On the Blue Comet Page 6

  Snow swirled in after the men, bringing a jolt of cold air into the warm room. They crept up behind Mr. Applegate. I tried to shout, but before I could even open my mouth, one of the men whacked Mr. Applegate over the head with a club. All that followed happened in a kind of blur. I reckon the whole thing took only a minute or maybe two, but time itself slowed to a snail’s crawl and I watched everything happen in the slowest of slow-motion pictures. I stood like a boy carved in stone until a shattering bang, much louder than any gunshot, made me leap out of my skin.

  That’s when one of the men saw me. He held the muzzle of a pistol straight out from his body. It was aimed directly between my eyes. In that exact moment, Mr. Applegate pulled off his blindfold. He rasped from the floor, “Jump, Oscar! Jump!”

  Not five feet away, I saw a nail-­bitten index finger settle over the gun’s trigger. I smelled the oil from inside its barrel and panicked.

  Facing the train layout at eye level, I tucked my chin, squeezed my eyes shut, and dived forward. Behind me somewhere, the gun went off like a firecracker.

  I rocketed upward like a circus acrobat shot out of an air cannon and came down with a thump on my elbows and knees. I was a sitting duck and I knew it. The man with the gun would see me and shoot me in the tail. But I lay perfectly still on something horribly prickly and didn’t move an eyelash. Somewhere nearby, a string of swear words echoed. Then clearly came the words, “Where the h—’s the d— kid? He musta jumped into thin air!”

  I closed my eyes tight as if doing that and holding my breath would make the men go away. Around me and over me rang a voice demanding, “Where’s the kid? Where’d he go?” Furious, steaming words followed. “He was just here! Where the h— did he go?”

  “There’s no kid. We’re seeing things! Let’s get out of here before the cops come.”

  Another shot rang out.

  In front of me, a train rattled by, undisturbed, as if the shooting and yelling were part of another world. I had to breathe. My nostrils filled with a nauseating stink. The stink brought me back to our basement on Lucifer Street. I knew perfectly well what it was. . . . Kwik-Dri. Dad and I had made dozens of bushes and trees out of a cheap dried sponge called seafoam. This delicate foliage stank of the Kwik-Dri paint it had been dipped in. I was sunk in a row of toothpick-sharp Kwik-Dri seafoam shrubberies. Mr. Pettishanks had them too.

  I lifted my head above the bushes just a hair, in order to see. The snow beneath my knees was not cold, as it was only mica-flake powder, which gave a nice sparkle. All I could see from my position was the underside of the tin bench next to me. On the slats was stamped LIONEL COMPANY. There was no mistaking where I was.

  I waited in silence for what seemed an eternity until I could stand the prickling seafoam no more. I rolled myself out, staggered to my feet, and thought about finding a telephone. The police had to be called, and an ambulance for Mr. Applegate, but where was Mr. Applegate? I frowned, trying to remember what had happened to him. Then I teetered and sank heavily down onto the bench. I was as exhausted as if I’d run ten miles. When I could get up, I stood and carefully walked a few steps. Beyond the very edges of the layout table, the lobby of the bank had vanished. In its place were the dunes of Indiana and beyond them Lake Michigan. The lake wind blew fiercely off the waves. It knifed through my sweater and whirled sand into my hair.

  I snatched a handful of the snow that lay on a pine branch. It was cold. The pine branch was sticky with sap. My fingertips reddened. The flakes melted to cold water in my hand. The snow wasn’t mica flakes at all. The bench on which I’d sat was not tin but stone and iron. Again I listened for pistols, thieves, bank noises. I heard nothing of the kind. Off the lake and into my lungs came the wind, salty and damp, a wind that could never happen inside the marble lobby of the First National Bank of Cairo.

  A railroad depot loomed two stories above my head. The neat green trim around the station’s main door was familiar. So was the white-and-emerald pattern of the tiles on the belvedere, yet I was sure I had never been here in my life, since I had never once in my eleven years left Cairo.

  But this much was certain, I told myself. I was standing outside the Dune Park Station on the South Shore Line. How would I ever get home? Where was my world? I began to sweat into the cold wind and the fabric of my shirt. The station clock read 5:04.

  A whistle shrilled suddenly and up roared the unmistakable grinding of iron couplings slamming to a stop. Puffing away on the tracks was the Blue Comet.

