dark, acute eyes over long noses. All held up by pointed ears. She knew she was seeing what few, perhaps no, halfling had ever seen — a gathering of elves. Perhaps even Dark Elves.
They seemed unaware of her presence. She crept even closer and heard the indecipherable music of their native speech, punctuated by high, sharp whistles. Their conversation grew more intense, as if arguments were brewing. She thought she heard one of them say “an-ginn”, an old world, used by elder halflings to mean “source”.
Then she froze as all the elves grew quiet and turned their heads toward her at once. They regarded her as if she were sitting in the village square on a dunce high chair with a ridiculous dunce hat.
One spoke to her in her tongue:
“For your subtle woodcraft, a reward. You may tell of this secret, for none will believe your wild boast and every retelling will filch more of the good name of your house. For your uninvited presence, though your understood none of what you overheard, a price. All things have consequence. This is your tithe: every unselfish step you take hence, every worthy deed you undertake, shall each draw your fate closer and more certain. Your good acts will only dim the memory of your passing. Put all others before you, unsparingly risk your life, and your tale will all the more certainly be erased and forgotten for all time. Go now!”
Ara fled in fear and confusion and never told a living soul, save her Mum.
Cadence found herself leaning forward, clutching the last page. She took a breath and eased back. So, she thought, Ara and I each have a burden. Hers was a secret curse that doomed her for heroism. I’m lucky. I’m just chasing a question mark. No one’s out to de-res me …
The connection of long journeys now seemed almost palpable. She reached over and got her grandfather’s journal and opened it, picking out a passage that seemed to be notes from another east-to-west-coast hopping of freight trains. It described pure old- time hobo-style travel:
Grand Junction. June 14, 1980
Worked at a diner next to the rail yard. It was called, simply enough, “EAT.” The sign stuck up on the roof in flashing red neon. So I think now that “the Eat” or “Eat at the EAT” must be a national chain targeting the raunchy and low-down spots. A kind of niche. Anyway, this one had only six counter stools. No tables. One person running the grill, waiting tables, busing, doing dishes — the whole thing. Got my standard job. It always works. He paid me to clean up the garbage out back, cut up some boxes. Got five dollars and eggs, taters, toast and coffee.
It’s hot. Laid up in the cool of some big abandoned icehouses next to the rail yards. They’re basically big wooden boxes, five stories tall, made up of foot thick timbers. No windows. You could fit a basketball court inside each one of them.
The man at the EAT said these things used to hold ice for the fruit transport. This valley is world-famous for its peaches. It got that way cause of the icehouses. The railroads and the orchard people figured out that you could get big, fresh, ripe, sweet peaches to streets in New York or Philadelphia in three days if they were iced down.
So, before air-conditioned boxcars came along in the fifties, those icehouses, made of foot-thick wooden beams laid tight into big boxes fifty feet tall and a hundred feet on each side. No windows, one little door. They were the way they stored up ice supplies for the late summer harvest. That’s all over now. They’re just sitting there. There’s still plenty of ice in them at the bottom and the corners. 15–20 feet thick. Ice maybe 50 years old. Just outside the open door its 108 degrees, easy.
Anyway, I lay up all day watching them make train. They use a hump yard. That’s a little hill the tracks go up and over. The switch engine pushes cars up the incline, they unloose the coupling, and the car goes careening down the other side.
The rolling cars are switched to different tracks. You can hear them shunt over. Then they crash into the couplings of the cars waiting there. That’s makin’ train, and that’s my custom ride. All day, all night. Cu-Chang. Each noise echoed 10 or 20 times by the cars jamming together down the line. Kind of like music.
Course I got my own music. Right here in my teeth fillings. Only I can hear it. Although once I had little Arnie put his ear next to my open mouth and he could hear it too. Tonight its playing K-O-M-A Oklahoma City! 50,000 Watts Serving the Heartland! (“Playing tonight at the National Guard Armory in Elk City, Spider and the Crabs! And at the Fairgrounds Pavilion in Olathe, it’s Ray Ruff and the Checkmates!”) The other day it was K-E-E-L Shreveport dishing up southern fried top 40.
I’m thinking about Helen and Arnie. What am I doing here? I keep dreaming I’m outside looking in at them. A dream that I can’t shake. That’s my fate. Always outside looking in. So I succumb. I’m here and they’re there.
Hell, maybe I’ll try a new name today. Keep even myself guessing.
Cadence sat, stunned, holding the man’s confession in her hands.
Before she could get too angry the man across the aisle rustled, saw her awake. “You know the sounds?”
“What?”
“My name’s Julian. I was asking if you know the train sounds.”
“Nice to meet you. I’m Cadence. Yes, I’m hearing them, if that’s what you mean.”
“But if you know them like I do, there are subtleties. There are actually three signature sounds of trains.”
“OK, tell me.”
“Well, there’s the sing-song click-clack of the junctions in the rails. But listen. Listen. No song, right? Now it’s more like a delay, maybe ten seconds, then just one click-clack. Hear?”
The train rumbled, and then the isolated double-note came and went. It seemed like a rare passing comma in a jargon of flat and unintelligible steel on steel.
“Yeah, there,” she said.
“That’s not the way it used to be. Used to be every second or two, an almost constant beat. Up-tempo, sort of. You know, Chattanooga Choo-Choo, Pennsylvania Six Five Thousand, Orange Blossom Special. That’s all gone now, cause they changed the rails. They put in longer rails so there’s only a tenth of the junctions there used to be. So it’s a backbeat now, is all.”
“The other sounds are still there. It’s kinda like the Doppler effect. Another train whistle or clanging crossing signal, depending on where you are. It comes and jams together and then fades away. And there’s that long, lonely whistle going away in the night. The stuff of country songs — Hank Williams and Johnny Cash. Of all the ways people get around — cars, boats, planes — there’s only one, railroads, that has the music, the joy and the sorrow. So, what do you think?”
“I think I don’t know. To me it’s just trains. Nothing magical about it.”
“Don’t dismiss it. Magic sometimes comes in little packages.”
Cadence listened.
“Well, what’s your story?” he said.
“I’m going to New York to find out about my grandfather.”
“That’s great. That’s where he’s from?”
“No, it’s where he met someone famous. I have some documents from there.”
“Was
“No, he’s … was kind of a bum. A drifter. He left my grandmother and my dad.”
“So why are you looking?”
“I don’t know. Just to find something true about myself, I guess. How come he left. How come my dad was the way he was. You know, that family thing.”
“At least you got something worth looking for. Me, I got nobody much to worry about. They know I’m here, wherever that is, but it’s
“How’s that?”
“You know, like the Kingston Trio song about the guy on the Boston Metro Transit Authority. ‘Did he ever return? No, he never returned. And his fate is still unlearned.’ Only I’m here by choice.”
“You live on trains?”
He scooted over to the aisle seat. “Since 9/11.”
She scooted over to hear better. “OK, let’s hear your 9/11 story.”
