The Christmas Train by David Baldacci
toenails?”
“Perhaps Tylenol and an emery board?”
“This is not funny,” she yelled.
“Look, I’m beat and the cell reception is bad here. I’ll call you when we get into Pittsburgh.”
“What? I thought you were in Pittsburgh.”
Tom slapped his forehead at this gaffe. Under enormous pressure, he struck on what seemed a brilliant plan. “Uh, Lelia?” He tapped the phone with his finger. “Lelia, you’re breaking up. I can’t hear you.”
“Tom, don’t you dare try to pull that—”
He spoke slowly and in a very loud voice, as though to a hearing-impaired idiot:
“IF . . . YOU . . . CAN . . . HEAR . . . ME . . . I’LL . . . CALL . . . YOU . . . WHEN . . . WE . . . GET . . . INTO . . . CHICAGO .”
He clicked the off button and sat back. The phone rang again, but he didn’t answer it. It went to voice mail and then it rang again. He finally just turned it off. Well, that had gone reasonably okay.
In his time, Mark Twain was probably the most often-quoted person in America, and one of his famous sayings came from a miscommunication that had led the world to believe the great man had passed away. When asked to comment on his alleged demise, Twain had mischievously opined that the news of his death had been greatly exaggerated. Tom had a feeling that if he were unfortunate enough to be within Lelia’s grasp right that minute, there’d be no one capable of overembellishing the circumstances of his violent death.
As the Cap began to move, he settled back, turned off the light, and took up sentinel at the window. The train slowed once more, however, and as he squinted into the darkness, he could make out the tombstones of a small cemetery the train was now idling beside.
Unnerved by the proximity of so many lost souls, Tom rose and went strolling once more. He had never done so much walking as he had since stepping foot on this train.
chapter sixteen
Tom poured a cup of coffee from the snack station near the stairs and headed for the lounge car. Most compartments were dark at this late hour, and he saw no one in the corridors. It could be him alone on this ten-car train chugging on. The dining room was also quiet and dark, the service crew long since having gone to their quarters in the dormitory car, he assumed. In the lounge area the lights had also been turned down, and it was empty as far as he could tell. The train started up again and he balanced himself against one of the seat backs. He recoiled when his hand touched skin, and he almost spilled his coffee.
Eleanor looked up at him. She seemed as startled as he. She was also holding a cup of coffee.
“God,” she said, “I didn’t even hear you come in.”
He eyed the coffee. “Still have insomnia too?” They’d both suffered from it, perhaps because of too many time zones and too much travel, and too many horror stories covered that came back to torture them in their sleep.
She rubbed her temples. “Funny, I thought I was over it. It seems to have come back very recently.”
“Okay, I get the hint. I can find another place to drink my coffee and mull my truly limitless future.”
“No, I can leave,” she said.
“Look,” said Tom, “we’re both adults. I think we can coexist on something as big as a train, at least for a little while.”
“That’s actually very mature of you.”
“I have my moments.”
They were both silent as the Cap picked up speed again, beating the tracks at nearly eighty miles an hour. Darkness had never flown by with such purpose, Tom thought.
“I’ve been wondering why you’re really on this train,” Eleanor said. “You were always into getting there the fastest way possible.”
“I told you, I’m doing a story about a train trip, which is a little difficult to accomplish unless you actually ride one.”
“Is that all?”
“Why shouldn’t it be?”
“Because I know you too well, I suppose. You don’t have to tell me. It’s not like you owe me an explanation.”
He thought about the double meaning of that statement — as in: she didn’t owe him an explanation either — but decided to let it pass. Instead he told her about his father’s wish and what he was doing about it, not that his dad would know.
“I think maybe your father will know,” she said quietly.
“Okay now, being the suspicious, paranoid, conspiracy-theorist investigative-reporter type, I have to tell you, your being on this train seems like one heck of a coincidence.”
“We were supposed to be taking the Capitol Limited yesterday.” She looked at her watch. “Well, since it’s already tomorrow, I mean the day before yesterday. But then apparently Max’s plans changed, he got into D.C. a day later, and we had to take the train you were on.”
Tom shrugged. “So maybe it’s a coincidence.”
“Trust me, if I’d known you’d be on this train, I wouldn’t have been.”
“So it was really that bad, huh?”
“Look, we didn’t work out, it happens to millions of people. Some folks just aren’t the marrying kind.”
“I was married once.”
Eleanor was clearly stunned by this. “What?”
“Well, it was over so fast — the marriage, I mean — that I barely remember it.”
