CHAPTER SIXTY-SIX – “MYSTERY TRAIN”

Norlin stands under a digital clock at the transit station, watching Jatesland's night people come and go, passing the memorial to Colonel Parker mutilated by Tony Debris with eyes averted, lest some passing patrolman notice them and draw a line from Stimwood to Mondretto’s lozenge. The clock flicks time: 2350 hours. It's begun raining, again, and he has inserted two Jean-tokens into an antique pay telephone with the placard: Maintained by the Jatesland City Council for Convenience of Autocomless passengers under Section 51 of the Compliance Doctrine.

It buzzes three times, and Reason picks up...

"Who the keb is this? It's late... is it you, Andy?"

Something's stuck in Norlin's throat, and he has trouble spitting out a reply - sounding more like a phibe than a man. "Reason?"

"Who is this?"

Norlin coughs, losing his train of thought and, by the time he's retrieved it, the impossibly nasal Terminal loudspeaker is announcing his transport to West Memphis… the city of Elvis himself still remaining within the insanitary zone – entry prohibited. Noise and static fill his head and throat, as if with mental cotton:

The Highway 61 Revisited - Frontierland Midnight EastAm Local is now boarding for Border City, Rayville and Clinton's Ferry. Transfer at Clinton's Ferry for West Memphis, Arkansas, Hayti, New Madrid and Jefferson City, Missouri; Des Moines, Minneapolis and all Can-American points. Transfer at New Madrid for Kiowa Village, Golden, Reno Beach and all points west. All EastAmerica lines depart Crossroads station for Marion, Champaign and New Chicago north, eastbound buses for Space City, Nashville, Mystery, Louisville, all other EastAmerican stations. Baggage must be inspected, ticketed and checked through; passengers departing EastAmerican terminals must have internal passports pre-stamped.

And only dead air answers from the other end of the telephone.

"Love you..." Norlin sighs; it's 2353 hours, and a uniformed conductor has opened the door to the boarding platform. He hangs up, taking his place at the end of a short line of doops, freaks and losers - probable LC's, each fingering their ticket out-of-town and staring downwards, as if to avoid the attention of two of John Crum's least-favoured officers, chatting up the fat lady closing up the terminal's Integral Bar for the night. Dead inside, now, absolutely wasted in mind and body, the Corporal drops into a seat beside an apparently sleeping passenger, but the dark, old rattlecoach is not even over the WestAmerican ponton when the wearisome, odoriferous pilgrim stirs, yawns, extends a hand, and launches into his spiel...

"Fred Cook. Sir... may I share with you the good news, as proclaimed by Jezekiah Jemaliel Jates?"

"Until we hit the border station," Norlin decides to compromise. "Then, you shut up..."

"That's not a very positive attitude. Triple-J exudes positivism..."

Norlin removes the skimmer from his pocket, lets it repose on his lap.

"Triple-J was a kebbin' nut! You on your way to Space City?"

"I am!"

"Kinda last-minute for that, ain'tcha?"

"I only raised my ticket money at the last moment," Fred Cook allows. "Generous friends and relatives finally answered my entreaties and... here I am! Bursting with joy! I can just make it... as long as there isn't any problem with the Crossroads Ferry," frets the pilgrim, eyes still darting to the skimmer, as if his seatmate might just frustrate Ascension out of one of those midnight train-passenger whims that whisper in the desolation of a winter's squall.

"Those people gave you the money to be rid of you..." Norlin reminds him.

"What mean sentiments! But you don't dishearten me... you know... this time, tomorrow, I will be on my way to join Triple-J on a magical, joyous voyage towards achievement of the pinnacle of substance!"

Some infectious meme teases the Corporal - shooting the smelly hadji in an arm or leg, to prevent him from shooting himself off into the sun.

"I have also been permitted a vista of the future, tonight, and that future is death. The final stop for all of us! You'll be dead! If that contraption doesn't blow on the Space City pad like the one back in October," Norlin reminds the old man, "you'll pass a few weeks listening to qubed sermons, eating tasteless crackers, growing hotter and hotter and them, finally, burn to death before you even cross Mercury's orbit..."

"What negative thinking!" the pilgrim reiterates. "A soul cannot end its own existence - the objective being Becoming, not termination. The Becoming soul, often seen by relatives and friends as unstable, is only separating itself from the worldly Tu-Manic growth, so as to be ready to seek a higher truth, or Hu-Manic reality…"

"You're flying into the kebbin' sun! You'll just be cooked..." Norlin reminds him.

"Not cooked, sir… hooked! Hooked! on the Becoming. The Days of Harvest are here, praise Jates…" but the Corporal has closed his eyelids, allowing Fred Cook's proselytizations to wash over him like a filthy, Stimwoodian tide.

