Lily's Story (94 page)

A few minutes after they had
left the train seemingly deserted, the doodle-bug from Stratford
arrived and debouched a handful of well-chilled passengers (the
heating apparatus, clogged with snow and striations of ice, gave up
in Ailsa Craig). One of these, distinguished in black, did not
enter the faint warmth of the waiting-room, with its windows
steamed tight, but instead turned and, pausing to confirm his
anonymity, slipped through the snow towards the mystery locomotive,
panting inexplicably on its lonely siding. The male figure – at
ease anywhere, even in a blizzard as if he might at any second
command it to cease at his convenience – glanced up at the deserted
engine-cab, nodded with satisfaction, then walked casually down
past the three box-cars to the caboose, whose single lamp flickered
bravely outward. Vice-President Margison Dilworth hopped nimbly
aboard, shutting the caboose door deliberately behind him,
disdainful of the privy councillor’s teeth-chattering ‘hello’, and
apparently unmindful that his boot-prints were already
half-obliterated by the still-falling snow.

A second pair of prints,
suffering a like fate, were fast approaching along the tracks from
the north where they curved and ran down Front Street towards the
outskirts of Point Edward.

2

B
y six o’clock the
snow was deep enough to impede all walking. So Lucien and Cora
decided to celebrate the first week’s anniversary of their marriage
in the dining room of the St. Clair. After a light supper they
began toasting one another (and several recruits from nearby
tables) with champagne and a heartiness only partially forced.
There was in Lucien’s eye a manic twinkle that had taken spark
sometime before his arrival home early in the afternoon, and that
was not in the least assuaged by their fiery coupling nor its amber
aftermath, that prospered with each tumbler of elixir he lavished
upon it with the abandon of a dispossessed leprechaun.

“
Tonight,” he
said, “I’m gonna take you on that ride I been
promisin’.”

“
In this?” she
said lightly, scanning his eyes for some sign of what the fire in
them was shielding with its glee-glint.

“
Snow never
stopped a train,” he said.

When they stepped outside, Cora
could just discern the outlines of a horse-and-cutter. Lucien
silenced the muttering of the driver with a silver dollar, swept
his beloved onto the snowy seat, and proclaimed: “To the station,
my good fellow. And hurry. We’ve got a train to catch!”

Cora snuggled against
him. H is heart was drumming through layers of wool. The sound of
the horse’s hooves never reached them. It was hard to believe that
somewhere behind the muffling veil around them there was a night
full of darkness punctured by stars. No lights blinked at their
passing along Front to Cromwell. The driver closed his eyes, sagged
forward, and gave up the reins. Only the instinct of beasts brought
them at last before the looming shadow of the former Great Western
depot.

The waiting-room was deserted,
its gas lamps blazing foolishly. Brushing the snow from his coat,
Lucien said, “You wait here. Scrubby Parsons said we could hop on
his way-freight down to the Point. About seven o’clock. I’ll see if
he’s in the bunkhouse.”

Cora spotted Big Meg in the
doorway of the Ladies, and pulled her scarf further up across her
face. She felt a twinge of shame. Meg didn’t see her. “It’ll be
just an hour’s run to the Point an’ back,” Lucien had explained,
“but you’ll get the feel of it. There’s nothin’ on this earth like
it.”

His hand touched her shoulder.
“Can’t find him anywheres. One of the boys thinks the run might’ve
been cancelled.” She saw in his face the deep disappointment, the
souring of the champagne’s sheen, and beneath it the germ of
something black and combustible. “I’ll just check the back sidings.
They may be out there waitin’ for us.”

“
I’ll come
with you,” Cora said.

“
Okay, but
wait on the platform,” he said quickly. “You can’t tell a tie from
a T-bar out there.”

She followed him outside and
stood in the passenger area beside the main-line as Lucien headed
across the half-acre of tracks normally visible to the south-east.
Within seconds he was gone. The snow beat against her face like the
frayed wings of winter-sparrows. She shivered but was not cold.

Lucien reappeared, flushed. “I
found it,” he puffed. “Six tracks over behind the car-man’s shed.
She’s primed an’ ready to go.”

