The Search Page 8

  As a last attempt he switched the engine off, waited a few seconds, switched on again and tried second gear – nothing. Fourth – nothing. He was down to twenty miles an hour, three lanes from the left, four from the right, cars rushing by on either side. Only now that he was coming to a halt did he fully appreciate the speed of traffic all around. Cars were flashing blurs of metal. He flicked on the hazard lights but nothing happened: it was as if the car had experienced a massive coronary and died instantaneously. He tightened the seat belt as the car drifted to a halt. Cars were swerving to avoid him, bearing down and then indicating frantically and pulling out into another lane. He saw a truck moving towards him, heard the squeal of brakes, saw it filling the rear window. Braced himself for the impact, raised his legs clear of the steering wheel and at the last second the truck veered, screeching to the left. It was like being a coconut in a shy. All he could do was wait for the smash of impact. Huge seconds passed. Already thirty cars had zoomed by and narrowly missed. Swerving clear, a car clipped his trunk and nudged the Ford around so that it was now at a slight angle to the flow and presented a bigger target. A van grazed the back bumper and tugged Walker round until he was at right angles to the traffic. A third car ploughed into the front left fender. A rending sound of metal, a drizzle of glass and then still another crash as something thundered into the back. A blur of movement. The seat belt bit into him as the car, entangled with another, was shunted forward. He looked up and saw that the Ford had been completely turned around and was now facing into the oncoming traffic.

  He flicked open his seat belt and clambered into the back. There was another crunch and the whole of the front seat was a jagged concertina of metal. The car had caved in around him as if it were being scrapped. Another vehicle piled into the one that had hit him, and then another until Walker was protected from the impact by the buffer of vehicles joining the pile-up. Oil began spurting from a ruptured pipe. The smell of petrol.

  By now knowledge of the crash had filtered back along the freeway, traffic all around had come to a halt. There was hardly room for Walker to move but, incredibly, he was unhurt. He looked through the spider-web cracks of the window and saw a snake of petrol coiling around the car. The door was jammed but one kick and the window disappeared. He clambered through the gap, the wail of sirens already approaching.

  Four or five cars were tangled together. A young woman pulled herself clear of her wrecked car. Together she and Walker checked the other drivers. Two were trapped in the wreckage of their cars but even they shouted with shocked exuberance that they were OK, they were OK.

  Cops arrived. Nobody was sure what had happened. There was talk of a car breaking down, stalling. Walker joined in, explaining he had slowed to avoid a car in front of him that had practically stopped in the middle of the highway.

  Patrol cars and ambulances kept arriving. The wreckage was slashed by blue lights. Walker grabbed his hold-all from the back seat and limped – despite an abundance of stretchers – to an ambulance which began squeezing its way along the hard shoulder.

  At the hospital the sense of unity which bound together the survivors of the crash was dispersed among the chaos of pain and injury that waited and hurried all around. Cops and hospital staff began taking details of who was driving which vehicle, trying to discover exactly what had happened. Knowing that he couldn’t explain how he came by his car, Walker took advantage of the white bustle of activity to move away in the direction of the toilets. Once out of sight he ducked down another corridor and disappeared into a labyrinth of wards and specialist departments. It was a large hospital and when he emerged from the lemon-scented fluorescence it was into a tree-lined street that contrasted sharply with the swarming forecourt where the ambulances arrived.

  He had ended up in Attica literally by accident and wanted to get out of town as quickly as possible. He flagged down a cab which took him to the bus terminal. The bus to Eagle City had already left so he bought a ticket as far as Odessa. He was so tired it took an effort of will just to make his way to his seat. Getting out of Attica, negotiating the tangled ribbon of freeways would take hours. It didn’t matter. By the time the bus pulled clear of the terminal he was asleep.

  He was shaken awake by the driver saying, ‘We’re here, buddy.’

  ‘Where’s here?’ Walker had slept so deeply it took him a few moments to remember he was on a coach. His knee ached, memories, dreams, thoughts began to untangle.

