Steampunked Read Free Page A

pocket watch and looked at it. “Less than four hours. The wife will awake and call out the Cavalry if I’m not there.”
    As Cody stood, Hickok said, “I have something for you.” He handed Cody a handful of lucifers.
    Cody smiled. “Next time we meet, friend, perhaps I will have my own.” As he stepped into the aisle he said, “I’ve enjoyed our little talk.”
    “So have I,” Hickok said. “I don’t feel any happier, but I feel less lonesome.”
    “Maybe that’s the best we can do.”
    Hickok went back to his cabin but did not try to be overly quiet. There was no need. Mary Jane, when drunk, slept like an anvil.
    He slipped out of his clothes and crawled into bed. Lay there feeling the warmth of his wife’s shoulder and hip; smelling the alcoholic aroma of her breath. He could remember a time when they could not crawl into bed together without touching and expressing their love. Now he did not want to touch her and he did not want to be touched by her. He could not remember the last time she had bothered to tell him she loved him, and he could not remember the last time he had said it and it was not partly a lie.
    Earlier, before dinner, the old good times had been recalled and for a few moments he adored her. Now he lay beside her feeling anger. Anger because she would not try. Or could not try. Anger because he was always the one to try, the one to apologize, even when he felt he was not wrong. Trains on a different track going opposite directions, passing fast in the night, going nowhere really. That was them.
    Closing his eyes he fell asleep instantly and dreamed of the blonde lovely in blue and white calico with a thick, black Japanese belt. He dreamed of her without the calico, lying here beside him white-skinned and soft and passionate and all the things his wife was not.
    And when the dream ended, so did his sleep. He got up and dressed and went out to the parlor car. It was empty and dark. He sat and smoked a cigarette. When that was through he opened a window, felt and smelled the wind. It was a fine night. A lover’s night.
    Then he sensed the train was slowing.
    Cherrywood already?
    No, it was still too early for that. What gave here?
    In the car down from the one in which he sat, a lamp was suddenly lit, and there appeared beside it the chiseled face of the Cherokee porter. Behind him, bags against their legs, were three people: the matronly lady, the boy who loved trains and the beautiful blonde woman.
    The train continued to slow.
    By God, he thought, they are getting off.
    Hickok got out his little, crumpled train schedule and pressed it out on his knee. He struck a lucifer and held it down behind the seat so that he could read. After that he got out his pocket watch and held it next to the flame. Two-fifteen. The time on his watch and that on the schedule matched. This was a scheduled stop-the little town and fort outside of Cherrywood. He had been right in daydreaming. The girl was going here.
    Hickok pushed the schedule into his pocket and dropped the dead match on the floor. Even from where he sat, he could see the blonde girl. As always, she was smiling. The porter was enjoying the smile and he was giving her one back.
    The train began to stop.
    For a moment, Hickok imagined that he too were getting off here and that the blonde woman was his sweetheart. Or better yet, would be. They would meet in the railway station and strike up some talk and she would be one of those new modern women who did not mind a man buying her a drink in public. But she would not be like his wife. She would drink for taste and not effect.
    They would fall instantly in love, and on occasion they would walk in the moonlight down by these tracks, stand beneath the cherry trees and watch the trains run by. And afterwards they would lie down beneath the trees and make love with shadows and starlight as their canopy. When it was over, and they were tired of satisfaction, they would walk arm in arm back towards the