The Voice of the Night

22

When he felt the pickup moving, Colin jumped back, astonished.

The truck stopped with a sharp squeak. “What’d you do that for?” Roy demanded. “We had it going, for Christ’s sake! Why’d you stop?”

Colin looked at him through the open cab of the truck. “Okay. Tell me. What’s the joke?”

Roy was angry. His voice was hard and cold, and he emphasized each word. “Get … it … through… your… head. There… is… no… joke!”

They stared at each other in the fast-fading, smoky light of dusk.

“Are you my blood brother?” Roy asked.

“Sure.”

“Isn’t it you and me against the world?”

“Yeah.”

“Won’t blood brothers do anything for each other?”

“Almost anything.”

“Anything! It has to be anything! No ifs, ands, or buts. Not with blood brothers. Are you my blood brother?”

“I said I was, didn’t I?”

“Then push, damnit!”

“Roy, this has gone far enough.”

“It won’t have gone far enough until it’s gone over the edge of the hill.”

“Fooling around like this could be dangerous.”

“Have you got concrete for brains?”

“We might accidentally wreck the train.”

“It won’t be an accident. Push!”

“You win. I give up. I won’t push the truck or you any further. You win the game, Roy.”

“What the hell are you doing to me?”

“I just want to get out of here.”

Roy’s voice was strained now, almost hysterical. His eyes were wild. He glared at Colin through the truck. “Are you turning your back on me?”

“Of course not.”

“Betraying me?”

“Look, I-”

“Are you a phony, too? Are you just like all the other goddamned cheats and back-stabbers and liars?”

“Roy-”

“Didn’t you mean one word you said to me?”

In the distance a train whistle pierced the twilight. “That’s it!” Roy said frantically. “The engineer always blows the whistle when he crosses Ranch Road. We’ve only got three minutes. Help me.”

Even in the dimming, orange-purple light, Colin could clearly see the rage in Roy’s face, the madness in his blue, blue eyes. Colin was shocked. He took another step back, away from the truck.

“Bastard!” Roy said.

He tried to push the Ford by himself.

Colin remembered how Roy acted in the garage when they played with Mr. Borden’s trains. How he wrecked them with such fierce glee. How he peered through the windows of the derailed toy cars. How he imagined that he was seeing real bodies, real blood, real tragedy-and somehow found pleasure in those sick fantasies.

This was not a game.

It had never been a game.

Pushing, then relaxing, pushing, then relaxing, keeping a hard, fast rhythm, Roy rocked the truck until suddenly he overcame inertia. The pickup moved.

“No!” Colin said.

Gravity helped again. The truck’s wheels turned slowly, reluctantly. They squealed and squeaked. The metal rims ground harshly against the heavy corrugated tracks. But they turned.

Colin raced around the pickup, grabbed Roy, and pulled him away from the truck.

“You little creep!”

“Roy, you can‘t!”

“Let me alone!”

Roy wrenched loose, shoved Colin backward, and returned to the truck.

The pickup had ceased all movement the instant Roy had been dragged from it. The slope was not steep enough to encourage the Ford to run away.

Roy rocked it again.

“You can’t kill all those people.”

“Just watch me.”

The truck needed considerably less coaxing this time than it had the last. Or perhaps Roy had found even greater strength in his madness. In a few seconds the Ford began to roll.

Colin leaped at him and wrestled him away from the truck.

Furious, cursing, Roy turned and punched him twice in the stomach.

Colin collapsed around the blows. He let go of Roy, gagged, bent forward, caved in, staggered back, and fell. The pain was terrible. He felt as if Roy’s fists had gone all the way through him leaving two big holes. He couldn’t get his breath.

His glasses had been knocked off. He could see only blurry outlines of the junkyard. Coughing, gagging, still struggling to breathe, he felt the grass around him, anxious to regain his sight.

Roy grunted and mumbled to himself as he tried to move the pickup.

Suddenly Colin was aware of another sound: a steady chuka-chuka-chuka-chuka-chuka-chuka.

The train.

In the distance. But not too far.

Coming closer.

Colin found his glasses and put them on. Through tears, he saw that the truck was still more than twenty feet from the brink, and that Roy had only just begun to get it moving again.

Colin attempted to stand. He got as far as his knees when a wave of excruciating pain washed through his guts, immobilizing him.

The truck was no more than twenty feet from the edge of the hill, gaining inches slowly, slowly but relentlessly.

By the sound of it, the train had reached the curve in the glen below.

The truck was eighteen feet from the brink.

Sixteen.

Fourteen.

Twelve.

Then it ran off the corrugated track; its wheels bit into the dry earth; and it would not move. If they had been pushing from both sides, if the force had been applied evenly, the truck would not have deviated from the twin ribbons of metal. But because all the effort was being exerted on the left side, the Ford turned inexorably to the right, and Roy didn’t use the steering wheel fast enough to correct the truck’s course.

Colin clutched the door handle of a dilapidated Dodge beside him and drew himself to his feet. His legs were shaky.

The thunderous clatter of the rails filled the night: a cacophonous roar like an orchestra of machinery tuning itself.

Roy ran to the edge of the hill. He looked down at the train that Colin couldn’t see.

In less than a minute, the sound of the passenger express diminished. The last car was around the curve; it was speeding away, toward San Francisco.

The small noises of the oncoming night crept back across the hilltop. For a while, Colin was too stunned to hear anything at all. Gradually, he began once more to perceive the crickets, the toads, the breeze in the trees, and the pounding of his own heart.

Roy screamed. He looked down at the tracks that were now empty, and he raised his fists toward the sky, and he cried out like an animal in agony. He turned and started toward Colin.

Only thirty feet of open ground separated them.

“Roy, I had to do it.”

“I hate you.”

“You don’t really.”

“You’re like all the rest.”

“Roy, you’d have gone to jail.”

“I’ll kill you.”

“But Roy-”

“You fucking traitor!”

Colin ran.