Black Train is Coming

They sat cross-legged on a blanket of grass several feet from the river, a girl and a boy, both feigning interest in the rush of the white-capped current traveling downstream. Small branches whipped between boulders; the dark mottled limbs of some tree now impotent against the rapids.

Angled toward each other, yet facing the waters, their knees might appear to touch to some passing observer, yet they were not. He had rolled his breeches past his ankles from their earlier gambol near the waters edge and her eyes were continuously drawn to his bare feet where dark hairs curled on the tops of his toes, an observation that never failed to flush her cheeks. The girl’s bare feet were secured modestly under her skirts and she unnecessarily smoothed the blue and black calico dress splayed out like a fan across the grass, arranged to hide the shape of her legs. Iron rich red dirt tinged the ruffle of her petticoat.

The girl’s mother thought she was looking for river stones and she would before the day was done. The smooth black stones made pretty pendants and were popular with the girls in Town. She didn’t know he had dug one up for her already.

Heat pulsed between them, an energy alive with desire and intention. They were painfully conscious of their fingertips, close enough to touch if they only stretched their fingers just so.

The breeze picked up somewhat urgently, blowing through the tops of the river birch trees. The chatter of the leaves grew louder and the girl and the boy inclined their heads to listen, sensing they were just on the other side of understanding: excited, harried, heralding the arrival of some new visitor, or perhaps just the next moment, replete with secrets from long before time.

Hair snaked out of the girl’s loose knot and, as she pulled the cornsilk wisps away from her cheeks, the boy caught her eye with a smile full of promises. He held one hand to his hat to keep it from blowing away; a hat the girl had seen the boy wear many times in Town, its tattered brown edges curling from sweat and dust and decay. His boyhood hat that he refused to part with.

He had not been a boy in a long time and neither could she be called merely a girl.

One corner of her mouth rose and she cast down her eyes demurely. Both felt the magnetic pull, a luminous field drawing them together with aching sweetness. They leaned in simultaneously. Their finger tips grazed and her eyes rose to his lips.

Thunder rolled in the distance and they glanced up, distracted. Only a sparse field of wispy clouds mottled the expansive blue sky above them, but their heads turned in unison toward the mists of Frey Valley. Darkness gathered where the scarred foothills rolled endlessly over each other and folded out of the base of Black Mountain like the belly rolls of some fat beast.

“Look.” He pointed toward a light emerging from between the hills. The light followed a dark line that snaked in and out of their view, heading toward the valley viaduct.

His tone turned grim. “The train is coming.”

The girl frowned. Mesmerized by the light growing steadily larger, coming steadily closer. She couldn’t look away if she wanted to.

Something, indeed, was coming and it seemed to bring with it the darkening sky, rumbling with discontent and punctuated increasingly by lightening.

Only seconds before they were enjoying the warmth of the sun’s rays and the promise of a kiss. Now, they both shivered.

***

Elenor instinctively reached for Jesup’s hand, but grasped only air. Unmoored, she pitched forward, a sense of tumbling into emptiness accompanied by a pounding heart like the sense of falling asleep and jerking awake. In her case, it was as if startled from a dream. Fragments of Jesup and afternoon at the river unraveled in her memory and disappeared like smoke as her palms landed unsteadily on the plush bench of a carriage. The cab swayed to the right as if rounding a bend and then settled in one direction. She took her bearings.

No. Not a carriage. A train car. Dark tufted textiles and ivy wall paper. Ornate metal overlays.

She was not alone.

A woman sat across from her, unsmiling. She wore a vacuous expression, her bun haphazard beneath a drooping bonnet. She held a baby under a wrap at her breast and wore the color of mourning.

Tentatively, Elenor asked, “What train is this?”

When the woman made no indication of having heard, she asked, “Do you know where are we going?”

Niether of these questions occupied the forefront of her mind. How had she got on the train in the first place? What had she been doing before she slept on the train? Vaguely, she recalled the river and Jesup.

What happened to Jesup?

She implored the woman again.

“Ma’am, please, tell me where we are going? Were you here when I came into the car? Do you know when we are stopping?”

Other questions arose, but she bit them back. Did the woman know how long she had been on the train? What happened to Jesup? What happened to Jesup?

