Death Kit (3 page)

Thus far, the girl had refused to confirm anything. Perhaps she is embarrassed or angry. Or was she inured to her aunt's volubility? The aunt, as she babbled on, kept touching the girl's cheek, shoulder, and forearm in a proprietary dull way. Diddy wished he could tie up the aunt's hands. But didn't feel like silencing her, blocking off the stream of information. Since the events of a month ago, he had more patience with people addicted to recounting their illnesses and operations. No, not only that. Subjugated to some bolder desire he'd not yet acknowledged to himself, he floated down the old woman's river of discourse. Aimed his own words at the aunt, kept his eyes on the sightless girl. A blind person couldn't see Diddy, emaciated from his abortive closure with death and the hospital regimen. But the girl could talk, if she would; and Diddy felt sure it would be, unlike her aunt's talk, clean and unlittered. Diddy wanted to touch her, too.

Then, suddenly, the day failed. So did our conversation. Diddy remembered this tunnel, approximately two hours out of the city. But why didn't the lights in the compartment and the corridor go on? No? All right then. From the instant the compartment went dark, no one spoke. We wanted to wait, to be in silence as well as darkness. Then, after an endurable pause, resume our desultory conversations on the far side of the tunnel, at the exact point at which they'd broken off. The train charged through the darkness, it seemed to go faster, dangerously fast, its motion like a horizontal fall. But, just about when, according to Diddy's memory, we should have thrust the tunnel behind us, the train convulsed, shrieked, and came to a stop. Sighs, scrambling hands, exclamations. Anyone hurt? Instantly we all began to talk. If darkness had silenced us, darkness minus motion loosened our tongues. New situation, new behavior. Well, not
so
new. We weren't worried. Trains are reliable. Diddy consulted the luminous dial of his watch. We had been in the tunnel at least seven minutes. Then we saw a light jogging along the corridor, heard the neighboring compartment's door rattle open. A deep voice spoke briefly, words we couldn't make out. When the door was slammed shut, Diddy braces himself for a nearer, harsher sound. Officialdom calling has its distinctive noises and movements. And Diddy was something of an experienced traveler. What was happening (now) was just like a border control in funny old Europe, but this is a big country, too big; we weren't at a border, but in the middle of a tunnel. Sure enough, our compartment door was rolled back. A flashlight with a man vaguely outlined behind it on the threshold. “Apologies from the chief engineer, ladies and gentlemen.”

“Is anything wrong?” asked the stamp dealer. When, obviously, something is.

“Young man, why aren't you in your caboose or wherever you're supposed to be, getting the train started?” said the aunt.

“I'm not the chief engineer, lady,” said the man. A complacent toad. “I'm just bringing the apologies. Take 'em or leave 'em.”

“What seems to be the difficulty?” asked the priest.

“We've had to make a stop in the tunnel.”

“That we can see for ourselves!” said the aunt tartly.

The flashlight wobbled, then focused on the woman's face. “Lady, will you let me finish?” She gasped and threw up her arm; the light drooped. “We've had to stop because the track isn't clear. There's, uh, something in the way ahead.”

“Is the track being repaired?” asks Diddy.

“No record of any work going on in this tunnel that we know of.”

“I never heard of anything so stupid,” said the woman. “Hester, do you hear?” Could she be deaf, too? Diddy wondered.

“Relax, lady. We'll get the train going.”

“Crash right through,” said the girl softly. Not deaf. Just quiet.

“Lovey, don't get upset. You see, young man, there's a sick person here.”

“I'm not sick,” said the girl. “I was only joking.”

“What next?” said Diddy.

“Well,” said the conductor or whoever he was, “as soon as they figure out whether this is the middle of the tunnel or close to the end … I mean, because it may be that we're in the wrong tunnel.…”

“Wrong tunnel!” exclaimed Diddy.

“But there's no doubt that the tunnel is blocked,” concluded the conductor.

“Couldn't the right tunnel be blocked?” asked the priest.

“Look, folks, don't give me a hard time, will you? I'm just passing on what I've been told to say, and that is, that right now the chief engineer and the head conductor are in conference—”

“Conference!” muttered the woman.

