Amerikan Eagle

To the east he could make out the roof of the B&M railroad station and its sister freight station. There was also a smell of smoke in the air, and he looked down the tracks, away from Maplewood Avenue, down by the grove of trees.

He started walking.

* * *

The encampment was built on a muddy stretch of ground, up against the marshland that bordered the shallow North Mill Pond. There were automobiles and trucks parked near the trees, and from the condition of most of the tires, it looked like the vehicles had made their final stop. Shacks made from scrap lumber and tree branches were scattered around, most with meager fires burning before them and women tending them. The children playing about were shoeless, their feet black with dirt. The women, with their thin dresses soiled and patched, looked up at him, eyes and expressions dull. It made him queasy, thinking about Sarah and Toby safe and warm back home. He shivered, knowing that one mistake, one bad run-in with a Long’s Legionnaire or some other screwup, could easily put his family here.

A skinny old man came over, his white beard down to his chest, his skin gray with grime, his leather shoes held together by twine. “What are you lookin’ for, fella?”

“Looking for Lou from Troy. Is he around?”

“Depends who’s askin’. You a cop?”

“I am.”

“Town cop, railroad cop, or federal cop?”

“Town cop. Inspector Sam Miller.”

The old man spat. “Haven’t seen Lou since yesterday. He in trouble?”

“No. I just want to ask him a few questions.”

“Huh. Sure. Well, he’s not here. Just me and the kids and the womenfolk. That’s it.”

Sam took in the encampment once more. “Where are the other men?”

“Whaddya think? Out in town. Day jobs. Looking for work. Other stuff.”

Other stuff, Sam thought. Rummaging through trash bins, looking for swill or food scraps. Or collecting bottles or cans. Or, like Lou, scavenging for coal lumps to cut the cold at night, when your wife and your children shivered in the rags as you lay there with them, in despair and rage, wondering again how you had ended up here, a failure as a father, a husband, a man.

“Look, last night, there was something loud coming from here… like gunshots. You know anything about that?”

The old man spat again. “A couple of fellas were drunk, got pissed at each other, fired off a couple o’ rounds. Missed, o’ course. But shit, you tell me you’re worried about that, somethin’ that happened twelve hours ago? Why didn’t you come earlier?”

Sam said, “Other matters had priority, and—”

“Yeah, that’s crap. You cops, you don’t give a shit. If you did, you woulda been here last night instead of comin’ out here the next day to pick up the pieces. Well, the hell with you.”

Without warning, the man took a swing at Sam, the blow landing hard on his left cheek. Sam, stunned, stepped back and, with two hands, shoved the old man in the chest. The old man fell on his butt, snarling, “Fuck you, cop. You and your kind don’t care about us. I was a stonecutter from Indiana, made stone that built this country, and look at me and my family—livin’ like animals, beggin’ for scraps. So get the fuck out of here, leave us be. Shit, better yet, you want to arrest me? Go ahead. I’ll be fed better and will sleep better tonight in your damn jail.”

Sam touched his cheek, then turned away. Suddenly, he heard a man laughing. From one of the shacks a man stepped out, buttoning his fly. A shipyard worker, probably, Sam thought. The man strolled away, whistling, lighting up a hand-rolled cigarette, and then a woman in a gray dress emerged from the shed, holding a dollar bill, an empty look on her tired face. When she saw Sam, she ducked back into the shack, and he heard her say something he couldn’t make out.

He looked at the rails again. Hearing that woman’s voice, a memory had come to him of a time when he had been a patrolman. Along these very tracks, not far from here, he’d been part of a search party seeking an old man who had wandered off when a train rumbled by unexpectedly. Not a B&M train, just a dark locomotive with a series of closed-off boxcars, and from those boxcars, Sam remembered hearing… noises. Voices. Scores of voices, crying out desperately as the train shuttled through the night, going God knows where.

Voices he couldn’t understand.

He looked back at the trampled spot where the dead man had been found.

“Who are you?” he said. “And where in hell did you come from?”

Then he continued back to his Packard, rubbing his sore cheek.

CHAPTER NINE

Dinner was a bowl of chicken stew and some chunks of homemade bread, and while Toby drew doodles on scrap memo paper from the department, Sarah sat on the other side of the table, silent and looking paler than usual. There was a faint crackle to the air, as though a thunderstorm were approaching.

When she spoke, there was a listlessness to her voice, as if she were preoccupied with something.