While Mortals Sleep: Unpublished Short Fiction Read online

  * * *

  The brutish black 4-8-2, its big drivers clashing steel on steel, boomed over the quivering trestle and plunged into the tunnel mouth, whipping the chattering, screaming freight cars behind it. In another five seconds the locomotive, known along the pike as Old Spitfire, burst into the open again with the roar of a wounded devil.

  It was Saturday morning, and Earl “Hotbox” Harrison was at the throttle. His gunmetal gray eyes were slits under the visor of his striped cap. His freight was behind time, east-bound on a single track, with the westbound passenger express due. Between Old Spitfire and the safety of the siding ahead was Widow’s Hairpin, the most treacherous curve on the Harrisonburg and Earl City Railroad.

  The passenger express whistled mournfully in the distance. Hotbox gritted his teeth. There was only one thing to do. He eased the throttle wide open as Old Spitfire shot past the water tower and into the curve.

  The track writhed under the fury of the train. Suddenly, at the peak of the curve, the locomotive tottered and shook. Hotbox cried out. The locomotive leaped free of the tracks, and the train followed its crashing, rolling course down the embankment.

  All was still.

  “Damn!” said Earl. He shut off the power, left his stool, and went over to where Old Spitfire lay on its side.

  “Bent its main rod and side rod,” said Harry Zellerbach sympathetically. He and Earl had been in the basement for two hours, tirelessly shipping mythical passengers and freight back and forth between the oil burner and the water softener.

  Earl set Old Spitfire on the tracks, and rolled it back and forth experimentally. “Yeah—and dented the ashpan hopper,” he said gravely. He sighed. “Old Spitfire was the first locomotive I bought when I started the pike. Remember, Harry?”

  “You bet I do, Hotbox.”

  “And Old Spitfire is going to keep on running till I’m through with the pike.”

  “Till hell freezes over,” said Harry with satisfaction. He had reason to be satisfied with the thought. A tall, thin, wan man, who spent most of his life in basements, he was proprietor of the local hobby shop. In terms of his own modest notions of wealth, he had struck a bonanza in Earl Harrison. There was nothing scaled to HO gauge that Earl wouldn’t buy.

  “Till hell freezes over,” said Earl. He took a can of beer from behind a plaster mountain range, and drank to the world that was all his and still growing.

  “Earl—” called his wife, Ella, from the top of the basement stairs, “lunch is getting cold, hon.” Her tone was polite and apologetic, though this was the third time she’d called.

  “Coming,” said Earl. “On my way. Be there in two shakes.”

  “Please, Earl,” called his mother, “Ella has a wonderful lunch, and it’ll spoil if you don’t come right up.”

  “Coming,” said Earl absently, trying to straighten Old Spitfire’s main rod with a screwdriver. “Please, Mom, will you two please keep your shirts on for a couple of seconds?”

  The door at the top of the stairs clicked shut, and Earl exhaled with relief. “Honest to God, Harry,” he said, “it’s like living in a sorority house around here lately. Women, women.”

  “Yeah—I guess,” said Harry. “Of course, you could have it worse. You could have your mother-in-law visiting you, like I do, instead of just your mother. Your mother seems like a sweet old lady.”

  “No question about it,” said Earl. “She is sweet. But she still treats me like I was a little kid, and it drives me nuts. I’m not a kid anymore.”

  “I’ll tell the world, Hotbox,” said Harry loyally.

  “I’m worth ten times what my old man was worth, and have a hundred times as much responsibility.”

  “You can say that again, Hotbox.”

  “Earl—” called Ella again. “Hotbox, honey—”

  “Earl!” said his mother. “You’re being rude.”

  “See what I mean?” said Earl to Harry. “Just like I was a kid.” He turned his head toward the stairway. “Said I’d be right up, didn’t I?” He returned to his work. “Old Spitfire’s smashed up, but what do they care? Women are always talking about how men ought to try to understand their psychology more, but I don’t think they spend ten seconds a year trying to see things from a man’s point of view.”

  “I hear you talking, Hotbox.”

  “Earl—please, darn it,” called Ella.

