“These here are the bones of this country. Know how many folks died doing this?”
“No.”
“More than a hundred thousand. Maybe two hundred thousand. From when the first spike punctured the dirt to now, men died for this. To lay the bones of this country. Men are still dying. Right now. Did you know that?”
“No.”
“They are. In the freightyards someone’s had an accident. Someone’s getting dragged, something’s not loading right. A hobo like us is messing up his mount and getting chewed up like a doll in a cat’s mouth. Greasing the rails. But, see, you got to sacrifice something. This is the first time in the history of anything that you been able to go from one ocean to another. One big… big architecture,” finished Roosevelt. “And we’re just a part, if that. You know, I had a bunch of different preacher-folk yell at me when I was a kid but I never had much of a head for religion or gods. But if it came right to it, why, I’d say train’d be something like a god. It’s a god to plenty of us. Brings work, brings travel. Brings the future and it brings our loved ones. And it brings death. A lot of it, too. Maybe that’s part of it. Maybe you got to feed it. Feed it a little more than coal.”
Roosevelt stood up and brushed his hands off. His eyes followed the track, carving its wide alley through the woods. “That’s how you know you believe something,” he said. “If you wound up dying for it and thought, well, that’s okay.”
A thought wormed its way into Connelly’s head. He tried to understand what it was asking but at first he didn’t have the means. He hammered it out as best he could and said, “Roosevelt?”
“Yeah?”
“Would you kill for the trains?”
“What?”
“Let’s say if a certain someone didn’t die then one whole line would wind up breaking down or never getting built. So you had to be the guy to do him in. Would you do that?”
Roosevelt sucked his lip into his mouth and leaned on one foot. His brows drew close together and then he licked his teeth and blew a streamer of snot from one nostril. “Goddamn, that’s a crazy question,” he said. “It’s getting dark. Let’s head back to the others.”
Roosevelt led the way, following the path of the rails, but he did not look at them again.
CHAPTER TWELVE
On the night before their train left they resolved to get as much rest as they could. As sunset faded into evening the temperature began to drop. Fires were started here and there, people walking from campsite to campsite carrying envoys of burning brush. The air filled with the acidic haze of woodsmoke and people clapped rags and blankets around their shoulders until they resembled wandering mounds of offal, passing one another in the smoky night.
Connelly left Pike and the others and ventured out until the air was clear. He turned and looked back and saw the valley’s face dotted with dancing sparks, a small sea of lonely light clutching the curve of the land. He listened to the coughs and the shouts, watched vague shadows toil around the shacks. It was a city of refugees, but refuge from what? He could think of no answer except the world itself.
He took his canteen from his pocket and sipped it to cool his burning throat. As he did a voice below croaked, “What you drinking?”
He started and looked around for the speaker. A man was lying on the ground not more than ten feet from him, hands behind his head.
“Just water,” said Connelly.
The man scoffed. “Ain’t worth it. I can’t sleep a wink in a Hoover if I don’t have some liquor in my guts. I need to marinade my head for a whiles before I can shut my eyes. You come to get away from the smoke?”
“Yeah.”
“Cold nights does that. Nothing but green wood around.” He sat up and grinned at Connelly. His eyes were red as plums and fine blossoms of burst veins circled his nose and cheeks. Connelly saw he had lost a hand and one of his feet was mangled beyond recognition. The cripple stuck out his good hand and said, “Name’s Korsher. I’d shake with the other but I don’t know where it is.”
Connelly shook his hand.
“Where you headed?” the man asked.
“New Mexico,” said Connelly.
“Hell. Who isn’t? That or California, it seems.”
“You going anywhere?”
“Son, I do my best to go nowhere at all at top speed. And that’s what I’m doing right now.”
Connelly took a step closer. “How did you…”
“Lose my hand?”
“Well. Yeah.”
“Got et up by a train. Broked my foot too. It was something else.”
“I bet.”
“It was a long time ago.”
“How do you get around?” Connelly asked.
“Slowly. But this helps,” he said, and tapped a length of ash tree he had fashioned into a crutch. “I don’t mind it so much. What’s your name?”
“Connelly.”
“Hm. Here. Sit you on down next to me.”
Connelly did. Korsher absentmindedly reached into his pocket and took out a small ceramic flask, then offered it to Connelly.
“Take you a sip of that,” he said.
Connelly opened it and smelled it first. It reeked enough to make his eyes water. Wood alcohol, perhaps. He pretended to take a sip and coughed.
“That’ll put a lot more kick in you than water,” said Korsher, and he laughed drunkenly. “Makes the ground a lot softer. Makes the night quieter and thinking easier.”
“I’ll say,” Connelly said, and handed it back.
Korsher lay back down and looked at the sky. He unstoppered his flask, sipped and sighed, breath whistling between his teeth. “Oh, well. It’s nice to get out from the Hoover. This is all right, ain’t it?”
“I guess.”
“You guess? That all?”
Connelly shrugged.
“No. No, I think I’m doing just fine now,” said Korsher. “You got to say that every once in a while. I mean, sure, I’m hungry and I don’t know where the hell I am, but I mean, just look,” he said, and waved above.
Connelly looked. The moon sat high in the sky, a luminescent and muddy yellow. Webs of stars stretched out behind it, falling in a veil to the faint line of the earth.
“That’s free right there,” said Korsher. “I couldn’t see any such thing in the city. Too much light.”
“Yeah.”
They sat in silence listening to the cicadas and crickets singing somewhere in the brush. Korsher smacked his lips and said, “My daddy once said the moon was a bone.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah. Looks kind of like a bone, don’t it?”
“I suppose. I don’t know what kind of bone, though.”
“Hell, I don’t either, I’m no kind of doctor. My pa said it was the bone of whoever made this here earth. Said he chopped and beat stone all day, just working away, and when he was done he just plumb dropped dead.”