  ‘Odessa,’ said the driver.

  ‘And what time is it?’

  ‘Time for breakfast, buddy. You look like you could use some.’

  Walker limped along the aisle after the driver, stepped down into the blue hunger of morning. He walked through a diner and dunked his head under the washroom tap. His face was there waiting in the mirror when he looked up.

  He ordered coffee, cereal, pancakes, eggs, more coffee. Sitting a couple of places along the counter was a red-faced guy, wading through a breakfast of comparable size. Nodded at Walker between chews.

  ‘Some breakfast, ain’t it?’

  Walker nodded back, holding up his fork to indicate his mouth was too full to speak.

  ‘Just off the bus?’

  ‘Yeah. From Attica.’

  ‘Where you heading?’

  ‘Eagle City. You know about buses there?’

  ‘There’s one late this afternoon. Used to be one in the morning as well but they stopped that.’

  They went back to eating, ordered more coffee. The guy was called Ray and he was on his way to Crowville. He had a few things to do first here in Odessa, he said, but Walker could come with him as far as Crowville halfway to Eagle City. From there he could get a train or a bus easy. Walker agreed immediately and they shook hands as if clinching a deal.

  An hour later they were sitting in the front of Ray’s pick-up, nosing their way out of town. For the first twenty miles they chatted and then fell into an easy silence, broken only when one of them said ‘Look’ and pointed to a black flop of buzzards up ahead, a rabbit streaking across the highway. They had been travelling for just over two hours when Ray got a call on shortwave telling him he had to go to New Bedford, a hundred miles away to the north, to pick up a crate of spares. Urgent. There was a brief argument and then Ray hung up.

  ‘Shit.’

  ‘It’s no problem,’ said Walker. ‘I can hitch.’ There was little traffic but anyone who passed by would pick him up.

  ‘I’ve got a better idea,’ said Ray.

  They continued for ten minutes and then turned down an unsurfaced road, little more than a track, the kind of road you drove down when you wanted to dispose of a body. After a couple of miles he stopped and they both got out of the car.

  Warm, blue skies, only a breeze moving. Ray pointed off into the distance and said, ‘Walk due south, where I’m pointing. After an hour, hour and a half, you’ll come to some railroad tracks. I’d take you myself but the terrain’s too rough for the pick-up. Follow the track west and you’ll see it start climbing. After about half an hour the gradient is enough to slow the freights right down. You can hop one no problem. It’s a busy piece of track. Anything going west will be heading to Eagle City.’

  Walker nodded and looked in the direction indicated. Ray hunted around in the back of the pick-up and handed him a gallon container of water, a bottle of Pepsi, bread, fruit, biscuits. Walker stuffed everything except the water into his rucksack and slipped his arms through the straps. He was touched by Ray’s efficient concern and when they shook hands and said goodbye he felt like he was parting from a friend he had known for ten years.

  ‘Don’t forget,’ said Ray as he climbed back in the car. ‘Head straight south. It won’t matter if you veer a bit to one side – it’ll just mean a longer or shorter walk once you hit the rails.’

  With that he twisted the key in the ignition and turned the pick-up round. Waved and headed back up the road, leaving Walker in the dust-settling emptiness.

  After walking for half
an hour the landscape became fertile and wild, twitching with butterflies. He passed through knee-length grass and a field so dense with strawberries that their juice stained his shoes. Buffalo clouds roamed the sky. Then, in the distance, he saw the river-glint of the railroad tracks and quickened his pace, smiling.

  When he got to the railroad he looked back at the wavering track he had cut through the grass and began following the rails west, the gradient steepening all the time. After a couple of miles he stretched out by them and waited for the train, drowsy from the walk and heat. He shaded his face with a shirt and dozed.

  He woke and gulped some water, ate the last of the strawberries he had picked on the way. The light was softening, his shadow reaching out along the track. Three geese angled towards the horizon: everything straining into the distance.

  Waiting.

