Casserole Diplomacy and Other Stories (44 page)

He thought of her often on the long pulls from Charlotte to Greensboro, drifting away from the drumbeat of the timer at the front of the engine. He would imagine them walking in the woods near her home in Thomasville, looking out across the village made white by blooming dogwoods. He could always persuade her to give up her resistance in these dreams, and the two of them would sit on a hillside and hold each other close until the foreman’s whip came down across Devin’s shoulders, spraying sweat, and stinging like mad.

“Get back in time, damn you!” Herman would shout. “You pull your weight or I’ll dump you with the rest of the bastards!” He would point to the sodden glades by the side of the track where the castlings lived, and Devin would shudder despite the heat.

The mercury rose as high as one hundred on summertime runs, with nothing to stave off the sun but the engine’s tin roof. The breeze blew through, but the summer wind was not one that cooled, and its most valuable function was to keep off the bugs. The plague worked fast under these conditions, and men dropped at their handbars, slumping to the ground while the bars cycled on, up and down, up and down, while a man lay dying below.

On the King’s birthday, Devin’s team lost two men to sickness. The train was large, with a sixteen-man Walter engine, the
Lady Wales
; but to lose two men on one pull was rare indeed. Some of the crew muttered prayers as the second man was laid on a stretcher and carried to the rear of the train.

“The plague’s comin’ back,” Devin’s friend Alan whispered. He had the bar to the right of Devin. Two years older than Devin, Alan was still a hauler too, but would probably never be elevated to railman. He was strong of back but simple of mind, and had never mastered the mechanical skills a railman needed on the road alone. “The plague’s been gone two years,” Devin said, watching over his shoulder as the sick man was helped up into the caboose. The hearse car, it was called by the railmen. “And if it was comin’ back, we’d be the first to know.” News reached those who served the road first, since they roamed the length and breadth of the colony. “Those boys got yellow jack, more’n likely.”

“I’ve heard of whole crews gettin’ it on one shift,” Alan said. He held his head low so Herman would not see him talking. “They find the train next day with the dead men still on it. They bury ’em right there beside the track.” He looked at Devin with wide eyes. “That could be us.”

But the sun dropped, and the mercury fell, and by the time High Point fell in their wake they had regained the steady pace of the timer’s drum-beat, pushing their bars up and down, driving the train through wide fields of cotton. Signal towers, maintained by the railroad for the King’s government, appeared every mile, occasionally whipping out some message in a flash of red flags, speaking in a language only the signallers understood.

The tracks came over the top of a gentle rise, and the bulk of Greensboro station loomed before them, a black octagon with a peaked roof like a witch’s hat. Smoke from a thousand chimneys in the town beyond glowed in the setting sun. It would be dinner time for the villagers, sitting down with family and recounting the day’s events by lantern light. On board the
Lady Wales
, the whip cracked again, and Devin and his mates swung harder at the bars.

Herman rang the bell at the head of the engine. A second later, an answering bell came from the station, and the double doors blocking the track swung open, casting a rectangle of yellow on the darkening ground. Beyond could be seen the frantic activity of railmen and mechanics, and here and there, the glint of torchlight on brass. A spider-web of tracks converged on the station, coming from Raleigh, Charlotte, and Durham. Even now, trains headed downhill from the east and north. Devin let his grip on the bar slacken as the
Lady Wales
slipped through the doors into the heat and light of the station.

Herman led his charges by hand signals now, as his voice could no longer be heard in the back. The
Lady Wales
slowed to a crawl, guided to its platform by a yellow-jacketed station boss. The minute she stopped, labourers converged on the flatcars, unloading the cargo onto carts that would soon be on the streets of the town.

Devin rubbed his aching shoulders and arms as he dropped to the plank floor of the station. A cantina crew ran up, bearing trays of water and food, and Devin snatched an orange.

“Look at ’em,” Alan said, nodding to the two sick men being carried from the train. “They got it sure. They’ll be dead by morning.”

