The Nine Pound Hammer (14 page)

Conker and Si burst out laughing, and Ray forced a chuckle.

“What do they mean?” Jolie asked. Si quickly told her about when Ray first arrived and met Marisol on the vestibule. “You were walking around with nothing on?” Jolie asked with a smile.

“No,” Ray said with chagrin. “I had my underwear on. Conker just forgot to bring my clothes back.”

Jolie looked from Ray to Conker and Si. “So what do you do in the show?”

Conker and Si began telling her, going back and forth, until soon Jolie was leaning forward, eagerly hearing all about the different performances and about life in the medicine show. Soon Ray relaxed, too, settling back on his elbows as the evening got later and later.

After a while, the four grew quiet and listened to the patter of rain on the roof. Conker gave a wide yawn.

Jolie looked around at them. “I know you need to go. You are all so kind to visit me. I have seen the others out my window. The boy who makes fire, and the yellow-haired boy with the swords, and the girl with the snakes. They are all so … beautiful. But I am …”

“What are you talking about?” Si scowled.

Jolie ran her fingers over the marks across her arms, the scars on her neck and cheek. “These are ugly. I am ugly.”

Conker shifted uncomfortably, shaking his head as he said, “No, you’re not!”

“They’re … just scars,” Ray said. “You got them escaping from the Hound. Having scars just means you faced something terrible and difficult, but you survived. They show that you’re brave—braver than any of us have ever been. You just need to get out of this car some. Then you’ll feel better.”

Jolie pulled her legs back up to her chest. She wrapped her arms around them, holding herself tightly.

“When we were escaping from the Hoarhound, I was scared. But if I see it again, if the Gog comes for me, I will
fight. I will not let others die to protect me. If Little Bill and the Ramblers were brave enough, then I will be, too. I hate being in here, locked away.”

“I’ll ask Buck,” Ray began, a little hesitantly. “See if you can get outside.”

“Will you?” Jolie asked, her eyes wide.

“Sure,” Ray said. “But don’t get your hopes up.”

The next day, as everyone was preparing for the first show in Atlanta, Ray spied Buck alone, resting in the shade on the stage.

The cowboy lifted his head as Ray approached. Buck was running his fingers over one of his revolvers, and giving the chamber a spin, he holstered it neatly. “How did it go with Conker and Si?”

“Fine,” Ray said. “I think Jolie likes them.”

A horrible look came over Buck’s ragged face and, after a moment, Ray realized that this was what passed for a smile with the sharpshooter.

“Jolie …,” Ray began. “She wants to come outside … if you think that’ll be okay.”

“Good idea,” Buck said, more easily than Ray had imagined. “I think meeting you has really helped her. I’ve been talking to Nel about her getting more fresh air, some sunshine.”

“What about her needing to be hidden?” Ray asked. “Isn’t there … danger?”

“The bottletrees will protect her fine.”

Ray cast a glance at the cedar poles covered in colored bottles that he and Conker had been putting up at every show.

“I thought they were just for decoration.”

Buck hopped down from the stage, his cowboy boots jangling as he landed. “No, they’re not decoration,” Buck said. “They’re old magic. Hoodoo.” He leaned close, whispering in his raspy voice, “They keep the Gog’s servants away. If they got too close, they’d be trapped in the bottles.” Then walking away from Ray, he said, “I’ll tell Nel about your idea.”

Ray looked over once more at a bottletree, and went to get ready with the others for the first performance.

As the
Ballyhoo
traveled from town to town over the next week, Jolie wavered between days of improvement and lapses into weariness. Finally Nel agreed that Jolie would benefit from fresh air. Although Ray had been anxious—anxious about Seth, anxious about the Gog’s men or the Hoarhound storming suddenly from the forest, neither happened. Seth, along with Marisol and Redfeather, watched Jolie curiously when Ray led her outside that first day, but none of them bothered her.