  “The 5:04 local to Chicago!” said a voice on a loudspeaker.

  I ran forward toward the steps of the train. I knew every side rail and nameplate. But this was no toy. It was a huge steel Blue Comet, the real train, but now on the Chicago track. No play smoke pellets poppled out of its stack. Instead, thick clouds of steam roiled into the sky. Black oil, gritty and hot, lined the crankpins and piston rods of the enormous iron wheels. The engineer’s window was spangled with frost, and the whistle shrilled a deafening shriek.

  “All aboard that’s going aboard!” sang the conductor. The brass buttons on his uniform coat gleamed smartly in the doorway light. His red conductor’s hat was beautiful to behold. I ran up the steps and found a seat in the first car, the Westphal.

  “Tickets, please!” said the conductor.

  Desperately I grabbed my wallet. It was a thin rubber one with gimp cowboy-style stitching, given out on saints’ days by Our Lady of Sorrows Sunday School. The conductor did not take his eyes off it. No mistaking the Sacred Heart of Jesus embossed on one side. I riffled through the tickets bunched in their elastic band and pulled out the one that had come in the box with the Blue Comet set. In cobalt and silver letters was printed BLUE COMET-JUNIOR PASS.

  I held my breath, waiting for the conductor to laugh and throw me off the train, but he placed the ticket into his time punch and slipped a receipt into the slot at the back of my seat.

  “Chicago your final destination, son?” he asked.

  Would my sudden plan work? I hardly dared to hope. Would I have to stay on this South Shore route only to loop back into the First Bank of Cairo and Aunt Carmen’s cod-cheek casseroles? Or maybe . . . maybe this train would connect with other trains. I hardly dared to hope, but the answer fell out of me. “I’m going to Cal­i­fornia,” I drawled easily. “My dad’s going to meet my train at the station in Los Angeles.”

  The conductor nodded as if this were the most normal thing in the world. “Now you’re gonna wanna change trains at Dearborn Station, Chicago, son,” he said. “You’ll have fourteen minutes. You’re gonna wanna board the Golden State Limited. Go to track nine. There’s a big sign, can’t miss it, says Rock Island Line. She leaves at 7:09 on the dot.”

  The conductor went along to the next passenger. Outside, the engine whistle screamed and we pulled away. For a few minutes I rested my eyes on the rolling Indiana dunes on the right side of the car. Speeding right along, we passed between smut-belching factories.

  A woman got on the train at the next station, Gary. She sat down next to me and smiled a little greeting. She reminded me of Mrs. Olderby.

  “Young man?” she said after a few moments.

  “Yes, ma’am?” I answered.

  “I don’t mean to pry, but you have some green substance all over your left cheek!”

  I reached up to my face and brushed off a palmful of permagrass from where I’d pressed my cheek deep into the Nebraska plains on the bank’s layout.

  I didn’t dare throw the grass leavings on the floor in case the woman disapproved and got me into trouble, so I squirreled it away in my shirt pocket. She got her hankie out of her handbag and dusted the rest off my face. “Now you look fine, dear heart,” she said, and brought out some knitting.

  I sank back onto the plush blue upholstery and drew breath deeply and painfully. I tried to remember the whole sequence of events in the bank. The stockings the men were wearing over their heads and faces had pushed their features into puddings of flesh. What had happened
during the robbery was fading from me like wisps of skywriting. Did they take the masks off? Did they say their names? I closed my eyes and clamped my jaw shut in concentration. Recalling it was im­possible, like catching a leaping fish with my fingers.

  Outside the speeding Blue Comet’s window, smut from the Gary, Indiana, smokestacks smudged out the sky. A dirty blizzard of ash fluttered by.

  Deep breath, Oscar, I told myself. Wiggle your lucky toes and say a few Hail Marys. I did this with profound thanks to God, wherever He might be in this weird world. Somehow I had been delivered into my father’s train; more than that I did not know. But there was no mistaking where I was. Up ahead were the lights of an enormous city. Majestically they sparkled along the curved bank of Lake Michigan. Sure enough, I was headed northwest to Chicago and beyond.

