The Devil Delivered and Other Tales (20 page)

Joey “Rip” Sanger’s mother threw herself in front of a train the day his father walked out on them. It had been one of those vintage jaunts somewhere around the Gatineau Hills, a Kitson Meyer steam engine pulling six antique smokers full of Health Club Americans on a package tour. She’d stepped between the restored bullhead rails at a sharp bend from which, on a clear day and with the aid of binoculars, one could see Ottawa.

The Kitson Meyer had slowed to a steady twenty miles an hour taking the bend, and the broad cowcatcher scooped up Joey’s mother and gave her a three-hour ride down into Hull. She’d walked away with only a chipped front door, which she got when she rolled off the catcher at the station.

These days, Emilia Sanger knitted toques for old folks in Scarborough.

Joey’s father had gone off to find his true love. Five years later, Joey and his brothers received a photograph postcard showing their old man, his white face a startling blotch amidst all the dark-skinned Pakistanis, perched on the runner of the twelfth Clayton Wagon steamer originally built in Lancashire. Most historians claimed that the Clayton Wagon Company built only eleven engines. Thomas Sanger had found his phantom lover, doing the Afghanistan run, and on the back of the card he’d written:
Go get ’em, boys.

A sentiment his three sons had taken to heart. Wally Sanger, the eldest, was doing time in Fort Saskatchewan for the attempted murder of Joey’s kid brother, Mack. Wally had been a professional scab for the railroad companies. Mack had gotten in the way on a picket line and Wally had driven over him, crushing both legs and leaving him a paraplegic. They’d since patched things up and now wrote each other every other day.

Like his brothers, like his old man and his grandfather and his great-grandmother on Daddy’s side, Joey also had the railroad in his blood. His grandfather, Straight-Line Sanger, drove the third-to-last spike in the Rockies moments before pitching over dead of heat prostration and, it was rumoured, syphilis. Joey’s great-grandmother, Liza Sanger, baked bread, built saunas, and stored explosives for the railroad work teams at the camp southwest of Rennie. One day, while walking beside one of the stone-houses—which held 727 sticks of dynamite—Liza had blown up. Not the house. Just her. Some stories went around after that, since everybody knew how Liza had an adventurous spirit.

Joey “Rip” Sanger stepped off the train at the station and waited for the redcap to collect his twin steel trunks from the baggage car. He ran a battered hand across his fiery red brush cut, scratched at his scar, then fished for a fiver from his off-white trench coat’s spacious pockets. The redcaps had a history. Something that demanded respect. The fiver would tell this redcap that Joey knew what tradition was all about.

He watched the crimson-clad young man loading the twin steel trunks onto the roller. The man wheeled the cart up to Joey. “Man, these are heavy buggers, Jack. Whatcha got in ’em, rocks?”

Joey scowled. “Redcaps bend their backs without jawing and moaning. Redcaps don’t retire. They go on compensation. You new or something, son?”

“Tell ya what, Jack. You just climb on here and I’ll roll ya all off the ramp and the Devil with ya.”

“Follow me to the head office. I got an appointment.”

“You gonna citation me?”

Joey turned away and headed for the hallway that led into the company offices. He pulled out the fiver and fluttered it over one shoulder. “Let’s go, Bobby-boy, we’re wasting time and Joey ‘Rip’ Sanger never—I repeat, never—wastes time.”

“Did you say Joey ‘Rip’ Sanger? Geez, Mr. Sanger, I didn’t know, honest. I’m right with ya, Mr. Sanger, right here behind ya. Y’just lead the way and I’m right with ya.”

They passed through the room containing the scaled-down model reconstruction of the station yards. Joey waved a hand at it. “This, Bobby-boy, is something you should pay attention to. It’s what we’re all about and you know why?” He paused at the door and met the redcap’s wide eyes.

“No,” the young man said softly.

“’Cause it’s for the little people, that’s why.”

They continued on, came to a stop outside the president’s office. “Leave the trunks here,” Joey said.

“Yes sir, Mr. Sanger. And I’ll stand guard, too, right here till you’re done.”

Joey narrowed his iron gray eyes to slits. “Learn to respect that red cap, son.” He raised the five-dollar bill. “Learn it good, and maybe one day a fiver like this one will land in your pocket.” He swung around, opened the door, and stepped inside the office.

