The Nine Pound Hammer (10 page)

Ray stepped out into the cluttered hallway, rubbed his eyes, and walked to the vestibule to get some air. On the other side of the low-topped tender car, Eddie was working with his father up in the locomotive. Eddie gave a friendly wave before lifting another shovelful of coal from the tender.

“You’re awake,” Conker said from behind him.

Ray turned and then looked up at the giant crouching in the doorway to the vestibule. “Is it late?” Ray asked. “I was exhausted.”

“Midmorning, I reckon,” Conker said. “You missed breakfast. Ma Everett left out some food for you.”

Ray followed Conker down the hallway. He had trouble getting the hang of how to sway with the movement of the jostling train. As he fell against the wall when the train took a turn, Ray imagined that it was like being on a ship. Soon he’d forget about the nauseating back-and-forth motion, and by the time they stopped, it would probably feel strange to walk on solid, motionless ground. But for now he felt a little sick and had to keep looking out the windows to keep steady.

Conker pointed to a door as they passed. Ray could barely see where he was pointing, as the entire hallway was filled with Conker’s enormous frame.

“You know that’s the washroom there? You’re close to it, so that’s good.” Conker then pointed to a door up ahead as they crawled over the boxes and debris in the hallway. “Here’s my room, but I most never sleep there at night. Too tight. Can’t fit on the bed. I rather sleep in the boxcar or outdoors or sometimes in Nel’s car when the weather turns cold.”

As Conker opened the door to show Ray his room, he lurched back with a yelp, nearly crushing Ray in his panic. A copper and black viper as thick as a man’s forearm slithered across the quilt on his bed. Conker fell to the floor as he scrambled away from the snake.

Seth and Redfeather burst from the room next door—Seth howling with laughter and Redfeather tentatively chuckling behind him.

“Get—get it—away from me!” Conker stammered.

Ray wasn’t keen on touching the snake but felt he had to help the terrified giant. “You heard Conker. Get that snake out of his room!” Ray snapped at Seth.

Seth waved his hands. “Easy there, rube. It’s just a little joke. No need to get crabby.” Glaring at Ray, he cupped a hand around his mouth and shouted, “Marisol! Javier’s out again.”

Marisol emerged from her room, farther down the hall. “
¿Qué esta pasando?
What’s he doing down there?” She pushed playfully at Seth as she came down. “You teasing Conker again?” She whispered something, and the viper slid from the bed, coming out into the hallway past the terrified Conker, and to Marisol’s hand.

Ray raised an eyebrow. “Did you just speak to your snake?”

“So?” Marisol lifted the fat viper, caressing him like a pet Pomeranian.

“How … can you do that?” Ray asked.

Marisol’s eyes darkened and then she hissed,
“Déjame solo
.”

“Come on,” Seth said, knocking his shoulder into Ray as he followed Marisol back to her room. Slouching with his braids dangling against his shoulders, Redfeather glanced briefly at Conker and then Ray. He seemed about to say something but then turned to catch up to Seth and Marisol.

Ray helped Conker to his feet. “I hate them things,” Conker mumbled. “Anything with scales.” He shivered.

“Why don’t you stand up to them?” Ray asked. “I grew up in the city. Bullies like Seth, you just have to act tough. You don’t usually have to fight them. Just stand up for yourself, and they’ll leave you alone.”

“Oh, they’re just fooling is all, Ray,” Conker said good-naturedly but looking a little embarrassed. “Besides, this ain’t the city. And they ain’t bullies. Seth just likes to kid around, and Redfeather … well, he just goes along with Seth.”

Ray shook his head.

Conker stopped at the last room before the vestibule and knocked. “Si. You in there?”

Si opened the door, but her smile faded as she saw Ray.

“Hey, we’re going to the mess car,” Conker said. “You want to come?”

“No. Not now. I’m busy.”

“Doing what?”

Si looked again from Conker to Ray. “I’m just busy, that’s all!”

Ray said, “That was a great performance, by the way. Really amazing.”

“Thanks,” she said reluctantly.

“I guess that’s how you found the
Ballyhoo
.”

Si’s eyes narrowed.

“You know?” Ray added. “Back when you and Conker rescued me in the forest. You found your way to the train with … your hand, right?”

Si slipped her tattooed hand into her loose sleeve and
scowled. “I guess you think that makes you some kind of genius?” She slammed her door before Ray could say any more.

“Did I say something wrong?” Ray asked Conker.

