Tucker’s Grove (32 page)

I wanted to blink my eyes and make it go away.
It
’
s not real! We just made it up!
But how can you deny a couple million tons of hot angry steel charging down the tracks in front of your very eyes?

The bla
ck train chugged and clattered past our hiding place, and we could feel the heat of its big coal-burning furnace. I wanted to cry then, even in front of Alan. But the big yellow eye of the locomotive didn
’
t see us
—
instead it focused on new prey. It paused,
hissing steam like a fighting cat, tensed and coiled its mechanical muscles, and then
lunged
forward
—
toward old man Pickman
’
s stalled tractor.

The tractor didn
’
t move, of course
—
it was just a tractor. But the locomotive reared up off the tracks, and it st
ruck. Its shining pistons detached themselves and reached forward like steel ma
n
tis arms to grasp the heavy old tractor and pull it onto the tracks. The steam hissed and built up; black smoke poured out of the smokestack, and the wheels churned backward. T
he locomotive took its mechanical victim and dragged it along the tracks like a spider returning to its lair.

The locomotive stopped right in front of us and proceeded to tear
Pickman
’
s tractor apart. Wheel guards, the two small hea
d
lights, parts of the en
gine, the rusty and uncomfortable seat on its thick spring
—
all were shredded by invisible steel jaws under the locomotive itself. We could feel the heat, smell the oil and the hot steel of an overworked engine.

As it destroyed the tractor, the black train
tossed the scrap metal along the embankment, like someone throwing chicken bones after a barbecue. One of the huge black tractor tires crashed down right by us, almost smashing me, and I yelled out loud. In a second I was up and running toward the barbed-
w
ire fence, not caring at all about skunks or possums or raccoons in the soybeans. Alan shouted at me to get down.

The locomotive let out the most horrible roaring explosion I
’
ve ever heard in my life, infuriated because we had discovered it. I dove over th
e barbed-wire fence, not thinking about scratc
h
es or cuts or even lockjaw. Alan was right on my heels. Behind me, the locomotive reared up off the tracks again, keeping its back seven cars firmly on the rails. It was like a big black cobra striking. It cam
e down hard on the embankment, and the bladelike cow-catcher made a deep smoking impression in the dirt.

But it missed us, and we were out in Pickman
’
s soybean field running like hell, not even trying to dodge the rows. The locom
o
tive
bellowed in anger, trapped on the rails but promising to get us both someday. We ran and ran, and after a while the locom
o
tive turned back to destroying the poor old tractor.

Neither Alan nor I went
back to the railroad tracks again all summer, no way. That autumn my dad had us pack up and move back into town, since he
’
d grown tired of the country life by then. Alan and I drifted apart, now that we weren
’
t constantly in touch with each other. Sure,
w
e were still friends, but it wasn
’
t the
same
.

In high school we rediscovered our friendship, falling back into the best-buddies bit. Since Alan was almost a year older than I, he got his driver
’
s license first and took me all over the place, and because he
turned eighteen first, he could get me beer. I r
e
member spending many a weekend afternoon on his back porch, shootin
’
the breeze with the stereo turned up and looking across the fields at the distant railroad tracks.

After graduation, I went off to colleg
e; Alan went to a local technical college where he picked up a something-or-other d
e
gree in electronics. He ended up working as a manager for a chain restaurant in Bartonville, and partying a lot.

Meanwhile, I did the typical college stunt of waiting until
Friday night to start a term paper that was due on the following Monday. Last week, I had planned on doing an all-nighter, but spent most of my time feeling miserable because the girl I
’
d been chasing all semester still wouldn
’
t go out with me. I gave up
on the term paper an hour or so past midnight and flopped on my unmade dorm bed, going to sleep with all my clothes on….

Even after so many years, I dreamed of the black locomotive again, slavering oil from its mechanical jaws, searching for us with its on
e yellow eye. It charged at me and I ran, but I couldn
’
t get off the tracks
—
I was trapped, and the train was gaining on me, wanting to grind me to a pulp beneath wheels and scatter my limbs all up and down the embankment. I woke up drowning in sweat.

And t
hat was the night Alan got killed in his car by the Locust Road crossing. Demolished
—
parts of his car thrown gleefully all along the tracks….

When I heard, and when I figured it out, I went into the bat
h
room for almost an hour, bent over the John, trying t
o be sick, sick at myself. I think it might have hardened me up inside, so I could face going back home.

Alan
’
s funeral was like a regular class reunion. Everybody was there, all the people who ever knew him. Even the freaks and the jocks came, the ones wh
o would never sign your yearbook or bother to talk to you in the halls. Now they couldn
’
t even look Alan in the face because of the closed coffin. I held up pretty well, even though I was distracted. What kind of jerk gets
di
s
tracted
at the funeral of his
best buddy?

