Settling in for the long pull down to L.A., he gravitated between the dusty car, the narrow windy vestibule, and the men’s room where he shaved and washed himself as best he could using their dinky little bars of soap, and paper towels. He slept in his seat, ate the dry sandwiches, read other people’s discarded newspapers, and he thought too much.
The hitch at McNeil was the longest he’d ever served, he shouldn’t have had a ten-year sentence. The only reason he got caught was sloppy work, and that had worried him. For the first time he knew he was getting old, afraid he’d lost his touch, maybe lost all talent for making a living in the only way he knew, the only way he liked. He’d give all he’d ever stolen or earned to be young and vigorous again, to be back in the early part of the century, back when the prairie was free and open, a good horse under him, nothing to think about but when the next steam train was due and what it carried, how much gold and cash—but then came the diesel trains, during the war, and you couldn’t stop those babies by riding across the track waving a gun at the engineer. And those trains carried dozens of guards, soon there wasn’t just one detective named Pinkerton to investigate a train job but a whole organization called Pinkerton, nosy, high-powered bastards, and his own times, his own ways were gone into the dust of the past.
After the steam trains were finished he’d worked cattle for a while, doing his first paid work in years. Then, long before America got into the war—but when many folks knew that day would come—he had taken a job in Montana, in Billings, breaking horses for the remount. Later, during the war, he’d heard that even the coast guard was using horses, patrolling the coastal beaches at night watching for German submarines.
For two years he had worked for the government breaking horses, he’d been straight then, no robberies, and he had, strangely, felt almost good about that. But then the itch for a thrill got him. When he left Billings he took on the Midnight Limited out of Denver, a diesel carrying military payroll. He’d planned every detail carefully, had even worn gloves to avoid fingerprints, accepting the annoying traps of modern technology. He had brought off the job alone without a hitch, had left the conductor and four guards tied up in the express car, had stashed the strongbox in the truck he’d hidden in an arroyo south of Grand Junction. But then, one second of bad judgment and he blew it. Blew it all, real bad. One second, standing beside that old Ford truck thinking how the money in the strongbox was meant for the new recruits at Camp Pendleton, thinking how those marines wouldn’t get any pay, and he had turned away from the strongbox. Had left it in the truck and just walked away, knowing the sheriff or the feds would be on it within an hour. One weak minute, thinking how the leathernecks deserved their money more than he did, and he’d lost it all. Walked away, half of him feeling good, the other half shocked at the stupid waste.
And then, soon afterward, still pissed off at his own stupidity and with a lot of hustle and not the faintest plan, he’d stormed into that Vegas bank, leaned into the teller’s cage and jammed the six-inch barrel of his forty-five into the girl’s face, and before he could get a word out that feisty little bitch had slammed the brass window gate so hard it broke two fingers on his right hand. From that point on it was all downhill, the bank guard had him cold. The feds picked up a few prints on the train job, and on the Ford truck and the strongbox, where he’d been careless. They had him for both jobs though he never got a penny from the damned bank teller, and he knew he’d be doing time. He’d toldhimself bank robbery wasn’t his line of work, but the truth was, he’d blown it bad. Suddenly, he knew he was old. An old man who’d lost his skill, and he’d envisioned the slow, confused end to his life, imprisoned by his own weakness, imprisoned by a fear far greater than he had ever known or ever wanted to know. Trapped by a mortality that seemed, every day, to draw in closer around him—and trapped by a heavier darkness, by a convergence of shadows pressing at him in a way far more lethal than simple fear of death, by a dark and terrifying aura that seemed to reach down from cold infinity, reaching to embrace and to own him, to painfully and endlessly devour him.
4
On the short run down to Olympia beneath the snowy shoulder of Mount Rainier, they were soon skirting the vast and marshy shore of Nisqually Reach, where dairy cows grazed fat and content in their lush pastures. Among the tall green marsh grass at the water’s edge, two bald eagles fought over a flopping fish, beating with angry wings at each other, tearing the silver body apart between them. But as Lee watched their hungry and brutal battle, the air inside the train, even through the closed windows, soon stank of the area’s paper mills, a sour odor harsher than rotted wood, its thick effluence soon turning the land, the sea, and sky a dull, heavy gray, featureless and depressing.
But maybe, Lee thought, he’d better enjoy, while he could, even these pollution-bound inlets where the mills had soured the land, before he reached the dry desert, the pale dunes where the only water he’d see would be dark and sluggish, where he’d miss looking out every morning at the lapping waters of the sound washing against the ragged and wooded shore.
Now, suddenly, the world turned black as they pounded through a tunnel. When they emerged, the passengers around him strained to see the Cascade Mountains towering in the east, snowcapped, bright even against the graying sky. Only when, farther on, the manmade fog thinned near the ground, could he see the dense city buildings of Olympia, and the Olympic Range rising to the west. In the green surrounding fields, half a dozen eagles soared low over a pasture, homing in on something dead, then one lifted and left the group; he watched it rise on powerful wings to disappear into the overcast above, the great bird soaring free wherever he chose to go, his unfettered flight making Lee want to do the same.
Made him wonder, when he got to L.A. to change trains, if he should fly free, too. End the journey there, take off wherever he chose, never complete his parole plan. Buy a bedroll, put together a kit, hop a freight out of the city, never show up in Blythe, forget the job waiting for him, stop knuckling under to the feds.
Right. And end up back in the joint. Christ, that would be dumb. Besides, he wouldn’t do that to a friend. Jake Ellson had gone to a lot of trouble to get him this job. Without it he might not have made parole, would have finished out his sentence right there at McNeil.
It didn’t seem like twenty-five years since he and Jake had pulled their last train robbery, and now Ellson was married, to the woman they’d both wanted, was settled in a responsible job and had two grown girls—married to Lucita because Lee had turned away from her, because he was too wild to want to settle down. Yet even now when he thought about her dark Latin beauty the heat would start to build and he’d wonder if heshould have stayed.
Well, hell, that had been decided when they were young, Jake was the one who’d got himself tamed, and that was what Jake wanted. Lee hadn’t cared to settle down, had no desire to be saddled with a family. Now he wondered what that would have been like, that life, children to love and to love him, Lucita in his bed, a warm, vibrant part of his life.
Leaving Olympia, the train was crowded. He tried to occupy both seats by spreading out newspapers but it wasn’t five minutes, passengers pushing into the car, that a round little man entered carrying a briefcase, headed straight for the seat next to Lee, a nattily dressed little fellow in a baby-blue three-piece suit. Lee glared at him, willing him to move on, but brazenly he pushed the papers aside andsat down, his round blue eyes smiling behind wire-rimmed glasses. “Guess it’s the only seat left.” Still smiling, he made a short attempt at small talk, leaning forward to look myopically at Lee, his blue eyes too earnest, and the first thing Lee knew he had launched into a land-selling scam,intently pushing his worthless, five-acre desert plots. Lee tuned out the man’s sales pitch, staring out through the smeared window at a red-tailed hawk lifting on the rising wind. The little man went right on, garrulous, so annoying Lee wanted to punch him. “You married, sir? You have children? Mister … I didn’t catch your name.”