All Heads Turn When the Hunt Goes By (20 page)

"Just the conductor."

"Well, have you seen anyone, I mean?"

"I still don't get your drift."

Conversation was an effort; Champ swallowed again.

"Seen anyone who looks as if they might be following us."

"You suspect we've been followed? All the way from Kansas City?"

"I don't know. I was just asking."

"Going in circles here, aren't we, major?"

"The hell with you," Champ said bitterly, and closed his eyes.

Before long Jackson felt the train slowing. He gave Champ a cautious shake. "It's Bonefort. We're getting off. Can you walk?"

"I'll make it okay." He didn't seem eager, now that the long ride was ending. He gazed out the window at a thin scatter of lights along the track.

The train crawled now, through a switchyard filled with cattle and tank cars. Jackson, with a porter's help, assembled their luggage. The train crossed the straight and narrow of the main line to the southwest and fetched up on the north side of the one-story brick station. Jackson and the porter piled the luggage on the station platform.

Jackson had a long look around. A pfc, taking leave of his family, stood so small in his oversize uniform that he seemed to be nothing more than fingertips, ears and Adam's apple. The family members leaned against each other and clutched each other desperately and said not a word. A heavy farmer in bib overalls was supervising the unloading of many cardboard cartons of peeps and tiny feathers that floated upward in the mild cones of light along the platform. To help him he'd brought along a Negro, whom he insulted or threatened in a jocular tone whenever the man's pace slackened enough to displease him.
Goddam you, Ezzard, 'ffun they was swappin' pussy for sweat down at the whorehouse, you couldn't work up enough to get French-kissed
.
Haw, Ezzard would laugh, every time, haw-haw, showing the gold in his teeth.

The porter hopped aboard to help Champ get off. But no one, apparently, was going to be there to greet the major; no one had ordered up a brass band for the occasion.

Whut I heard, Ezzard, you was borned five months late 'cause your mammy couldn't wake you up from your nap
.

Haw! Thass truf. Mos' likely.

Jackson gave the porter a dollar. The Ozark Scenic went on its way. The sparse activity around the station thinned down to nothing.

Champ stood on the platform looking neither left nor right.

"No one's come, major. What now?"

He seemed, in a complex way, relieved that he had not been met. "Ask inside," he said. "Ask about a private railroad car."

"Yes, sir, major," Jackson replied, suddenly and extravagantly angry. Because what he'd seen thus far of Dixie didn't please him, and he still had a very sick man on his hands, when he'd been half-hoping for an excuse to break away. There was a sweet ripened moon overhead that failed to impart glamour to his surroundings. Bonefort, Arkansas, smelled like pig shit. He kicked open the door to the waiting room and went inside, and when the door didn't close fast enough to suit him, he turned around and kicked it shut.

A ticket agent took in his display of temper with a sidewise look. Then he went back to work in his lighted cubicle, pigeonholing slips of paper. He looked around again when Jackson approached him.

"Haow yew?" he said.

"I beg your pardon?"

The agent looked past Jackson, taking time to study the figure of Champ on the platform outside.

"That the war hero?"

"One of them. Are you acquainted with Major Bradwin?"

The agent consulted a sheaf of notes and telegrams on a clipboard, extracted one.

"Major Charles R. Bradwin, from Chisca Ridge?"

"Yes."

"Family's sorry they couldn't be here to meet him. They did send a private car by way of the Delta, Saint Francis and Dasharoons."

"Where is it now?"

"Siding over there by the anhydrous-ammonia tanks. You don't know where that is. What you do, you go outside on the platform and look for a nigger named Walter. Don't have to look too hard, you don't see him, just call 'Walter!'—like that. He'll turn up. He's always somewheres around. Walter'll take you and the major to his car. I expect one-two-seven will pick it up around eleven, twelve o'clock tonight."