  “Be up before you can say Jack Robinson,” said Earl.

  And twenty minutes later, Hotbox did come up to lunch, and lunch was cold. Harry Zellerbach declined Ella’s halfhearted invitation to share the meal, explaining that he had to deliver some deadeyes and marlinspikes to a man who was building a model of the Constitution in his basement.

  Earl removed his red neckerchief and engineer’s cap, and kissed his wife and then his mother.

  “Switchman’s strike slow you down?” said Ella.

  “He was handling a lot of rush defense shipments,” said his mother. “Couldn’t let our boys in the front lines down, just because lunch was getting cold.” She was slight and birdlike, extremely feminine and seeming in need of protection. But she’d been blessed with six brawling sons, Earl the oldest, and had had to be as quick and clever as a mongoose to get any obedience from them. Yearning for a sweet, frilly daughter, she’d learned judo and how to play shortstop. “Cut off the troops’ rail supplies, and they might have to give up the water heater and retreat to the fuse box,” she said.

  “Aaaaaaaaaaah,” said Earl, grinning with a mixture of self-consciousness and irritation. “I guess I’m entitled to a little relaxation now and then. I don’t have to apologize.” It had never occured to him, before the arrival of his mother two days before, that anyone might think an apology was in order. Ella had never twitted him about the pike until now. Suddenly, it was open season on model railroaders.

  “Women are entitled to a few things, too,” said his mother.

  “They got the vote and free access to the saloons,” said Earl. “What do they want now—to enter the men’s shot put?”

  “Common courtesy,” said his mother.

  He didn’t answer. Instead, he went to his file of magazines, and brought one back to the table with him. By coincidence, the magazine opened to an ad for model tanks and artillery pieces, authentic in every detail, and scaled for HO gauge layouts. He squinted at the photograph in the ad, trying to screen out the surrounding type and get the impression of realism.

  “Earl—” said Ella.

  “Hotbox,” said his mother, “you’re being spoken to by your wife, your companion for life.”

  “Shoot,” said Earl, laying down the magazine reluctantly.

  “I was wondering if maybe we couldn’t all go out to dinner tonight—for a change,” said Ella. “We could go to Lou’s Steak House, and—”

  “Not tonight, honey,” said Earl. “I’ve got to do some troubleshooting on the block system.”

  “Be a sport,” said his mother. “Take her out, Earl. Just the two of you go out, and I’ll fix a little something for myself here.”

  “We go out,” said Earl. “We go out together lots. Didn’t we go out together last Tuesday, Ella?”

  Ella nodded vaguely. “Down to the depot to see the new gas-turbine locomotive. It was on exhibit.”

  “Oh, that must have been nice,” said Earl’s mother. “Nobody ever took me to see a locomotive.”

  Earl felt the redness of irritation spreading over the back of his neck. “What’s the big idea, you two needling me all the time lately? I work hard, and I’m entitled to play hard, I say. So I like trains. What’s the matter with trains?”

  “Nothing’s the matter with trains, dear,” said his mother. “I don’t know where the world would be without trains. But there are other things, too. All week you’re out on the job somewhere, and come home so tired you can hardly say hello, and then on the weekends you’re down in the basement. What kind of a life is that for Ella?”

  “Now, Mother—” said Ella, making th
e faintest of gestures to stop her.

  “Who do you think I’m working for, ten, twelve hours a day?” said Earl. “Where do you suppose the money’s coming from to pay for this house and this food and the cars—for clothes? I love my wife, and I work like hell for her.”

  “Couldn’t you strike a happy medium?” said his mother. “Poor Ella—”

  “Listen,” said Earl, “the man in the road construction business who tries to strike a happy medium gets eaten alive.”

  “What a picture!” said his mother.

  “Well, it’s the truth,” said Earl. “And I’ve invited Ella to play on the pike with me lots of times. She can come down and get in on the fun any time she wants. Haven’t I always said that, Ella? Lots of wives take a real interest in their husbands’ layouts.”

  “That’s right,” said Ella. “Harry Zellerbach’s wife can lay track and wind a transformer and talk for hours about 4-6-6-4 articulated locomotives and 0-4-0 docksides.”

