“Yeah.”
Colin sighed.
“What’s wrong?” Roy asked.
“Another damned game.”
“No game.”
“I guess I’m supposed to do what I did with the Sarah Callahan scheme. You want me to show you the holes in it so you’ll have an excuse to chicken out.”
“What holes?” Roy challenged.
“For one thing, a train is too damned big and heavy to be derailed by a little truck like this.”
“Not if we do it right,” Roy said. “If it’s perfectly timed, if the truck’s coming down the slope just as the train’s rounding the bend, the engineer will hit the brakes. When he tries to stop the train on a sharp curve like that, it’ll start rocking like crazy. And then when the truck hits it, it’ll roll right off the tracks.”
“I don’t think so.”
“You’re wrong,” Roy said. “There’s a pretty good chance it’ll happen just like I say.”
“No.”
“It’s worth a try. Even if it doesn’t derail the train, it’ll scare the hell out of them. Either way, it’ll be a popper.”
“There’s something else you haven’t thought of. This truck’s been sitting out here for a couple of years. The wheels are rusted. No matter how hard we push, they aren’t going to turn.”
“You’re wrong again,” Roy said happily. “I thought of that. There hasn’t been that much rain the past few years. They weren’t rusted really bad. I had to spend a few days working on the truck, but now the wheels will turn for us.”
For the first time, Colin noticed dark, oily stains on the wheel beside him. He reached behind it and found that it had been freshly, excessively lubricated. His hand came away with gobs of grease on it.
Roy grinned. “You see any other flaws in the plan?”
Colin wiped his hand in the grass and stood up.
Roy stood, too. “Well?”
The sun had just set. The western sky was golden.
“When do you figure to do it?” Colin asked.
Roy looked at his wristwatch. “About six or seven minutes from now.”
“There’ll be a train then?”
“Six nights a week at this time, a passenger train comes through here. I’ve done some checking. It starts in San Diego, stops in L.A., goes on to San Francisco and then Seattle before starting back: I’ve sat on the hill and watched it a lot of nights. It really moves. It’s an express.”
“You said the timing has to be perfect.”
“It will be. Or near enough.”
“But no matter how carefully you’ve planned it, you can’t expect the railroad to co-operate. I mean, trains don’t always run on time.”
“This one usually does,” Roy said confidently. “Besides, that’s not too important. All we have to do is push the truck closer to the edge, then wait until the train is almost here. When we see the locomotive coming, we’ll give the truck a little shove, tip it over the brink, and away it’ll go:”
Colin bit his lip, frowned. “I know you set this up so it can’t be done.”
“Wrong. I want to do it.”
“It’s a game. There’s a big hole in the plan, and you expect me to find it.”
“No holes.”
“I must be missing something.”
“You haven’t missed anything.”
Each of the ruined pickup’s front wheels was jammed against a wooden chock. Roy removed these braces and threw them aside.
“What’s the joke?” Colin asked.
“We’ve got to get moving.”
“There must be a joke.”
“We don’t have much time.”
Both of the truck’s doors had been removed, either by the collision or by Hermit Hobson. Roy went to the open driver’s side, reached in, and put his right hand on the steering wheel. He put his left hand on the door frame, ready to push.
“Roy, why don’t you give up? I know there’s got to be a catch.”
“Get around on the other side and help.”
Still trying to find the hole, still wondering what he had overlooked, still certain that Roy was playing an elaborate trick on him, Colin walked around the truck and stationed himself at the open passenger side.
Roy looked through the truck at him. “Put both hands on the front of the door frame and push.”
Colin did as he was told, and Roy pushed from the other side.
The truck didn’t move.
What’s the joke?
“It’s been sitting here awhile,” Roy said. “It’s made a sort of depression for itself.”
“Ahhh,” Colin said. “And of course we’re not strong enough to push it out.”
“Sure we are,” Roy said. “Put your back into it.”
Colin strained.
“Harder!” Roy said.
It won’t come up out of its little depression, Colin thought. He knows it. That’s the way he planned it.
“Push!”
The land was not flat. It graded down toward the edge of the hill.
“Harder!”
The firm, sun-baked earth helped them, and the corrugated metal tracks helped them.
“Harder!”
The recent grease job helped them.
“Harder!”
But most of all, the gently sloping land and gravity helped them.
The truck moved.
22
When he felt the pickup moving, Colin jumped back, astonished.
The truck stopped with a sharp squeak. “What’d you do that for?” Roy demanded. “We had it going, for Christ’s sake! Why’d you stop?”
Colin looked at him through the open cab of the truck. “Okay. Tell me. What’s the joke?”
Roy was angry. His voice was hard and cold, and he emphasized each word. “Get … it … through… your… head. There… is… no… joke!”
They stared at each other in the fast-fading, smoky light of dusk.
“Are you my blood brother?” Roy asked.
“Sure.”
“Isn’t it you and me against the world?”
“Yeah.”
“Won’t blood brothers do anything for each other?”
“Almost anything.”
“Anything! It has to be anything! No ifs, ands, or buts. Not with blood brothers. Are you my blood brother?”
“I said I was, didn’t I?”
“Then push, damnit!”
“Roy, this has gone far enough.”
“It won’t have gone far enough until it’s gone over the edge of the hill.”
“Fooling around like this could be dangerous.”
“Have you got concrete for brains?”
“We might accidentally wreck the train.”
“It won’t be an accident. Push!”
“You win. I give up. I won’t push the truck or you any further. You win the game, Roy.”
“What the hell are you doing to me?”
“I just want to get out of here.”
Roy’s voice was strained now, almost hysterical. His eyes were wild. He glared at Colin through the truck. “Are you turning your back on me?”
“Of course not.”
“Betraying me?”
“Look, I-”
“Are you a phony, too? Are you just like all the other goddamned cheats and back-stabbers and liars?”
“Roy-”
“Didn’t you mean one word you said to me?”
In the distance a train whistle pierced the twilight. “That’s it!” Roy said frantically. “The engineer always blows the whistle when he crosses Ranch Road. We’ve only got three minutes. Help me.”
Even in the dimming, orange-purple light, Colin could clearly see the rage in Roy’s face, the madness in his blue, blue eyes. Colin was shocked. He took another step back, away from the truck.
“Bastard!” Roy said.
He tried to push the Ford by himself.
Colin remembered how Roy acted in the garage when they played with Mr. Borden’s trains. How he wrecked them with such fierce glee. How he peered through the windows of the derailed toy cars. How he imagined that he was seeing real bodies, real blood, real tragedy-and somehow found pleasure in those sick fantasies.