The muscles in Mike Pennel’s jaw worked, a glint of coppery whiskers on his face, as he ran his hand over his head. “What kind of danger is my family in?”
“It’s complicated. May I come inside?”
“You sure I’m not dreaming?”
“Does it feel like one?”
“No.”
“Even if it is one, then what do you have to lose? I mean, you’ll wake up and be fine, right.”
“Right, or I’m crazy.”
“I thought that a lot myself. You’ll feel it a few more times before I finish.”
“Well, then you best get started,” he said, swinging the screen door open and motioning her to follow him inside.
She stepped into the same house that she had stepped into decades into the future. Her head danced with a sensation of vertigo and disorientation. This version of the Pennel home smelled of the same wood materials, but added to that was a musty odor from the dusty rugs and a sharpness to the varnish that was not present in the future brands. She made her way to the kitchen with Mike following. If her familiarity with the place was strange to him, he did not comment on it. Instead, as she sat at the table and took in the kitchen—this version with the original pine cabinets and laminate counters—Mike went to the sink and ran water to splash in his face before pulling out a chair and sitting down across from her.
She wasted no time telling him everything and set aside any compunctions about informing him of future events which had yet to occur, science fiction tropes of corrupting timelines be damned. She wanted to corrupt this one as much as possible if it meant saving her friends—his niece and nephews.
She explained the events of the summer of 2017 and what she knew about what would take place on the night of August 22, 1953. She focused on the facts she knew, those most critical to their situation, and then a few of the assumptions and hypotheses she had formed in discussion with the Pennels and the Coates brothers. She felt like her sister Chinemere, laying out a case in court, or how Kenia herself might outline the case in a journal article.
When she was finished, Mike held his fist to his mouth. His throat fluttered as he tried to take in all she had shared. “If I had not seen you disappear myself, this would be harder to take in.” He paused for a beat to shake his head back and forth. “My niece and nephews, they live in this house. They are your friends?”
“Yes, and I am afraid I could not stop my jump. I left them in grave danger. Our only hope is to change the timeline, or if that does not happen, hopefully I will return with enough time to help them.”
“I hope so too, even if I don’t know them.”
“They are good people. The best. And they take good care of this house.”
He smiled. “Good to know. And good to know the old place has stayed in the family.”
“Where are your parents and your brother now?” she asked carefully, worried that it might prompt him to ask about his brother and future sister-in-law. Kenia was not sure if it was right to share with him that they would die in a car accident with a drunk driver, especially when she didn’t know any further details on how it might be prevented.
“My brother Jay is in the Navy. His ship docked from its last tour in Norfolk, Virginia yesterday. Mom and Dad headed down to pick him up. First time they’ve seen him since he came back from Korea.”
“What day is it today?” Kenia asked.
Mike looked at the clock on the kitchen wall, the pendulum rocking back and forth with steady clicks. It read a quarter to midnight.
“It’s Saturday, August 22, at least for another fifteen minutes. So if what you say is true—”
“We need to move.”
“Right. Follow me,” he said, pushing out his chair.
Mike’s long stride took him across the room into the hallway. He had the body of a man, but still some of the awkwardness of a teenager. His youth gave him an energy that overcame the drowsiness of sleep. Kenia hurried after him as he ran down to the basement, his feet pounding a rapid beat on the wooden cellar steps. The lower level smelled of ashes and fuel oil. A coal-burning furnace was cleaned and closed up for the summer season. Homemade jars of preserves lined the shelves. Mike ran to the northwest corner of the house and knelt next to a wooden chest that he opened to reveal two miner helmets with lamps and heavy 1950s era batteries. He clicked the switches, but the lamps remained dead.
“No matter. We don’t need the lamps to work. We just need to look like miners,” he said, setting the helmets aside and pulling out two pairs of work boots followed by two sets of coveralls. They were stiff and, despite washings, were dark with embedded coal dust.
“What are these?”
“My grandfather’s old mining kit.”
“You saved them?”
“They’re sort of family heirlooms. Those old guys, even though the mines were killing them, it was their life, their identity. That work was their purpose, keeping the lights on for the rest of the country, food on the table for their families, and babies warm in the winter. They took it seriously.” He touched the cloth as one might an old battlefield flag before handing it over to Kenia. “It might be a bit big on you, but we’ll need them to move around the plant without attracting too much attention.”
