The Fires of Spring (13 page)

David pulled the whistle cord and his train went “Whoo! Whooooooo!” He threw the pointer into the first notch. Thrillingly, the wheels whirred. Then they caught, and the P and R was off on its first trip under new management.

“Now this bend is a bad one,” the man warned. “Some day we’ll rebuild this. You need speed for the next hill, so just about here … Let her have it!” David wrenched the pointer hard right, and his train whizzed around the bend and in among the trestles of the Hurricane. Above him a tandem of cars roared past. The Hurricane passengers screamed, and in the railroad the children squealed with vicarious pleasure. The man said, “That’s good timing. Always try to have the train under here when the Hurricane goes by. Kids love it.”

Exhilarated and confident, David led his train back toward the wooden station. At his ear the engineer gave instructions: “Lots of speed here … watch … now … toss her hard into reverse!” The engine groaned and came to a protesting halt. “That’s it!” the man said approvingly.

On the next trip he showed David how to jump the track. After the locomotive had ripped up the grass he called, “Everybody out! But keep away from the third rail!” An old man picking up paper came over to help.

“Worst wreck in forty years!” he said in a high voice to the children. Some onlookers helped and the locomotive was shoved back into place. “Everybody push ’er up the hill!” the old man cackled, and as people strained, the wheels
slowly took hold. “All a
board!
” the engineer shouted, and children scrambled into their seats. “That’s all there is to that,” the man said.

“Doesn’t anybody ever get hurt?” David asked.

“Nah!” the man said deprecatingly. “Up there!” he said, pointing to the cars roaring past on the Hurricane. “That’s where they get hurt. Forever!”

“You mean those cars jump the track, too?” David asked in awe.

“You bet they do!” the engineer replied. “You’ll see one of ’em rip over the edge some day. People fly through the air like crazy birds. See that lilac tree? All its branches torn off. A full train landed there last year.”

“What happened to the people?” David asked dully.

“What the hell do you suppose happened to them?” the man countered. “One thing you can be sure. They ain’t smellin’ lilacs. They got a snootful of lilacs that day.” He laughed at his grisly joke.

“It wasn’t in the papers,” David observed.

“It’s never in the papers,” the man said reassuringly. “That would be bad for business.” David looked up at the towering structure while the man droned on, “It’s really pretty safe. Two men walk over every inch of it every day. Then somebody takes an empty car around just as fast as he can. Sometimes he goes too fast, and he gets killed. The last guy went too fast. Now I have the job.” David gaped at his instructor with astonishment.

“You took the empty car around today?” he asked.

“Every day.”

“What are you doing on this little ride?” David inquired.

“Fillin’ in,” the man explained. “The boy that had this job got arrested yesterday. Stole too much money.”

“Stole?” David repeated.

The engineer nudged David’s hand to indicate that more speed was necessary for the last hill. “It’s like this,” he explained. “When you sell a ticket, you get a dime. Each ticket is numbered, so in the morning the Company takes down the number on your first ticket. At night all they have to do is subtract the number on your last ticket, multiply by ten cents, and that’s how much you owe.”

“How could a fellow steal against such a system?” David asked.

“He can’t, usually,” the engineer agreed. “Because on all other rides one guy sells and another collects. But here we
don’t do enough business to hire two men. You sell and you also collect, so what’s to prevent you from sellin’ the same cardboards over and over? Huh?”

David’s attention was diverted by a peculiar circumstance, and he began, “That woman …” but the engineer gripped his wrist in an icy grasp. When the woman had seated herself in the train, David whispered, “She gave you a two-dollar bill!” Again the engineer squeezed David’s wrist and dragged him along to the locomotive. They made the trip in silence, and when the woman led her children away, the man took a big, deep breath and handed David fifty cents.

“That’s yours,” he said.

David left the coin in his open hand. “Are you going to keep that dollar?” he asked.

“Sure!” the engineer explained, folding David’s fingers over the money. “That’s the rule. You mustn’t steal from the Company. But if somebody leaves her change, that’s yours. When you’ve been here a while, you’ll learn how to get rich on other people’s mistakes.”

“What do you mean?” David asked.