  “Well, a woman can go too far,” said Earl. “I think Maude Zellerbach is probably a little punchy. But Ella could have a good time, if she’d just give it a chance. I gave her a Bowser M-1 4-8-2 for her birthday, and she hasn’t had it out of the roundhouse once in six months.”

  “Ella—how could you?” said Earl’s mother. “If I had a Bowser all my own, heaven knows when I’d get my housework done.”

  “OK, you’ve had your fun,” said Earl. “Now let a man eat in peace. I’ve got a lot on my mind.”

  “We could go for a ride in the car this afternoon,” said Ella. “We could show Mother the countryside, and you could do your thinking out in the fresh air.”

  The atmosphere of conspiracy made Earl stubborn. He wasn’t going to be wheedled into anything. “Trouble is,” he said, “Harry’s expecting in a shipment of stuff this afternoon, and he’s going to give me first look. With the metal shortage, the shipments are small, and everything’s on a first-come, first-serve basis. You go. I’d better stay.”

  “It’s like being mother to a dope fiend,” said Earl’s mother. “I didn’t raise him this way.”

  “Aaaaaaaaaah,” said Earl again. His eyes dropped to his magazine, and he scanned, ironically, an article about a man whose wife painted the scenery background for his layout, swell little barns and haystacks and snow-covered peaks and clouds and birds and everything.

  “Earl,” said his mother, “Ella hasn’t been out to a movie or to supper with you for four months. You should take her out tonight.”

  “Never mind, Mother,” said Ella.

  Earl abandoned the magazine. “Mother,” he said evenly, “I love you dearly, as a good son should. But I’m not your little boy anymore. I’m a grown man, entitled to make up my own mind, not to have my life run by you. Everything is fine between Ella and me, and we go out whenever I can possibly spare the time. Isn’t that right, Ella?”

  “Yes,” said Ella. And then she spoiled it. “I guess.”

  “Now, there’s this shipment coming in this afternoon, and the block system is all balled up, so, I’m sorry, but—”

  “She could help you with the block system,” said Earl’s mother. “Ella could help you this afternoon, and then tonight would be free.”

  “I would, Earl,” said Ella.

  “Well, you see—” said Earl. “That is, I mean—” He shrugged. “OK.”

  * * *

  Ella worked hard and gamely in the basement. Her slender fingers were clever, and she learned the knack of splicing and soldering wires after one demonstration from Earl.

  “By golly, Ella,” said Earl, “we should have tried this before. A circus, isn’t it?”

  “Yup,” said Ella, dropping a bead of solder onto a connection.

  Earl, as he moved busily about the edge of the layout, hugged Ella ardently every time he passed her. “See? You never know till you try, eh?”

  “Nope.”

  “And, when you get that last circuit done there, then the real fun begins. We’ll get the trains rolling, and see how the system works.”

  “Anything you say,” said Ella. “There—the circuit’s done.”

  “Wonderful,” said Earl. Together, they hid the block system’s wires under the roadbeds.

  Then Earl put his arm around Ella, and gave her a long, now poetic, now philosophic, now technical lecture on the operation of a layout. Grandly, he seated her on the stool and guided her hand to the throttle. He put his engineer’s cap on her head, where it came to rest on level with her ears. Her large, dark eyes were all but hidden by the visor, glittering like the eyes of an animal at bay in a shallow hole.

  “OK,” said Earl judiciously, “let’s see, what’ll we have for a situation?”

  “You’d go a long way before you found a more unlikely one than this one,” said Ella, looking bleakly over the miniature landscape, awaiting instructions.

  Earl was deep in thought. “That’s the difference between a kid’s toy railroad and an honest-to-gosh pike,” he said. “A kid will just run his train around and around in circles. This thing is set up to do hauling jobs just like the real thing.”

  “I’m glad there’s a difference,” said Ella.

  “OK, I’ve got the situation,” said Earl. “Let’s say a big load of frozen beef has just been brought in to the Earl City yards for shipment to Harrisonburg.”

  “Lord!” said Ella helplessly.