“Aw, don’t let her get to you. Si acts tough, but she’s a kitten. You’ll see.”

They left the sleeping car, crossed the windy vestibule, and went through the door to the mess car. Conker went to the cabinet and took out a plate piled with cold flapjacks, a square of grits, and several pieces of curly bacon.

After sitting down at the table, Ray began eating. “I’m glad you’re staying on with the show,” Conker said, taking a big bite from an apple.

“Yeah, me too,” Ray replied through a mouthful. “Conker, how can you all do these things?”

“What do you mean?”

“Marisol speaks to snakes,” Ray said. “And Si has that tattoo. Redfeather can hold fire. I mean … it all seems so impossible. Doesn’t it?”

Conker shrugged, shifting his eyes uncomfortably as he munched on the apple. “I don’t know for certain,” he said. “I reckon none of us do, ’cause Nel don’t like talking about our parents. But I can figure it.”

“Figure what?” Ray asked.

Conker stopped chewing and leaned closer. “That our parents were Ramblers.”

Ray’s brow twisted. Hadn’t Buck mentioned something to Nel about Ramblers? And Hobnob. He had been
babbling on about the Ramblers and John Henry and some Gog machine thing.

“Who are the … ?” Ray began to ask, but at that moment the door to the mess car opened, ushering in the wind and noise of the train. Ray and Conker turned to see Buck step in. He wasn’t wearing his gun belts or his cowboy hat, and Ray was struck again by the image of Buck in the swamp.

Buck paused, sniffed, and said, “Little late for breakfast, boys.”

Conker stood. “Ray overslept. I’m just … showing him around. Come on, Ray. Let’s go see Shacks.”

Ray quickly shoveled down a few more bites and placed the plate in a bucket on the floor. As Conker looked at Ray and cocked his head toward the back of the train, he said, “Where’s Nel, Buck?”

Buck poured a cup of coffee from a tin kettle. “Taking a rest.”

“Oh. Okay. See you later.” Conker quickly led Ray to the door.

Ray looked back at the grim cowboy once more before stepping onto the vestibule. Buck’s pale eyes seemed to be staring right at him as the cowboy sipped from his cup of coffee. Ray looked away quickly before realizing that Buck couldn’t be looking at him. Or was he—in the cowboy’s own mysterious way?

Ray followed Conker onto the vestibule and through the car that Buck and Nel shared with Nel’s workshop.
When they reached the next vestibule, Ray realized they were standing before the locked car. Conker put a hand to a ladder next to the car’s door. “Can’t go through.”

“How come?” Ray asked.

“Off-limits,” Conker said. “Buck’s orders.”

“Why?” Ray asked.

“Got me.” Conker shrugged. “Nel just bought this car a few weeks ago from some circus in Richmond, but none of us know what for.”

“Have you heard anything … any singing coming from it?”

Conker furled his brow. “Singing? No. Why? You heard that?”

Ray nodded. “It wasn’t like any music I’ve ever heard before. It sounded … eerie. And it did something to me. I’m not sure what, but it was strange.”

Conker said, “I guess that’s why Nel and Buck said for us to stay away from it. No telling what’s in there. Let’s get. You okay climbing up on top?”

Ray looked at the ladder. “Up on top of the train?”

“Yeah.”

“Is it safe?”

“If you don’t fall off. I never have.”

Ray took a deep breath. “Okay,” he said. “I guess I’ve already jumped off a moving train.”

“You have?” Conker asked with admiration.

“I’ll tell you all about it,” Ray said. “Lead the way.”

Ray followed Conker up the ladder to the top of the
car. He was relieved to see a metal railing around the sides of the car, in case the
Ballyhoo
took a sharp turn and Ray slid to the edge. Fortunately, that didn’t happen. With the gale-force wind whipping around them, they crawled to the other side and came down the ladder.

On the next vestibule there was a door to the boxcar. As they went in, they had to scramble over the piles of crates, rolls of canvas, and assorted supplies stored for the performances.

“Not so bad, huh?” Conker asked as they came out the other side and went into the caboose. “Hey, Shacks.”

Shacks nodded from up in the cupola. As the brakeman, his job required him to watch the train and the tracks ahead and be ready in case his father signaled to stop.

They went out to the platform at the back of the caboose. Conker sat on the metal grating, dangling his feet over the railing. Ray settled down next to him. “So who are they?” he asked. “The Ramblers?”