Cora hesitated, her head tilted
to one side. She seemed to be listening for some sound in the mute
threshing about her – a warning perhaps, an all-clear, a starter’s
gun – like a robin waiting for the ground to heave with the worm’s
appetite.

“
Come on,” he
said, no longer able to mask the desperation behind his
excitement.

Above them the clock hanging
over the platform, if it had been unobscured, would have read ‘five
minutes to seven’.

Hand in hand they crossed the
tracks they could not see.

T
he locomotive stood
rigid in its berth, huffing and fitfully sighing to itself. The
snow sizzled on its hot metal and, dripping downward, froze
instantly into stalactites – which lent an illusion of immobility,
of rootedness, of fossilized behemoth. The great gulping
steam-chambers, hissing inside it, said otherwise. Lucien pulled
her into the cab with a gentleman’s grace and slid the flap closed
behind them. They were alone.

“
Where’s
Scrubby? An’ the crew?”

His broad shoulders were turned
towards the dials and levers in front of him. “Sleepin’ it off in
the caboose, I reckon. We’ll do them a big favour, takin’ it down
there on our own.”

Any response she may have been
contemplating was cut short by the shriek of the steam-whistle –
two short blasts, repeated. “She’s steamed up an’ ready to go,” he
shouted back. “All set?” He hopped over to a leather bench on the
right, slid open the window, leaned out and with his left hand
grasped a lever and slowly eased it towards him.

Everything metallic around them
shivered, creaked, strained against gravity. The creature lurched,
skidded, lurched again. A tremor of motion hummed through their
bones and shook its way back through the coal-tender, box-cars and
caboose. Safe in this cab, surrounded by steel, Cora could sense
the power of the released steam as it crashed into the cylinders
like stunted thunder, and poured its dissipating energies into the
pleasures of motion and speed. Lucien pointed to the stoker’s seat
under the left-hand window. She looked out in time to see several
blotched shadows below her. They appeared to be waving. She waved
back.

I
got her up to thirty,” he called
across, peering at a smoky gauge an inch beneath his nose. “She was
well-primed.”

The only light was cast by two
fixed lamps above the benches that shivered and threatened to jump
ship with every jerk and skid of the locomotive over the drifted,
erratic roadbed. The slitted firebox, near Cora’s side, glowed with
radiant, welcoming heat, but cast over wall and ceiling scraps of
fretting shadow that reminded her of moths caught in a coal-oil
lamp.

“
Feels like
we’re curvin’ to the left,” she said. “Shouldn’t we have veered
right by now?”

He slipped open his
window a little ways, pushing his face into a white flail. “Yup, we
would’ve,” he said, “if we was goin’ towards Point
Edward.”

Cora looked out her side. She
was certain she could see a ragged horizon line bouncing just
beyond the storm’s fury. “I see the bush,” she said. “We’re headin’
for London!”

“
We were, old
sweetheart, until this very second!” As he spoke the cab jumped
sideways, spilling Cora onto the stippled steel floor and pinning
Lucien to his perch. The screech of iron rebelling against iron
pierced the ear, stunning them both. Then as each of three box-cars
and the caboose met the crossover switch behind them, they were
struck again. The whole train tilted wildly to the right, yearning
to roll over into the battened ditches beside it.

Lucien’s powerful throttle-hand
was under her. He helped her back to her bench, mouthing
endearments and apologies, then starting to laugh uncontrollably.
Without the least notion why, she joined him. Whatever direction
the beast had chosen, it seemed perfectly content to travel on its
own. Lucien’s lips closed her eyes. After a time, he drew back.
They could hear again: the steady, imperturbable cadence of Pegasus
en route to anywhere.

“I
don’t know why we got turned east,”
he said. “We hit the main-line just past the bunkhouse. I figured
we’d spend the night in London, but somebody left ‘number-three
switch north’ where it was an’ now we’re aimed up the spur-line
that don’t end till Woodston. Up in Huron County.”

“
Are they
expectin’ us?”

“
Ain’t got
much of a choice!” He was laughing and trying to holler over from
his side where he was scrutinizing the steam-gauges. “There’s
nothin’ between us an’ them an’ we sure ain’t gonna park out here
tonight. In fact, we got a straight run in there. Oughta make it in
about forty-five minutes.”

