The Insane Train Read Free

the caboose ceiling. The old steamers had a weak power stroke on takeoff, so the engineers would back up and then throttle forward to bump her ahead. By the time the slack hit the caboose forty cars down line, a man could accelerate from zero to ten miles an hour in one second. On more than one occasion, the handrail had saved him from being propelled across the caboose like a cannonball.
    A jug of Runt Wallace’s forty-year-old shine still sat in the closet. One day, given the right occasion, he’d dip in. For now, he had enough trouble to keep him busy. Eddie didn’t need much of a reason to send another Brownie his way, and finding a job for a one-arm yard dog would be tough indeed.
    That night, after he’d polished his shoes, he hung his prosthesis over the chair and went to bed early to read a little of Bradbury’s Dark Carnival. When the coyotes tuned up out on the desert, Mixer growled.
    â€œGo to sleep,” Hook said, turning out the light. “You can’t take on the whole world. Damn dog.”
    Hook gathered up his pillow and listened to the coyotes. He didn’t know what awaited him at Baldwin Insane Asylum. But he did know that when Eddie called on an assignment, it would be neither good nor easy.

2
    Hook sat straight up. The blackness of the early morning hours filled the caboose like a still pool. No more than a sliver of moonlight cast through the cupola window and onto the floor. He’d heard something, something that had brought him out of a deep sleep. He turned his ear into the silence. Perhaps his imagination had gone wild, the foreboding that could rise up unbidden in the night hours. Perhaps Mixer had sought out the water dish, as he sometimes did, or perhaps the wind had swept in from the desert.
    He lay back and closed his eyes. Mixer’s soft snore came from the back corner of the caboose where Hook kept the throw rug. Hook wondered if he’d latched the door, taken the basic precaution against intruders. He’d been known to forget, particularly when he’d had a drink or two or had become too comfortable with his surroundings, a foolish mistake for someone well schooled in the depravity of man. Who knew better than a railroad yard dog that crime respected neither time nor place, that evil thrived on complacency and overconfidence and sought out weakness like a pack wolf?
    He turned on his side and stared into the darkness. In that moment he sensed the cool of the night air entering the caboose. He could just make out the shadow of someone standing in the doorway. His heart tripped in his ears as he searched the blackness for his sidearm. The crash of the ashtray onto the floor brought Mixer out of his slumber. His yaps resounded in the confines of the caboose, and Hook’s adrenaline rushed through him like hot wax. He groped for the kerosene lantern, nearly spilling the chimney onto the floor with the back of his hand.
    By the time he’d managed to light the lantern, Mixer’s barking had turned frantic. He stood yelping at the closed door, his ears laid back, his tail swishing to and fro. Hook grabbed his shoes and slipped them on.
    â€œSome guard dog,” he said. “Come on. He can’t be far.”
    He stepped into the cool desert air. A thumbnail moon hung low in the western sky as it made way for sunrise. Hook eased down onto the track and checked under the caboose. He’d caught many a hobo hiding under cars and had picked up more than his share of body parts because of it. Escaping from under a moving boxcar could be deceptively difficult. Even a steamer could bump forward fast enough to trap a man before he could roll out.
    He spotted something lying in the bedrock, and he bent to examine it.
    â€œLug wrench,” he said to Mixer, who waited at his side. “A goddang bo.”
    Hobos used lug wrenches to break the seals on boxcars or for a number of other things, including cracking someone’s skull. Hobos