"Thank you," Jackson said, mollified. He took the telegram from the ticket agent and handed it to Major Bradwin outside. Then he went looking for Walter. He had three Negroes to choose from. He had not noticed them before, getting off the train, but he had a feeling they'd been in their particular spots for hours, if not all day.

Now that he wanted one of them, they were visible.

Walter turned out to be a ricketsy runt with a spry manner once he was in motion. He quickly gathered up the luggage and pushed it on a hand truck across several sets of rails to a far corner of the switchyard, Jackson and Champ trailing slowly behind him. Champ just wasn't capable of much more exertion. And he was wheezing almost inaudibly, which disturbed Jackson.

The private car, which undoubtedly dated from the turn of the century, was mammoth and, dirty. Its blue and gold colors were hard to distinguish beneath a spray of dried mud. The windows looked blacked out from the observation deck forward, but there were small outside lights at the head end of the car. They walked that way, the hand truck rattling along beside the rails, Walter caught up in a nearly wordless song moaning and humming like a man with a toothache.

Jackson felt an almost inescapable sense of gloom. Much as he disliked Bonefort, Arkansas, he didn't want to get aboard this disconnected railroad car that was waiting for the one-two-seven. He didn't believe in ghosts and he wasn't prone to hallucination; nevertheless he felt a sympathetic tremor as the champ hung back, then put a hand on Jackson for support or reassurance. Jackson helped him up the steps and inside.

There were a number of surprises: first the odors of freshly cooked food in the butler's pantry, then the rosewood-paneled parlor, which was clean and well lighted and furnished in the style of one of the better gentlemen's clubs in London, with an exuberant dash of Creole charm. There were paintings of the French Quarter of New Orleans by unknown artists, and several works of French postimpressionists, the names not overly familiar to Jackson.

The air inside was warm but not stale; Major Bradwin turned on the air conditioning right away. A table had been set with crystal and china. There were full decanters on a sideboard, whiskey and sherry, red wine on the table. Jackson opened the door to the bedroom and looked in. A woman's room, Italian Renaissance, and also in good order.

"You don't need to go in there," Champ said curtly.

Jackson closed the door again. Walter had come aboard with the luggage, which he left in the butler's pantry. Jackson paid him. When he returned to the parlor, Champ was slumped in a chair and his eyes were closed.

"How are we feeling?"

"Woozy."

Jackson gave him another shot of penicillin from his dwindling stock. He hoped it was beginning to do the major some good; obtaining a fresh supply would take weeks, even if he had the money.

"Drink, major?"

Champ opened one eye. "What can I have?"

"Sherry, if you've a taste for it."

"Fine. What I really want to do right now is lie down." Jackson found lap robes in a closet and arranged pillows on a long sofa. Champ took off his shoes and unbuttoned his collar.

"Too hot," he complained, when Jackson insisted on covering him.

"You won't be; and I don't want you coming down with chills. Not malarial, are you?"

"No, I was good about taking Atabrine."

Jackson poured sherry for Champ and whiskey for himself. There was a folded note on the table which he'd overlooked before—heavy, stiff cream paper with edges Re razor blades.
Darling
, the note began, and he read no further, handing the note to Champ along with the stemmed glass of sherry.

"From your wife, I believe."

Champ made no comment. He took the note and began to read.

"I'll just help myself to chop," Jackson said.

In the butler's pantry he found a baked ham keeping warm in an oven, fresh breads, wheels of imported cheese. He drank the rest of his whiskey, made a sandwich and went outside to sit on the steps of the car to eat. Mosquitoes weren't a problem here, perhaps because of the train smoke. A long freight train was rolling north on the main line. He heard the far-off percussions of a juke joint. He was less hungry than he'd thought. He had a sense of being watched, studiously appraised. The lights of the rail yard had softened and were smearing. Peculiar, he'd forgotten how to chew, His tongue was getting in the way, and swallowing was hard. Coming down with something? No, he felt all right—just lazy and aimless, a little uncoordinated, strain catching up at last.

