Hellfire (7 page)

“Mhm,” Husk confirmed. Then he paused and turned to the old man. Someone was willing to talk; now he just had to steer the conversation. “Do they use that coal in the locomotives?”

The old man nodded. “Refills the train yards here in Shreveport. All the coal fields around here are that wet brown coal, what do they call it… lignite. That’s only good if you’ve got some Newton’s Catalyst to add to it.”

Husk nodded. “We’ve certainly got plenty of catalyst around Gloriana.”

“Maybe too much,” the old man said.

Husk watched him a moment. The old man looked into the sky, seemingly at nothing at all.

“What do you mean?” Husk asked.

The old man kept looking away. “It’s strange stuff, that Catalyst. Makes fires do weird things, maybe things they shouldn’t. Sure, it’s made life easier and given us industry my pappy never would’ve dreamed of, but… People say they hear voices in the fire.”

“Stoker’s Madness, going crazy from being near the fire too long. I’ve read a lot about it.”

“Reading can only get you so far,” the old man said. “I’ve heard those voices. You ever hear ‘em?”

Husk shook his head.

The old man chewed up a little more of his straw. “Not everybody does. Some folks just feel sick, which they say is breathing gasses, but I don’t know.” He paused and looked down at the ground. “I knew those boys on the train that crashed. Jim Ralph and Matt Thompson, good boys. Jim had two little ones at home. The Rail Agency is giving his wife a pension.”

“That’s good,” Husk said.

The old man spat. “I suppose so, but it was quick. I’ve never seen any Rail Agent let paperwork go through that fast, especially if it cost the railroad money.”

“Still, that’s a good thing, right?” Husk asked.

The old man shrugged. “Maybe it’s just my nature to suspect. I still don’t know if I trust that Prichert boy, and he’s my son-in-law, doin’ fine. On the other hand, it seemed almost as if the Rail Agency expected something to happen and were ready to tuck it away.”

Husk’s eyes went wide. He patted his coat pockets for his pad and pencil. By the time he dug it out to make a note, the old man was walking away.

“Wait, can I get your name?” Husk asked.

The old man shook his head as he walked. “If I were you, I wouldn’t be asking for anyone’s name around here if you’re going to be talking about the train crash. Folks downtown wouldn’t like it.”

Husk stepped in front of the old man. “I understand that it was awful, but the public has a right to know.”

“Maybe the public will find out something it don’t want to know.”

“What do you mean by that?”

The old man glanced around Husk. Husk checked over his shoulder. The others were milling around the edge of the train yard, waiting for the river water to calm down before heading back to their perch overlooking the shady spots where catfish liked to hide.

“Tell me,” Husk said.

“We saw it,” the old man said. “The boys and I were fishin’, as usual. We saw the crash as train broke through the yard, all spittin’ fire and runaway headin’ west. Jim and Matt were scurrying out of the cab and doing their best to get off the train.”

Husk nodded. “And the reports said the locomotive exploded, then rolled down the track for almost another mile.”

“Yep, but Jim and Matt weren’t running from any explosion.”

A chill ran down Husk’s spine, and he wasn’t certain why. “Then what was it?”

“There was something else that came out of that locomotive cab, out of the flames, something they didn’t get away from. We all saw it.” His voice cracked, making the old man seem like a scared kid. The old man swallowed dryly. “Abel saw it, too.”

“Abel?” Husk asked. He glanced back over his shoulder through narrowed eyes, trying to remember which one… He froze when he realized. “Isn’t Abel blind?”

“He is,” the old man replied. “He has been since that boiler explosion on one of the steamboats going up the Red.”

Husk fidgeted. His hands dropped his pencil and shook as he tried to pick it up. “W-what was in the train cab?”

A shout came from the other men. They walked back toward the river. Husk tried to subtly hold out his arms to keep the old man from getting away.

The old man only shook his head and told him, “Be at the lumberyard at high noon.”

He walked around Husk, who stood stiff and watched him go. Something was very wrong in Shreveport, something that was so horrible no one wanted to talk about it.

