In order to prevent the cap from coming down over his eyes my father had to balance it on the back of his head and keep his head tipped back. The grimy bandanna came halfway down the front of his surplice. The gauntlets on his gloves extended well above his elbows. Pretending to adjust the gloves, he pushed the throttle forward a notch.

  I leaned out the window. Ahead was a steep incline through two rock walls. It looked like a long sloping roofless tunnel.

  I heard my father saying, “Do you like to go fast, Captain?”

  “Fast?” Compton’s eyes were getting red.

  “How fast will Old Ninety-seven do?”

  “Old Ninety-seven?” Compton said as though he had never heard of the engine. “Oh, Old Ninety-seven. At first I thought you meant did Eula and I go fast. She’ll do about eighty on a downgrade, Ninety-seven will. Not down the other side of this ridge, though. There’s a hairpin curve at the bottom. Twenty’s the limit around there.”

  “What if she ever got out of the traces going down the mountain. Would you jump?”

  “Abandon Old Ninety-seven? Never. I’d almost as soon turn her over to a Frenchman.”

  “Couldn’t prize you loose, eh? True for you, Captain. Have another short one.”

  Compton took a drink. He looked out the window at the wall of the cut. “How them rocks do rush by,” he said. “I never noticed when I was behind the controls.”

  “It always seems faster to a passenger,” my father said, pushing the throttle up as far as it would go. “What’s in them shut boxcars, Captain? Newsprint?”

  “No, that’s hay from Ontario. Alfalfa hay.”

  “Alfalfa hay. That’s a valuable commodity in these times. Alfalfa hay he says, Brother William.”

  Compton was quite drunk now, but he couldn’t help noticing how fast we were going. “Here,” he said, “I’d better take back over.”

  My father glanced back out the window. “Who’s that dark curly-headed fella?” he said.

  “What?”

  “They’s a little fella looks like a section hand hanging onto your ladder, Captain.”

  “Judas Priest, one of them dirty little French darkies hitching a ride,” Compton said. “Keep the controls another minute.”

  “Certainly. What are you going to do with him? Make him pay a fare?”

  “How big did you say he was?”

  “He’s only a pitiful little fella. Not much bigger than a boy. He looked scared.”

  “He better look scared. This is the last straw. See this big boot, Pastor? I’m going to put it to him.”

  In the best style of an honorary Legionnaire, red-faced Compton came bulling back through the cab. As he went by I noticed that he did not seem to have any neck at all. His head was clamped down tightly between his shoulders like something round and hard and ugly in a vise.

  My father was close behind him. As Compton drew back his foot and lunged toward the open entranceway above the ladder my father drew back his foot and lunged toward Compton’s barrel of a rear end. “Bon voyage,” he said as Compton disappeared through the opening.

  Somehow Compton managed to catch hold of a rung of the ladder with one hand. Dangling with his short legs just out of reach of the driving cams, he shouted for his fireman. The fireman rushed up into the cab. He knelt in the entranceway and extended his arm.

  An interesting exhibition ensued. Compton flailed out with his free hand and caught the fireman’s wrist. The fireman heaved up, but without much success. At the same time Compton seemed to be trying to pull his would-be rescuer off his perch and down on top of him. The fireman was no match for his engineer in this tug of war. With some slight assistance from my father, he steadily lost ground. Suddenly he was sailing through the air over Compton, who had less than a second to enjoy his triumph before being yanked off the ladder over the flying fireman. Clasping one another’s wrists like trapeze artists they rolled in tandem to the base of the rock cut.

  Meanwhile my father had discovered Compton’s longspouted oilcan and was diligently lubricating the gears and levers on the instrument panel. Weighed down by all of his engineering accoutrements, he grinned his manic grin at me. “Wild Bill,” he said, “we have just become the proud new owners of two carloads of alfalfa.”

  “We can’t steal that hay,” I said. “That’s going too far. Uncle Henry wouldn’t like this at all.”

  “Uncle Henry’s back in the milk car. He don’t need to know nothing about it.”

  “How are you going to keep him from finding out?”

