Engine Zero-Zero: Chapter 15

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15

“We keep him with us for awhile, until we know we’re out of the woods. We might be able to use him if they come after us, or if there’s more of them out there.”

            That was Miller’s excuse. That was what he told Dendri.

            “Then what?” Dendri’d cleaned off most of the blood and the grease and revealed all the cuts and bruises he’d withstood. It revealed just how bad his arm was, how mangled the flesh and discordant the bone. “Then what are we going to do with him?”

            “We’ll worry about that later. We got plenty of time yet before we have to worry about it.”

            “Let’s stop and let him off. You don’t want to kill him let’s just stop and let him off. We already got one kid along with us, we can’t tolerate another.”

            “Can’t just drop a boy in the middle of the desert.”

“Boy’s lived in the desert his entire life. We give him a canteen and send him on his way. He can follow the track.”

            Miller shook his head. “It’s miles between here and there. I’ll worry about it. I’ll worry about the kids and you worry about the train.”

            Dendri clenched his teeth and his face turned red but then he nodded and went to the controls. He tried raising his left arm but couldn’t get it above his waist and had to make do with the one.

            Miller returned to the sleeping car where the boys knelt on the floor going through a box of toys. Junior was almost frantic in showing David his wooden car, his tin-can airplane. When David, not knowing any better, made a toy soldier hold his gun backwards, Junior snatched it from him and showed him how to do it right. He spoke to the younger, smaller boy the way his father spoke to him.

            Miller sat quietly in his armchair and watched them a moment. The sky was turning lighter out the window.

David seemed curiously unaffected by his situation, as if everywhere was the one place, everybody the one person. He was doglike in his gravitation towards a master, following Junior’ lead without complaint.  

“Hey boy—” the both of them turned. “Not you, boy, the other one. David. How’d you get that scar the top of your head?”

David nervously rubbed the top of his head. “Brother did it.”

“Your brother did it? Why’d he do that? What with?”

Did it with a machete. Did it so he wouldn’t have to share his meat.”

Miller nodded. He wondered if the boy might be an idiot like Junior was, but then again there was a clarity in his gaze the other one didn’t have, and a certain purposefulness to his simplicity. “You hungry?” he asked. “When’s the last time you ate?”

            The boy lowered his eyes and fidgeted with his toes. “Dinner never made it to me last night.”

            “Well we’ll have to see if we can do something about that.”

            Most of their stores had been eaten but there were still a few yams that’d escaped molestation, and Miller cooked them on the stove while Junior and David tried throwing leftover pieces of debris up through the holes in the roof. Junior seemed to draw no connection between David and the wreckage. He handled the upset—the broken and missing furniture, his tattered bed—better than expected, and he’d quit asking about “the people in back of the train.” By the time they sat down to breakfast the sun was all the way up and the desert out the window turned white and powdery. David ate with his fingers, in a hurry, without ever looking up from his plate, while Junior cut and mashed his yams into the one pile of mush. When David was finished eating he sat quietly by and watched the other boy, and for the first time seemed to wonder if there might be something off about him.

            “What’s that for?” he said finally.

            “Better this way.” Maybe not even Junior knew why he did what he did.

            “Your mom and dad back there at that camp?” Miller asked David.

            With his food all gone the boy didn’t seem to know what to do with his hands or how to be at a table. He played with his one front tooth like he was plucking a guitar string. “Father died hunting last year. Mother hung herself year before that.”

            “What about your brother? He still alive?”

            “That one killed my brother.” The boy pointed up towards the engine, toward Dendri.

            “He did?”

            “Saw his head pop like a balloon.”

            The boy rubbed the scar on the top of his head. Miller didn’t know whether to apologize or if he’d done the boy a favor.

            “You kill a lot of people?” asked David. “You show me how?”

            Miller cleared his throat and looked back and forth between the boys. He’d taken the yams with a bit of green on them and cut around it. “If you—if you want to target practice maybe we can do that.”

            Junior covered his ears and David asked him what the matter was.

            “He don’t like guns,” said Miller, and Junior shook his head in agreement.

            “My brother always said guns was the difference between being rich and poor.”

            Miller nodded. “Alive or dead,” for sure.

            Junior let go of his ears. “My father can do fifty pushups,” he said proudly.”

            “Wow,” said David.

            After the boys ate they slept. Junior, after a great deal of fuss, retook his bed, while David, despite whatever alternatives Miller offered him, crawled underneath and settled on the floor. As soon as they were asleep Miller went and sought out the bottle he kept at the bottom of his trunk and found it intact. He sat with the bottle in his armchair, drinking and poking his finger into a bullet hole left in the seat cushion. Out the back door the red X on the lead boxcar had been smudged with black and white handprints. It was good to be alone again. He was only as in control as who was watching.

Chapter 16