“I like the way you think,” she said, pulling the zipper down on the front and slipping the coveralls on over her clothes. Mike did the same, negotiating his with much more efficiency than she could with her oversized set. While she rolled up the sleeves and positioned the pant legs to fit over the boots, Mike rounded the corner of the cellar, opening a few more chests and drawers, and returned with a climbing rope strung across his chest and a utility belt around his waist. He buckled a second belt around Kenia and cinched it, helping with the excess fabric. She felt a bit ridiculous as she pulled her braids back and tried to arrange them in a discreet fashion beneath her helmet. Mike looked much more the part than she. But he seemed satisfied as he took a look at her and declared, “That will do.”
“How will we get past the gate?” she asked. Not satisfied with her hair, she bent down to where a row of old shoes had been stored, yanked out the laces, and used them to secure her hair back.
“I figure we’ll jump the train that comes in around a quarter to one.”
“How do you know the schedule?”
Mike shrugged. “Whole town knows it. You hear the whistle as it crosses the trellis at night . . . at least those of us who are light sleepers do.”
“Sure,” she said remembering the open bedroom windows in this era without widespread AC.
“But we need to move. We will have to hop it before it gets to the trellis,” he said, moving to the steps. “Can you drive that bike with a passenger behind you?”
“I guess we’ll find out.”
The Scout handled differently with the addition of a passenger, but Kenia was able to adjust. Mike caught on that he had to lean with her around the turns, keeping his center of gravity close to hers, and hunker down on the straightaways when she would shift into higher gears and open up the engine. He had to shout over the roar to direct her where to go, leading them through town and eventually into the woods along roads Kenia was not sure she had been on—or if they even still existed—in the future she was familiar with. These roads were unpaved and went from gravel to nothing but wheel ruts that shook the frame and caused the fenders of the Scout to shudder.
“Fire trails,” Mike cried out in her ear. “They are better suited for a Jeep, but you are doing great.”
Kenia would have thanked him, but she was distracted as a panel from one of the fenders went flying off into the bushes. The effort required to keep the bike upright was too great anyway. Had she tried talking, she likely would have bit her tongue from the clacking of her teeth. She wrestled the Scout for another half mile, until Mike pointed out a break in the trees. Kenia had to downshift and bring the bike to a stop to steer it up and out of a wheel rut and over a small rise adjacent to the fire road. The far side barely even presented a path. The bike skidded through leaves and sprayed up fans of dirt, nearly toppling over, before they came out in a flat space next to the railroad tracks. Over the idling engine they both heard the unmistakable howl of the train whistle.
“That way,” Mike said, pointing west. Just before a bend where the tracks disappeared stood a signal tower, the lights burning red in their direction.
“Hold tight.”
Kenia steered the Scout along the rail bed. The easement was mostly clear of obstructions, but the earth was soft from pools of runoff, causing the rear tire to spin out more than once. The train whistle sounded again. Mike didn’t need to tell her to go faster. She twisted the accelerator, and they barreled towards the tower at a reckless speed. A deer carcass, the creature likely frozen in the headlamp of a previous locomotive before being struck and flung to the side, loomed up in the cone of light in front of the Scout. Kenia held her breath as they rolled over it, but they both still choked from the cloying scent of decay.
They could hear the thrum of the diesel engine as they reached the base of the tower. The access ladder for maintenance crews was outside of their reach.
“We should hide the bike in the bushes,” Mike said, climbing off and pulling a steel hook-shaped wrench of some sort from his belt. Kenia turned to push the Scout into the bushes while he lifted the rope from his shoulders and looped the end around the handle of the wrench. The bike was too heavy to move on her own in the soft ground, so Kenia gave it some gas and rode it into the tall grass and bushes at the forest’s edge. She cut the engine and gave the seat an appreciative pat.
“Thanks, Chief,” she said to the profile, now scratched, its shine gone from a patina of mud.
“What’s that?” Mike asked from the tower base.
“Nothing, how can I help?”
