Quartet for the End of Time (30 page)

Douglas stood there shaking his head, but he couldn't reply now because if he opened his mouth he would cry. So he kept his mouth shut. But when the thin man looked at him square again he was still shaking his head.

Well, I don't know what else yer gonna do, the thin man said, and he
shook his head, too. For a while they stood there like that, side by side, both of them shaking their heads.

There ain't no work anywheres else.

The thin man took off his cap then and rubbed the top of his head, which was bald and glistening. Douglas still did not risk a word as, finally—returning his cap to his polished head—the thin man touched Douglas on the shoulder, then turned.

—

C
ECIL
C
ADON AND THE REST OF THE
C
ADON CLAN TOOK CARE OF HIM
pretty well after that, almost as if he were one of their own—though it was three days before anyone remembered to ask for his name. He was always just “son” or “the kid” until, on the third day, Cecil pointed to the name written in red letters on the side of Douglas's bag and asked if it was his. No, Douglas said. It was his father's name.

Only when Cecil looked at him funny did he remember to add that— of course—that also made it his own.

The Cadons were from Texas. Cecil was eldest. He'd been a rodeo clown but one day he busted his knee getting thrown and he wasn't any good clowning anymore. Next there was Mick, and Mick's son, Curly. Curly was a half-wit, and never said a word. His hair wasn't curly but straight and hung on his forehead limp and slick, and when one day Douglas asked about that, Mick wound his finger in a tight circle around his left ear and stared at him.

You never noticed the kid's brains is curly? he said.

Oh, Douglas said. All right. I noticed.

Finally, there was Smoke, who was youngest, aside from Curly. He was almost as silent as Curly was, but not so stupid, and after a while Douglas got to notice that it was Smoke and not Cecil who decided the way things went, even though that was not how it appeared. It was Mick and Cecil who did the talking. Smoke just sat there and nodded his head. But whenever he did say something, even just a single word sometimes, or head off in one direction or the other without announcing where or
why, well, the rest of them would always follow. So after a while Douglas got to see the sense to his name, too. Whatever direction Smoke headed—that was the way they went.

T
HEY ARRIVED IN
J
OHNSTOWN
on a boxcar that was full nearly to overflowing—and every one of them, like the Cadons, Bonus Army men. Each time the car pulled into the station it seemed more boarded the train.

Ho' up, they'd say. Move on over, soldiers, you got room for one more.

More often than not there was a bottle of something to pass around, but there never was anything to eat among them. It got to bother Douglas; he couldn't put his finger on it. How it was these soldiers could lay their hands on whiskey like it was water, but couldn't ever find a loaf of bread to eat. But the reason was simple enough, and he realized it after a while. Liquor didn't always have to be liquor, but bread always had to be bread. And it always cost something.

From time to time a fight would break out when the jug had been passed around a reasonable number of times, but it was always quelled pretty quick, and usually it was Cecil who did it. He'd yell out,
Yeeeehaaauup
, and everyone would turn, surprised, and stop whatever they were doing or whatever it was they were fighting about. You boys jus' gonna make the road stretch out longer than ever if you keep on involvin' yerselves like that in dis-agree-ment, he'd say.

Sometimes it wasn't a fight at all—just a sideways glance or a discussion that rankled the clown, and he would let out his yell and everyone would ho' up. But as the ride wore on, some of them began to get sore about it, and say, What's it to you, Tex, can't a man open his mouth around here without hearin' you yip?

This ain't no dis-agree-ment, one man said, mocking Cecil's Texas drawl. He had just been called out by Cecil for suggesting that Waters (who had disappeared again) could only be bothered to look out for his men when it suited him. Is there any one of you, the man asked, looking around, hard, at the collection of soldiers slumped against one another,
and against the rattling wall of the train car, in dis-agree-ment with that?

No one said a word, and Cecil didn't, either. Only the
clickety-clack
of the train could be heard—every man's face trained on Cecil.

After a while, Cecil just shrugged. So long's there ain't no trouble, he mumbled, pulling his hat over his eyes.

For a while, peace did reign in the cramped boxcar. Douglas closed his own eyes for a time, then opened them again and looked around and saw that nearly all of the men had their eyes shut tight, too. They were slumped against the walls of the car in such a way that their shoulders bounced and rattled and even their heads banged sometimes against the metal of the car with a steady beat, but even that didn't wake them. At times their faces were briefly illuminated in the moonlight, which came in, in fits and starts, through the gaping door as the train trundled into open country and then plunged (disappearing once again into darkness) through a tunnel of trees. The night was so clear and the sky seemed so open and vast that it was a wonder to Douglas that God could not see straight down from above and see all the faces of those men lit up as clearly as he could in that light— which he himself had thought to throw on them. Most of the time it seemed to Douglas there was good reason why God did not take notice of everything that was going on all the time. Even though it is said he can keep his eye on every living thing and keep dominion everywhere, Douglas was more often of the mind to forgive him when, from time to time, things got overlooked, because human beings—they made it very difficult, the way they were always so foolish and mixed up and confused and never knew themselves if they were coming or going and would do one thing and say another or the other way around. It would be no wonder that in looking down from any sort of distance, a being might become confused as to the general direction and intent of actions down here on the ground and therefore would have a terribly hard time knowing which way to direct a man or what would be the most obvious thing to say or do to lend a hand. And then there was the weather, too, and the terrible distance that seemed always to exist between the earth and the sky, and so most times it seemed to Douglas no wonder that certain things went unnoticed or ignored.