Eleanor rose, her fury barely contained. “Well, I’m glad you loved a woman enough to actually ask her, however long it lasted.”
“Ellie, it wasn’t like that, it was the worst decision of my life—”
She turned and walked out.
He watched her leave as the Cap came to a stop.
He rose and leaned against the window. He said quietly, to himself, Actually it was the second worst decision of my life. Then he said out loud, “What the hell is going on? I could’ve walked to Chicago faster.”
“What is going on,” said a voice, “is that a freight train is on the tracks up ahead blocking the Cap’s way, that’s what.”
Tom looked in the direction the voice had come from. In the far corner of the lounge car, in the darkness, was the silhouette of a man. As the figure rose and seemed to float toward him, Tom thought he was about to encounter the Ghost of Christmas Past, who was coming to foretell his future of doom.
When the fellow came into the small wash of ambient light from the window, Tom let out his breath. He was tall in stature and lean, salt- and pepper–haired, about sixty or so, with handsome, chiseled features; he clearly would have turned many a young lady’s head in his prime. He was dressed in a white button-down shirt, tie, and dress slacks. He was also wearing what looked to be a conductor’s cap.
“Do you work on the train?” asked Tom. He was looking at the man’s hat.
“No,” he said, taking off his cap and shaking Tom’s hand. “Although I used to. Retired now. Name’s Herrick Higgins.”
Tom introduced himself and they sat down.
“You say there’s a freight train up ahead? So why don’t they get it to move out of the way?”
“Well,” said Higgins, “the easiest explanation is that Amtrak doesn’t own the track, the freight company does, so freight takes priority over people.”
“Are you serious?”
“Amtrak doesn’t own any of the tracks it runs on, except along the Northeast Corridor and other bits here and there. When the private train companies gave up passenger rail, they weren’t about to give up their tracks. You see, rail freight is very profitable, hauling people isn’t. Amtrak has arrangements with a whole hob-gob of folks. And sometimes it’s a logistical headache.”
“No offense, but that doesn’t sound like a great way to run a railroad,” commented Tom.
“Amtrak was never appropriated the funds to either buy the tracks or build new ones. Its only choice was to deal with the owners. So if a freight train gets backed up or derails, we wait. Happens all the time, and we really can’t do anything about it. Sorry, I keep saying ‘we’; old habits die hard.”
“How long were you wit
“Sometimes it seems like my whole life. I was actually around when it started up in ’71. Been a railroad man since I took my first breath, just like my father was. He worked the UP, the Union Pacific.”
Higgins looked at Tom’s cup of coffee and smiled. “Sleep comes slowly if at all on the first night on a train, but the second night, you’ll sleep through anything, trust me.” He looked out the window. “This route is laid over what used to be a turnpike. George Washington owned stock in the turnpike company. I often wondered what the father of our country would say, seeing the old Cap running up and down that same path. But maybe not much longer. Future doesn’t look too good for long-distance passenger trains. Government’s talking about busting Amtrak up, privatizing, spinning off the Northeast Corridor.”
“Well, America is such a large country, train travel just doesn’t make a lot of sense.”
Higgins eyed him. “You’re right, train travel as presently configured in this country doesn’t make a lot of sense. Amtrak folks are some of the most creative and dedicated souls there are; they have to be to get by on shoestring budgets and old equipment. They say rail travel is a financial drain. Well, I wonder what it’s worth to the environment to get ten million polluting cars off the highway or a bunch of noisy jets from over the top of people’s homes. Did you know that the United States spends more on cleaning roadkill off the highways than it does on passenger rail?”
“True, but passenger rail is subsidized, the airlines aren’t.”
“Did the airlines build the airports? Do they pay for air traffic control? Fact is, the airlines have been given tens of billions of dollars by Uncle Sam and they still barely make any money. The highways get over eighty cents out of every transportation dollar and the result is we keep building roads and we keep buying gas-guzzling cars to drive on those roads and we’re one big traffic jam and dependent on foreign oil. With just a one-penny-per-gallon fuel-tax fund, Amtrak could build a world-class passenger-rail system, but the government won’t give it to us. Ironically, this country was built by rail. Connected the east to the west and made America the center of the world.”
Higgins put his hat back on and adjusted it with a practiced hand. “I hear that they’re working on a commercial aircraft that will be able to fly seventeen thousand miles an hour. You could actually commute daily to Europe for work.”
“Well, that has appeal.”