As Jolie began getting outside more often, many days Conker and Si joined her and Ray on walks within the perimeter of the bottletrees, listening to stories about John Henry and his fabled Nine Pound Hammer. But Conker and Si were often busy helping with the show, and during
those times, Jolie and Ray would sit in the grass by the shadow of the train and talk.

She told him stories about the Ramblers and tales she had heard from Li’l Bill and the others when they had kept watch over her. She told Ray about Jonathan Chapman, who stole a silver apple from a witch in Hudson Valley and broke it open with a rock to spread the seeds in his vast travels. She told him about Colonel Pierce and his band of Ramblers meeting the White Buffalo, who was Boss of the Western Plains, and who taught the Ramblers the power of animal speech. Ray especially enjoyed the tale of Old Tea Mat, the monstrous catfish who lived beneath the waters of Lake Pontchartrain.

Jolie was curious about the outside world and about Ray’s life before he met the medicine show. She asked about Sally and about surviving on the streets of lower Manhattan.

One afternoon, when he was telling her about a time he had been caught stealing a drunken man’s wallet, Jolie fainted. She stayed in her tank for several days after that, coming from the water only long enough to share a few words with Ray or Si and Conker. She looked weak and ate little of the food they took to her. Sometimes she seemed to be in a dark depression and would not come out even to say hello to Ray.

That was around the same time the lodestone began pulling again.

*  *  *

Ray twisted and turned sleeplessly on his straw mattress. The night was hot and all the mosquitoes in Alabama seemed to have found their way into Ray’s room. He kicked off his sheets in agitation and stepped to the floor. His foot landed hard on something. Bending down, he touched the lodestone.

As his fingers met it, the stone moved. Ray sat up, watching as the lodestone began sliding across his palm. What was it doing? He closed his fingers around it, but still felt the urgent pull pressing into his palm.

Ray ran out his door and jumped down from the vestibule, heading across the grass, already wet with the muggy summer night. He had to tell Conker; maybe he was still awake. As he went under the tent, it took Ray a few moments of stumbling to find the stage in the darkness. “Conker,” he whispered but got no reply.

A large dark shadow lay upon the stage, murmuring with a dream. His eyes slowly adjusting to the dark, Ray saw that Conker was twitching in his sleep, his face mashed onto a thin feather pillow.

The giant was dreaming. With the lodestone still in his hand, Ray reached out to shake Conker’s shoulder.

As his fingers touched him, Ray’s mind exploded with a vision.

A cavern far under the earth was illuminated with the dim glow of a kerosene lantern. A huge man, nearly the same size as Conker but older and harder-faced, was carrying a
heavy long-handled hammer. He turned to a man behind him, small by comparison
.

The large man had to shout to be heard over the buzzing, hissing noises that filled the tunnel. “Go back, Li’l Bill!
”

The small man had a thick blond beard and long hair run through with gray. He looked as if he was going to speak, but the fierce, not unkind resolve on the large man’s face stifled any argument. Li’l Bill hesitated a moment before clamping his hands affectionately to the large man’s arms. Words seemed to fail to come to his lips, and he turned, receding into the dark
.

Alone, the large man with the hammer held up his lantern
.

Before him were a thousand clawing, churning movements, like a wall of maggots writhing in the oily light. But they were not insects. They were intricate bits of machinery. The hissing of pistons firing, the grinding of gears and rumbling chains filled the tunnel. The cold, grease-slick machinery was enormous and extended into the rock surrounding it. There was no focal point to the steel mass, no obvious function of the mechanization. It was as if this were only a small portion of some larger machine encased in the earth
.

He looked back once. Li’l Bill was gone
.

Then the man threw down his lantern and rushed forward with his hammer, swinging the thick iron head into the skin of rivets and rods
.

As the blow sank into the machinery, the tunnel erupted with a howl of steam and oil and flame
.

*  *  *

Ray fell back with a clatter to the wooden floor of the stage, the lodestone dropping from his hand. Conker shot up with a roar.