“Wish me luck,” he said, twirling the wrench on the end of the rope. He reminded her of a pitcher winding up for a fastball, his concentration unbroken by the crescendo of sound from the looming locomotive, its headlamp appearing through the trees and reflecting off the river just below them.
Mike released the wrench. It wanged against the lowest rung of the access ladder, the sound like a poorly tuned drum, and fell back to the ground with a thud. Mike recovered the line, made a few adjustments with his feet, spun and released again.
This time the wrench floated right over the last rung, the line arching behind it. Mike wasted no time pulling the slack, hesitating only when the wrench approached the rung and dangled, twisting in a slow circle. He yanked it taut at the right moment and the hooked end caught on the rung. With another pull, the maintenance ladder clattered down.
“Come on, you first,” he said.
Kenia jumped up, Mike kneeling to unhook then refasten the wrench so that when he followed Kenia up the ladder to the catwalk he was able to pull the ladder up back into place, shake the wrench free from the bottom, and wind it back up around his elbow and forearm.
The tracks below were lit in bright relief by the approaching locomotive.
“Hide yourself behind the signal,” Mike said, motioning towards the catwalk that extended over the tracks. On either side were two sets of signal lights in black metal casings about the size of a small refrigerator: red lights shone in the direction they had come; green in the direction of the train.
Kenia crossed the catwalk, her feet banging on the metal grating. She was able to crouch and hide herself behind one—Mike the other. The beam from the headlamp brought day to night, illuminating the tracks with the searing intensity of a sustained lightning flash, even from a hundred feet away. The metal of the tower gleamed; Kenia was grateful Mike had had the foresight to hide them from the engineer’s view. While they waited, Mike freed the wrench from the rope and began to fashion a complex new knot around the handrail between the signal cases.
She would have asked him what he was doing, but the train whistle sounded. It was deafening so close. She covered her ears as the cone of light around them narrowed, and the engine itself passed beneath them. The burst of withering heat from the turbines and the haze of exhaust nearly made her faint. It was like standing before a blast furnace. Mike caught her by the shoulder as she wavered.
“You all right?” he screamed over the drum of the railcars, the throbbing of the axles, and the clomp-click-clack-click of the wheels over the track joints. She nodded, taking a gulp of the fresh air that swept past in the locomotive’s wake. The outer layer of her clothes was hot to the touch, her skin flushed and sweating.
“Yeah, yeah,” she said, although she had to steady herself with the handrail as she got to her feet.
Four by four by four.
Mike wiped his own brow. He secured the knot and lowered the rope down to dangle just above the passing cars. The railcars were uniform, as far as the eye could see, each one a coal car, the beds empty as the train was headed to the plant to be filled. Each had its own wheel brake at the end, above the couplers. The first few to pass struck the end of the rope, whipping it wildly, one after another. Mike adjusted the length so that it hung just above them; at the same time, he kept looking down the tracks for sign of the caboose.
“You first, watch the wheel brakes.”
Kenia had not considered just how dangerous the stunt was going to be. The train was indeed moving too fast to come alongside to jump on or climb aboard—so fast, in fact, that the window to drop into the bed of the coal cars was breathlessly short. A thousand last-second doubts log-jammed in her head.
“Will this knot hold?”
“My brother is a sailor. He taught me a thing or two about knots. But we got to move before the caboose comes.”
Kenia nodded. She swung herself over the railing, testing her grip on the rope and the placement of her feet on either side. She tried to tell herself it was no different than the climbing wall at the school gym. The wheels of the railcars that would cut her in two, notwithstanding.
She lifted her feet and put her trust in the rope and the knot. They held. Her arms burned and she tried to give them some relief by slipping her legs around the line. She lowered herself hand over hand, watching the beds thunder past: a series of rusty bottoms punctuated by a gap where the couplings clanked together with all the weight and force of ocean freighters, completely indifferent to her soft, fleshy body. The picture of the shattered deer corpse flashed into her mind.
“Kenia, the caboose!”
She chanced a look towards the rear of the train. Two red lights were approaching. She loosened her grip, sliding down, the skin of her palms burning with the friction. She stopped just at the end, her feet running in air as a wheel brake passed just beneath her, then another, and another. When she thought she had the rhythm down, she let go.