Bentley Little: The Burning

"I was at that Indian powwow a few months back," the fat guy said. "You know the one up at Promontory Point that was all over the news?"

"Really? Did you see the accident?"

"Front-row seats," the man bragged. "Those trains came at each other like two bulls out for blood. People were tryin' to get out of the way, but it was a mob scene. Reporters were gettin' trampled. Indians were runnin' in all directions, tryin' to get away from the tracks. ..."

Ector arrived, squinting into the dimness.

Henry waved him over.

"Yeah," the man said, "it was like those engineers had it in for each other. They just kept acceleratin' until- bam! -the trains hit. Shit was flyin' every which way. ..."

Henry couldn't help smiling to himself.

Ector walked up, slapped a hand on the table. "Hey."

"Hey, yourself," Henry replied.

"... and those two trains were ..."

He was still smiling. "Have a seat," he said. "Have a beer."

Seal Beach, California

Dennis stood at the end of the pier, looking not out at the ocean but back toward the shore and the solid row of contiguous houses that faced the beach. Within the past week, dump trucks, bulldozers and a cadre of uniformed men from the Army Corps of Engineers had built a sand berm in front of the houses in order to protect them from the waves of winter storms, but today's weather was nice, and mothers with their preschool children were walking, running and playing atop the giant hill of sand. Inland a few blocks, his mother and sister were, against his wishes, cleaning his apartment. They were out here only for a short vacation, in order to see for themselves where and how he was living, but Cathy had already told him she wanted to move out West, and he knew that with both of her children living here, his mother would follow.

As he had every day since his arrival, Dennis marveled at California's amazing weather. In Pennsylvania right now, the temperature was well below freezing and dirty snowdrifts were piled high along the roads like walls. Here it might as well be summer. On both sides of the pier, young men in wet suits were waiting on surfboards for waves to catch, and on the beach several couples as well as one very hot teenage girl were lying on blankets, catching some rays, while a tourist family ate lunch out of a picnic basket. Two small children ran up and down the shoreline, chasing seagulls and screaming.

It was a world away from Pennsylvania and a universe away from what he now thought of as his road trip through hell.

Unlike the other people at Promontory Point, he and his fellow passengers had been stranded by the destruction of the trains, left on that plain in Utah with no transportation and no way to return to their starting locations. His own car was way back in Milner, Wyoming, and if it hadn't been for a Sioux man with an old Pacer heading back home to Montana who offered him a ride, he had no idea what he would have done.

They hadn't spoken on the return trip, he and the Sioux man. There might have been a couple of exchanged sentences along the lines of "Let's get something to eat" or "I'll drive if you're getting tired," but for the most part there were hours and hours of silence as they drove north through plains and past mountains. It wasn't an uncomfortable silence, but it wasn't exactly comfortable either, and to Dennis the trip seemed very, very long.

He arrived in Milner midmorning, after a long nap, and he was grateful for that. He didn't want to see Carl Fong or his buddies, wanted only to escape cleanly and quietly, and he settled his bill at the motel, packed his stuff, got in his car and drove away, heading toward the coast.

He had a lot of time to think on the road.

But he avoided that.

Dennis turned, looked out at the ocean. A lone sailboat was heading toward Long Beach, and beyond that, silhouetted by a thin layer of white smog, he could see the blocky shape of a cargo ship waiting to dock at the port. A few days ago, there'd been a story on the news about illegal Chinese immigrants who'd been smuggled in the hold of one of these cargo ships but captured upon inspection. Although there wasn't as much resentment toward Asian illegals as there seemed to be toward those from Mexico-who weren't even granted the status of human but were referred to as aliens -darker races still seemed to provoke the ire of white America. There never seemed to be much of an outcry against immigrants from Caucasian countries.

He thought of that professor from Denver and the housewife from Oregon who had believed so strongly that retribution was necessary, violence justified, against the descendants of those who had persecuted their people. It was an insane and untenable position, the type of attitude that had led to wars and instances of ethnic strife throughout the world.

And yet ...

And yet he could see their point.

He thought of the looting and lawlessness that inevitably followed large-scale disasters. The veneer of civilization was thin. Anger and violence were always near the surface, even in seemingly peaceful rational individuals.

He recalled that giant... thing ... he'd seen towering over the plain.

Sometimes it was only outside intervention that saved people from themselves.

'"Scuse me." A dark squat man carrying a fishing pole, a tackle box and a bucket pushed past him to stake out a spot by the pier's railing.

Dennis started walking slowly back toward shore, enjoying the feel of the offshore breeze against his face. He looked up at the clock tower on top of the police substation. It was getting close to lunch. Already he could smell Mexican food from Taco Surf, and as he drew closer the scent of baked goods came to him from the bakery.

Maybe he'd take his mother and sister out to lunch. His mom moaned and complained if they ate anything other than Chinese food, but this was his chance to try and broaden her horizons.

From somewhere far off came the sound of a train whistle, and Dennis stopped in his tracks, heart pounding, the hairs bristling on the back of his neck. For a moment, he was frozen, his breath caught in his throat, his eyes wide with fear. But then he forced himself to exhale, forced his eyes to blink, forced his feet to walk forward, and within a few seconds he was back to normal. Glancing up at the slightly smog-tinged sky, he took a deep breath. Once again, he thought of the- spirit -that he'd seen looming over Promontory Point. What had really happened there? What exactly had they prevented? Was it all over for good?

Or were the professor and the housewife, along with other Chinese Americans throughout the country, resuming their blood rituals in hopes of once again raising the dead?

He didn't want to think about it.

And he wouldn't.

Dennis reached into his pocket, pulled out his cell phone and dialed the number of his apartment. After three rings, his sister answered, and he told her to stop whatever she was doing, grab their mother and meet him at Taco Surf in ten minutes.

"Is that Mexican food? You know Mom won't-"

"Hey, this is California."

He could almost hear his sister's smile over the phone. "And if we're both going to be living here, she'd better get used to it."

"Exactly." He gave her directions on how to reach the restaurant from his apartment.

"We'll be there," Cathy said.

Feeling happy, feeling good, Dennis closed the phone, put it in his pocket and strode off the pier onto the sidewalk. Instead of walking up the left side of Main Street to the restaurant, he started up the right side toward the liquor store.

He wanted to get a lottery ticket and a newspaper before his mother and sister arrived.

Bear Flats, California

It was not where she'd expected to be, not even where she was sure she wanted to be, but Jolene found herself working for the Bear Flats Police Department as an adjunct officer, a position created for her until she could find the time to undergo training, pass the test and become official. With her background, a career in law enforcement might have seemed a natural, but the truth was that she'd never considered such a move until Ned brought it up to her a week after the charred ruins of the Williams house had been razed. The police chief hired her, she supposed, because he knew that she could function well under extreme pressure. And because he needed her. There'd been one death and two defections, and the loss of even one person in a department this small had major repercussions. It was no more than the usual turnover, Ned tried to reassure everyone, but they all knew that wasn't the case.