“You’ll find out!” the engineer replied with a big wink. “This is my last trip.” He hurried down the long line of passengers and sold each one a ticket, but David noticed that he was reselling old ones and pocketing the money. The boy said nothing about this, but when the Pennsylvania and Reading was under the trestles the man whispered, “About them tickets. The Company expects you to steal a little dough each day. Hell, they pay you only $2.14 for a fifteen-hour day. Hardly covers carfare and meals. So if you steal a couple of bucks daily, nobody’ll howl. But don’t try to steal more’n that, or I’ll catch you sure.”

“You?” David gasped.

“Sure,” the man said, wiping his nose. “I’m your boss. I run this railroad.”

Paradise Park paid its cashiers $2.14 a day. Grown men with fine winter jobs gave up those jobs to work at the Park. Men with families and automobiles drove thirty miles to work for $15 a week. In his first ten days David found out why.

At nine o’clock one night a woman with three children—two of her own and one of her sister’s in Manyunk—came to the train, obviously harried by the sticky, noisy children. David gave her four tickets and stuffed the bill she handed
him into his alligator bag. Not until this woman was well on her way home to Torresdale did he discover that she had given him a five-dollar bill.

Two nights later a party of adult drunks boarded the train for a noisy spree. Two different men paid for the tickets and one gave David a two-dollar bill, which was forgotten in the clamor. David made eight extra dollars that week. Then, slowly, he began practicing ways to make people forget their money. He did not admit to himself that this was dishonest, for he was not stealing from the Company, and then one day he cashiered for Max Volo, and that night he had to admit to himself that he was becoming a crook.

The rheostat on the locomotive broke, and David was ordered to sell tickets at the loganberry stand. He remembered the cool drinks he had bought Marcia Paxson and her parents, and he approached the stand with pleasant memories, but he was even more pleased when he saw behind the counter the same excited, flash-smiled little man. “My name’s Dave Harper!” the boy reported. “I remember you from when I was just a kid. First forty cents I ever spent at one time. I was standing right here, and you made my girl’s father buy two extra drinks!”

“I know! I know!” the quick little man said, wiping the metal bar with great speed. “We were innerducin’ the stuff. You’ll like it here.”

“Hey! You!” a guard yelled. “Don’t you know cashiers is not supposed to talk to ticket-takers! Get in your box.” An elderly man appeared and showed David his badge. “No selling tickets over on my beat. You get in that box and stay there.”

David climbed into his narrow booth and grinned back at Max Volo. The little manager of the loganberry stand was about five-feet-three. He even wore his white apron with a flair, and his black hair was always combed. He had big teeth, which he showed liberally when he smiled. His quick eyes seemed to miss nothing, and he moved his head jerkily as if vainly trying to keep up with his inquisitive stares. Less than twenty minutes after the guard had warned David, Max started swearing at his pimply-faced clean-up boy: “I told you a dozen times to clean out that box!” He dragged his helper over to David’s booth and tore open the door. “Look at that dirt!” he cried, belting the boy across the head. Then, quick as a viper on hot sand, he thrust a wad of old
tickets into David’s hand and slammed the door. “We’ll get this cleaned up,” he said.

Under the change board David fumbled with the second-hand tickets but would not take them from their tight rubber bands. At the end of an hour Max Volo, standing behind the loganberry dispenser, glared at David. In a flash that no one else could have seen he held up an untorn ticket, whisked it under the counter and indicated by cutting his left forefinger in half with his right that he and David would split all stolen money fifty-fifty.

As the day wore on, David tried slipping one or two of the old tickets into his left hand and palming them so they looked as if he were tearing them off the regular roll. He had disposed of perhaps a hundred in this manner when a thin man approached the booth. David watched him coming, but out of the corner of his eye he also saw Max Volo suddenly freeze into an attitude which fairly telegraphed terror. David had only a few seconds in which to interpret this unsent signal, but he guessed that the approaching man was one of the Company spotters, the stoolpigeons that spied on everyone in a vain effort to prevent theft. With exaggerated gestures of honesty, David clearly tore off a fresh, new ticket and handed it to the spotter. Almost imperceptibly the stoolpigeon studied the ticket and its number. Then he handed it to Max Volo who ostentatiously tore it cleanly in half and tossed it into the chopper.

For a long time David was afraid to pass any old tickets, but as night fell and crowds continued to buy drinks, he disposed of his last seventy-five. When he added up his accounts, he had $29.80 too much. He stuffed the money into his shoe and walked slowly down to the cashier’s office, where he delivered his unused tickets and the Company’s money.