“Either they'll be able to remove the obstruction, which might not be all that solid, you know, just some prank. Or they'll back the train out.”

Diddy could hear the stamp dealer's irregular, heavy breathing—indication, even before the man spoke (now), of his alarm. “What you're telling us is that we're in big trouble. Whether we just sit here, or try to plow through, or back out of the tunnel, we're likely to be rammed from the rear by the next train on this route.”

More alarmed than Diddy? At this point, yes. Diddy was slow to panic. That's what he used his mind for. Good mind. Diddy remembered the stamp dealer gazing into his handkerchief. A hypochondriac, probably. Certainly the worrying type. And that collecting of little paper trophies. Obsessional, too.

“When's the next train due on this route?” asked Diddy, trying to be helpful. His shoulders ache with tension.

“Not for a long time. Close to an hour,” replied the conductor, his voice dimming. He was backing off (now), his hand beginning to close the compartment door.

“Are you telling us the truth, young man?” asked the aunt.

“I'll be back soon,” said the conductor. Slam. We heard the door of the compartment to our left roll open. People are cattle, thought Diddy. Why isn't anyone screaming? Or weeping or praying? Why, instead, so eager to believe everything's going to be all right?

We sat in silence, eavesdropping on the unintelligible discourse seeping through the partition behind Diddy and the stamp dealer. The same conversation? Diddy wondered if the occupants of that compartment were accepting trustfully the conductor's sloppy explanation. Or if, daring to feel alarm, they were pressing him with anxious questions. The stamp dealer struck a match. How shadowy and grim we all looked. The man already holds the cigarette between his lips. Diddy anticipated, then failed to detect, any trembling of the flame as it approached the man's jaw.

“I suppose no one has a flashlight,” said the soft-voiced priest.

“I have a pencil flashlight.” Diddy the Helpful. “If that's any use.”

“Hardly,” said the aunt, sulking.

Staring at the disembodied red tip of the stamp dealer's cigarette, Diddy was starting to come undone. The passably well-knit empire of his body yielding to secession and rebelliousness. His gut was a suitcase full of bricks, his chest a keg of eels. The blood thundered in his ears; whitish lines, like wilted lightning, went zigzagging from left to right. The door of the neighboring compartment slammed shut. Then a dim light went on in the corridor, probably an electric hand lamp, reserved for emergencies, lit by the evasive messenger before he passed into the car behind. Is this an emergency? At least the darkness wasn't total (now).

“How do you like them apples!” exclaimed the stamp dealer.

None of us seemed prepared to answer him.

“This is a hell of a mess!” he added. The stamp dealer sounded angry.

Diddy panicking (now). While others remain calm. Unbidden, the thought of his death settles like a flat stone on his chest.

“Do you think we're in real danger?” Diddy wondered to whom the girl's question was addressed. And whether, since she couldn't see anyway, she found the situation as oppressive as the others did.

“No,” said the priest.

“No, darling,” said the aunt.

Death, thought Diddy, is like a lithographer's stone. One stone, cool and smooth to the touch, can print many deaths, virtually identical except to the expert eye. One lightly inscribed stone can be used, reused indefinitely.

“I tell you, this is the last time I ride
this
railroad,” said the stamp dealer. He cleared his throat.

Diddy, sliding down in his seat, trying to lift the stone off his chest. He has to move. “Look,” he said, “I want to see what's going on. Maybe I can find someone with more information.”

“Good,” said the woman. Good Diddy.

What Diddy felt (now) could only be described as panic.

He got up and became dizzy, had to reach for the baggage rack and hang on in order to bypass pairs of dark shoes and the old woman's parcels and the cheap briefcase at the stamp dealer's feet without falling. Rolled the door back, stepped out. The corridor window as opaque and uninformative as the window in the compartment. Loosening his collar, he turned right and began to walk along the corridor, away from the emergency lantern. He tried to avert his glance from the dim shapes that slumped, tilted, leaned toward one another in each of the compartments. Why does everyone talk so softly? In one compartment a baby was crying. Ahead was the only other person who, like him, had fled to the corridor—a smoking person, Diddy could see at a distance; a fat woman wearing slacks, as he came closer. Turning sideways to pass her, Diddy drew in his chest, mouthed “Excuse me.”