“Oh, sure, if you’re into the destination only as opposed to the trip itself. It’s been my experience that most folk who ride trains could care less where they’re going. For them it’s the journey itself and the people they meet along the way. You see, at every stop this train makes, a little bit of America, a little bit of your country, gets on and says hello. That’s why trains are so popular at Christmas. People get on to meet their country over the holidays. They’re looking for some friendship, a warm body to talk to. People don’t rush on a train, because that’s not what trains are for. How do you put a dollar value on that? What accounting line does that go on?”
Higgins fell silent, rubbing his chin and looking at the floor. “I’m not saying that riding the train will change your life, or that passenger rail will be a big moneymaker one day. But no matter how fast we feel we have to go, shouldn’t there be room for a train, where you can just sit back, take a breath, and be human for a little while? Just for a little while? Is that so bad?”
chapter seventeen
As Tom left Herrick Higgins sitting there in the dark and walked slowly back to the sleeper cars, the Cap started up again. Over the sounds of the rolling train he heard something else. Something that made him race down the hall and clamber down the stairs as he followed the source.
There, sitting against one of the bulkheads was Julie, sobbing, and Eleanor sitting next to her, her arms around the younger woman.
“What’s going on?” asked Tom.
“I’m not sure,” said Eleanor. “I just found her like this.”
In a voice often halted by sobs, Julie explained that Steve’s parents had called. They’d found out what the couple was planning and had threatened to both disown and disinherit Steve if he married Julie. Steve, apparently, hadn’t been very decisive in telling them he was going ahead with it. In fact, he’d started to waffle so much that Julie and he had had a serious argument and she’d fled her fiancé to cry her heart out.
“Where is he?” asked Tom.
She told him that Steve was back at his compartment.
“Take care of Julie, I’m going to see him.”
“What are you going to do?” asked Eleanor.
“Stop him from making the mistake of his life.”
Tom stalked off and soon found young Steve staring forlornly out the window of his compartment. For the next ten minutes, he read the younger man the riot act, and voices and tempers flared on both sides, until Tom finally asked, “Do you love her? Do you? It’s really that simple.”
“Yes,” Steve said without hesitation.
“Then you take her without reservation, disclaimer, parental demands, or otherwise. You take her as she is with all her faults, weaknesses, idiosyncrasies, and requirements. You take her without qualification, with no strings attached by anyone else, because that’s what loving someone means. If you let that woman out of your life, you’re a fool. She’s given up as much as you, if not more. This may be the only shot you have at happiness. She may be the one woman in the entire world who you will love and who will make you happy. If you blow it, there’s no going back, Steve, trust me.”
“I love her, Tom, I really love her.”
“Then that’s all you need, that’s all you need.”
Steve looked past him. Tom turned, and there was Eleanor and a red-faced Julie. They’d apparently heard pretty much everything. Julie flew to Steve’s embrace. Tom stepped out and closed the privacy curtain. As he and Eleanor walked back, she said, “That was a good thing you did. I’m impressed.”
“Why sit around and watch someone mess up his life?”
They were going through the darkened dining car when Eleanor gasped, screamed, and then pointed. Under one of the tables, two eyes were peering out at them.
“What is that?”
At that moment a depressed-looking Kristobal came into the diner. When he saw Eleanor, he said, “God, Eleanor, I’ve been looking everywhere for you. Max is going to cut my salary. Can you talk to him?”
“Why is he cutting your salary?”
“Oh, because of a little misunderstanding about a pair of sunglasses I lost.”
“His?”
“No, mine. They cost—”
He looked where Tom was staring and screamed louder than Eleanor had. Jumping on one of the tables, he yelled out, “What is that?”
Tom crept forward for a closer look. About the time he started to smile, Regina had come racing up in her robe.
“What’s going on now?” she asked.
Tom was squatting in front of the table where the two eyes still peered out. “We have a visitor here, and I don’t think it has a ticket.”
When Regina saw the two eyes she drew back and clutched at her robe. “What is it?”
“A stowaway of the reptilian variety. Do you have a flashlight, a cardboard box or a Styrofoam ice chest, and a spare blanket?” asked Tom.
She ran off and was back shortly with an ice chest, blanket, and flashlight. Tom poked a couple of air holes in the chest, then shone the light under the table; that caused the creature to draw back in fear. Tom smiled.
“Okay, Kristobal,” he said, “position yourself so that if it takes off, it won’t get past you.”
Kristobal remained on the table. “Are you insane? I’m not getting anywhere near whatever that is.”
Tom looked at Eleanor.
“Okay, okay,” she said, “but I’m making no promises.” She positioned herself at the other end of the car and looked at Tom