Joey hung up his trench coat, scrubbed the crimson bristle on his head, then walked past the secretary. “Wild Bill in, honey? Good, I ain’t got much time. Buzz him I’m on my way, let’s see how fast you are.” He walked to the inner door and had his hand on the knob before the secretary suddenly snatched at the intercom on her desk. Joey grinned to himself and stepped into the president’s office.

“G’afternoon, scum-face,” he said to the balding man spread out in the chair behind an antique desk. “Hey, you’re not Wild Bill Chan. What the hell you doing in his chair? Take a hike, I got an appointment with Chan.”

The balding man’s round, patchy face deepened a shade as he slowly sat forward. “You got one thing right, Mr. Sanger,” he said in a reedy voice. “Wild Bill made the call, making sure it was you who’d take the job. But he retired last year. The name’s Jeremy Under. Please, Mr. Sanger, take a seat.”

Scowling, Joey sat down. “What the hell? Wild Bill couldn’t be over eighty-five. What do you mean, he retired?”

“It was,” Jeremy Under said, “a forced retirement. Management folded on this one, because it had to. The old give and take. We fold, they fold, you know how it is. Now, onto the business at hand.” The man leaned back, lacing his pudgy fingers together on his round belly. “The reports have it you almost single-handedly collared that Kerouac Gang out of Toronto’s East Side.”

“No ‘almost’ about it, Blotto,” Joey said. “Those punks have hopped their last free ride.”

Jeremy Under’s eyes bugged out. “What did you call me?” he squeaked.

“What’s the matter? Got a thin skin? Get outa the business if you do. Ain’t no room for beached whales who can’t even sit up straight. Now, I got nothing against being fat. Mack’s turned into a walrus since he got his legs cut off. Just carry it right, will ya? That’s all it takes. Some pride in yourself. You got the mass, but you ain’t got the moxy, if you know what I mean. Takes a little practice, that’s all. Now, what’s all this about a bunch of homeless scrubs squatting on railroad property? Sounds like a minor infestation, I’d think you prairie boys could’ve handled it—not that it matters anymore. I work alone. I’ll scrape your lands clean, or I’m not Joey ‘Rip’ Sanger.” He stood, reached up and traced a blunt, stained finger along the scar running diagonally over his eyebrows. “Now, if you can lever that disgusting bulk outa the chair, show me your track maps. What the hell you waiting for, ten redcaps with crowbars?”

Joey walked out of the office and collected his trench coat. As he put it on, he turned to the gaping, wide-eyed secretary. “Better call an ambulance, honey. Your boss ain’t looking too good. Burst blood vessel, I’d guess. Only a matter of time when you let yourself go like that, of course. Let me know when’s the funeral, I’ll send a card. Now, where’s the survey maps of the company yards? I’ve got work to do.”

TWO

The Peers

1.

in which the diagnosis is revealed

The cheerful nurse led Arthur to an alcove at one end of the Recovery Room. It was opposite the nurse’s station and had a love seat sofa and a recliner. Behind the sofa was a large window with all its seams and joins painted over, a window never meant to be opened, but the spring sun’s midday light was welcome all the same.

“Dr. Payne will be with you shortly,” the nurse said. Under her lab coat she wore a blouse with a surprisingly low neckline. She’d been taking her coffee breaks outside, Arthur concluded, since her chest was bright pink. The curiously alluring blush above her deep cleavage made Arthur think of sunny dispositions. He smiled down at her, then slowly sat in the recliner, reaching for a magazine from the stack on the end table.

He began reading an article randomly chosen from the magazine, and within moments was engrossed in a theoretical battle between two camps of economists as they advanced fiscal projections into the next decade. He felt a twist or two of envy reading about business executives and investment portfolios—the same kind of vague yearning he sometimes experienced when walking down a street and seeing all the brand-new cars rolling past. It baffled him how so many people could have so much money … especially given the dire economic forecasts and the shapeless, invisible, but terribly heavy cloud of national debt under which he and everyone else in the country labored—the very debt the article in the magazine was going on and on about.

“Ah, Mr. Revell.”

Arthur looked up to find Dr. Payne standing in front of him. “My goodness,” Arthur said, “you look very tired, Doctor. Please, sit down.” He indicated the love seat as he returned the magazine to the stack on the end table.

“Tired?” Dr. Payne’s eyebrows rose, then dropped. “Indeed, I suppose I am.” He sat down. “Of course, aren’t we all these days, hmm?”