“Maybe they didn’t drink enough water,” Devin said, peeling the fruit with aching fingers. “It could be heat stroke. Have you got to be so damn negative?”

“Devin Barefoot?” The voice brought Devin and Alan up short. A man in a twill suit and spectacles stood before them. This was a manager, one of the men in the offices that overlooked the station floor. Devin swallowed hard and nodded.

“Yes sir, that’s me,” he said.

“Will you come with me, please?” The man turned on his heel and walked away. Devin and Alan exchanged a wary look, and Devin followed after.

The man introduced himself as Appleton—no first name—and led Devin upstairs, from the noisy floor to the quiet offices. The smell of the air changed from the sharpness of machine oil and sweat to the mustiness of old paper and dust. Devin grew aware of his grimy road-clothes, and looked at the floor whenever one of the other managers passed by.

When they finally arrived, the office was surprisingly plain. Appleton’s stern demeanour softened, and he motioned Devin to a chair. “You need it,” he said. “You work a lot harder than I do.”

Devin smiled and eased himself into the chair. Appleton sat behind the desk and tapped a folder lying in front of him. “We’ve got a job that’s come up,” he said, “something of an urgent nature. We need to get a train to a little village called Thomasville.”

Devin started in his chair, and Appleton gave a little smile. “You’ve heard of it.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Been there before?”

“Lots,” Devin said.

“The road has an arrangement with the King,” Appleton said, “that provides free transportation to people with relatives that are seriously ill or dying.”

Devin had heard of the provision, and nodded.

“There is a young lady in Thomasville who has requested our services. Her situation is more extreme than most, so we’ve agreed to meet her at noon tomorrow.” Appleton pulled a slip of paper from the folder and pushed it across the desk at Devin. “Her name is Elaine Pittman.”

Devin’s heart pounded. He saw Elaine’s name on the paper, but did not move to pick it up. “Is she sick?”

“It’s her mother,” Appleton said. “She’s dying.”

Devin remembered now. Elaine’s mother was a consumptive, and had been taken away not long after her husband’s death to a sanatorium in the mountains. Devin looked at Appleton. “But she’s all the way up in—”

“Asheville,” Appleton said. “We want you to take Miss Pittman to see her mother.”

Devin blinked. “What crew am I on?”

Appleton pulled another folder from his desk. Devin could see his own name written on this one. Appleton left the folder on his desk, unopened.

“How long have you been with the company, Mr. Barefoot?” he asked.

“Five years,” Devin said. He looked at the folder on Appleton’s desk.
But you already know that.

“Long time. How come you’re not a railman by now?”

Devin felt his face redden. “I don’t know. Just hadn’t done well enough to move up, I guess.”

“Your foremen say you’re smart. Smarter than most, even. You can read and write.”

“Yes, sir.”

“You understand how a rail car works, how all the parts operate?”

“Yes, sir. Sure I do.”

“Well, what else do you think a railman needs?”

Devin sat in the chair and chewed the inside of his cheek, pondering the number of times he’d been reminded how old he was for a hauler. “I don’t know. I guess if I had figured it out, I would’ve been a railman by now.”

The corner of Appleton’s mouth twisted up into a smile. He pushed a brown paper envelope across the desk. “We need you to go to Thomasville and pick up Miss Pittman. It’ll be your second consecutive run, of course, so you’ll get time-and-a-half, plus mileage.”

Devin ran his finger under the envelope’s flap. The contents fell out into his lap, and his heart skipped a beat. It was an octagonal patch of sky blue, with gold trim around the edges.

“We’ll get one of the ladies downstairs to put that on your uniform,” Appleton said. “You can pick it up in the morning.”

“Yes, sir.” Devin fingered the rough fabric of the patch. “Thank you.”

“One of your foremen heard about this job, and thought it was time we gave you a chance,” Appleton said. “Herman Turner, as a matter of fact.”

Devin gaped at him. “
Herman?
”

“He thinks very highly of you. He said he figured you had wasted enough time with the grunts, even if you didn’t think so.”

