Andrew Vachss: Two Trains Running

“When Lewis woke up, I was standing over him, with a shotgun aimed right at his face. We chained him up and put him in the back of the wagon. He didn’t fight-it wouldn’t have done him any good-but he didn’t cry or carry on, either, the way some of the others had done.

“Zeke drove us out to a spot they had picked out. They made him walk to a tree, and Parnell took out a rope. Zeke asked Lewis if he had anything to say, and that’s when I knew. That’s when I knew for sure.”

“They were going to murder him?” Tussy blurted out.

“That’s one thing I knew,” Dett said, his voice just above a whisper. “But I knew something else, too. I knew it as sure as I had ever known anything in my life. When it was over, when I told the government men about what happened to Lewis, it still wouldn’t be the end. They’d just send me back. To do more.

“Lewis might have been scared, but you couldn’t see it in his face. He looked… not even angry… more like he was looking down on all of us. Like we were dirt. ‘You can’t stop the train from coming,’ is what he said. And I knew what he meant, even if the others didn’t. I remember thinking, There’s five people, standing out in this field, in the middle of the night. But there’s only one man.

“The moon was shining. Cold light, making us all into ghosts. I had a pistol in my belt. My old army.45. I could feel it against my stomach, pushing at me.

“ ‘You got the sickle, Parnell?’ Zeke said. Then I knew what they were going to do… after they hung him. The shotgun in my hand came up, like it had its own mind. I cut Zeke down. Parnell and William Lee just stood there. Their mouths were open, but nothing came out. I pulled my.45 and shot them both. At that distance, I couldn’t miss.

“Then it was just me and Lewis. I had nothing left. I couldn’t even talk. Like killing those men had taken all I had, and I was done.

“ ‘Get these chains off me,’ Lewis said. I felt like I was moving underwater, so slow and heavy, but I did it.

“ ‘You can’t never go back now,’ he said. ‘Me, neither. They’ll never find me where I’m going. I’m just another nigger, I can disappear. But you, they know you.’

“He walked over to the bodies of the three men, went through their pockets like rolling a drunk. ‘Got almost sixty dollars here,’ he said. ‘You got anything?’ I told him I had about forty on me. I thought he would want that, too, but he just said, ‘Good. We got a little time, not much. Give me a ride to the crossroads; I’ll be all right from there. They probably won’t even start looking until morning, when this trash don’t come home. Got a few hours. They going to expect you to go north, man. But you can’t do that. You going down to Louisiana. To my auntie’s place. It ain’t got no address, but I’m going to tell you how to get there. Tante Verity, she take care of you until you ready to make your move.’

“I was still… not in shock, but stunned, like. Whatever he said, I just nodded ‘okay.’ We got in the station wagon; I drove him to the crossroads, and I never saw him again.”

“Did you go to his aunt’s?” Tussy said.

“I didn’t know what else to do. I just kept driving and driving. I was scared to be in that station wagon, but I was scared to steal another car, too. It was still dark when I got close to where I was supposed to go. I buried the car in the swamp. Just opened all the windows, put it in neutral, dropped a heavy stone on the gas pedal, reached inside, and threw the lever into drive. It disappeared; the swamp swallowed it. Then I started to walk.

“It took a long time. I didn’t have anything to eat. The bugs were fierce, and I was in a panic over everything that moved out there. Like being back overseas. All I had was the landmarks Lewis had given me. But they were good ones.

“Even once it got light out, the swamp was dark. I finally found the house. It was right where Lewis said it would be, and it had the bottle tree outside.”

“What’s a bottle tree?” Tussy said, bending forward to stroke Fireball’s head.

“It’s just a regular tree, with all kinds of bottles attached to the branches. Like fruit. When there’s a breeze, you can hear it tinkle. I’d never seen anything like it.”

Tussy started to speak, then clamped her lips together.

“Tante Verity was an old woman,” Dett said. “Real old, like a hundred, maybe. She was just sitting on her porch, watching me come out of the swamp. I came up to her real slow, so I wouldn’t frighten her. But when I got close, I could see that nothing would ever frighten her. She acted like she was expecting me.

“I told her what happened. From the very beginning, like I just told you. She didn’t say a word, just sat there, rocking in her chair. But I knew she heard me.

“I remember telling her about dropping Lewis at the crossroads, and then I must have passed out. When I came to, I was inside her house, lying in some kind of hammock, with netting over me. The old woman gave me something to drink. It was in a mug, but thick, like stew. I remember it was very hot, burned going down, and then I passed out again.”

Dett got to his feet, rotated his neck, giving off an audible crack. Seeing the expression on Tussy’s face, he returned to the couch.

“I don’t know how long I stayed with Tante Verity-that’s what she told me to call her, too-but every day, I got stronger. And every day, she taught me things.”

“What kind of things?”

“Like roots you can grind up, to keep the inside of your body clean. About the things in the swamp, how you can live among them if you know how to make peace. But, mostly, she taught me what I had to do.

“ ‘Two trains coming, son,’ she said to me. ‘Headed for the junction. You can’t stop either one. But you can slow the dark one down. You can put a log across the tracks, make Satan late enough so that the righteous train gets by clean.’ ”

“What does that mean?” Tussy demanded, her voice caught between anger and dread.

“It means I kill people,” Dett said, dead-voiced. “You can say they’re bad people, but that’s not why I have to do it. Those three men out in that field that night, they were bad men. And whoever sent them there, to do what they meant to do, they’re worse. But the worst of all are the people who sent me there.”

“The FBI?”

“Not even them, Tussy. Not even them. I don’t think I’ll ever know who makes things the way they are. And it doesn’t matter. My job is to roll that log across the tracks in time. It doesn’t matter who hires me, because they’re all guilty or they’re all being used by those who are. It’s like being surrounded. Wherever you shoot, you hit the enemy.”

“You came here, to Locke City, to-?”

“Beaumont hired me,” Dett said. “He wanted something done about Dioguardi. And I did that.”

“You were the one?”

“Yes. And I left things set up so that there may be more. A lot more. What I do is like throwing a rock into a pool. The splash doesn’t matter, only the circles it makes.”

“But Mr. Beaumont isn’t a-”

“Yes he is, Tussy,” Dett said. “He’s just smarter than other men like him. He knows you do better being nice to people than stomping all over them. He owns this town, top to bottom. And what he owns, he can deliver. He brought me in here to make sure he could keep his power. But I never really work for any of them, even though I take their money.”

“Walker-”

“That’s not my name,” Dett said. “I don’t have a name, anymore. Just one I use. Even this face, it’s different from the one I started with. There’s people who can do that. There’s people who can do just about anything, if you pay them.”