But on a night like that one, there seemed no excuse in the world; no reason that God could not look straight down from wherever he was and see, just as clear as Douglas himself could, how dead tired those men were, and how hungry and desperate and poor, and find some way to comfort them. See how all alone in the world Douglas was, and his father—wherever he was at that moment—was, too, and do something about that. See how poor Curly's brains had got all twisted up in his head and unwind them for him, and just generally take stock of the situation down here. In those moments there seemed to be not much mystery at all, and everything seemed very wide open and plain to see, and as Douglas looked at all those men's faces in the moonlight, empty of whatever resentments or expectations they generally had, he thought that each and every man was deserving and that there wasn't any sense of bringing any man into the world if he wasn't going to be in some way provided for and looked after, or at the very least checked in on from time to time.

Then, just as the sun was starting to come up, creeping its way through the low branches of the trees, there arose a new quality to the stillness, and with the sudden introduction of form (the trees just beginning to sharpen their edges against the sky) and the introduction of sound (that first sharp call of a bird, still hidden among the branches, which would seem not to lessen but to heighten the silence, to bring it personal and near) that stillness would deepen and deepen 'til you could hardly stand it anymore. Even the steady tread of the wheels on the tracks below seemed to become present in a way that it had not been all night. That steady rhythm, the sound of their own passing, seemed to become a part of the quiet. It seemed to sing out—to answer the lonesome cries of the birds, who were just being discovered in the trees— and everything was, for a moment, utterly changed and changeless. Just as—Douglas thought—it always had been, and always would be, as far as he could tell, with the dawning of every new day.

O
N THAT PARTICULAR DAY
, however—the last before they would arrive in Johnstown—the train ground to a halt just as the sun had begun to rise. The abrupt alteration in momentum roused everyone from their
sleep. It occurred to Douglas in that moment, as he watched the men stir and wake, that a man could and would become accustomed to every discomfort just so long as it was regular. If, like the steady rhythm of a train, which had pounded the men's heads against the walls of the car as they drove, it continued to pound. So, it was not (he considered) nor could it ever be, discomfort or suffering that roused a man, or made him seek change in the world.

Well—what was it, then?

N
O ONE SAID ANYTHING
for five minutes or more—everyone still expecting the train to move again; for it to establish the rhythm and regularity according to which they might drift off, once more, into muchneeded sleep. You could almost feel it—the way the men willed it to begin; willed themselves to be lulled back to sleep—for the train not to have arrived yet at its destination. For it—perhaps—never to arrive there. It was easier, after all, to exist between points of arrival and departure as the train made its way, with no seeming direction at all, precisely because there was only one direction to go in—the one that had already been laid out ahead. In every man's heart, therefore, as in Douglas's own, there was the same secret dread of the next port of call.

After something more than five minutes had passed, one of the men finally spoke, interrupting the silence. With that, the delay became real, and very soon after that it became interminable. There was a general stirring of bodies, uncomfortable now, and a rumbling of voices as sleep lifted itself, and was soon so quickly and cleanly forgotten that (though just moments before they would not have parted from it for anything in the world) no man desired it, and they were all once more firmly established within the waking world.

The birds began to call with greater insistence as though truly hopeful now that they might communicate something, and everything seemed to take on a shape of its own.

Another minute passed and the men became even more restless.

Do you see anything? someone asked, leaning from the car. It was as though he were asking himself, because no one else had such a wide view.

Swinging back into the car of the train, he shook his head in reply. Nope, he said. Can't see a damned thing.

If I was you I'd get out now and walk the rest of the way, someone else said. But he himself made no move to go.

It was another ten minutes or more before they heard the railway police coming down the line. They could hear them banging their sticks against the cars from a distance of a quarter mile, the metal ringing like an empty bell. Now everyone moved at once. Mick, who had still been seated as though sleeping, his hat pulled low over his eyes, leapt up quickest of all and pulled Curly up by the collar, too. Curly made a loud low sound like a startled deer. He had nothing to gather because he had not unrolled anything from his pack, which his father now fixed to his back. Soon everyone was pouring out of the boxcar and making for the woods, but there were so many men that many of them, including Douglas and the Cadons, who were nearer the back of the car, did not have time to exit the train before the guard arrived. He shouted at them to disembark, but the way he spoke—even with his voice raised like that—it came out sounding more like a question than a demand. Douglas's heart stopped beating so hard in his chest. It almost made him laugh out loud to hear that voice now. They all piled out one after the other as they were told, but now no one was in a hurry, and once they exited the car they all just stood around lazily, as though they were paying customers waiting for a missed connection.

It wasn't until they were all out of the car that someone piped up: Well, hold on, wait a minute now, how come? Why can't we ride in on this train same as ever? Let it get us where we're going same as it's going to get you and itself there?

We've got our orders, the voice said, adjusting itself to a lower— steadier—note. There isn't to be anyone riding in this car when it pulls into Johnstown. Johnstown's full, and they can't use any more travelers—coming from any direction. Personally, I don't care where you fellers are headed, I just know it can't be by train. There's strict orders about that.

He continued up the line, then, and Douglas watched with interest as he went. An ordinary man, his stick ringing on the emptying cars that
still stretched out ahead. Once, he looked back over his shoulder—not enough to see them, really, just enough that they registered the glance, and its direction. In a different voice, still—as though neither the one (low and steady) nor the other (troubled and high) he had so far used belonged to him at all—he said quickly: Sorry about that, men.

In response, Cecil hooted like an owl. The rest of the men stood sullen and quiet. Then, when the policeman had rung his way up the line some six or seven cars farther, they began clambering back on board.

Ten minutes later they were on their way to Johnstown again.

T
HE
BEF
CAMP WAS
set up in an abandoned amusement park just outside of town. It was not hard to find, but when they got near they saw a police checkpoint set up in the middle of the road, which made Mick stop dead in his tracks. Smoke, however, continued straight ahead and soon the rest of them followed, and they just walked right through—the police had their hands full already with a dozen other veterans, both coming and going.