  The Golden State Limited was waiting, just as the conductor had said, on track nine. Only when I had scrambled aboard did I realize that I was still in a panic and a brain freeze. Clothes and shoes still on, I fell flat across the upper bunk of the nearest empty sleeping compartment. My sinuses throbbed. I was sure my head had swollen to the size of a melon and had filled with cotton wool. I could not exactly say I was in any pain. I saw no scrapes or bruises. But my body knew it had been through something very unnatural.

  Somewhere on the Dearborn Station platform, the conductor blew his whistle sharply. Six cars ahead of mine, I heard the engine grind and chug to life. The couplings clanged, one iron mass slamming against another, as we lurched forward. Although I tried mightily, I could not lift my stone-heavy head from the pillow nor open my eyes. A porter marched down the aisle, rapping smartly on each compartment door. “Dinner in two sittings, ladieez and genl’men! First seating in thirrr-ty minutes! Thirrrr-ty minutes! Cocktails in the lounge.” I was hungry. I could have eaten ten of Aunt Carmen’s baked-bean sandwiches, but it didn’t matter. In thirty seconds, sleep overpowered me.

  I lay like a rag doll until the train shuddered to a stop sometime in the night. “Des Moines! Des Moines!” I heard the conductor yell. “All aboard the Golden State Limited!”

  I drowsed back into a half dream. Suddenly, cold air rushed in as the door to my compartment flashed open, and somebody flung a suitcase onto the lower bunk. Whoever it was did not seem to know I was up there on bunk number two in the darkness. For one second I peered at him over the top of my railing. The man had put on blue-and-white-striped pajamas. He washed his face, brushed his teeth, and shaved, all the while singing off key, “I’m a rambling wreck from Georgia Tech, but a heck of an engineer!”

  I did not wake again until the morning light was streaming through the window over my bunk. I opened my eyes fully. Oscar, where in God’s name are you? I asked myself. And how did you get here? I had no idea.

  If you could pinch your mind, I pinched mine. If you could pummel your brain into attention, I pounded on mine, but very little memory surfaced. There was a troll in a picture book I had when I was little. His trick was that you could see him only out of the corner of your eye; if you turned to look right at him, he disappeared. What had happened in the First National Bank was like trying to see that troll.

  Lying on my back, I checked myself for bruises. There were none. I flexed my knees and ankles. All parts seemed to work. Carefully I slung my legs over the side of the bunk.

  “Merry Christmas!” said the voice of last night’s singer from beneath my feet. I withdrew my feet and curled back up into a ball on the bed. “Who are you?” I managed to ask.

  “My name is Dutch. Who are you?” the voice asked. I could not continue to be alarmed. Dutch was not much of a singer, but his speaking voice was the most cheery and melodious I had ever heard.

  I looked over the side of the bunk. His strong jaw managed a smile as warm as a June morning. I looked down on Dutch’s full head of brown hair, parted on one side and combed into a little stack on the other. He wore thick horn-rimmed glasses and a Eureka College football sweater.

  “My name is Oscar,” I answered.

  “Oscar, you traveling alone?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Anyone meeting you at the other end?”

  “Yes, sir, my dad,” I answered automatically. “He’s meeting me in Los Angeles, Cal­i­fornia.” I did not tell Dutch that my dad had no idea where I was or that I didn’t either.

  “Good,” said Dutch. He got out of his bunk, straightened up, and offered me his right hand. “Happy to meet you, Oscar,” he said, grinning. “You’re a fine-looking young fella!” He cocked his head when he talked. It was im­possible not to smile back at him. “What are you gonna do in Cal­i­fornia?” he asked.

  “I don’t know,” I admitted. “How about you?”

  “I’ve got a girl out there!” said Dutch. “I’m on Christmas break from college. My girl asked me to come and meet her family. Imagine that! She leaned on her old man. He sent me a ticket and twenty bucks for the diner tab, or I’d never have been able to spring for it.” Dutch chuckled. “Heck, I could eat all the way to Cal­i­fornia for five! With twenty bucks, I can eat like a king!”

  I listened to Dutch’s wonderful voice. He was clearly a young man of character. That was a good thing, because anyone would believe anything he might say. Just having him on the same train made me feel safe all over. I realized I was hungry. Dutch crinkled a smile at me. He stood as tall and broad-shouldered as any of the stars of western movies.

  “I was sure you’d say you were heading for Hollywood,” I told him. “You’d be a sure thing in the westerns, Mr. Dutch!”