“I feel quite well rested, actually,” Arthur said. “If not for the national debt, I might well consider my life worry-free. Tell me, Doctor, is it possible I have a national ulcer? What I mean is, could I be suffering the stress of the citizen, you know, something representational of high unemployment, declining social services, hiring inequities, escalating prices, and so on? Or is it the plight of youngish folk in modern society? Are these things even possible, Doctor?”

“Assuming a massive neurosis on your part, Mr. Revell, anything is possible.” The doctor cleared his throat, glanced out the window. “Mind you, I found no ulcer.” He looked back at Arthur and smiled. “Are you a collector, by any chance? I’ve been for a long time. Porcelain figures from England. Very therapeutic. My hedgehog collection is insured by Lloyd’s, which in some circles doesn’t mean as much as it used to, given the declining reputation of insurance industries the world over. In any case, what were we talking about?”

“This is my follow-up to the internal examination,” Arthur said. “Even so, do you concur that the decline of the insurance industry is simply a symptom of an overall loss of faith in the market system?”

“I certainly hope not!” Dr. Payne said, laughing. “What would be the point of my owning a BMW and a Jaguar if all distinctions should suddenly vanish? In such a world, Mr. Revell, I envision the nightmare where I am the patient and you the doctor, if you see what I mean.”

“No.”

“Well, never mind that. Our biopsies indicate that, indeed, you are infected with a nasty, very pervasive bug. It will require treatment, beginning immediately.”

“A bug?”

“Hundreds of millions of them, in fact. Of the family Aphidae, having a soft, pear-shaped body and a tube-shaped mouth. Even at this moment, as we speak, they devour at your insides. This is why it is paramount we begin treatment immediately. You are, Mr. Revell, being quietly ingested.”

“What a distressing thought,” Arthur said.

“No doubt.” Dr. Payne reached into his coat pocket and withdrew a cellular phone. “Excuse me while I take this call.”

Arthur blinked. He’d heard no ring. He watched as Dr. Payne activated the phone and held it to his ear, his frown deepening as the seconds ticked by.

“You want me in Entomology,” the doctor said, nodding. “Third floor, yes, of course. Containment Room B, yes.” He sat up straight. “My God, not Room B! I’ll be right there!” The doctor rose, looking momentarily lost.

“My treatment,” Arthur prompted.

“Hmm? Oh, yes.” Dr. Payne pulled out a pill bottle. “Take three of these every four hours. See the nurse for more details. I must be off. Excuse me, Mr. Revell. And do let me know if you see any hedgehogs, hmm? Good-bye.”

Arthur watched him leave. He glanced down at the bottle in his hand, hesitating as a part of him wanted to return to the article in the magazine. Of course, that wasn’t proper form. He climbed to his feet and approached the nurse’s station.

The cheerful nurse had gone to look at one of the patients in the beds in the Recovery Room, leaving the older nurse, Margaret, behind the desk. Arthur leaned on the counter. “Excuse me, ma’am. Dr. Payne directed me here to get details of the medication he’s putting me on.”

Margaret coughed, then held out her hand. “Let’s see the bottle, Mr. Revell.”

He passed it over.

She read the label, “One hundred twenty-five milligrams, Coccinellidae, hmmm, not one I’m familiar with.” She jotted the name down on a notepad. “Well, take three at a time every four hours. You have three refills on this prescription, to be dispensed by Dr. Payne’s clinic. There are three hundred pills inside. Anything else you want to know, Mr. Revell?”

“I’m to take twelve hundred pills?”

Margaret frowned slightly and reread the label. “Yes, Mr. Revell, that’s correct.”

“Well,” Arthur said, “he is the doctor, isn’t he?”

“Correct, Mr. Revell. Now, if you haven’t any more questions, I’m about to go on my coffee break.”

“By all means,” Arthur said. “Enjoy your cigarette.”

“Each one more than the last, Mr. Revell. Thank you. You can find your own way out?”

“Oh yes.”

Arthur continued smiling as he watched Margaret leave the room. After a moment he glanced down at himself, making sure his fly was zipped and nothing was out of place. He ran both hands through his reddish brown hair, rubbed a finger over his teeth, then turned to watch the cheerful nurse.

She was still busy, arguing with an enormous, balding man occupying a bed halfway down the aisle. The man looked very angry, the color of his face alarmingly red as he bellowed incomprehensible orders into his cellular phone. The cheerful nurse was still smiling, but it was clear to Arthur that even she was losing her patience as she tried to calm the patient down.