The Last Speaker (Sample)

CHAPTER 1

 He had been calling himself Merv now for a number of years, but as he crouched down behind the stacks of logs beside the tracks in the trainyard, piled high and waiting to be loaded onto some coming train, he had to admit it wasn’t a very Merv thing to do. The cold of the ground was seeping up through the thin soles of his old boots, the mud soaking through cracks in the toe and dampening his sock—the night’s fog creeping like invisible fingers down his loose collar. Merv, if he could have afforded it, he would have paid for the train. He would have got off at the town on the ticket stub, found himself a room, started looking for a new job.

Maybe Merv had been a smarter man than he gave him credit for.

Up the line, the watchman who had been coming his way stopped, and swinging the lantern wide, moved his gauzy gray beam out and over the yard. The man who had called himself Merv couldn’t help it; he had to shift his cold, cramped, aching feet, and as he did the mud squelched. The beam turned, lingered a moment. Then, like a lighthouse’s lamp, it swung back the other way, growing narrower down the track as it moved away. There was a flash of orange in the darkness as another man flicked a lighter. The watchman’s lantern clicked off, leaving the night darker than before, the orange ember of a cigar tip tracing spirals in the air.

He looked up at the hulking shadow of the train cars in the darkness. Most of the doors were closed. And even if they weren’t, he doubted he could sneak on without one of the watchmen hearing him. He’d been amazed he’d made it this far, what with there being two more watchmen back by the switchman’s shack. Was this train carrying frankincense? Myrrh? Unicorn horn? It was guarded like a sultan’s treasure house.

That’s when he heard someone shuffling behind him in the darkness. He turned just as hands grabbed him by the arms. “Hey, shush it now, Joe,” whispered a voice, “before the bulls hear us. You made enough noise trotting down here to bring a whole army of them down on you.”

The shadow of the man popped up and peeped over the top of the pile of lumber. “You looking to scarper on board, heading west?”

“Yeah,” the man no longer named Merv whispered back, still feeling his heart pounding. He hadn’t known where the train was going, but sure.

“Well, follow me. But keep your snout low,” the man said. “That spooked face of yours is as bright as a birthday cake.”

Staying low, he followed the stranger on down the trainyard away from the two watchmen, swerving around large lumps of machinery in the dark, stopping only once when the stranger threw an arm across him when they heard a skittering sound not too far away. “Probably just a rat,” the stranger whispered when the yard stayed quiet, then the two of them moved on. Slow going; they must have been four or five cars down when the stranger snuck over to an open train car and stood, patting the floor up by their shoulders.

“Climb up,” he said.

The man no longer named Merv stood and saw there was a soft glow inside the car coming from a small, dirty lantern, the light of which barely reached the door. It plastered the two men hunched over it with shadows that moved over and around the white playing cards they were holding in their hands. The stranger pushed up into the car and joined them. Against the dirty wall of the train car, the three white faces glowing in the low light looked back at him like different phases of the moon.

“Don’t worry about them now, Joe. Get on up here before the bulls spies you. I don’t want to have to listen while they makes jelly out of your insides. I hates the sound it makes.”

He climbed up, though not as nimbly as the stranger had. With all the grit on the floor, there was no way to keep his pants from getting dirty.

“Come on over here, Joe,” whispered the stranger, who had hunkered over by the lantern. “You like cards? You know rummy?”

The man no longer named Merv nodded, and then for good measure said, “Yeah, I know ‘nuf rummy,” in case they couldn’t see him nodding.

“You sure about this guy, Slim?” asked the guy across from the stranger, peering at him with his cap pulled low so his eyes were hidden. Between them, the other guy, hatless, had a round, cheerful, face. The lantern cast shadows across his cheeks so his eyes were gray pools too, but it was obvious he was staring at him anyway. He wasn’t trying to hide it.

Slim turned around, as if studying him, and the man no longer named Merv felt an odd warmth in his chest. “Yeah, I’m sure,” Slim said. “Come over here.” Slim pointed at the man across from him. “This is Henry.” And then shook his thumb at the man next to him. “And this is Tommy.”

“Who’re you?” asked Henry.

The man no longer named Merv liked the way Slim talked, a soft Southern lilt to his voice, and he seemed to make his own way of getting places. “You cracked it,” he said to him rather than Henry, who had the hard tongue and furtive eyes of a northern city man. “Name’s Joe. I thought maybe we was old pals when you came getting friendly in the dark like that and you already knew my name.”

Joe watched as Slim’s face opened up to take in the joke. He had a soft laugh like an old cat coughing, all gasps, and quiet. He supposed that might come in handy if Slim spent a lot of time playing cards in dark boxcars with watchmen right outside.

“No, not looking for a dance,” he said. “We saw you out there, figured maybe you looked lost.”