Ray snatched the lodestone as he backed away. For a moment, Ray saw Conker in a terrible way, for what he could be—someone frightening and powerful and dangerous.

“Conker, it’s okay,” Ray said. “It’s just me. Ray.”

The ferocious look left Conker’s face as he saw Ray flinching back.

“Oh, Ray. You startled me. I was … dreaming and … you scared me.” Then his eyes fell to Ray’s hand. Even in the dim light, the dark shadow of the lodestone was apparent in his palm.

“What were you doing?” Conker asked.

“I … I was just coming to wake you … I didn’t mean to …”

“Did you see my dream?” Anger rose in his voice.

“I’m sorry,” Ray said. “I didn’t know—”

“That ain’t right, Ray! I’m your friend. You ought not to be snooping on my dreams.”

“I didn’t mean to,” Ray said again. The realization of what he had seen overwhelmed him, and he scrambled to his feet. “I’m sorry, Conker.”

As Ray jumped from the stage, Conker called, “Ray … where are you going? Ray!”

But Ray was out from under the tent and running. He
ran and ran until he reached the caboose and then a bottle-tree and down the track until he dropped to his knees.

Ray trembled at what he had witnessed. That had been Conker’s father, John Henry, destroying the Gog’s Machine so long ago. The Machine! It had been horrific. Unlike anything he had ever imagined. But that was not what disturbed Ray so greatly.

Li’l Bill. The Rambler who had helped John Henry. Ray knew him. He had recognized the man immediately. How could he not?

Li’l Bill was William Cobb. Li’l Bill was his own father.

Late in the night, maybe it was nearly dawn, Ray made his way back to his room in the sleeper car. He knew he would not sleep.

With the sun rising in the east toward the caboose, he held the lodestone, watching it draw heavily across his palm. Ray closed his fingers over it, but still felt the incessant pull. He gauged the direction against the warm sunlight spilling orange and yellow over the land.

South.

His father had been a Rambler. His father had known and fought beside John Henry. His father had not died eight years ago.

The lodestone had started pulling, started giving him the dreams of the Hound, a month before Ray joined the medicine show. That was the same time that his father had helped Jolie and Buck escape from the Hoarhound. All
that time, Ray had been seeing his father but had not known it. His father had fought the Hound. His father had tried to escape, when the Hoarhound bit into his hand.

What had happened to him when they disappeared?

Eight years. Eight years his father had been away. His father had never known that Sally had been born. He had never known all the hardships that she and Ray and their poor mother had endured.

What had he been doing all that time?

Jolie.

He had been protecting Jolie.

A hatred boiled up in Ray that he could not stop. She had kept his father from his family. Ray pounded a fist into his pillow and tore the quilt from his bed.

Why hadn’t his father tried to find his family again? Surely he could have. Was Jolie more important than they were?

Dawn came. And with it, the rustle and rumble of breakfast and the final preparations for the medicine show getting ready to depart.

The lodestone’s pull was as powerful as he’d ever felt it.

Out his window, Ray saw Nel walk around the field where they had set up, looking around to double-check that all was safely stowed away.

Could it be that the lodestone had been leading him all along to his father? And if it was, was his father alive or dead?

Ox called from the locomotive, “Ready, Nel? All aboard!”

“Let’s sally forth, Everett,” Nel shouted.

A whistle shrieked. Steam and coal smoke clouded the dawn. The
Ballyhoo’s
wheels began to turn.

Ray quickly gathered his few possessions, wrapping them in his coat and tucking it under his arm. He stepped out onto the vestibule. The
Ballyhoo
was gaining speed, but not too quickly. Ray hopped down onto the smoky gravel right-of-way beside the train and dashed behind a nearby tree.

When he stepped out again, he saw the
Ballyhoo’s
caboose disappearing in the distance.

R
AY SAT FOR A LONG TIME BY THE SIDE OF THE TRACKS.
T
HE
Ballyhoo
was gone. Conker and Buck and Jolie and all the others were gone.