  “I wonder where the brakes are,” my father said.

  “You can’t just hijack a train, Dad. We’re going to be in a lot of trouble.”

  “So’s Compton,” my father said, as though Compton’s difficulties would solve all of ours. “He won’t be burning no crosses or attending no more beheadings for a while. The company ain’t going to like this.”

  “Dad. Listen to me, Dad. What are we going to do with a train?”

  “I’ll figure out something. Where do you suppose the brakes are, Wild Bill?”

  “Pull this back first.”

  I pulled back the throttle, but we had already crested the ridge and started down the long grade on the other side. Far ahead through the light rain I could see the lake. It did not look inviting.

  We were entering another short cut. For some reason I looked back over the tops of the cars. “Oh no,” I said.

  “It ain’t that bad, Bill. I think this is them.”

  I grabbed my father’s arm. “A Mountie just jumped onto the train.”

  My father swung around fast just as the policeman disappeared over the side of the caboose. “I saw him,” I said. “He dropped down from the top of those rocks. I’m positive I saw him.”

  “All right, my boy. You stay here and see if you can find the brakes. I don’t want to lose that alfalfa. I’ll go back and tend to the Mountie. Compton don’t want unauthorized riders on his train. It’s against company policy.”

  He scrambled over the coal gondola and leaped up onto the top of the first boxcar. I looked out the window and down the track. About halfway down the ridge to the lake I could see a trestle built into the grade. I hunted frantically for the brakes.

  “You’re under arrest in the name of the King,” said a voice behind me in a thick Scottish accent.

  My most immediate feeling was relief. We might be carried off to jail, but at least we weren’t going to be killed in a train wreck. “The brakes,” I shouted, spinning around. “Where are the brakes?”

  I was staring up into the face of a monster. Huge chunks of flesh had been torn away from it. The right ear was hanging by a few shreds of cartilage. Part of his right nostril was gone. The right eye socket was a leaking gelatinous pulp. His beard was stiff with dried blood. I could see a row of stubby dark side teeth through a hole in his cheek. When he opened his mouth to laugh I realized that he had no cheek at all.

  “Where’s the wee mun, lad? It’s the wee mun the King wants. Do na say he drouned this time. Sergeant MacPhearson kens better.”

  I couldn’t stop staring into that creature’s ruined eye. “She is na pretty, lad, but I think she’s nathing to what you’ll resemble if you do na tell me. Look ahead.”

  I looked out. We were close to the trestle and going much faster.

  He gestured with his pistol. “She’s a great ways doun, eh, laddie? Unless you tell Sergeant where he can find the wee mun you’ll be lepping into the teeny wee burn that chuckles along below.”

  Carcajou trilled his r’s and drew out certain words in an insane parody of a Highland accent. He was so big that he had not been able to button the Mountie’s jacket across his chest, which was covered by a thick mat of blood-soaked white hair. As we moved out onto the trestle he reached up and casually plucked off his wounded ear, which he lofted out over the chasm. His good blue eye seemed quite calm, quite amused.

  He motioned with the pistol. “Step out, lad.”

  I had no choice. I had to do what he said. As I passed him I was nearly overpowered by the reek of blood. If I could just stall until we were off that long trestle I would have a chance. I made up my mind that regardless of what happened I was not going to jump into that gulf. Anything would be better than that.

  Now Carcajou was facing me with his back to the instrument panel. I stood on the edge of the entranceway. He gestured with his pistol for me to jump. I shook my head. He raised the pistol to a height level with my eyes and fired.

  Carcajou staggered back into the panel and fired again. He was shooting wildly. Both shots had gone through the roof of the cab.

  “Jump, Wild Bill,” my father shouted from the top of the boxcar behind the gondola.

  We were off the trestle, but I didn’t know whether I had strength enough in my legs to jump clear of the train. I looked at Carcajou once more. He was bent over, struggling to raise the gun with both hands. As he started to straighten up I saw the long wooden handle projecting from his red coat. My father had skewered him with the pike pole.

