Two Trains Running

IRON HORSE WAS, IN MADCAT’S ESTIMATION, A true thoroughbred among fortified wines and every bit the equal of Night Train. The packaging, which depicted a brazen fire-breathing stallion in full gallop, contrived a perfect visual analog to the charge it had made through his bloodstream. Two pints had trampled his anxieties, flattened out his migraine, and enabled him to view with contentment the sorry particulars of his place in the world: a bridge on the edge of the Spokane freight yard, an abutment spangled with graffiti rising to a vault of discolored concrete that roofed the cardboard pallet where he rested with legs asprawl, head propped against his pack, a wiry, weathered man of thirty whose ragged beard and gaunt features presented an image of Old Testament fortitude. His left eye was bloodshot, the skin around it discolored from a beating, and a less recent scar ridged the cheekbone beneath it. Now and then he would sit up straight and warm his hands at a fire gone to embers, gazing blearily about, while the rush of traffic overhead fell around him like the surging of invisible tides.

Beyond the bridge lay a muddy, rutted ground dappled with snowy patches and slicks of dead grass. Railroad junk strewn everywhere. Rusting wheels, dismantled brake shoes, and objects less definable nested in the weeds along the tracks. A waste bordered by stacks of railroad ties and dark gatherings of boxcars, all sketched in glints and gleams by the shining of a high-flying half moon, so the place looked to have acquired the cozy, comprehensible geography of a village and an air of romantic isolation it did not possess by day. Somewhere off in the yard two cars coupled with a steely clash. The forlorn voice of a train, as questioning as a whale’s song, sounded the greater distance, and with its fading, a shadow slipped from behind a stack of ties and darted toward the bridge, resolving into a slight, pale girl with unnaturally red hair and dressed in baggy clothing. She stopped about forty feet away and peered at Madcat, trying—he supposed—to make certain he was harmless. Then an engine unit came chugging out onto the section of track behind her, like a huge yellow-and-black mechanical dog sniffing at her heels, and she scooted forward again. She stood hugging herself just beneath the lee of the bridge. Dyed scarlet dreadlocks hung down over a sharp, thin-boned face. Skin so white as to seem nearly translucent. Pretty…but the sort of witchy Appalachian prettiness that never lasts much past twenty. Her sweatshirt and carpenter’s pants rubbed gray with grime. Still hugging herself, she edged a few steps closer, and once the noise of the engine had abated, she asked, “Kin you he’p me, mister?”

“I kinda doubt it,” Madcat said.

The girl’s head twitched as if the flatness of his response had touched a nerve.

“I got no money to spare, that’s what you’re asking,” he said.

She glanced nervously back toward the yard and when she spoke, her voice had a catch in it. “Kin I set here a minute? Kin you jus’ lemme set here and not bother me?”

That irritated him. “Set wherever the fuck you want.”

She hesitated, then dropped to her knees beside the fire and stretched her hands out over it—as if conjured by the gesture, a tiny flame sheeted from the bed of embers, brightening the glow on her palms. Madcat caught a whiff of creosote and thought she must have been standing close to the ties for quite some time to pick up that smell.

He cracked the cap of his third pint, had a swallow, and considered the girl. Her eyes were shut tight, squeezing out tears. Yet for all her apparent helplessness, the tense, forward-thrusting attitude of her neck and the thick scarlet twists of hair caging her white face gave her an uncanny look. He imagined she was casting an evil spell and the tears were the result of concentrated effort. She made a fretful noise in her throat, drew a breath that pulled the sweatshirt taut across her breasts.

“Want some wine?” he asked, holding out the bottle.

Her eyes snapped open and went toward it, the way a snake will quicken on spotting a mouse. She shook her head, sat back on her haunches. “There’s somethin’ I should tell you ’bout,” she said.

“Oh, that’s okay,” he said. “I got enough troubles, I don’t need to be taking yours on.”