Chapter Eleven

Sheriff Clancy Blake strode down the brick pavement. Everyone else on the street rushed, walking with a hurried gait or urging their horses into a trot. There didn’t seem to be time for a stroll in the big city.

Lake Providence churned like an enormous living clock, a marvel of the Age of Steam. Streetcars dashed through the city, outpacing horses and buggies, now the transport of a bygone era. Cranes lifted enormous stone bricks onto one side of the new City Center that promised gas, piping-hot water, and pneumatic power to every house on every block in the city. Folks in Lake Providence would soon have amenities people back East could only read about in magazines.

On the north side of the city, a collection of airships stood atop a wide, brick plaza dotted with sheds of highly volatile anthracite coal. On the south side, trains bustled across Burr Bridge, heading west to Texas or east to Jackson and beyond. Between the two, the wide river docks loaded and unloaded the enormous steamboats that crawled the Mississippi, surrounded by ferries and steam-powered tugs that buzzed like flies in a cattle herd.

A perpetual cloud hung over the whole city. All of the furnaces that poured out the heat to do work also poured out smoke that rose up from a hundred smokestacks and a thousand chimneys. Industry was the city’s lifeblood, giving people employment in factories and offices, but it gave off the acrid, sulfurous smell of an engine. They said it was the smell of progress.

Some of the smoke got caught in his nose, and Blake sneezed. No one on the street blessed him.

The sun had been yellow and bright back in Bastrop when Blake left this morning. Lake Providence’s light was orange in a gray sky.

Something hit Blake in the stomach, and he let out a burst of air. His hands settled on the shoulders of a dark-headed boy, probably nine or ten years old. His face was dirty, and his wooden coat had a split seam.

“Sorry, sir!” the boy called.

He pulled away and tried to run.

Blake held his hands tight.

“Just a moment, son,” Blake said. He kept his left hand in a firm grip on the boy’s shoulder and felt his own belt.

His wallet was gone, just as he suspected.

He patted down the kid and found it in his sleeve. Blake held it in front of the boy’s eyes. “What’s this about?”

The boy let out a grumbling whine, as if he were trying to think but couldn’t come up with any words. He started trembling.

Blake sighed. If this were Bastrop, he would drag the boy down to the sheriff’s office and give him a meal and a cot while he got in touch with the State School for Boys. But, he was out of his jurisdiction.

“Don’t steal,” Blake told the boy flatly. “It makes you weak. You didn’t earn this money. You didn’t work for it. All you’re doing is getting rich off my work. Work for your money, and it’ll always keep coming to you. Steal it, and the money will run out. Maybe you’ll end up in jail, or maybe the people you’re stealing from will do something worse to you.”

The boy stared at him with huge, brown eyes.

Blake cleared his throat. “Where’s your pa, boy?”

The boy shook his head.

Blake took in a deep breath of the smoky air. He let the boy go.

The boy pulled away and again turned to run.

“Hold it!” Blake called.

The boy froze. Slowly, as if he weren’t sure what was happening, he turned around.

Blake dug into his wallet, pulling out a quarter dollar. He held it up to the boy.

“I’m not giving you this,” Blake said. “I’m investing it in you. You go get something to eat with this, you hear?”

The boy took it and nodded. “Thank you, sir.”

“No,” Blake said. “Don’t thank me. I’m not giving it to you.”

The boy squinted in confusion. Lines on his face became dark wrinkles from the dirt.

“I’m investing it. You are to get something to eat with that. When you do, ask for a pitcher of water and a bowl to clean yourself up. Then you ask if you can do some work around there in exchange for some meals. If they don’t have any work for you, ask where you can get some. Wash dishes, sweep floors, it doesn’t matter. Once you can take care of yourself, you save the rest. Then you come to Bastrop and ask for Sheriff Blake. You pay me back that quarter with a penny interest and show me you’ve become a man.”

The boy’s eyes had gone wide again. He looked down at the quarter.

