flare. The end sparked, and began to hiss red flame and white smoke. He held it like a magic wand, playing the fire over the frozen valve, and started to sing:
“Johnny told the brakeman, get your hand off that wheel, Johnny told the brakeman, get your hand off that wheel, We’re going through Altoona
At a hundred and ten,
And if we don’t get up that mountain
We ain’t comin’ down again.”
His voice was rough and big. He didn’t hit all the notes, but he got near enough. Then the fusee sputtered out, and he tossed it into the snow behind them.
“Let’s see you use that wrench,” he said to the brakeman, and the kid hefted a pipe wrench two feet long. The stranger showed him where to grip the vent. The kid yanked on the end of the wrench, but it didn’t budge. He pulled and pulled and even bent over it to put his weight into it, but the wrench didn’t move.
“Let me give you a hand with that,” the stranger said. He gripped the cold metal in one naked hand and jerked down. The valve end popped off with a squeal and bounced against the ground. The demon laughed. “Don’t feel bad, son—you loosened it for me!”
The conductor picked up the valve in his gloved hands, heard a rattle, and shook it. Something black fell out of it. The conductor picked it up, regarded it suspiciously. It was a lump of coal. Who would have jammed a lump of coal into the ventilator?
“I’ll show you a trick,” the stranger said. He took the valve end from the conductor, turned it sideways, and fit it back on the pipe, capping it. “It ain’t legal, but it’ll get you home.”
It took an hour and a half to pump the pipes back up to the minimum PSI. Johnny sat in the cab with them, filling the air with smoke, stories, and old railroader jokes that only the brakeman hadn’t heard before. “Know why the conductor’s got the best job on the train?” Johnny asked. “Because he don’t have to work with the conductor!” He’d slap his knees and laugh hard. No one else could manage more than a forced chuckle. Finally the conductor sent the brakeman running to the back of the train to release the handbrake, and the engineer started bringing the electricals online.
“So,” the conductor said casually. “How far you riding with us today, Johnny?”
“Just as far as Olympia,” the demon said.
The engineer said, “We ain’t going to—”
The conductor cut him off. “If that’s where you’re going, Johnny, that’ll be just fine. I’ll radio the dispatcher.”
The engineer’s eyes were wide. “We can’t just switch over,” he said quietly. “That’s not even our road.”
“It is now,” the conductor said.
Johnny whooped his approval. “Get outta my way, boys,” the demon said. “I’ll show you how to drive.” He started the bell, then pulled twice on the air horns and set the throttle to notch 1—all as natural as a man pulling on his shirt. The train started to move, and the brakeman had to run to get back in the cab.
Johnny moved smoothly through the notches. The train picked up speed, and then he started to sing. He bellowed “Rock Island Line” and
“Casey Jones” and “I’ve Been Working on the Railroad.”
They hit the Hutchinson switch much too fast—the conductor thought he could feel the cars swaying off the curve—but the wheels held and they rocketed onto Kansas & Oklahoma’s north-running track. Johnny had them on notch 8 by then, running faster and faster, like a twelve-year-old happy to let his Lionel fly off the track. They flashed past little towns like Nickerson, Sterling, and Ellinwood, the crew holding their breath at every crossing. One of the K&O peddlers ahead of them just managed to pull into a side-out, its last car almost jutting past the switch, and they cleared it by two feet, whistling past at a hundred miles per hour.
The track turned west, running straight into the dropping sun. The snow lit up like fields of crushed glass. And then he picked up the song he’d been singing while working on the ventilator:
“Johnny told the fireman to shovel that coal, Johnny told the fireman to shovel that coal, We’re stokin’ up that firebox
Until the smokestack screams,
And if the boiler blows, boys,
Be sure to save the steam.”
Olympia was a little bump of a town that came up on their left. The demon laid on the air horns and kept blowing, a long wail that must have been heard all the way to Dodge City. He sang out:
“Johnny told the conductor, better say your prayers, Johnny told the conductor, better say your prayers, There’s a diesel train a-comin’
And it’s riding on our track.
We won’t be here much longer, boys,
But I’ll be comin’ back,
Lord, I’ll be comin’ back.”
He set the throttle and marched to the cabin door. The brakeman stood up in alarm, but the conductor and the engineer didn’t move.
“It’s been a great ride, boys!” Smokestack Johnny said. His smile was bright as a headlamp. Then he yanked open the door and stepped into the wind.
9
I opened my mouth, closed it.
O’Connell made a disgusted noise and pushed past me. She went to the table, pulled off her jacket, and draped it across the chair back. She wiped the water from her face, and her gaze fell on the pile of chains on the bed. She looked at me, eyebrows raised, as if to say, Are those yours?