He threw half the sandwich into a nearby ditch for stray dogs to find and went back inside, always just a shade off balance, blinking his eyes to focus them. There was a haze in the parlor. The air was now pleasantly cool and dry. Champ snored on the sofa, fingers of one hand trailing on the carpet, his empty glass nearby, the twice-folded note in his other hand. Jackson rubbed his eyes and looked at his watch. Half an hour had gone by very quickly. He took the note from Champ's unresisting hand and glanced at it. The words climbed the paper at an odd angle and seemed to drip off the edge before he could make sense of them. He threw the note on the table and turned to sit down. Instead he crossed his feet and fell.

Wasn't much of a fall: he couldn't be alarmed by his appalling clumsiness because he'd somehow, instantly, acquired the knack of floating on air.
Chloral hydrate?
his professional mind inquired, getting a little panicky, but Id promptly rose up and told Ego and Superego where to stuff it, he was having a jolly good time. Jackson floated facedown for a while until the carpet seemed near, then he just flipped over on his back and continued to float in the softly wavering, jelly air. Thoroughly comfortable, no other way to describe his situation. Holding one hand before his eyes, he studied the deep grooves, particularly his life line. It looked like a road to him, curving gracefully through the long palm valley. He imagined himself walking slowly on this road in sunlight, coat hung carelessly over one shoulder, in no particular hurry, just whistling his way along. All by himself on the road, nothing ahead that worried him, and for once nothing behind that was gaining on him.

A
t a quarter to twelve a MoPac locomotive hauling a baggage car and three empty chair cars with all shades drawn backed up the siding to the private car and coupled with it, not gently. With the new car hooked on, the train pulled slowly out of Bonefort, Arkansas, heading south.

A man who had been sitting on an upturned cement block in the shadows of the anhydrous-ammonia storage tanks got up and extinguished his half-smoked cigar in a tin cup that still held a little cold coffee. He threw this liquid away, put his cigar in a shirt packet and the cup in his bindle and walked out to meet the departing train.

Early Boy Hodges was about six-one and thin, but his shoulders were broad and high. He limped, though not badly. He wore a herringbone cap and a long-sleeved shirt, the sleeves peeled back to just below his elbows. The GI shirt was so durably waxed with grime and body oils it could shed water like a slicker. It was no trouble for him to board the moving train, he did it with a sort of offhand elegance that told of long experience.

Before opening the door to the middle car he paused to remove his jackknife from a scabbard on his belt. The knife had a deeply scored handle carved from staghorn, a blade five inches long and a blade three inches long, each blade sharply silvered from a daily whetting. With this knife Early Boy could cut off a man's ear, or a thumb, at a stroke. He placed the opened knife inside the band of his cap where he could get at it quickly and entered the car, which had begun to sway as the train picked up speed.

Early Boy was certain that the only other passengers aboard the train were the unconscious men in the private car, but he moved with instinctive caution into the almost pitch-dark coach: A couple of shades had popped up from the lurching of the train, and just enough moonlight came in to show him the way down the aisle. There was nothing in this car of interest, and nothing in the first car either. But he went into the baggage car with his knife in his hand, the blade just behind his right leg where it wouldn't catch the light too soon.

The baggage car was almost empty, except for the polished mahogany coffin midway between the rollback doors on either side of the car.

Early Boy braced himself and studied the coffin, dismayed, touched by sorrow. Then he put his knife back in his cap and went to open the top of the coffin. By moonlight and the flickering roadside light of several hamlets he studied the remains. The train was moving much faster, like a runaway; probably it would not stop until it reached Dasharoons. He had to hold on to the coffin with both hands so as not to lose his balance. Heavy as the box was, he felt it shifting uneasily when the train leaned hard into the curves.

"Never had a cut dog's chance," he said under his breath, feeling an emotion that wasn't far from fear, though he was sure he was the least fearful of men. Nothing to lose, nothing to gain, no one to care for At least not anymore.