Getting no help from the woman, Elenor turned to the window. Outside, she could barely make through dim light the tall, thin tree trunks rolling by, each rooted into the side of steep hills. Fear spiked under her skin. This train must be headed into the mountains. Hundreds of miles from town. Perhaps thousands of miles. Had they crossed the valley yet?

She turned to the woman and beseeched her. “Ma’am, what is the next stop?”

But the woman remained unresponsive.

Elenor looked at the child and realized the baby was white and quite still. Realization dawned with a new terror.

“Ma’am,” Elenor whispered carefully, “your baby …”

The woman’s eyes finally met hers. Elenor was hit with a wave of hopelessness and despair that took her breath away. The woman lifted a gnarled pale finger and pointed it at Elenor. The infants head rolled away from the woman’s breast.

Startled, Elenor lurched back and scrambled toward the car door. She flung it open and leapt into the narrow passageway and swiftly closed the door behind her. On the other side of the passage the car was empty and dark. She pushed open the door and went to the window. She struggled to lift the frame and by the time she succeeded she was slick with sweat. A hot wind hit her face as she plunged her head out and looked toward the engine car. A long black trail of smoke emitted from the stack. As the train rounded a bend Elenor was able to see figures moving inside the cab amidst two flickering flames. The cranks lurched with visible effort as the tracks rose in elevation.

The train rocked and she tumbled back into her seat. She scrambled back to secure the window and then sank into the bench to catch her breath.

She had to find help.

She left the car and headed falteringly down the passageway, peering into cars with windows and opening doors of those without. The train rumbled onward at breakneck speed, indicating no intention to stop. She held on to whatever supports she could grasp as she made her way clumsily from car to car.

Finally, she came to one where two men in top hats and head to toe black ditto suits concentrated over a chess game. They sat across from each other and turned to her when she burst into the chamber.

“Foozler!” said a man with round spectacles.

The other, his beard neatly tapered to a point in the middle of his chest, drew his lips together in displeasure. When he turned his head further, she saw the scar where his far eye had once been.

“I-I’m terribly sorry.” Her voice shook. “Can you help me? I seem to have … forgotten … “ Elenor swallowed. “Do you know the next stop?”

The man with the round spectacles drew a chain watch from his breast pocket and muttered under his breath. Pointing toward Elenor, he said to his companion, “Foozler!”

The bearded man deepened his frown and drew his body more toward the door. And her.

Elenor did not know what to make of any of it. Though she bristled at the namecalling, she nodded in agreement. “Yes, yes, I have bungled this somehow."

“I am not supposed to be here,” she added.

“Return to your car, Miss.” The bearded man finally spoke, his voice gravelly and deep. “Then you will be exactly where you are supposed to be.”

“There is a lady––“ Elenor started, remembering the woman “––her baby …”

Both men turned back to their game, dismissing her. Elenor meekly backed out and closed the car door. Surely there were others on the train. If not, she would make her way to the cab and plead with the Conductor.

Only, the next car smelled of sulfur and contained a rotund woman who sat stiffly worrying her hands over several dense, ivory objects in her lap. Elenor looked closer. Bones: a thigh, an incomplete vertebra, a jaw. Small enough to be a pet, Elenor noticed. The woman’s turned her attention toward her and Elenor gasped, back away from woman’s mangled scarred face.

Elenor closed the door and stumbled on, falling into the next empty car she found. She collapsed onto the bench.

Her heart pounded in her ears as she tried to get her bearings.

Alone, she took account of her physical being, running her hands across her bodice, and patting her arms beneath the fabric of her sleeve. She lifted her skirts and examining her legs beneath the petticoats. She did not feel as if she had been handled roughly or with force. She went back to the last thing she remembered … sitting with Jesup on the riverbank.

No matter how hard she tried to envision him, however, he remained a murky memory. She put a hand to her head, aware of a pounding headache that might have been there all along. Perhaps she had hit her head or been knocked out. That could be the only explanation.

Had she been kidnapped?

What happened to Jesup?

Her brow furrowed as she stared at the laces on her boots. Her mind travelled back to the river bank, to Jesup, to the thunder and the train … the train …

The boots.

When had she put her boots back on?

Fatigue settled over her and she lay down on the bench, placing the back of her hand to her aching head. She didn’t know how long she lay like that, or if she had slept, but the repetitive tune of a rote voice punctured her consciousness.