“You made more noise than the pope dropped down a pipe,” said Henry. He moved two cards about in his hand. “Slim here, he thought he’d best go get you. I thought it might be a good idea to let the bulls have at you, get all their blood out.”  

“I’ve heard the sound of enough bones breaking,” said Slim gently.

Joe, feeling like now wasn’t the right time to address any of the things the two men had said, looked up at the man across from him.

Henry saw him looking. “Oh, Tommy don’t say much. Don’t you go giving him any trouble.”

“Now why would you say something like that, Henry?” said Slim. “He was just asking who Tommy was.”

“I was just telling him,” said Henry, looking over at Joe and then down at the cards in his hand. “Just so he knows. That’s all.”

Through it all, Tommy had hardly moved, and still looked to be staring at Joe, or maybe somewhere behind him. “I won’t go giving Tommy no trouble,” he said, doing his best to find Tommy’s eyes in a reassuring manner. “I don’t want to give nobody no trouble. I’m just moving, and looking to move freely.”

That seemed to mollify Henry, who closed the fan of cards in his hand. He pulled Tommy and Slim’s cards to him and shuffled with slow chops, shoving the old, worn cards together like he was palming a snowball. When he was done, he expertly spun out four hands of seven.

“First time?” asked Slim. “Riding?”

“Going? No,” said Joe. “Riding like this, yes, this is my first time.”

The four of them moved the cards about in their hands, and when the silence stretched on, he could tell that they were waiting for him, and not just for part of the card game.

“I was working at Jumper Races,” he said, “in the stables taking care of the horses…”

“Dirty work,” said Slim, still studying his hand. “Unless you like horses.”

“It was dirty work,” Joe agreed. “But I like horses. That’s why I got on there. I showed the boss I could calm down the big boys when they were chomping and chortling in their pens, champing to get at one another. But he was some piece of work. He—”

“Shut it,” said Henry, raising his head from his cards. “Listen.”

Joe saw that Tommy had raised his hand and was sitting upright. Slim clicked the shutter closed on the lamp, bending over and extinguishing the flame with a short puff, and Joe felt the trepidation for stealing into the trainyard washing down over him again, like the little lamp had been holding that fear at bay.

They heard the clear crunch of a boot on gravel. It had come from just outside the train car.

Slim tugged Joe to his feet by the sleeve of his jacket, and with Henry they pressed to the wall. It only took a moment for Joe to realize that Tommy hadn’t moved. Joe inched away from the wall, gauging if he had enough time to fetch him, but Slim barred an arm across his chest, stopping him.

The three of them hadn’t been graceful in clambering to the side wall. For sure their boots had bumped over the boards and echoed in the empty car. Right away, with a click like Joe had heard earlier, a light snapped on outside, the same gauzy gray beam bending towards the open door of the car.

A shrill whistle blew outside. “Art! Ben! Get on down here. I heard something.”

Joe’s stomach sank. He could hear pairs of footsteps tramping nearer, and Henry muttering under his breath as the watchman’s lantern lit up the far wall of the car, moving back and forth as if it could swish away the fog. Joe could see the watchman leaning in, peering into the gray. All he had to do was swing the lantern to the right and he would spy them. He tensed. What would the watchmen do when they found them? Would they have to run? Would they have to fight?

He could hear the lantern hissing as the light swung around and landed directly on Tommy, who, to Joe’s astonishment, was still sitting there, bent over peering at Henry’s cards. When the light landed on Tommy, he pulled back guiltily, pretending to be studying his own cards intently.

Behind Tommy, lantern light reflected in two bright yellow eyes, and for the first time Joe saw the large black cat that must have been sitting there the whole time. With the sort of lazy disdain only a cat can show, the cat stood, arching its back, and padded out towards the middle of the car, where it stopped and started licking a paw. The light followed it, and after a moment the lantern flicked off with that same harsh click.

“Never mind, fellas,” called the watchman, stepping away from the open door of the car. “It’s just a cat.”

“You palooka, Jim,” said a man as footsteps crunched up to the side of the car. “I had a flush going. Now Art is gonna have peeked and redealt the whole damn deck. He’ll have six damn kings.”

They don’t see Tommy, Joe realized.

The watchmen were only gone a few seconds before the small, dirty lantern popped back to life, illuminating Tommy, who was holding his cards high in front of himself with a brazen grin on his face, eager to get back to the game.

In the light, Joe realized that Henry and Slim were peering at him because he had slapped his hand over his mouth to stifle the laughter that had come bubbling up out of him. It had been so long since he had seen true magic that he almost didn’t recognize it when he did, and it had surprised him.

Then that idea struck him as perhaps the funniest thought of all, maybe the funniest he’d had in at least the last hundred years, and trying not to snort behind his hands became even harder.