I snap to, scrabbling with my legs until I get purchase on the top edge of the car. From there, it’s easy enough to haul myself up and a second later I’m once again lying on the top rail, gasping for breath.
The train whistle blows, and I lift my huge head. I’m on top of the stock car. I only have to make it to the vent and drop down. I crawl to the vent in fits and starts. It’s open, which is odd because I thought I closed it. I lower myself inside and crash to the floor. One of the horses whinnies and continues to snort and stamp, riled up about something.
I turn my head. The exterior door is now open.
I jerk up and scootch around so I’m facing the interior door. It is also open.
“Walter! Camel!” I shout.
Nothing but the sound of the door gently hitting the wall behind it, keeping time with the ties clacking beneath us.
I scramble to my feet and lunge for the door. Doubled over and supporting myself with one hand against the doorframe and the other on my thigh, I scan the interior of the room with sightless eyes. All the blood has left my head, and my vision once again fills with black and white explosions.
“Walter! Camel!”
My eyesight starts to return, from the outside in so that I find myself turning my head to try to catch things in the periphery. The only light is what comes through the slats, and it reveals an empty cot. The bedroll is also empty, as is the horse blanket in the corner.
I stagger to the row of trunks against the back wall and lean over them.
“Walter?”
All I find is Queenie, shivering and curled into a ball. She looks up at me in terror, and I am left with no doubt.
I sink to the floor, overcome with grief and guilt. I throw a book at the wall. I pound the floorboards. I shake my fists at heaven and God, and when I finally subside into uncontrolled sobbing Queenie creeps out from behind the trunks and slides into my lap. I hold her warm body until finally we are rocking in silence.
I want to believe that taking Walter’s knife didn’t make a difference. But still, I left him without a knife, without even a chance.
I want to believe they survived. I try to picture it—the two of them rolling out onto the mossy forest floor amid indignant curses. Why, at this very moment, Walter is probably going for help. He has made Camel comfortable in some sheltered spot and is going for help.
Okay. Okay. It’s not as bad as I thought. I’ll go back for them. In the morning, I’ll grab Marlena and we’ll go back to the nearest town and ask at the hospital. Maybe even the jail, in case the town decided they were vagrants. It should be easy enough to figure out which town is closest. I can locate it by proximity to the—
They didn’t. They couldn’t have. Nobody could have redlighted a crippled old man and a dwarf over a trestle. Not even August. Not even Uncle Al.
I spend the rest of the night planning all the ways I can kill them, rolling the ideas around in my head and savoring them, as though I were fingering smooth stones.
THE SCREECH OF THE air brakes snaps me out of my trance. Before the train has even stopped, I drop to the gravel and stride toward the sleepers. I climb the iron stairs to the first one shabby enough to house working men and slide the door open so violently it bounces closed again. I reopen it and march through.
“Earl! Earl! Where are you?” My voice is guttural with hate and rage. “Earl!”
I stalk down the aisle, peering into bunks. None of the surprised faces I encounter is Earl’s.
Onto the next car.
“Earl! You in here?”
I pause and turn to a bewildered man in a bunk. “Where the hell is he? Is he in here?”
“You mean Earl from security?”
“Yeah. That’s who I mean, all right.”
He jerks his thumb over his shoulder. “Two cars thataway.”
I pass through another car, trying to avoid the limbs that stick out from under bunks, the arms that spill over their edges.
I slide the door open with a crash. “Earl! Where the hell are you? I know you’re in here!”
There’s an astonished pause, with men on both sides of the car shifting in their bunks to get a look at this loud intruder. Three-quarters of the way down I see Earl. I charge him.
“You son of a bitch!” I say, reaching down to grab him by the neck. “How could you do it? How could you?”
Earl leaps from his bunk, holding my arms out to the side. “Whoa—hang on, Jacob. Calm down. What’s going on?”
“You know fucking well what I’m talking about!” I shriek, twisting my forearms around and out, breaking his grasp. I hurl myself at him, but before I make contact he once again has me at arm’s length.
“How could you do it?” Tears are running down my face. “How could you? You were supposed to be Camel’s friend! And what the hell did Walter ever do to you?”
Earl goes pale. He freezes with his hands still closed around my wrists. The shock on his face is so genuine I stop struggling.
We blink at each other in horror. Seconds pass. A panicked buzz ripples through the rest of the car.
Earl releases me and says, “Follow me.”