Mr. Shivers (11 page)

On the night before their train left they resolved to get as much rest as they could. As sunset faded into evening the temperature
began to drop. Fires were started here and there, people walking from campsite to campsite carrying envoys of burning brush.
The air filled with the acidic haze of woodsmoke and people clapped rags and blankets around their shoulders until they resembled
wandering mounds of offal, passing one another in the smoky night.

Connelly left Pike and the others and ventured out until the air was clear. He turned and looked back and saw the valley’s
face dotted with dancing sparks, a small sea of lonely light clutching the curve of the land. He listened to the coughs and
the shouts, watched vague shadows toil around the shacks. It was a city of refugees, but refuge from what? He could think
of no answer except the world itself.

He took his canteen from his pocket and sipped it to cool his burning throat. As he did a voice below croaked, “What you drinking?”

He started and looked around for the speaker. A man was lying on the ground not more than ten feet from him, hands behind
his head.

“Just water,” said Connelly.

The man scoffed. “Ain’t worth it. I can’t sleep a wink in a Hoover if I don’t have some liquor in my guts. I need to marinade
my head for a whiles before I can shut my eyes. You come to get away from the smoke?”

“Yeah.”

“Cold nights does that. Nothing but green wood around.” He sat up and grinned at Connelly. His eyes were red as plums and
fine blossoms of burst veins circled his nose and cheeks. Connelly saw he had lost a hand and one of his feet was mangled
beyond recognition. The cripple stuck out his good hand and said, “Name’s Korsher. I’d shake with the other but I don’t know
where it is.”

Connelly shook his hand.

“Where you headed?” the man asked.

“New Mexico,” said Connelly.

“Hell. Who isn’t? That or California, it seems.”

“You going anywhere?”

“Son, I do my best to go nowhere at all at top speed. And that’s what I’m doing right now.”

Connelly took a step closer. “How did you…”

“Lose my hand?”

“Well. Yeah.”

“Got et up by a train. Broked my foot too. It was something else.”

“I bet.”

“It was a long time ago.”

“How do you get around?” Connelly asked.

“Slowly. But this helps,” he said, and tapped a length of ash tree he had fashioned into a crutch. “I don’t mind it so much.
What’s your name?”

“Connelly.”

“Hm. Here. Sit you on down next to me.”

Connelly did. Korsher absentmindedly reached into his pocket and took out a small ceramic flask, then offered it to Connelly.

“Take you a sip of that,” he said.

Connelly opened it and smelled it first. It reeked enough to make his eyes water. Wood alcohol, perhaps. He pretended to take
a sip and coughed.

“That’ll put a lot more kick in you than water,” said Korsher, and he laughed drunkenly. “Makes the ground a lot softer. Makes
the night quieter and thinking easier.”

“I’ll say,” Connelly said, and handed it back.

Korsher lay back down and looked at the sky. He unstoppered his flask, sipped and sighed, breath whistling between his teeth.
“Oh, well. It’s nice to get out from the Hoover. This is all right, ain’t it?”

“I guess.”

“You guess? That all?”

Connelly shrugged.

“No. No, I think I’m doing just fine now,” said Korsher. “You got to say that every once in a while. I mean, sure, I’m hungry
and I don’t know where the hell I am, but I mean, just look,” he said, and waved above.

Connelly looked. The moon sat high in the sky, a luminescent and muddy yellow. Webs of stars stretched out behind it, falling
in a veil to the faint line of the earth.

“That’s free right there,” said Korsher. “I couldn’t see any such thing in the city. Too much light.”

“Yeah.”

They sat in silence listening to the cicadas and crickets singing somewhere in the brush. Korsher smacked his lips and said,
“My daddy once said the moon was a bone.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah. Looks kind of like a bone, don’t it?”

“I suppose. I don’t know what kind of bone, though.”

“Hell, I don’t either, I’m no kind of doctor. My pa said it was the bone of whoever made this here earth. Said he chopped
and beat stone all day, just working away, and when he was done he just plumb dropped dead.”

“How’d it get out there, then?”

“Devil,” said Korsher simply.

“The devil?”

