Engine Zero-Zero: Chapter 16

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16

The cargo came alive at watering time. They sat up and stuck out their tongues, lapping at the inside of their flour sacks. Some tried begging Miller, pleading with him one cup wasn’t enough. Men and women alike offered him their bodies, their children, their secret fortunes—all those things which, in the beginning, they’d tried to buy their freedom with, discounted for another cup of water. Miller had practice ignoring them. He ignored a man losing a tooth biting the rim of the cup; he ignored a woman’s dry, pained rasping. There was something going around the second boxcar and he covered his nose and mouth with a handkerchief as he entered, and made the cargo drink from an old lighting fixture. One of them had died and he unlocked and threw them out the sliding door into the dirt.

In the third boxcar was a woman who, every time Miller lifted the bag from over her head, somehow found the energy to curse him. “Your bones,” she would say. “will turn to jelly. Your blood to dust. Your fingers and toes will be eaten by dogs. The ground will open up under your feet and swallow you whole. The sky will come down on your head.”

            But today she had nothing to say to him. She opened her eyes in his direction, blinked, and for a moment it looked like she was going to speak, but never graduated past the slight movement of her tongue. Miller gave her water, replaced the bag over her head and continued on, but there was something missing without her berating him. It was all the rest of them that hated him quietly; he thought he could at least count on her to hate him out loud.

            After water it was their vitamin chew, then mopping up their piss and shit. Sometimes Dendri read the Bible to them. Miller didn’t like it—pretended not to know about it—but whenever it was Dendri’s turn to clean and water the cargo he would press an ear to the door and hear him reading Genesis, John, Exodus. Miller thought it was cruel. He knew Dendri was trying to comfort them but all he could think of was that it was cruel. What was worse was when the cargo would repeat it, when they would recite the prayers Dendri had taught them with all feeling and devotion.

            “Ye do I walk through the valley in the shadow of death,” a man began, and Miller couldn’t help but kick him some to get him to stop. They could only fit the one yoke around their neck.

            “He was started on car number five when the train slowed to a halt. Miller abandoned his mop and bucket, went out through the boxcar and ran up the length of the train.

            “What’s going on? Why’d we stop?”

            “Voltometer spiked then dropped down to zero. Heard the generator pop.” Dendri climbed down from the cab then up the side of the engine, where he could slide back the maintenance hatches and get at the innards. Miller climbed up beside him and whistled at the incredible heat. The engine ticked and hissed and groaned. “Don’t see anything,” said Dendri. “Swear I heard the generator pop. Could swear I did.”

            He was unusually animated. He went and retrieved his tools and started on the generator, and it didn’t take long to notice him trying to do everything with just the one hand. Miller asked him if he wanted any help—was waved away—then had to stand idly by and endure all his slow, clumsy digressing. Dendri finally managed to get the outer casing from the generator but in doing dropped it on his foot and cursed so that the boy’s stuck their heads out the windows like a pair of meerkats and asked what was the matter.

            “Nothing,” said Miller. “Go back inside.”

            Dendri stood back from the generator. “Come here and take a look at this.”

            Miller went and leaned into the engine. There was blood and brown feathers smeared all over the inside of the generator—a hunk of mutilated flesh wedged between the turbines. Dendri twisted and pulled until a piece of it came free and held up what, after some back and forth, they determined to be the bottom half of a rooster.

            “How the hell’d that get in there?” Miller asked, and Dendri’s answer was to climb down from the engine, lower rooster in hand,  and storm into the sleeping car.

            “You do this?” He was on David in an instant, grabbing him by the shoulder and shaking the rooster in his face. “You do it? Tell me the truth or I’ll know you’re lying.”

            The boy was dumbstruck. He couldn’t speak nor break from the man nor take his eyes off him. Junior shrieked and shrunk back into the corner.

            “Answer me, boy! Answer me when I’m talking to you!” Dendri smeared the mangled rooster all over the boy’s face.

            Miller caught up to Dendri and tried to reel him in.

            “Who else could have done it?” said Dendri. “Who else would want to sabotage us?”

            “What’s he know about a train engine?” argued Miller. “What’s he know about a generator or how to stop one up?”

            “I think he knows a lot he’s not letting on. He comes on here, sees there’s an idiot aboard and figures he can get away with playing idiot himself.”

            “Leave Junior out of it.”

            “Would that I could. You know if it was up to me—”

            “I said leave him out of it!”

            Dendri would’ve taken it to blows. He was still so out to prove his fortitude he would’ve gone at it with Miller, if the both of them weren’t interrupted by the sound of pittering on the carpet. Junior was pissing himself. He was weeping and pissing himself and then when David saw what he was doing closed his eyes and in a gesture of sympathy, of subordination, began pissing himself too. Dendri stepped back and watched the boys incredulously. Miller massaged his brow. By the time they were finished both the boys had a puddle underneath them. The smell filled the sleeper car.

            “They probably put it there before we escaped,” said Miller, capitalizing on the moment. “They probably put it in there in case we run off and it just—just didn’t take until now.”  

            Dendri seemed to’ve forgotten what they were talking about. He looked at the blood on David’s face and the mangled rooster in his hand like he didn’t know how they’d gotten there. He was pale and his eyes were glassy. He stumbled, held his forehead, and sat down heavily on his bed. He tossed away the rooster.

            “You all right?” Miller moved David out of reach of Dendri.

            Dendri held his head in his hand. He moaned.

            “What is it?”

            Dendri mumbled something but Miller couldn’t hear him.

            “I said it’s going to have to come off.” Dendri lifted his head. There were tears in his eyes.

            “What is?”

            Dendri picked up his left arm with his right and set it dead weight in his lap. He undid his bandages, and in doing let out a stink like spoiled meat. His arm had gotten worse—a mess of blood and puss and tattered flesh. Around the elbow was turning green and purple and black; rank, glistening.

            “It’s going to have to come off,” said Dendri. He came from his despair a moment to point a rooster-bloody finger at David, to tell him, tearfully, that he was wise to him, then hung his head again—and whatever happened between him breaking down and recomposing himself Miller wouldn’t let himself or the boys stick around to watch. He didn’t want to embarrass the man.  

Chapter 17