  It was almost sundown when the rails began to sing. The noise got louder and soon he could see the train pulling slowly towards him.

  The train was so long that three minutes after the engine had passed there was still no sign of the rear coach. Then, seeing an open boxcar approaching, he ran alongside, tossing in his bag. The length of the train made its speed deceptive. He had to sprint to keep up with the boxcar and when he reached up to haul himself aboard the momentum jolted his arms and tugged him off his feet. Dangling from the train he touched the ground again before swinging his feet up and into the car.

  Once it had pulled up the incline the train began moving faster. Hanging slightly from the door he could see the long line of freights stretching away in both directions as the rails began curving slightly to the south. Mostly, he lay on the jolting floor, head propped on his rucksack, watching the sun smoulder over the horizon and the fields blazing fire-red. For a while the sky was streaked with purple and then, as the blue blackened, the first stars blinked on.

  It was a warm night. He sipped water and chewed hunks of bread, wished he had saved some of the strawberries. Later the momentum of the train lulled him to sleep. He dreamed of Rachel doing ordinary things, things he had never seen: cleaning her teeth, deciding which clothes to wear, reading, drying herself after a bath. He dreamed of her sleeping, dreaming of him.

  Throughout the night he woke uncomfortably on the hard boards, looked out at the star-clogged sky until the clack of wheels tugged him asleep again.

  CHAPTER TEN

  By morning the train was passing through a silent expanse of wheat. When the sun moved over the roof and slid in through the open door Walker retreated to the back of the car, into the cool. From here, with the golden fields and blue sky framed by the black doors, the view was exactly like the projected image of a movie screen, an endless panning shot of prairie.

  Then, slowly, the view began to shrink. Houses began to appear, roads; in the distance, factories. By late afternoon the train was heaving into the outskirts of Eagle City. The number of tracks visible from the freight increased until they stretched away like a wide river.

  Walker’s train clanked and squealed over points, drawing parallel to other trains and then sliding away again. Beyond the railroad tracks was an actual river. A bridge squatted iron-heavy in the distance. Cranes, warehouses, water towers and brooding clouds. Faded signs with speed limits and warnings that no longer mattered. Old stock that had been plundered for spares and left to rust in sidings. The broken windows of an abandoned signal house. Littered with gulls, even the sky looked old, run-down.

  The train slowed almost to a crawl. Walker jumped down and waited for it to pass, guessing that the centre of the town was on the other side, away from the river. Some way off a gang of workers in orange bibs walked across the tracks, shovels and picks over their shoulders.

  When the train had passed, Walker began making his way across the expanse of tracks, ducking under the bumpers of stationary coaches, stepping ahead of departing freights. Beyond the station rose the office blocks of the city’s business district, high glass buildings made from cubes of sky.

  Next to the railroad was a car park, cordoned off by a high perimeter fence. Walker waited behind a stationary shunter until there was no one in sight and then tossed over his bag and hauled himself up, the fence sagging and bulging with his weight. He dropped to the other side and walked out of the car park and into the town.

  Eagle City had grown up as a crossing-point and small port on the Eagle River; with the coming of the railroads it became the commercial centre of the region and was now a large, depressed town on the edge of the prairie. Walker spent two days asking after Malory or Carver without success. He had lost track of them both. Which meant that he himself was lost. He thought about leaving and going on to Despond, a couple of hundred miles away, but did not have the confidence to rationalize this in his usual way: if he felt like leaving, then the chances were that Malory had felt the same. Besides, what would he find there? Sitting on the steps of an abandoned building, drinking milk from a bottle, he glanced up and saw, on the wall opposite, a torn poster for a Western. In films cowboys spoke of the trail going cold, but he had no way of knowing if the trail had gone cold or had actually frozen over. And what trail was there except the one that he left in his wake? What else was there to guide him?