“Yeah. Devil came on by, picked it up, all laughing, and gave it a toss. Now it’s stuck out there for all to see.” He took
a drink from his flask again and made a face, then drank again. “Like a kid throwing rocks at an empty house, yes sir. You
believe in the devil?”

“I don’t know. Maybe.”

“I do. I certainly do. My daddy talked about him all the time. You couldn’t tangle with such a thing, not by a long shot.
He said the world was littered with bones of men who’d try and get the devil. Try and sneak up on him and kill him, you know?
But the devil was too smart for them. He’d act all innocent and lead them into a trap. Wind up getting them instead. Said
it’d been going on since forever.”

“Oh. That’s something.”

“He said when God was asleep the devil come down here and rearranged things,” slurred Korsher. “Then God went on back and
breathed a spirit into man and set us loose, not knowing any better. Meant to give us the world but gave us hardship instead,
devil just cackling away. You believe that?”

“I could.”

Korsher was quiet for a while. Then he said, “You know what?”

“No. What?”

“I believe I may have saw him the other night.”

“Seen who?”

“The devil.”

Connelly waited. Then he said, “You did?”

“Yeah,” he said softly. “I think I did.”

“What makes you say that?”

“ ’Cause he looked just like my daddy said he would.”

“What did your daddy say?”

“Said he was a great, tall man in a great black cloak. So tall he could walk through a cornfield and his knuckles wouldn’t
scrape a single ear. Said he had eyes like stars, and that every inch of him was scarred from where the angels whipped him
raw.”

Connelly sat forward. “What?”

“Hm?”

“What did you say? Just now? About the scars?”

“Oh. I said the devil was scarred from where the angels had whupped him.”

“Wh-what was he doing?”

“When? Last night?”

“Yeah.”

“Just… I don’t know, just walking by. I saw him pass through the town and go down into the yard. I thought I had gone nuts.
Nearly… Well, I nearly pissed myself. People got out of his way like Moses and the sea. It was like just him being there made
them want to run. I couldn’t get away,” he said softly. “Because of my leg. So I sat and he passed by just inches away and
I looked into his face and I wished I never had. Not ever. I didn’t want to sleep in the camp after that. He’d know where
I was, see, and come and get me.”

Connelly’s mind reeled. He struggled to control it. “And before that? The part about… about all those men who’d chased him?”

“What about it?”

“What did you say happened to them?”

Korsher looked at him. “He killed every single one of them,” he said. “Tricked them. My father said it’d been going on since
before men could speak.”

Connelly jumped to his feet. “You stay there,” he said. “You just stay right there, you hear?”

“Well, sure, where the hell else am I gonna go?”

Connelly sprinted down to the camp, dodged between shanties and broken-down cars. He found Pike and the others crouched in
the shadow of a tent. He grabbed Pike and said, “Come with me.”

“What? Why?” said Pike.

“Just come on.”

“Well, hell,” said Monk, and stood.

“N-No,” said Connelly. “Just Pike. I just want him to hear this. Just at first.”

“Why?” said Monk, suspicious.

“I don’t… I don’t know. I just want to see what someone else thinks.”

Connelly led Pike out to where Korsher lay. The cripple sat up again and said, “Who’s that?”

“Tell him what you told me,” said Connelly.

“Why should I?”

“Just shut up and tell him what you said.”

Korsher frowned but went through it again, stumbling through his story. He was deep in a drunken stupor now and Connelly had
to prod him along. Pike watched the cripple with flat eyes and did not speak. When Korsher finished Pike was quiet for a long
time and said, “That’s quite an interesting story, Mr. Korsher. I thank you for telling it to me.”

“Why the hell are you folks so fired up over this anyway?” said Korsher. “It upsets a fella, you know.” He lay back and drank
more.

“My colleague here is somewhat… superstitious. I’m sorry if he upset you.”

“Didn’t upset shit. Just… just crazy is all.”

“Yes, well. Good night, Mr. Korsher,” said Pike, and tipped his hat. “Stay safe.”

Korsher muttered something and Pike began to walk away. Connelly followed.

“Well?” Connelly said.

Pike kept moving and did not turn.

“Well?” said Connelly again, and he reached out and grabbed Pike’s shoulder.

Pike spun around, angry. “Well, what?”