“Say, do you know the time?”

“Five-nineteen,” said Diddy, more audibly. Jaw tightening, feeling the tentacles of her anxiety around his ankles. She seemed about to touch him.

“Boy, I hope they know what they're doing.”

“So do I.” Diddy moving on. No victim, he.

“Hey, wait a minute! Please!”

“I'm going to find out.” If Diddy stopped, turned around, he'd feel sorry for her, have to carry her as well as the stone. Goody Did had given himself a different task, less chivalrous. But, hopefully, more useful.

When Diddy reaches the end of the car, he has a choice.

Either open the heavy door and pass over the coupling into the next car, also feebly lit by an electric hand lamp, also inhabited by quiet people docilely keeping to their travel cells—a car exactly like our own, except that no one is stationed in the corridor.

Or get off the train altogether, go exploring, find the obstruction and see, with his own eyes, what's being done about it. What if the emergency is already over? Even though the conductor hasn't come back with the good news. The train personnel just returning to their posts, the engineer about to pull the switch that starts up the Privateer?

Pauses indecisively. No, don't be afraid. Even if the train should get underway while he is outside, surely it would start up slowly. Allowing time to grab hold and clamber aboard. Reason expounded, Diddy was convinced. He wrenches open the exit door at the end of our car, the metal steps unfold.

He had left the train.

The tunnel is cool but humid, thick with the smell of oil and damp rock. At the first stroke of air, Diddy shivers. But at least he has room to move about in. Plunges his hands into the wet air, then cautiously extends one arm; the wall of the tunnel lies beyond his reach. How wide is it? He snaps on his pencil flashlight and discovers the wall still some ten feet away. The tunnel has two wide-gauge tracks; Diddy steps onto the empty track. Turning right. Using the dim light to illuminate a small spot ahead of his softly polished shoes, starts toward the front of the train. Tired, terribly tired. Keep going. No time to give in to fatigue. For a while, he hears only the slurred sound of his own steps on the firm tunnel ground. But after passing half a dozen cars, begins to hear something else: hard, evenly spaced sounds like the blows of an ax. It was toward that sound that Diddy was heading.

“Hey there!” he calls out.

Sounds in the tunnel are slightly deadened. An echo effect.

Though he's keeping to the center of the vacant track, Diddy senses that he is drifting to the right. Halts his march. He probes at the space between two coaches with his small light; discovers that the forward coach lies at a slight angle to the one behind. The same for the next space between two coaches. And the next. So the track isn't straight, the tunnel itself is curved; which means that the train's heavy body, stalled, lay arched within the tunnel's sheath, bent systematically at each of its iron joints. Does this make matters more difficult? The emergency more grave? As Diddy follows the curving track, the sounds become louder and he sees a source of light. Continuing. The tunnel brightens.

Destination achieved. Panting, Diddy stands alongside the vast greasy forward wheel of the engine. Just ahead of the train is a swarthy man wearing cleated boots, denim overalls, undershirt. And a light strapped to his brow, like a doctor or miner; which supplements the stronger lighting furnished by a row of five bulbs stuck in a short board and suspended from an iron hook in the tunnel wall. The man is indeed wielding an ax, slamming it into a barrier about four feet high that straddles the track. A kind of wall made of heavy boards nailed together. Braced by or anchored to several crossties set diagonally against the wall.

“Jesus, who the hell put that up?” Diddy the Companionable. Relieved. The barrier has a makeshift look. And it was wood, not stone.

The man stoops. Picks up another tool, a sledgehammer, from a large wooden box lying on the ground.

One of the ties is under attack. The tie jumps as the man hits it with the sledgehammer. Gradually it's coming loose. Strange sonorities. Then the man lays down the hammer, pulls a crowbar from the box of tools, and begins a different sound, continuous and higher pitched. “How's it coming?” Diddy asks. Appears to be going well. One by one, the thick diagonal supports are yielding.

The workman pauses. Perhaps he hasn't heard Diddy. A change of pace. Using the massive hammer (now), he's attacking the wall itself, sending up a haze of dust. Clearly the shuddering barrier isn't impregnable.