Afterward, back home, I went alone to my old room and closed the door. Mom and Dad seemed willing to let me work it out for myself. I found the old ceramic mug half-filled with my silver Mercury dimes; it had been buried in the junk on one of m
y closet shelves. I sat down on the neatly made single bed that had been mine for so many years, but my bedroom became a guest room when I moved out. I looked out the window and waited for sunset to come.

I had to drive to the Locust Road tracks this time
, telling my parents I wanted to go cruising to clear my head. Dad warned me not to drink too much
—
he spoke out of habit, I think, from all the times I had gone out cruising with Alan. But partying wasn
’
t what I had in mind at all.

I pulled my car over on
the shallow rutted ditch next to the railroad crossing, shut off the headlights, and got out. I had some time yet before midnight, and the moon shone full again. I walked out into the brisk autumn night. I could see my breath, like the smoke coming out of
a black locomotive.

I stared at the tracks a long while before I got up the courage to step between the iron rails. In the moonlight down the e
m
bankment I saw something glint, and when I looked closer, I r
e
alized it was the broken rearview mirror from Alan
’
s car.

The vengeful black locomotive wasn
’
t
real
—
it was all made up, just a fantasy shared between us two kids. There
’
s a certain power in naiveté
, I think, and if you believe in something with all your heart, all your terror…
well, who knows? Maybe there
really
is
a Santa Claus or an Easter Bunny or a Boogey Man, from all the children in the world believing in it with the pure unque
s
tioning faith that only a kid can have. Alan and I had
believed
in the killer train, and we had challenged its reality by goi
ng to see, to prove it was only imaginary
—
and the nightmare had called our bluff.

Now, I had to
believe
I could destroy it. But I was a lot older and a lot more cynical this time.

I started to walk down the tracks again, all alone, listening to the coins j
ingle together in my pocket. I headed toward the Ba
r
tonville curve, away from the road and all hope of rescue.

The darkness made the ground hard to see, and I stumbled more than once on a broken crosstie. But I walked until I got between the two skeletal s
ignal towers on either side of the tracks, then I put my hands on my hips, trying to look defiant, and shouted into the night.

“
Come on, you son of a bitch! Come get me!”
The words echoed out, and the insect noises paused a moment before star
t
ing up again;
when nothing happened, I felt belittled and stupid. “
What
’
s the matter? Are you
chicken
?”

An unearthly bellow exploded from the darkness far ahead. The furnace in the black locomotive was stoked up with a little bit of Hell itself, and a blast of heat for
ced the steam to surge upward and scream through its whistle. I thought everyone in all of Rutherford County must have heard that noise.

Then its eye appeared, a round yellow bullet coming straight at me from around the curve and out of its unreal dimensio
n. I was flooded with light, transfixed. I heard the rattling rhythm of the locomotive
’
s wheels, the clatter against the tracks, the chug of its pistons. Smoke spurted from its stack as the train charged toward me, thinking only of murder.

My hands were sh
aking as I dug around in my pockets. Tr
y
ing to keep cool, I pulled out two of my special dimes, my silver Mercury dimes, and stooped down to lay them on the tracks, one on each steel rail. I stepped back, remaining between the tracks, not even thinking abo
ut trying to run. Silver dimes…
everyone knew that
silver
was deadly to supernatural things. What would horror movies be without silver bullets, silver crosses, silvered mirrors? I tried not to think about it too much because I had to
believe
this game woul
d work. And these silver dimes were sp
e
cial, cherished from childhood. I cursed myself over and over again for having majored in science, for insisting that things had to make
sense
before I could believe in them.

But this would work. I knew it would work.
I
knew
it would work. How come you can remember all sorts of stupid things from your childhood, but you can
’
t remember what it was like to
believe
in something? I crossed my fingers, and then I do
u
ble-crossed them. That might help.

The locomotive
’
s cow-ca
tcher looked like a spearhead as it came at me. I could see the engine
’
s brass pistons grabbing fo
r
ward and back, reaching out to stab me. Its eye never blinked, but I could see the oil that dripped from its mechanical jaws, and I definitely felt the heat
pouring off of it. The base of its smok
e
stack had turned a cherry red from its exertion. And in the eng
i
neer
’
s compartment, I could see a figure.

Alan. Riding the train, unable to get off. I knew he saw me waiting for him. The train blasted its steam whis
tle.

The black locomotive came down the tracks at me like a ca
n
nonball. I stood there petrified, looking at the pitifully small coins resting on the tracks as if they were really supposed to pr
o
tect me. The train didn
’
t pause
—
I knew it wouldn
’
t; it didn
’
t
want to give me a chance to jump off the tracks. But I felt calm inside
—
at least I knew what was going to hit me; Alan hadn
’
t even had that much warning. I had a terrible urge to shut my eyes, but I couldn
’
t. The nightmare was real now, and I couldn
’
t hid
e
under the covers.