“Well, what do you make of that?”

“What do I make of it? What do I make of it? You mean, what do I make of a… a drunken cripple so besotted with moonshine he
can barely sit up? What do I make of a bunch of silly ghost stories his father used to tell him to scare him? What do I make of that, is that what you’re asking?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I’m asking you that.”

“I think it’s nothing. I think you dragged me out here to listen to idiocy.” He began walking away.

“But what if it’s real,” said Connelly quietly.

Pike stopped. Then he turned and said, “Are you being serious with me, Mr. Connelly? You actually think this man may be the…
what, the devil?”

Connelly shrugged.

“You know there’s ghost stories about him. You know that and you didn’t believe them. Just stories.”

“Not like this. Not like what’s going on now. He said other men had chased the scarred man. Said he’d trapped them. Killed
them.”

“And? Could it be that he spread those stories himself, fearing for his life? Could it be just mere chance? You caught the
stink of that man, you know he could barely see you, let alone Shivers.”

“This has happened before,” said Connelly. “It’s been going on since forever, he said.”

“You don’t know that.”

“But what if it has?”

“But what? Would that change anything?”

Connelly hesitated. “It might.”

“No. It wouldn’t. We would still be doing the same. And besides… Even if it has, Lottie says the shiver-man is afraid of you,” said Pike, his eyes shining. “Is that so?”

Connelly looked away.

“Yes,” said Pike. “So if it’s happened before then things are different this time. Oh, yes. But I doubt the whole thing. I
doubt it very much.” He snorted and spat. “This is child’s foolishness. We have business to do. Come back to the camp and
rest.”

Pike walked back toward the little sea of fires. Connelly watched him, then looked up at the moon. After a few minutes he
left.

They awoke on the morning of their departure and traded for scraps among the other freight rats. They held stilted conversations
over bogwater ditches and flaming oil cans and as the sun reached the top of the sky they moved out to where the train would
pass through. They hid in the brush and readied their grips and watched for the numbers on the engines. Theirs was the second.
They bolted out, sprinting through the grit and smoke, and managed to climb up onto one of the last few cars. They walked
down its edge like tightrope walkers, jimmied open an empty grain car, then stowed themselves away in the musty dark.

They stayed as quiet as they could. Roonie said softly, “I once heard of a few ’bos that got caught in an empty grain car.
The railroad man found out about it and filled it with grain anyways, laughing. They drowned in it.”

“I heard the same damn thing, only it was a cattle car,” said Hammond. “They loaded the cattle in and the hobos were crushed.
It’s crap. No one does that. Not really.”

“No?” said Roonie.

“No. If they want anything they want your money. Not your blood.”

“The train is still a dangerous mistress,” said Pike.

Roosevelt grinned. “All mistresses is dangerous. ’Specially when they find out they’re just mistresses and not the main event.”

Pike shook his head, bemoaning the state of the world.

Monk took out a pack of cards. They took turns playing gin rummy and five-card draw for corn kernels they found. Connelly
watched and began to nod in sleep in his corner, lulled by the throb of the wheels. As he drifted off he heard a distant thump
and snapped awake.

He held a hand up for silence. Roonie began to speak, but Lottie grabbed him. Connelly pointed up above them, then cupped
his ear. They listened carefully.

Footfalls. Someone was walking over the car before them. Several people, from the sound of it.

Then they heard voices, just barely audible over the sound of the wheels and the wind.

“… not seen anything yet,” said one voice.

“We will.”

“We been over most of this train careful as fuck all. How are you so sure?”

“He said they’d be here. I believe him.”

“And how is he so sure?”

“What? Are you doubting him? Is that it?”

“N-No,” said the voice, frightened. “I’m just wonderin’…”

“Well, wonderin’ is a bad idea with him.”

“-I-I know. But still…”

“Listen, if they’re following him there’s only one engine they’d take, that’s why, and it’s this engine,” said the other voice. “So shut up and do your job. Come on. Help me over this gap.”

Scuffling sounds from the corner of the roof. The boards above shuddered and seemed to bend, sending spirals of dust down
among them. There were grunts, and then the weight increased.

“Here, is this one empty or full?” said the voice.