  He laughed. “Plain Dutch!” he answered. “You really think so, Oscar?”

  “I think you’d be a big success, Dutch,” I told him. “If you took your glasses off, that is!”

  Dutch took the glasses off. “Now I don’t look like a professor,” he said, “but I can’t see a thing!” He laughed and sat on his bunk to tie his shoes. “How about your dad? Is he in the movies?” he asked me.

  “No,” I answered sadly. “He’s picking oranges. He lost his job selling tractors in Illinois. He used to work for John Deere, but they closed up their offices.”

  Dutch tapped his newly tied brogans. “Soon the banks’ll close, and we’ll all be in the soup,” he said drily. But I guessed that Dutch was what my dad called a natural-born optimist. No dark cloud could stay in his skies for more than a minute. He grinned and said to me, “Well, Oscar, you wash up and I’ll meet you for breakfast in the diner. Is that a deal?”

  “It’s a deal,” I answered, and jumped down from the bunk.

  I brushed my teeth with a convenient Rock Island Line toothbrush provided for the passengers in a toiletry pack. I combed my hair with the Rock Island Line comb and washed my face with Rock Island Line linen.

  The train was clipping at close to top speed, I figured. The car around me swayed and rocketed along the tracks. In the corridor, I looked out the window at the fleeing landscape. Dry and fallow winter fields sped beside us. Rows of gray earth followed perfectly parallel lines all the way to the horizon. Papery corn tassels blew in the wind. Once in a while a silo, lone and distant against the cold sky, broke the monotony. I made my way to the diner, which was two cars along toward the back of the train.

  “Right here, young man,” said the porter. He guided me to a seat and a crisp table setting, right across from Dutch. The cloth was thick white linen, spotless, with heavy silver cutlery on it. The napkin was folded like a hat with the Rock Island Line initials all entwined and a sprig of holly sitting in the top fold. The porter removed the napkin, snapped it twice, and tied it gently around my neck. He handed me the menu and smiled.

  The diner car was filled with people. Had they somehow jumped on this train as I apparently had? Or had they come from their homes and driven to the train station in Fords and Plymouths the way all normal travelers do? There was no way for me to know, but no one seemed as lost and puzzled as I felt.

  During breakfast, Dutch slipped deep into the sports pages of last night’s
late edition of the Des Moines Register. He sipped his coffee happily. Suddenly he held up a knife. “They make the cutlery as big and heavy as they can,” he said, “so light-­fingered passengers don’t lift the silver and squirrel it away in their pockets. What are you going to have for breakfast, cowboy?”

  I looked at the menu. “I guess Cream of Wheat,” I said lamely. It was the cheapest thing on the menu. I had only Dad’s dollar in my pocket. I was so hungry, I could have eaten the plate itself.

  Dutch made a face. “Do you like Cream of Wheat?” he asked.

  “No, I hate it, but my aunt Carmen serves it every morning. I have to eat it, like it or not.” I brought my dad’s crumpled dollar bill out of my wallet and ironed it with my hand.

  Dutch ordered us waffles with bacon, a luxury that never made it into Aunt Carmen’s kitchen. “On me!” he said, eyeing my dollar bill.

  “I never met anyone in my life who looked like a movie actor before,” I said to Dutch.

  “I don’t know that they’d take me in Hollywood, cowboy,” Dutch answered. “They’d prob­ably say, ‘Close but no cigar, buddy! Go back to the Middle West, where you belong!’” He shot me a big grin and handed me the comics.

  The waiter brought our waffles and bacon. I gobbled them up as if I were the starving boy from Armenia on the Our Lady of Sorrows alms box back home in Cairo.

  Dutch had folded the news­paper and laid it on the table front-page up. All at once I saw the headline. On the front page, my own picture stared back at me. I scanned the story quickly:

  Mr. Applegate dead! It couldn’t be true. There must be some mistake.

  The picture was my school photograph, plaid shirt buttoned to the neck, my way-too-smiley smile, freckles clearly showing, and cowlick standing straight up on my head. Where did they get it? Guiltily I hoped Dutch wouldn’t recognize me.

  Dutch looked over the top of his sports section. Had he read the story? “Are you feeling top-notch, fella? If you don’t mind my saying so, you look like a poke who’s been dropped out of a ten-story window and lived to tell the tale.”