Casserole Diplomacy and Other Stories (46 page)

The tower’s big signal flag went up, a slash of red on an oaken boom. Almost immediately it was answered by its fellow on the next hill, and soon the message went spinning away over the mountains. Devin walked back to the Dawson to await the rescue crew. He slumped to the ground next to Elaine and let his eyes close at last.

The birds were just beginning to sing.

The Dawson had been damaged beyond using, so the road mechanics hooked it to a ten-man Witherup and hauled it up the mountain to Asheville, still bearing Elaine’s body. Devin did not need to concern himself with alerting Mrs. Pittman, he was told. The railroad had men who did such things, usually for the families of railmen or haulers killed on runs. Devin argued, but he was tired, and the steady insistence of the Asheville manager wore him down.

Devin was outfitted with a single-man Walter, an old model no longer used outside the mountains, for his return journey to Greensboro. The old engine squeaked and clacked; but the road to Hickory was downhill all the way, and Devin hardly needed to do more than squeeze the brake. Now in the daylight he could see the empty villages in the valleys, desolate houses with broken windows and sagging porches, where the sun shone through and lit the debris that always accumulates in abandoned buildings. Twice he saw castlings scurrying away from the tracks. He thought of the pistol in the iron box, but did not move to get it. The car rolled on, with Devin’s eyes fixed on the rails that rolled beneath him.

He stopped at the place outside Hickory where he and Elaine had eaten the day before. Such a rage overtook him that he tore the railman patch from his sleeve and flung it into the woods. He screamed and yelled, though no one was around to hear, until his anger was spent and he slumped to the deck of the Walter, too tired to do anything but coast downhill to Greensboro.

At seven in the evening he sighted the peaked roof of the station. Some part of his mind remembered to ring the bell, and the station door opened like a great mouth, swallowing him up into the din and chaos inside.

Devin had gone perhaps fifty yards when he noticed several figures following his car. He recognized friends from his old crew, and saw with some astonishment Alan waiting at the end of the line. Devin forgot to push the bar, and the men following him pushed the Walter with their hands.

Devin hit the stop at the end of the line with a light bump, and looked down at Herman standing before him.

“Take him,” Herman said, and hands reached up to help Devin from the car. He found himself standing before his old foreman, wishing he could be anywhere else. He waited for the inevitable rebuke.

“The plague is back,” Herman said.

Devin looked from one man to the next, finding confirmation of the awful truth in each face. Alan had been right, after all.

“It started in Durham this time,” Herman said. “The road is stopping all commercial runs to take doctors and medicines into the city. You’ll be going to Hillandale. They’ve lost three there already.”

He motioned to one of Devin’s old crewmates. “Find the manifest for Devin,” he told the man. “He needs to know what time he’s leaving.”

Devin stared at his old boss. “I’m not going out again,” he said. “I’m done with the road.”

Herman regarded him closely, and for a moment Devin was sure the big man would strike him. “Wait,” Herman called to the crewman he had sent away. The man turned, eyes questioning.

“Get Devin a new patch,” Herman said. “He’s lost his.”

Devin opened his mouth, but Herman shook his head. Devin did not protest when they took his coat to sew on another patch.

“Come on,” Herman said, flipping through the papers of Devin’s manifest. “We don’t leave until morning.”

They took him to the railmen’s quarters, where there were strong drinks waiting, and they stayed up singing and telling stories of the road until the small hours of the morning. In the haze of drink and exhaustion, the men’s faces blurred together in Devin’s vision until they looked like the same man, the Railman, who had felt this pain before and would bear it again. They were all incarnations of the same thing, and Devin knew he was that thing too, and would be for the rest of his life.

At eight the heavy fist came to pound on his door. Most of the other crews had already left when Devin reached the station floor, groggy and with an aching head, but Herman and the
Lady Wales
were there. Devin nodded to them across the floor. Herman returned a solemn wave, and then cracked his whip, cursing at his charges to get the
Lady Wales
moving. Devin heard the
Lady’
s bell clang as he turned away.

Devin boarded the single-man Walter again, taking the brake key from the mechanic on duty. There were four large boxes in the cargo cage at the front of the engine. Devin signed his name in the log book, and the great door opened to let him out into the daylight.