“
I know
someone in Woodston,” Cora said. “I’m sure she’d let us stay
overnight.”

Lucien didn’t
hear her. He had his window wide open. The blizzard poured into the
cab and spent itself in miniature frenzies. “Hang on, sweetheart!
Woodston, here we come, and if you don’t like it, we’ll shove
somethin’ hot up your ante room!” He pushed his head outside and
wailed: “
Ya-hoooo!
”

The whistle skirled in unison
with the engineer’s taunt. Cora was astonished to find the cord in
her own grasp.

“S
he’s losin’
pressure! You’ll have to take over while I stoke her.” He motioned
Cora over to him. Carefully he took her hand and placed it on the
throttle beside his. Then he eased away. “Hold her steady an’ keep
an eye on the pressure gauge,” he said, starting to strip off his
coat.

Cora felt the lever seize her
hand. It throbbed in her grip and she felt simultaneously through
it the monumental trembling of the whole apparatus – furnace,
boiler, cylinders, pistons, driver-wheels, the cold ignition of
metal on metal, its hair-trigger touch.

As Lucien flipped open the
firebox door, a jet of flame shot across the cab, scalding the
walls. He was bare to the waist. His torso gleamed with sweat and
the wash of infra-red. She saw the crevasses between muscle and
muscle, tendon and bone, as he leaned back towards the opened
shute, scooped up a huge shovelful of coals as nimbly as if they
were beans on a spoon, swivelled around, and in unbroken arc of
motion and strength hurled them into the furnace. At first his pace
was slow and methodically beautiful; soon it accelerated, gaining
momentum and urgency. The firebox roared, then howled, then frothed
into a white, wordless delirium. The stoker’s motions became
blurred, no one part distinguishable from another. Suddenly the
motion ceased and the stoker leaped sideways, kicked the door shut,
and punched a knob just below the pressure gauge. A cloud of steam
burst from each of the creature’s nostrils. They heard its
death-scream and the hail of melted snow and ice crystals flung
against the windows.

“
Can’t have
her blowin’ on us, can we?” His cheeks were as scarlet as a berry
harrowed in Hades, his grin was as wide as Beelzebub’s.
“
Open her up! Let’s make her
fly!
”

Cora pulled back on the
throttle. All the needles on all the gauges flinched.

“
Use these,”
Lucien shouted.

She slipped on the goggles,
slid open her window and peered out, not letting go of the
throttle, the microscopic value that somehow enflamed the steaming
heartstrokes of this leviathan-on-a-toot. She had to see what her
lover saw, what he felt, what he could forget to remember. She
peered ahead.

The storm had tapered off
to intermittent squalls. At this moment, between sieges, she was
able to see the glint of the piston-levers, the patina of exertion
along the bevelled boiler plates, the thrust of the stack with its
charred smoke blanched and flattened by the wind, the head-lamp
pinpointing a thousand discrete, induplicate snowflakes for the
quarter-second it took them to self-destruct and be replaced. She
could see no sign of the track. Somewhere below and beyond must be
a meridian, however thin or obscure, guiding them magnetically
across a landscape blown featureless by the blizzard and past the
reach of star or sextant.

Lucien was at her side. His
warmth enveloped her. She lay her cheek beside his along the ledge.
She was aware of her eyes closing with his. She held him holding
her. They took their breath together. Wherever they were pointed
became their destination. In them the snow dazzled, deepened,
blossomed with crystal flowers untouched by grief. Without moving,
with not a whisper of expended passion, hurtling at
seventy-miles-an-hour through a blinding snowstorm in an iron box
alternately freezing and searing, dumb-founded by cacophony and
inviolate silence – Lucien and Cora made patient, handwritten,
memorial love.

L
ucien was talking.
She had screamed a tacit, unending
no
, he had frozen his
lips with her kiss, she had yanked the throttle-lever as far back
as it could go until the struts and bolts of the beast rattled like
coffin-bones in an earthquake. But no ground can hold a voice whose
words must be spoken.