  The gun went off again just as I turned and leaped. I hit on my hands and knees and rolled down the embankment. Cinders and gravel cut into my palms and face. The earth seemed to rotate under me.

  I got to my feet but everything was tipping. The whole ridge was tilting. I fell and got up again. This time I stayed upright.

  The train was really rolling. I saw my father swing down through the open door of the milk car. Immediately milk cans began to fly out, followed closely by Rat, Henry and my father. Still dressed in their surplices, they rolled down the embankment like three big white rabbits, and had the same trouble getting to their feet. I waved and shouted that I was all right.

  Old Ninety-seven was breaking all her speed records. Near the bottom of the ridge the whistle began to scream. It continued blasting as the engine derailed itself and plunged over the embankment into the lake. The six cars were whipped off the track behind the engine. They came uncoupled and flipped lazily through the air end over end, descending into the lake beyond the engine, which lay on its side in shallow water, still puffing, like some stranded and dying behemoth surrounded by its offspring. The whistle continued to shriek for another halfminute or so. From where I stood the derailment had resembled the wreck of a little boy’s toy train.

  My father had hobbled back up on the track and was sitting with his right leg spraddled out at a curious angle. “That was a dandy,” he said. “It warn’t what I’d call spectacular, but it was better than adequate. Did you see that spout go up when she hit? I wish Compton could have been here to see that. Don’t she looked like a beached whale, though, boys? Our alfalfa got wet, I reckon. We seem fated to have our hay get wet, Bill.”

  “Are you all right?”

  “Certainly. Look at Rat down there in the bushes seeing if he can recover his case. I would give that wreck an eight out of a possible ten, Henry. How would you rate her?”

  Uncle Henry had cut a long slit up my father’s right pant leg with his hunting knife. Now he was ripping his surplice into bandages. He squatted by my father’s leg and began to wrap it above the knee.

  I leaned over his shoulder. “I thought you said you were all right?”

  “I am. I’m fine, Bill. It’s just my leg here that’s got a hole in it. I don’t know how he did it with that pick pole through his chest. Jesus, boys, the Christly hook on the end is ten inches long and I swear it went clear through him and out the other side. He fell back too. But then he just commenced to bringing that pistol up and up, a-holding it in both hands. There, boys, is one tough hombre. You should have seen his face, Hen. What was left of it. It didn’t look like a human man’s. It was blowed all to pieces. That man just won’t kill. Or wouldn’t until now. I reckon we don’t have to worry about him no more. Not with seventy tons of steel on top of him.”

  Uncle Henry tightened the tourniquet. He stood up and looked down through the rain at the wreck. “I reckon we do,” he said. “I reckon if I seen him laid out in state and buried I would still worry about him at least once a day for the rest of my life.”

  Without another word he went down to help Rat recover what was left of the whiskey. Some of the covers had been jarred off the milk cans, and many of the bottles were smashed. When we had packed those that remained into two cans, we had only fifty-two bottles.

  “Plus the joker,” Rat said, holding up the fifty-third, which was about three-quarters full. He took a drink and smacked his lips loudly. “You know, boys,” he said, “I don’t so much mind trains after all.”

  “How do you like railroad detectives?” Uncle Henry said. “Because in about an hour this stretch of track is going to be crawling with them. Them and Mounties and border patrol and sheriffs and deputies and G-men.”

  “See the fog rolling in, boys,” my father said. “They may not even spot her until morning.”

  “Are we going to wait for them to arrive so’s we can assist with the investigation?” Uncle Henry said.

  “Listen,” my father said. From up the track I heard a regular clicking, like the telegraph at the railroad station in the Common. It grew louder. The section handcar appeared on the trestle. It was Compton, pumping like a madman.

  My father lay back on the cinders beside the tracks. He crossed his hands over his breast. He was still wearing Compton’s engineer gloves and the surplice. Nothing I had ever seen looked more ludicrous. As wretched as our circumstances were, I had to laugh.

  The handcar was slowing down. Compton leaped off. “Where is he?” he shouted. “Where’s that bastard dwarf that stole my train?”