Finally, the Highway 61 Local brakes to a squealy, smoky stop at the WestAmerican customshouse and two heavyset officers board the smoker with a disturbed, snuffling hog on a leash... one taking each aisle of the bus, checking papers and opening and tossing luggage. With the skimmer lying, placidly, in his lap, Norlin scrunches back to hide the tape around his neck, reaches for his badge...

"Reason for desiring entry to WestAmerica?" says the plump, oblivious young constable.

"Police business."

Only now does the customs officer notice Norlin's skimmer. The border pig never gives it a glance - trained for detecting coffee, sugar, not guns. And it's not a concealed weapon, so the douanier isn't quite sure what to do... the Corporal figures him for a once-celebrated high-school athlete, already waxing fat on a diet of condemned, confiscated contraband.

"And what might that be..."

"Confidential," their visitor from Barataria wags a Trouble Factory finger.

With a shrug, the officer stamps Norlin's internal passport.

"I'm clearing you for two weeks, bro'. Keb up... at least get caught doin' so, or using, selling or possessing alcohol, caffeine or any of the usual illegal fex... and you're subject to deportation or, even, imprisonment... and we know your Department won't like that. Refined sugar legal, here, state-optional... there's a Krispy Kreme franchise over the Truman state line," he nods. "Welcome to WestAmerica." And, then, he glares at the smelly pilgrim in the other seat. "What about you?"

The Jatesist waves his Space City pass like a racetrack winner holding up a lucky two-Jean ticket.

"I'm going home!" Norlin's seatmate beams. "On my way to reunion with Triple-J and the solar choir in the heart of the sun..."

"Stop foamin'..." cautions the border guard, stamping the pilgrim's passport before he can begin his scripted conversion rhetoric. Norlin, noticing that his digital, globally-positioned watch has short-circuited and keeps flashing "anomaly!" is suddenly seized by an insane desire to bait the douanier.

"Officer..." he waves for attention, "...officer, what day is it?

"You a kebbin' comedian? Saturday, Thursday, Kingsday..." the exasperated border guard snorts, "...stop messin' with my head and all that Baratarian foolishness. You're in a civilized nation, now, try to blend in. Have a nice mission, Officer, and, for you, Mr. Cook, a happy solar appointment. Good riddance to the both of you!"

When the border patrol and their pig are off the bus... harvesting a couple of passengers with bad papers or attitudes in the course of their investigation... the train starts up and Norlin turns a sober face to the pilgrim.

"This cop is going to try and cop some sleep. And if I hear one peep from you 'bout Triple-J, I'll forward you along to him without your needing any rendezvous in Space City..."

And, in fact, Norlin does fall asleep, dreaming horrific dreams… phantasms of despair, abandonment and icy desperation flickering by on ever-widening gyres of Incunabular canvas… until the Local reaches its transfer station at Clinton's Ferry under terrible stars - shining in a clear, terrible, terrible sky. A shabby passenger ferry waiting at its dock, the blazing lights of Crossroads, across the Mississippi, proclaiming, to Fred Cook, the welcome of EastAmerica, Space City and oblivion. Meanwhile, an old petrol-burning black bus billowing black smoke waits to receive the northbound transferees. Its blacked-out destination engenders a sudden terror in Norlin, dis-ease that boils over, finding outlet in an untoward compassion to his doomed, wretched-looking travelling companion.

"Be with Jates, brother Cook..." he blesses ascension's pilgrim.

"Thank... thank you, I think..." recoils the flustered Jatesian son of the sun.

Norlin's fingers rifle his pockets for a pencilstub, not there. He frowns. "If you need a friend on your way to... you know, up there?... look for Homer Sack aboard the transport. He was a good man..." Norlin's voice trails off as the pilgrim nods, gathering his worldly belongings in a ragged, glastic bag and departs the bus... drawn towards the ferry as a bug towards its fatal light.

Norlin steps onto asphalt pitted with pebbles and dead weeds. Baratarian winters are mild but this... this is different, it's nearly freezing and there's even a dirty shroud of last week's snow on the mud bordering the station.

He hasn't smoked since he was barely out of his teens, just after the Cannonball when tobacco was still licit, but suddenly aches with a desire to fire one up and damn the law. Instead, he shivers, and begins walking towards the black bus.

The driver is a dark man in a dark overcoat... face shadowed by a long-billed cap. He takes Norlin's ticket without remark. There are only a few passengers, and the reason for the driver's overcoat becomes apparent... the bus is unheated. The Corporal squirms and shivers... falls into fitful sleep awhile and wakes again, squirming and shivering. When next he wakes, roiling purple clouds of approaching dawn overhang a desolate urban landscape and the black bus, otherwise empty, slows in sloshing, hubcap-high dirty water in a dirty, empty downtown.

"Wes’ Memp'is station," the driver turns with a horrible, dawn-of-destruction smirk. "End o' the line."

CHAPTER SIXTY-SIX – “MYSTERY TRAIN”

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