“Think you can do that?” Blake asked.

The boy swallowed.

“I think you can.”

The boy was quiet for a moment until he said, “Yeah.” He nodded, slowly at first, and then faster. “Yeah! Thanks, sir!”

“You’re welcome,” Blake told him.

The boy scurried down the street with the quarter held tight in his fist.

Blake watched him go. “Godspeed, son.”

He shivered a moment and turned back to his wallet. Inside was a scrap of paper with Mrs. Kemp’s address on it. He had gotten it from a bleary-eyed clerk at the downtown police station.

That had been a sight to behold. Blake’s sheriff’s office was two rooms and a short hall of cells with an outhouse. The police station beside the railroad depot was one of five in the town, two-story brick buildings filled with men in uniforms and numbered badges. Blake had two fulltime deputies, Carmichael was minding the shop right then since he was out. There was a drawer of stars for more deputies when there was a need for them. All of the men with “LPPD” stamped on their badges seemed like some kind of military outfit. He supposed that was what folks needed to keep order in the big city.

Bastrop was still a sizeable town, even if it couldn’t be compared to Lake Providence. It one of the earliest founded in Gloriana, just a few miles from where Colonel Burr had set up his plantation. After the whole affair of Burr’s loyalty to the nation cleared up and the Newton’s Catalyst starting pouring into the territory, Lake Providence took over as the major city with its river port. That was just fine by Blake.

He looked down at the address and then up at the street signs bolted into the brick on the corners of the buildings. He looked back down. “Yep, Wilkinson Street.”

It was a row of townhouses on the shabbier end of Lake Providence. There were outright slums nearer to the docks, but this was still a neighborhood where Blake wouldn’t want to be out after dark. There wasn’t anything particularly malevolent about it, but the brick crumbled in spots, hand-painted signs showed weathering, and rust stood on the ironwork. People around here were too busy trying to feed themselves to waste about time, money, and energy on appearances. Even if they saw someone pulling a crime, Blake doubted these folk would want to get mixed up in it.

He walked down the street, passing by a bakery and a tailor shop until he came to the right number the police had given him: 41 ½. The door was narrow, leading to a staircase above a butcher shop.

“Easy to bring home the bacon,” Blake supposed aloud to himself. He pulled the cord for the doorbell.

After a moment, footsteps clunked down stairs. A girl in her teenage years answered. Her face was freckled, her hair bright red, and her eyes shining brown. If Blake were a betting man, he would have put money on this being Kemp’s sister.

“Good morning, miss,” Blake said.

“Morning,” she replied.

He directed his hand at his chest in a little bow. “My name is Clancy Blake; I’m the sheriff out of Bastrop. Is this the residence of Mrs. Martha Kemp?”

The girl threw her head back and groaned. “Is this why Nate wasn’t home last night?”

“Yes, actually. But you might not—”

“I knew it! I knew he’d done something. How much d’you think it’ll be to bail him out?”

Blake scratched his head.

“We’ll have to get a lawyer, too. I bet Ma hires Mr. Cleveland again. I hate him, the way he looks at me.”

“Right,” Blake said. “Although I’d be surprised if the railroad even brought up charges—”

“The railroad? Oh, he didn’t lose his job out of this, did he? What are Ma and I going to do? When I get a hold of him, I’m going—”

“There’s been a crash!” Blake interrupted.

The color drained out of the girl’s face. All she said was, “Oh no.”

“He’s alive, just banged up a little,” Blake told her.

She was silent.

“I should speak with your ma,” Blake said.

She nodded and turned to lead him up the stairs. Her steps were quieter this time. Blake walked as softly as his boots would let him.

The upstairs apartment was nice enough, especially for this part of town. There was a large living room with a kitchen tucked up against the wall. Doors in the back must have led to bedrooms. An older woman stood over a huge kettle, stirring boiling water. Her graying red hair was gray at its roots. She was probably a few years younger than Blake, but years of hardship had weighed heavy on her. Wicker baskets were filled with dirty laundry, and the table was covered with folded sheets. The air was hot and humid.