The passenger conductor was coming through the cars, checking tickets.

Quickly, she sat up and checked the pockets inside her skirts. Of course! She would have had to have a ticket to get on the train. Only she had no such ticket on her person. Then her hand curled around a smooth, round object cool to the touch and she pulled out a black river stone that nestled perfectly into the palm of her hand. She stared at it, perplexed, pulled in by the swirling textures engrained in the stone’s surface.

She could hear Jesup whisper to her … what was it?

The river stone.

Remember the river stone.

The car opened abruptly and a large man with heavy jowls loomed over her. Elenor slid the stone back into her pocket.

Expressionless, the man held out his hand. “Ticket, please.”

If she had had a ticket she must have left it back in the other car.

“Sir,” Elenor implored, trying a new tactic. She grasped the man’s outstretched hand, “There is a lady in distress a few cars back, her baby, Sir––“ She swallowed.––“Her baby … I think her baby is dead.”

The passenger conductor’s face did not change, except for a darkening of his eyes as he peered at Elenor closely. She drew back, unsure. It was as if he had suddenly seen her. His hand slid cooly from hers.

“Ticket, Miss, ” he repeated.

“Sir––“

“If you have no ticket, Miss, I must take you to the Conductor.”

“It’s … I must have left it in the other car. Perhaps you will escort me back and help this woman?” Elenor’s tongue flicked across her lips as beads of sweat pooled between her shoulder blades.

“I will take you to the Conductor. Follow me.”

He turned around and continued on down the passageway.

Elenor peered out after him, unsure what to do. He paused and looked back at her sternly, expectantly. She looked back uncertainly in the direction she had come from, but knew the Conductor was her best chance to explain herself. There was no where else to go. Maybe the Conductor could help her find out how she had arrived on this train in the first place.

She hurried after him, easily catching up as he occasionally stopped by a passenger car to collect tickets. He seemed to know which cars were empty and which were not. A few times she peered in to see the other passengers before the door swiftly shut in her face. One was an elderly couple, the woman knitting and the man shining his shoes. They both looked at her, their eyes vacant, just like the woman with the baby. In another, a large immigrant family crowded together. There was not enough seating for everyone and so some sat on the floor, children in laps. No one smiled, no one spoke. The children made no sounds.

One by one, Elenor passed by cars that contained what seemed to be the mere shells of people. With each, a wary tingle grew along her spine. By the time they reached the mess car, she was trembling.

Something was not right here.

Three people were in the mess hall and two of them were the older gentlemen she had first encountered playing chess. She looked back, confused as to how they had gotten ahead of her.

Yet, there they were again, the chess board between them. Drink tumblers sat next to them though neither appeared to drink and the clear amber liquid shimmered and swirled of its own accord. Cigars tipped out of the gentlemen’s dry lips and smoke curled around them, dispersing throughout the rest of the chamber. They did not turn to look at Elenor or the passenger conductor.

The other person in the room was a girl about the age of eight in a plain white prairie dress and bonnet, big brown eyes and a smattering of freckles across her face.

Elenor frowned at her and took a step closer.

Did she know this girl? Was she from Town?

The conductor approached her and asked for a ticket. The little girl looked at Elenor curiously, but presented her ticket to the big man without fear or the trepidation that Elenor currently felt.

“I have Misses ticket, too” the girl said in a singsong voice. A voice full of joy and light and life.

Hope lifted Elenor’s countenance. There had been no such light on this train thus far.

The passenger conductor shook his head. “That is not allowed.”

The girl smiled and dimples appeared in each cheek. “Why don’t you leave Miss with me.”

It was not a question.

The big man hesitated.

“Go on. Surely, she won’t disappear.”

When the passenger conductor continued his scowling displeasure, the girl sighed dramatically.

“I could use the company.” She nodded toward the men at the chessboard. “And … they’re here.”

To Elenor’s relief the passenger conductor conceded reluctantly and went on his way.

“Sit,” the girl invited, motioning toward the seat next to her. “Would you like tea?”

Elenor had not noticed the vibrant tea service displayed on the table in front of the girl. Two tea cups and a plate of raspberry scones. With relief, she slid into the seat next to the girl. It had not occurred to her before then to be hungry.

Then, Elenor saw the hat.

At the next table a hat sat atop an open newspaper, but not any hat. Jesup’s hat.