  “Easy, my son,” Uncle Henry said, his face expressionless. “Can’t you see he was kilt jumping off the train? Have respect for the dead.”

  “Respect for the dead? What about respect for my train? Where’s Ninety-seven?”

  “She’s all right,” Uncle Henry said. “After we got scart and jumped she just went on down the line. She’ll run out of steam shortly and we’ll overtake her. Now let’s get the deceased aboard. Be careful, boys. They’ll probably want to martyr him. He was a most uncommon priest.”

  “I don’t care what you do with the carcass. I want my train back.”

  “The milk must go through,” Uncle Henry said as he and Rat set the two cans on the platform of the handcar. “Where’s your fireman? I hope he ain’t hurt.”

  “He’s walking back up the line to Magog. He said he’d had enough train rides for one day.”

  “That’s why he’s still a fireman and you’re an engineer,” Uncle Henry said. He and I picked up my father, who held himself stiff as a board, and laid him on the opposite side of the platform from the milk cans.

  “Are you sure he’s dead?” Compton said. “I thought I seen a tremor.”

  “No doubt. Sometimes priests and monks will jerk like that for hours. It’s the spirit departing.”

  “I thought he said you were Church of England?”

  “The same is true of them.”

  “See him jerk. He must have a lot of spirit. Jumpy as a dead snake, ain’t he?”

  Compton bent down over my father. “I wish Eula could see this.”

  “I wish she could see this,” my father said, raising his good leg and booting Compton down over the embankment for the second time in half an hour. “That will learn you some respect for the dead.”

  Simultaneously Uncle Henry and I began to pump. Rat sat between the milk cans, hugging them close. Compton was on his feet again, giving pursuit and shouting maledictions.

  “Plucky fella, ain’t he?” my father observed.

  “Pump,” Uncle Henry said.

  He seemed anxious to get home.

  XI

  Years later, when my own son was growing up, I was struck time and again by his physical resemblance to my father. Young Henry had the same tiny frame, light hair and vivid blue eyes, the same extraordinary strength and agility.

  There were striking differences too, which may have made their external similarity more remarkable to me. Henry did not, for example, have the slightest interest in trains, cars, live animals, music or games of any kind, though he once remarked to me that when he played baseball at school he could see the individual seams on the ball as it came spinning up to the plate. He liked the woods but did not care for hunting or fishing. He was not unpopular with other children, but he had none of my father’s intense feelings about people. He had little of my father’s capacity for affirmation, but was not cynical. He possessed the most remarkable powers of divination in a family noted for this gift.

  These first came to our attention when he was about four. For a year he had talked in his sleep, but whatever he was saying was unintelligible to us. Shortly after his fourth birthday my wife, whose family spoke only French, began to pick out certain habitant expressions. When I listened carefully I too recognized old French words and phrases. Henry would sit upright in his bed with his blue eyes wide open and talk or shout in an archaic dialect until we woke him. Sometimes he seemed to be conversing pleasantly. At other times he pleaded or railed. Remembering Cordelia’s terror-filled nights, her shrieks in Greek and sixteenth-century English, I was not reassured. In desperation we decided to consult a psychiatrist.

  Dr. Weinstein was a vague amiable low-keyed man who, I supposed at first, had been mellowed by much contact with the profoundly and irremediably mad. Two hours after he arrived I realized my error. Dr. Weinstein, I discovered, had been mellowed by the astonishing variety of pills and shots which he administered to himself at frequent intervals and which kept him dazed or euphoric throughout his three-day visit. By night he took handfuls of amphetamines to stay awake for his vigils at Henry’s bedside. In the morning he descended from his nocturnal flights with massive doses of narcotics.

  Henry put on several memorable evening performances. Twice he tried to choke Dr. Weinstein to death, mistaking him for a seventeenth-century sergeant-major named Davignon who had raped his sister. During his waking hours he refused to take either Dr. Weinstein or his questions seriously.

  “Henry,” Dr. Weinstein said in what I came to suspect was an affected accent, “it makes Toctor sad when you von’t talk sincerely to him. Vouldn’t you like to make Toctor happy?”

 

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