The girl walked Blake inside. He paused a moment at the threshold.

Not even looking up, the woman said, “Annie, who was it?”

“It’s a sheriff, Ma,” the girl said.

The woman stood up. Her hair was tied back in a tight bun. Steam had soaked her dress and apron, and they stuck to her portly body.

“Oh, Lord,” she called. She walked toward the door. “And I thought Nathan was over all that now.”

“How do, ma’am,” Blake said. He took off his hat. “I’m Clancy Blake, sheriff out of Bastrop.”

The woman blinked. “Bastrop?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“What trouble could he have gotten into in Bastrop? The train just passes through there. Did someone provoke him? He has such a temper…”

Blake saw where the girl got it. He cleared his throat to get a word in before they got off track.

“Mrs. Kemp, the train he was on derailed as it was going over the bridge at Bayou Bartholomew,” Blake said. “Your boy is fine, just got a cut on his shoulder.”

She stared at him a long while and then let out a sigh. She walked stiffly across the room to a set of wooden chairs. “Well, thank goodness he’s all right. Please, Sheriff Blake, was it? Have a seat.”

“Thank you.” Blake sat. His legs were more worn out than he would have thought walking across town. The ride back on the train would be a nice rest.

“Now, what happened?” Mrs. Kemp asked.

Blake fidgeted with his hat. “We’re not exactly certain on that.”

Mrs. Kemp leaned her face closer. “Oh?”

“It’s a bit of a puzzle,” Blake admitted. “The train went runaway. We know that much. Your son, Nate, had enough sense to climb back over the tender and loose the cars, but...”

“But?”

“We haven’t found the engineer.”

“Oh no, Jones!” the girl, Ann, called from the fireplace. “He was so nice. Do you think he’ll be all right?”

Blake had to shake his head. “I don’t know. The Rail Agency said that they would conduct the search for him.” He wondered if they meant it.

Mrs. Kemp let out a long, low whine. “He was thrown from the train? Bless his soul.”

Blake nodded slowly. There was more to tell, more he wanted to ask about Nate’s sanity. There wasn’t much worse than breaking bad news.

“Mrs. Kemp, I have to tell you… Has Nate ever had a history of Stoker’s Madness?”

She narrowed her eyes at him. “No. Nate’s a good boy. Sure, he had some problems when he was a boy, but he hasn’t hurt anybody, not permanently.”

“Has he ever mentioned… seeing things in the fire?”

“Seeing things?” Mrs. Kemp blurted. “Good heavens, no! Nathan’s not crazy. If there’s anything wrong with him, it’s that Newton’s Catalyst the railroad uses.”

Blake looked up at the cooking pots full of laundry. Several rested on the floor while one sat high on a stovetop. “You don’t use any here?”

“Of course not. Nathan tells me he could work extra hours and buy me some, how much we’d save in the long run on firewood and coal, but I won’t have it in the house.”

“Why not? Everybody has at least a pinch they use from time to time.”

“Not me,” Mrs. Kemp said firmly. “That stuff makes the whole house reek of Hell itself.”

Blake tried not to roll his eyes. It was the old wives’ tale about the Catalyst getting its heat from the proverbial Lake of Fire. Blake was a God-fearing man, that was how he was raised, but the Good Book was about leading a righteous life in the here and now. The geography of the afterlife was for someone else to worry about. He had enough problems on the Earth to wonder about what was above it or beneath.

“I’m not a fan of the smell myself,” Blake agreed. “I only let the boys down at the sheriff’s office use it in the stove on cold winter days.”

“You shouldn’t even do that.”

“Oh, well, I just can’t argue with them when it comes to how much we’d spend on heating coal otherwise.”

“‘The love of money is the root of all evil,’”Mrs. Kemp quoted.

Blake pursed his lips. “Good point from the books of Timothy, but I reckon there’s half of the Proverbs that tell us to be prudent with our money.”