Conker cast one glance back at Shacks in the caboose’s cupola. “I ain’t for sure,” he said. “Nel don’t like talking about them, but I heard a little from Buck. You know in the old stories, Ray, where there’s knights adventuring around, protecting the weak, standing up against the wicked? Ramblers are kind of like that. You ask the regular old person and they’d never have heard of them. But they knew what they did. Some goodness that came to pass, some terrible event that was averted: the Ramblers were usually behind it. They didn’t take credit, didn’t ask for no money or
parades or recognition. They just did what they was suppose to do and slipped away again into the wilderness.”

“And you think your parents and Si’s and the others’ were Ramblers?” Ray asked.

“My daddy was.” Conker nodded. “And I think some of the others’ were. There’s things I’ve heard Buck or Nel mention that made me put it together. Things about how they all died way back around the same time. And besides, how come else we could do these things?”

“So how did you wind up with Mister Nel?”

Conker said, “My mama, she was a good friend of Nel’s.”

“Do you remember her?”

“Not really. Just little snippets and such.”

“But how did she die?” Ray asked.

Conker sighed. “That I don’t know.”

Ray wondered over it all for a moment before saying, “I met this man when I was lost in the woods—before you and Si found me—named Hobnob. He worked for this Pirate Queen.”

“There’s pirates still around?”

“I guess so,” Ray said. “He told me the Ramblers were killed by the Gog.”

Conker frowned. “Never heard of no Gog.”

“Hobnob also said John Henry destroyed the Gog’s machine. I’ve heard of John Henry, but not about a machine. I didn’t even know John Henry was real.”

“I don’t know nothing about that machine,” Conker
said, a fierce look forming on his face. “But John Henry … he was real.”

“Really?” Ray asked.

“Sure,” Conker said. “He was my daddy.”

Ray’s eyes widened. “He was?”

Conker nodded. “I hear so many stories about him, I don’t know half of what’s true. But I know he was a hero.” He squeezed his fists tightly. “And, well, look at me, Ray. I’m big. I’m strong. But I ain’t a hero, not like my daddy.”

“You fought that bear,” Ray reminded him.

“And I was scared, too. Only did it ’cause I was worried about Si.”

Ray sat next to Conker in silence for a while, watching the shadows of clouds racing over the land. Ray’s hand clutched the lodestone through the fabric of his britches, and finally he said, “Conker, I think there’s some reason I wound up meeting you.”

“Why’s that?” Conker asked, turning his head to look down at Ray.

Ray took the lodestone from his pocket and began telling Conker about his parents and why he had left his sister to follow the lodestone’s strange pull and the mysterious dream with Buck. “But now it’s not moving anymore,” Ray said at last.

“So you reckon it led you here?” Conker asked. “Why you think it did that?”

“I don’t know,” Ray said. “My father told me it would guide me when I had a need.”

Conker clutched his knees with his huge hands, drumming his fingers as he thought. “But what need did you have?”

“That’s what I haven’t figured out yet,” Ray said.

Late in the afternoon, the
Ballyhoo
stopped outside the town of Winston. The show was not scheduled until the following afternoon, and Nel decided the stage could be set up in the morning. Seth, Redfeather, and Marisol headed into the town to get a soda at a drugstore. The rest lounged around to listen to the Everett men practicing songs in the shade of a grove of trees.

“Si,” Peg Leg Nel called from the window of his car. “I need to hasten you and Conker on an errand.”

“More supplies?” she asked, approaching his car. Conker and Ray followed.

Nel ran quickly through a list of herbs and roots, “… bindweed root, maybe some boneset or sumac, just a few leaves of fern, Devil’s shoestrings if you can find them. I suppose that’s it.”

“Can Ray come?” Conker asked.

Nel blinked several times, as if just noticing Ray standing there. “Why, of course. Educate the lad on the task of woodland pilfering. We’ll add it to his professional duties. Hurry, before night falls.”

Conker turned to smile at Ray, who returned the smile eagerly. When he smiled at Si, she only glowered.

“Come on, you grinning idiots,” she said.

Si led them from the lot next to town, where the medicine show would be held, across a field of tobacco, and into a forest of beech and elms and cedars. Long shadows crisscrossed the muggy forest, and soon they reached a creek bed bursting with full summer foliage.

“So what should I look for?” Ray asked.

Si was already kneeling to cut a small brown root from the earth with her knife. “What’s that one?” Ray asked, screwing his nose up at what seemed to be a mass of tentacles trailing from the bottom.