  “Don’t get panicky. That’s the thing—keep your head and think it out,” said Earl affectionately. “Just take that Baldwin diesel switcher, pick up those reefers in the hold yard, run ’em over to the loading platform, then back to the icing plant, then over the hump track to the southbound classification yard. Then pick ’em up with your Bowser in the roundhouse, hook on whatever’s in the forwarding yard, and off you go.”

  “I do?”

  “Here,” said Earl, “I’ll give you a hand on this one.” He stood behind Ella, his arms enveloping her as he pushed buttons and switches.

  Hours later, the two of them were still in the basement, now side by side on stools before the control panel.

  Ecstatic, fresh as a daisy, Earl closed a circuit, and a snub-nosed diesel-electric grumbled out of a siding, picked up a string of hopper cars, and labored up a long plaster grade to a coal loader. Dingadingadingading! went a warning bell at a crossing, and a little robot popped out of his shack to wave a lantern.

  Exhausted, but sticking grimly to her post, Ella drove her passenger express through an underpass, beneath the diesel-electric.

  Earl pressed a button, Ella pressed another, and the two locomotives whistled cheerily at each other.

  “Ella—” called Earl’s mother from the top of the stairs. “If you and Earl are going out to supper, you’d better get dressed.”

  “Seemed like minutes, didn’t it?” laughed Earl. “Whole afternoon gone like that!” He snapped his fingers.

  Ella took his hand, and seemed to come alive again, like a fish freed from a hook and thrown back into deep, cold water. “Let’s go,” she said. “What’ll I wear? Where’ll we go? What’ll we do?”

  “You go on up,” said Earl. “I’ll be up in two shakes, soon as I get the equipment back in the yards.”

  Earl and Ella, as a grand finale to their companionable afternoon in the basement, had put almost every piece of rolling stock into service on the little countryside, so Earl had a big job on his hands, restoring order to the pike while Ella took a shower and dressed. He might have picked up the trinkets and set them down again where he wanted them, and been done with the job in a minute or two. But he would have stolen from the poor box before he would have done such a thing. Under their own power, creeping at scale speeds, the trains made their way to their proper destinations, and were there broken up by switchers.

  Signals winked on and off, road barriers dipped and rose, bells tinkled—and euphoria and pride filled the being of Hotbox Harrison, who had this much of the universe precisely as he would have it, under his thumb.

&nbs
p; Over the tiny din he heard the outside door of the basement open and close. He turned to see Harry Zellerbach, who grinned and hugged a long, heavy parcel to his chest.

  “Harry!” said Earl. “By golly, I thought you’d forgotten me. Been waiting for you to call all afternoon.”

  “I’ll forget you when I forget my own name, Hotbox,” said Harry. He looked meaningfully at the box he was carrying, and winked. “The stuff that came through was mostly junk, or stuff you already had, so I didn’t bother calling. But there’s one thing, Hotbox—” He looked at the box again, coyly. “You’ll be the first one to see it, next to my wife. Nobody else even knows I got it.”

  Earl clapped him on his arm. “There’s a friend for you!”

  “I try to be, Hotbox,” said Harry. He laid the box on the edge of the layout, and lifted the lid slowly. “First one in the state, Hotbox.” There in the box, twinkling like a tiara, lay a long, sleek locomotive, silver, orange, black, and chromium.

  “The Westinghouse gas-turbine job,” said Earl huskily, awed.

  “And only sixty-eight forty-nine,” said Harry. “That’s practically cost for me, and I got it at a steal. It’s got a whine and a roar built in.”

  Reverently, Earl set it on the tracks, and gently fed power to it. Without a word, Harry took over the controls, and Earl stalked about the layout, spellbound, watching the dream locomotive from all angles, calling out to Harry whenever the illusion of reality was particularly striking.

  “Earl—” called Ella.

  He didn’t answer.

  “Hotbox!”

  “Hmm?” he said dreamily.

  “Come on, if we’re going to get any supper.”

  “Listen,” called Earl, “put on another plate, will you? Harry’s going to stay for supper.” He turned to Harry. “You will, won’t you? You’ll want to be here when we find out just what this baby can do.”

  “Pleasure, Hotbox.”