The car was heavily loaded, much more so than the Dawson had been when it carried Elaine, but Devin was strong, and he drove the car across the flat ground with ease. Soon he could only see the thin trails of smoke from the houses where breakfast was being cooked, and the people of Greensboro were waking to another day.

By midday he was miles away.

Originally published in On Spec
Summer 2010 Vol 22 No 2 #81

Corey Brown
is a mechanical engineer residing in the sunny climes of South Florida. Originally from North Carolina, he used his native land as the setting for “The Asheville Road.” In addition to
On Spec
, Corey’s work has appeared in
Electric Velocipede
,
Space and Time
and the 23rd
Writers of the Future
anthology.

Christian McPherson

I was living

in the now

but then I fell

a few seconds behind

I would just miss

the elevator

the bus

and before I knew it

I was living

in the 30-minutes-ago

I would

burn my rice

be late for work

then things got worse

I started living

in the two-hours-ago

I was missing

doctors’ appointments

lunch dates

it crept up on me

and all of a sudden

I was living

in yesterday

I sang Beatles songs

and got fired from work

I became depressed

hit the bottle

ended up living

in the past

babbling on my couch

about the good ole days

then came the intervention

people said “you can’t live in the past”

people said “you need to think about the future”

the men in white coats came

as did the pills

the rubber rooms

the drooling

now I’m all better

now I’m back in the now

now I might actually be a few seconds ahead

I catch things before they fall

people think I’m just moving things around

but I know the future

because I live there.

Originally published on On Spec
Winter 2011 Vol 23 No 4 # 87

Christian McPherson
is the author of
Cube Squared
,
My Life in Pictures
,
The Sun Has Forgotten Where I Live
,
The Cube People
(shortlisted 2011 ReLit Awards),
Poems That Swim From my Brain Like Rats Leaving a Sinking Ship
, and
Six Ways to Sunday
(shortlisted 2008 ReLit Awards).

Scott Overton

The tinkle of the bell announced a customer.

That was unusual—there weren’t many customers anymore. Gabrielle had owned the Shop & Smile
dépanneur
for thirty-five years, and in the early days the bell had rung like a wind chime on a March day. But no more. Most of the people on the concession road now shopped at the new Price-Well—even the ones who smiled to her face and wished her a good day as they drove quickly past.

It took an effort to rise from the old chair in the backroom, but she tried to hurry. The bell-heralded arrivals might be some of those young smart-alecks who stole her candy.

Not this time. It was Mrs. Simm from the neighbouring farm. Marjorie. And she had a little girl with her: eight or nine, with dark hair and a short sun dress that was covered in a print of some odd-shaped orange blotches. No, maybe a cartoon character? There was a single word that looked foreign.

“Hello, Gabby,” Marjorie said. “Amanda, this is Miss Dufour. She owns the store.”

The girl gave a polite curtsy and said, “It’s nice to meet you,” making Gabrielle smile in surprise. Not many children were taught such manners anymore.

“Amanda’s come to visit us for the summer,” Marjorie said. “From the States. Her mother—remember our daughter Sandra? She lives in Michigan now.”

Gabby used to hear a lot about that daughter, especially when Sandra went off to university, but that was before Marjorie got the job at the library in town. Since then she’d been too busy to drop by for gossip. Her husband, Edgar, had to handle all of the chores on their small farm himself, dawn to dusk. How did they expect to look after a child for the summer?

Marjorie said, “Amanda’s looking forward to roaming around the farm, but I’ve told her she mustn’t go anywhere else on her own. Except maybe here, if we send her to pick up a few things.”

So that was it. They expected Gabby to be a part-time babysitter. She ought to say something to quell that notion
tout de suite
.

But the girl spoke first. “Gramma says you know lots about the farm property. And the town that used to be there. Gramma says it’s covered with
blueberries
.” She said the word the way she’d speak a magic spell, her smile revealing small teeth that were just a little crooked, but sugar-white.

“Blueberries. Yes, there are blueberries,” Gabby huffed. “You can hardly walk without stepping on the things.”