A middle-aged man in a black alpaca coat sat at a table with four armed guards. Each cashier walked up, dropped his alligator bag on the table and stood at attention. The head cashier droned: “Tickets morning, 31857. Tickets night 35085. Tickets sold, 3228. Receipts, $322.80. Plus morning change, $50.00. Money deposited, $372.80.” The man in alpaca checked the numbers and tossed the money to a guard to count. If there was any money extra, the Company kept it. If there was a shortage, it was deducted from the weekly pay of $15.00.

From the cashiers’ office to the trolley that would take
David home to the poorhouse was a distance of about a mile, and it was along this dark pathway that thieving ticket men lay in wait for their cashiers and their share of the day’s stolen profits. As David walked the lonely mile, watching the stars, he wondered at what point Max Volo would appear to demand his cut, for the money was bulky in his shoe. Suddenly a dark form melted from a tree trunk, grabbed David by the wrist, and hauled him back into the bushes.

“You were swell, kid!” Max chortled. “I figure you owe me $13.20. And I was real proud of you when you got my signal about the stoolpigeon. I’d like to knife that creep.”

“This is too risky for me,” David admitted.

“Easy goes!” Max whispered, pressing his quick, hard hand over David’s lips. “You and me could tear this Park wide open. You’re smart! You’re my type. But look, I have to pay a rake-off to my helper, who knows all about this. So I think you oughta give me an extra, say, four bucks.” His voice was cold, demanding. David gave him two two-dollar bills. Max lit a match to check the bills and handed them back in horror. “Me take a two! Christ, kid, don’t jinx me!” He wouldn’t touch the unlucky bills, and when David handed him a five he said, “Why don’t we make it five even, hmm?” Then he grabbed David by the elbow and whispered, “Now for fifty dollars I can get you transferred to the loganberry stand permanent. We could steal the brass rails, you and me!”

“Not me,” David said with complete finality.

“Think it over,” Max said and magically disappeared among the shadows. David looked carefully about him and stepped unobtrusively back into the road.

But he was not undetected. A slim figure in a straw hat and neat gray suit stepped quietly beside him and grabbed him by the arm. David’s heart actually stopped for a moment. This was the arrest! Then he saw that his captor was Mr. Stone, the silent, efficient man who cashiered at the greatest amusement of all, the Hurricane. He always wore gray suits and straw hats, and he stayed far away from the messy business of selling tickets twice. “Well!” he said icily. “Doing business with Max Volo, eh?”

“No, sir!” David lied impulsively.

“Don’t lie about it,” Mr. Stone said quietly. “Everybody does business with Max. For a while. Then they wind up in jail, and Max stays free.”

“I don’t know what you mean,” David whispered, for his arm hurt.

Fiercely, quietly, Mr. Stone slapped David’s face four times and twisted his wrist until the skin ached. “You’re a good boy,” Mr. Stone said angrily. “In the office they think you’re one of the few honest cashiers, so don’t get mixed up with Max Volo. He’ll ruin you, just as he’s ruining the business for the rest of us. Soon the Company’ll bring in more detectives, and even short-changing will be outlawed. Be smart, kid. Play the game honestly. You don’t have to steal. All you have to do is learn to make change fast. Practice. Practice.”

“Max made me take the tickets,” David said quietly.

Mr. Stone slapped him another stinging blow. “Did he make you sell them?” he asked. “Max gives everybody tickets, but only fools sell them. I like you, kid. You’re real. I know who you are and where you came from. Stay away from Max Volo.” The slim gray man disappeared into the darkness.

But Max Volo was not an easy man to stay away from. David found that out the afternoon of the wreck. He was driving his train downgrade toward the trestles of the Hurricane when a string of cars high above him plunged through a railing and screamed madly to earth. The brakeman rode the deathly cars into the ground and was killed. The four occupants—two girls and two sailors from the Navy Yard—were thrown clear of the cars. They floated majestically to earth. One of the girls hit a tree. Her body seemed to come apart. The two sailors were horribly mangled. But the fourth girl, screaming like a meteor in flight through weird space, plunged into a lilac tree near David. She was not killed. An eye was ripped out by a branch, but she was not killed.