Devin thought of Alan. “They’re good boys,” he said. “Even if some of ’em aren’t too smart, they work hard.”

Appleton smiled. “I know.” He handed Devin the job folder. “Good luck, Mr. Barefoot. Show us you’ve earned it.”

Devin walked to the hauler’s quarters in a daze. He was a
railman
now. He could not even bring himself to speak the word, and signed in at the desk as a hauler, just as he always had. He took a candle from the bored clerk and trudged up the narrow staircase.

Devin’s room was small and musty, like all the hauler’s quarters. He threw a blanket over the dirty ticking that served as the mattress and heaved himself onto it without even kicking off his boots. A cool breeze blew in through the window, tapping the shutter against the outside wall. The clack of a horse cart on cobblestone drifted up on the wind, and Devin caught a few snatches of drowsy conversation. Out there, the people of Greensboro were slipping off to bed, secure in the knowledge that another day much like this one waited on the other side of the night. By dawn, Devin would be long gone.

He woke to the sound of a heavy fist pounding on the door.

Devin caught the 5:15 out of Greensboro, bound south to High Point. For the first thirty minutes he and his mates churned the bars in darkness. Then the gray glow in the east turned to pink, and Devin saw the silhouette of a church steeple. As the train grew closer, he noticed gaps in the structure where sunlight came through, and then the tall grass in the churchyard. The plague had been here, and the village had been abandoned. Devin turned away and focused on the rails.

In High Point he transferred to the 10:20 to Archdale, a four-bar Remington on which the foreman drove the bar along with the haulers. The load behind the Remington was light, two flatcars of cotton, and not twenty minutes out of High Point the train came to a junction. On the spur line heading west sat a single-bar Dawson, gleaming in the sun like a newly-polished rifle.

Devin shouldered his pack but did not step off the car.

“Okay,” the Remington foreman said. “This is it.”

“Yep,” Devin said, tugging his pack’s strap tighter over his shoulder.

The foreman’s puzzled expression softened into something like a smile. “Need help with anything?” he asked.

Devin shook his head suddenly, as one waking from a dream. “No thanks,” he said, and hopped down onto the gravel rail bed. “Thanks for the ride.”

The Remington’s foreman waved as the train moved away. “Good luck! Watch out for that first hill!”

Devin turned to the little Dawson, and the lump in his throat grew larger. In a kind of trance he stepped through the pre-run checklist—gears oiled, flywheel rotating freely on its bearings, brakes smooth and unblemished. Then he climbed aboard, put his feet on the iron footplate, and gently let off the brake.

The track sloped downhill, and the Dawson drifted off without a sound. Devin gripped the oscillating handbar and gingerly added his own force. Soon the Dawson was sailing along at ten miles an hour, and Devin allowed himself a hint of a smile.

No sooner had he done so than the track rounded a bend and plunged down a five percent grade. Devin felt his stomach lurch as he pulled back on the brake lever. Try though he might, the Dawson’s speed dropped only a little by the time it reached the bottom of the hill. Devin gritted his teeth as the Dawson swung around a tight corner, wheels screeching.

“Stupid.
Stupid
,” Devin said as he brought the car to a halt. He breathed deep and wiped the sweat from his palms. “You know you’re supposed to read the top first.”

He withdrew the map from his pack and spread it on the barpost. There, marked by a tight convergence of contour lines, was the hill he had just come down. It was even labeled with red letters.

“It won’t happen again,” he said, and studied the rest of the route until he could see it in his mind.

The country through which he passed was one of rolling hills, requiring no more than a 3 gear for a single-bar like the Dawson. The soil was rich, but the plague had been here twenty years before, and the human population had yet to return. The only sounds Devin heard besides the whoosh of the Dawson’s mechanism were the blue jays and the wind in the oak trees. For half an hour he saw no sign of another human being. Then he rounded a turn and saw three columns of smoke rising into the morning sky. He had arrived.