Elenor leapt up and grabbed the hat, examining it for … she didn’t know what for. Signs of struggle. Messages.

“Foozler!”

Elenor looked up and found the spectacled man and bearded man watching her.

The bearded man pulled on his beard and scowled at her disapprovingly––as if to scold her for not returning to her car––before they both resumed their game.

“Come, Elenor,” said the girl, gently. “Sit with me.”

Eleanor also picked up the paper––something Jesup must have read, therefore touched––and returned, clutching the hat. She held it up to her nose and closed her eyes. It smelled of him. The image of him at the river sharpened and she could almost feel his warmth next to her on the grass. She opened her eyes.

It meant he was on this train. Or, at least, he had been on the train. The evidence was right here! In her hands. She had to find him.

Suddenly suspicious, Elenor asked the girl, “How do you know my name?”

“Jesup told me.”

“He’s here?” Elenor leaned forward, breathless, hopeful. “Where?”

The girl looked at Elenor sadly. “Not here. There.”

She pointed out the window and Elenor followed the direction of her finger. In the distance the viaduct receded, arching elegantly across the valley, where beyond lay Town.

Elenor’s shoulders fell and she sank back. She did not bother to wipe the tears from her cheeks.

“Was he your Beloved?” the girl whispered reverently. Her brown eyes searched Elenor’s.

Was? Elenor looked away. “I don’t know. Maybe.”

She glanced down, remembering the first time she had met Jesup. He had come with his father to Elenor’s farm and she had hidden behind the chicken coop to watch him carry bags of horseshoes into the barn, which her father had commissioned from his father, Town Smith. He had not noticed her then and she had been only a girl of five or six. When she was eight she saw him every Sunday morning in the pew across aisle. Once he caught her looking, they often shared funny looks with each other to occupy their boredom. Then they grew older and the looks grew less funny. He had wanted to be a teacher. When not at the smithy, he spent all of his hours at the school house in Town, helping students with their letters. Sometimes, he helped Elenor with her arithmetic. Sometimes they only pretended she needed help.

Outside the sky darkened, lit up by lightening. Thunder rolled over the train. Elenor was not sure if the train trembled or if it was only her being that trembled. She clutched Jesup’s hat tighter. She would not lose it again.

Elenor looked back at the girl.

“What do you mean, Jesup told you my name?”

The girl pointed to the paper and Elenor unfolded the newsprint, skimming the columns. The words almost seemed to jump out at her and move around the page nonsensically, but she managed to fix her focus on one column. Her heart stilled.

She ran her thumb over Jesup’s face, afraid to read the words beneath his image.

“I know who you are,” Elenor said after several moments silence, scanning the girl's face. "I remember you now."

The girl smiled sadly.

Elenor glanced at the men playing chess, but they had stopped their game and to peer at her expectantly.

“I remember them, too,” Elenor acknowledged.

Several more moments seemed to pass, but it may have been an eternity. Resigned, Elenor accepted the tea and scone that the Conductor nudged toward her.

The passenger conductor’s hat appeared in the next car, gradually making his way back toward them, resuming his routes, scanning the train for new arrivals.

Elenor slid her hand into her skirts and wrapped her hand around the stone.

She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and then opened them again to read the article Jesup wrote about her after she died.

***

On the banks of Snake River, dark stones gather beneath red clay, flushed down from Black Mountain.

A young woman in denim capris kneels at the river’s edge, plucking each stone up from the muck and dropping it into her basket. Her hands shake as her eyes dart around. She tugs at the neck scarf tied to her throat and pulls her pony tail tighter against the wind. The chattering trees whisper to her what could be greetings or warnings; she cannot discern. She hurries her task along. She will take the stones home, leather wrap them as pendants and sell them at the tinker’s mall as a love protection charm.

A shrill whistle draws the girl’s attention to Black Mountain and she stands, shielding her eyes and searching the dark line that still snakes through the foothills. Thunder claps in the distance. Lightening strikes in the hills as the mist thickens into what she believes is smoke from a steam stack.

The girl shivers and steps away from the bank, hurrying back to Town.

There have been no trains on Black Mountain for at least a hundred years, yet the girl’s head is full of stories of other daring girls who disappeared at the river’s edge, their demise heralded by the sound of the Black Train coming.