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That was the real secret of happiness. He understood it now. Not even friendship meant as much as freedom. This was the best thing of all-to be free of friends or family or the furies of the flesh.
Martin walked slowly beside the embankment under the night sky. Come to think of it, he was just about back where he’d started, so many years ago. But the moment was good, good enough to prolong forever. Once a bum, always a bum.
He smiled as he thought about it, and then the smile twisted sharply and suddenly, like the pain twisting sharply and suddenly in his chest. The world began to spin and he fell down on the side of the embankment.
He couldn’t see very well, but he was still conscious, and he knew what had happened. Another stroke, and a bad one. Maybe this was it. Except that he wouldn’t be a fool any longer. He wouldn’t wait to see what was still around the corner.
Right now was his chance to use his power and save his life. And he was going to do it. He could still move, nothing could stop him. He groped in his pocket and pulled out the old silver watch, fumbling with the stem. A few twists and he’d cheat death, he’d never have to ride that Hell-Bound Train. He could go on forever. Forever.
Martin had never really considered the word before. To go on forever-but how? Did he want to go on forever, like this; a sick old man, lying helplessly here in the grass?
No. He couldn’t do it. He wouldn’t do it. And suddenly he wanted very much to cry, because he knew that somewhere along the line he’d outsmarted himself. And now it was too late. His eyes dimmed, there was a roaring in his ears…
He recognized the roaring, of course, and he wasn’t at all surprised to see the train come rushing out of the fog up there on the embankment. He wasn’t surprised when it stopped, either, or when the Conductor climbed off and walked slowly toward him.
The Conductor hadn’t changed a bit. Even his grin was still the same.
“Hello, Martin,” he said. “All aboard.”
“I know,” Martin whispered. “But you’ll have to carry me. I can’t walk. I’m not even really talking anymore, am I?”
“Yes you are,” the Conductor said. “I can hear you fine. And you can walk, too.” He leaned down and placed his hand on Martin’s chest. There was a moment of icy numbness, and then, sure enough, Martin could walk after all.
He got up and followed the Conductor along the slope, moving to the side of the train.
“In here?” he asked.
“No, the next car,” the Conductor murmured. “I guess you’re entitled to ride Pullman. After all, you’re quite a successful man. You’ve tasted the joys of wealth and position and prestige. You’ve known the pleasures of marriage and fatherhood. You’ve sampled the delights of dining and drinking and debauchery, too, and you traveled high, wide, and handsome. So let’s not have any last-minute recriminations.”
“All right,” Martin sighed. “I can’t blame you for my mistakes. On the other hand, you can’t take credit for what happened, either. I worked for everything I got. I did it all on my own. I didn’t even need your watch.”
“So you didn’t,” the Conductor said, smiling. “But would you mind giving it back to me now?”
“Need it for the next sucker, eh?” Martin muttered.
“Perhaps.”
Something about the way he said it made Martin look up. He tried to see the Conductor’s eyes, but the brim of his cap cast a shadow. So Martin looked down at the watch instead.
“Tell me something,” he said, softly. “If I give you the watch, what will you do with it?”
“Why, throw it into the ditch,” the Conductor told him. “That’s all I’ll do with it.” And he held out his hand.
“What if somebody comes along and finds it? And twists the stem backward, and stops Time?”
“Nobody would do that,” the Conductor murmured. “Even if they knew.”
“You mean, it was all a trick? This is only an ordinary, cheap watch?”
“I didn’t say that,” whispered the Conductor. “I only said that no one has ever twisted the stem backward. They’ve all been like you, Martin-looking ahead to find that perfect happiness. Waiting for the moment that never comes.”
The Conductor held out his hand again.
Martin sighed and shook his head. “You cheated me after all.”
“You cheated yourself, Martin. And now you’re going to ride that Hell-Bound Train.”
He pushed Martin up the steps and into the car ahead. As he entered, the train began to move and the whistle screamed. And Martin stood there in the swaying Pullman, gazing down the aisle at the other passengers. He could see them sitting there, and somehow it didn’t seem strange at all.
Here they were: the drunks and the si
“Mighty nice traveling companions,” Martin said. “Why, I’ve never seen such a pleasant bunch of people. I mean, they seem to be really enjoying themselves!”
The Conductor shrugged. “I’m afraid things won’t be quite so jazzy when we pull into that Depot Way Down Yonder.”
For the third time, he held out his hand. “Now, before you sit down, if you’ll just give me that watch. A bargain’s a bargain-”
Martin smiled. “A bargain’s a bargain,” he echoed. “I agreed to ride your train if I could stop Time when I found the right moment of happiness. And I think I’m about as happy right here as I’ve ever been.”
Very slowly, Martin took hold of the silver watch-stem.
“No!” gasped the Conductor. “No!”
But the watch-stem turned.
“Do you realize what you’ve done?” the Conductor yelled. “Now we’ll never reach the Depot! We’ll just go on riding, all of us-forever!”
Martin gri
And that’s the way it finally worked out. Wearing his cap and carrying his battered old silver watch, there’s no happier person in or out of this world-now and forever-than Martin. Martin, the new Brakeman on That Hell-Bound Train.
The God of Dark Laughter by Michael Chabon
Thirteen days after the Entwhistle-Ealing Bros. circus left Ashtown, beating a long retreat toward its winter headquarters in Peru, Indiana, two boys out hunting squirrels in the woods along Portwine Road stumbled on a body that was dressed in a mad suit of purple and orange velour. They found it at the end of a muddy strip of gravel that began, five miles to the west, as Yuggogheny County Road 22A. Another half mile farther to the east and it would have been left to my colleagues over in Fayette County to puzzle out the question of who had shot the man and ski
The boys who found the body were themselves fresh from several hours’ worth of bloody amusement with long knives and dead squirrels, and at first the investigating officers took them for the perpetrators of the crime. There was blood on the boys’ cuffs, their shirttails, and the bills of their gray twill caps. But the country detectives and I quickly moved beyond Joey Matuszak and Frankie Corro. For all their familiarity with gristle and sinew and the bright-purple discovered interior of a body, the boys had come into the station looking pale and bewildered, and we found ample evidence at the crime scene of their having lost the contents of their stomachs when confronted with the corpse.