“I think we’ve got a bigger problem,” the conductor said, and signed off. The pipe-smoking stranger waved jauntily up at the windows, then walked right up under the nose of the diesel, out of sight. The conductor went to one of the side windows, then the other, but couldn’t see anyone. He quickly pulled on his gloves, opened the cab door, and leaned out, squinting into the icy wind. The freight train stretched back in a straight line over the blank white plain, a hundred and sixty cars—twice too long for such
cold weather, but the Rock Island was going into its third bankruptcy and the company was running everything they could. The stranger and the two other members of the crew—the train ran with just a conductor, engineer, and one brakeman—were nowhere to be seen. The conductor hopped down and hustled around the front of the train to the other side. It was twenty below, but he’d already started to sweat. About ten cars down, the engineer and brakeman crouched beside a boxcar, waving a flashlight at its underbelly. The stranger was halfway to them, striding through the snow beside the tracks.
“What’s the problem, boys?” the stranger called out heartily. “Outta air?”
The engineer looked up, surprised, then stood up. “Who the hell are you?” he said, his voice carrying easily in the cold air. The conductor frantically waved his arms as he ran, trying to get the engineer to shut up. The stranger didn’t seem to take offense. “Why, I’m the king of the rails, that’s who! I’ve got coal in my teeth and steam in my lungs! There’s never been an engine I couldn’t fix or a locomotive I couldn’t drive. No grade too steep, no snow too deep. I’m Smokestack Johnny, and I ride the high iron!”
A moment of stunned silence, and then the brakeman said, “Who?”
The engineer said nothing. He’d been a railroad man for fifteen years, but the brakeman was a kid only a month into the job. The conductor finally caught up to them. He was breathing hard and he felt sick to his stomach, but he forced a shaky smile onto his face. “What can we do for you, Johnny?”
The stranger whipped around. “Hey there!” he said, beaming. “You must be the conductor.” He was a handsome man, his jaw as square and clean shaven as a Burma-Shave ad, his hair as black as axle grease. “Say, we rode together once, didn’t we?”
The conductor gulped, nodded. “Back in forty-eight. You took us through Chicago.” He still got the nightmares.
“Right!” Johnny said, then laughed his big laugh. “Course, not everybody on that crew was all that polite.” He winked at the other two men. “A few of those boys had to be dropped off a little early, if you know what I mean. But we made it across the ol’ Mississip, didn’t we? Record time!”
The conductor tried to laugh with him. “Yessir, record time.”
“Right! Now let’s see about getting this iron horse moving.”
Johnny marched off toward the end of the train. The engineer looked at the conductor with fear in his eyes. He must have seen the pictures from the last time Johnny had ridden the Rock Island line, two years before: a hundred derailed cars flung over the bridge and onto a Missouri highway. The new kid, though, still didn’t seem to grasp the seriousness of the situation.
“Why don’t you go up to the head end and keep the engine ready,” the conductor told the engineer, loudly enough for Johnny to hear. The engineer knew who to talk to at dispatch.
The engineer glanced back at Johnny. “You sure?”
“Just go.”
The conductor and the brakeman jogged to catch up with the demon. Every few cars Johnny ducked under, took a quick look around, and sometimes rapped the air brake pipes with his knuckles. At the thirtieth car, a piggyback flatbed with a truck trailer latched onto it, he said, “I think I see your problem.”
All three of them squatted down under the car. It was still cold, but they were out of the wind.
Johnny stuck his finger into an ice-encrusted ventilator. “Your A-1’s frozen open. Musta popped when you dumped your air at the yard.” He turned to the young brakeman. “I need a pipe wrench, son, and a coupla fusees.”
The brakeman looked at the conductor, and the conductor nodded. A few minutes later the kid came back lugging a tool chest as big as a suitcase, and a smaller red plastic case. The stranger popped open the plastic case and took out a long red fusee.
“Watch your eyes,” he said, and broke off the butt of the flare. The end sparked, and began to hiss red flame and white smoke. He held it like a magic wand, playing the fire over the frozen valve, and started to sing:
His voice was rough and big. He didn’t hit all the notes, but he got near enough. Then the fusee sputtered out, and he tossed it into the snow behind them.
“Let’s see you use that wrench,” he said to the brakeman, and the kid hefted a pipe wrench two feet long. The stranger showed him where to grip the vent. The kid yanked on the end of the wrench, but it didn’t budge. He pulled and pulled and even bent over it to put his weight into it, but the wrench didn’t move.
“Let me give you a hand with that,” the stranger said. He gripped the cold metal in one naked hand and jerked down. The valve end popped off with a squeal and bounced against the ground. The demon laughed. “Don’t feel bad, son—you loosened it for me!”
The conductor picked up the valve in his gloved hands, heard a rattle, and shook it. Something black fell out of it. The conductor picked it up, regarded it suspiciously. It was a lump of coal. Who would have jammed a lump of coal into the ventilator?
“I’ll show you a trick,” the stranger said. He took the valve end from the conductor, turned it sideways, and fit it back on the pipe, capping it. “It ain’t legal, but it’ll get you home.”
It took an hour and a half to pump the pipes back up to the minimum PSI. Johnny sat in the cab with them, filling the air with smoke, stories, and old railroader jokes that only the brakeman hadn’t heard before. “Know why the conductor’s got the best job on the train?” Johnny asked. “Because he don’t have to work with the conductor!” He’d slap his knees and laugh hard. No one else could manage more than a forced chuckle. Finally the conductor sent the brakeman running to the back of the train to release the handbrake, and the engineer started bringing the electricals online.
“So,” the conductor said casually. “How far you riding with us today, Johnny?”
“Just as far as Olympia,” the demon said.
The engineer said, “We ain’t going to—”
The conductor cut him off. “If that’s where you’re going, Johnny, that’ll be just fine. I’ll radio the dispatcher.”
The engineer’s eyes were wide. “We can’t just switch over,” he said quietly. “That’s not even our road.”
“It is now,” the conductor said.
Johnny whooped his approval. “Get outta my way, boys,” the demon said. “I’ll show you how to drive.” He started the bell, then pulled twice on the air horns and set the throttle to notch 1—all as natural as a man pulling on his shirt. The train started to move, and the brakeman had to run to get back in the cab.
Johnny moved smoothly through the notches. The train picked up speed, and then he started to sing. He bellowed “Rock Island Line” and
“Casey Jones” and “I’ve Been Working on the Railroad.”
They hit the Hutchinson switch much too fast—the conductor thought he could feel the cars swaying off the