  He tossed the empty milk bottle into a bin and began walking. Soon after embarking on the search he had given up trying to guess the real significance of what Rachel had asked him to do. He had concentrated instead on the smallest things, on a trail of imagined footprints. He had given no thought to where they might ultimately lead because the question overwhelmed him, dwarfed his efforts and made them seem futile, absurd – whatever that meant. Now that he was pondering the larger purpose of the search he felt, for the first time, like giving up, abandoning it. And then what? Abandoning things was all very well but what did you do once you had abandoned them? Something else. It was impossible to walk out on one thing without walking into another . . . What Rachel had asked him to do. Perhaps it was as simple as that. He had left so that he could return. All this shit just so he could fuck her. Like a story he’d heard in prison, using up the nothing days.

  He had come to a network of steam-drift streets, crowded with cafés, bars and clubs. He walked past a club where a new kind of music was playing loudly. A bottle smashed a few yards in front of him. Whoops of laughter and a voice calling out: ‘Sorry, man, just an accident.’ Walker looked up to a second-floor balcony: a guy with his arms around a giggling woman, the pair of them so huge it seemed likely that the next thing to come down would be the balcony itself. ‘Take a full one with my apologies,’ he said, letting a beer bottle drop from his hand. Walker caught it, twisted off the top and took a gulp, held it up appreciatively. He smiled and walked on, pleased with himself for catching the bottle, ears ringing with the laughter of the pair on the balcony.

  Pounding from the entrances to clubs, different kinds of music thumped together in a disjointed beat. The streets were littered with vomit, glass, even, Walker realized with revulsion, a bloody clump of teeth. A drunk lurched towards him, his face reeling yellow and blue in the flash of lights. His hands were on Walker’s lapels. Walker began pushing him away but already his battered mouth was spraying words: ‘He’s in Despond. That’s where you’ll find him. He’s waiting for you.’

  From across the street a guy came crashing through the window of a bar. The shower of glass held a thousand scattered glimpses of the scene before falling like hail over the figure sprawled on the sidewalk, blood laking around him. The drunk had let go of Walker, had vanished in the boozesodden crowd. Walker looked round, could see no sign of him. There was a cheer from the bar and then silence, passers-by standing clear as the guy on the sidewalk dragged himself to his knees, shambled to his feet. He swayed uncertainly, gazing into the bar until a stool came spinning through the window and knocked him back into the angled grit of glass. Another cheer from the bar. This time he didn’t have the strength to get to his feet and he crawled away from the window on his hands and knees. Another stool came sailing
out, followed by a chair, glasses and more stools, the remains of the window. The man sagged under the bombardment and lay motionless, one arm curled protectively around his head, surrounded by a broken mass of furniture. A dapper man from the bar stepped through the window frame and stood over him, counting him out – one-ah, two-ah – all the way to ten until he waved his arms to declare the bout oyer and stepped back through the window. All around from the street and bar were whoops, cheers and applause until people drifted away.

  Walker moved on, replaying the drunk’s few words over and over. The crowds thinned out. He came to the river and gazed across at an area of derelict buildings. The girders and pillars of burnt-out tower blocks showed stark against the sunset. Something in the nature of skyscrapers suggested that these bare skeletons of metal represented the final flourishing of their vertiginous aspiration: this is how they had been intended to look.

  The river was dappled red by the sun as Walker made his way along the tow-path. Further along the path was barricaded off and he entered the fringes of the Latin Quarter. Lines of washing hung between cramped balconies, the late silhouettes of birds were hemmed in by the redness of the sky. Preoccupied with the drunk’s startling appearance Walker had been paying little attention to exactly where he was. He had been told to be careful in certain parts of the Quarter at night and became abruptly anxious. A pair of youths in ripped jeans and biker jackets appeared from around a corner, nodded as they passed by.

  Top-floor windows glowed furnace-red but it was growing dark in the narrow streets. Walker glanced round and in the shadows behind him thought he detected a figure moving. When he looked again there was nothing. Dogs barked nearby. From behind, car headlights illuminated the street and flung his shadow up the wall of a building to his right. He turned down a one-way street and stepped into shadows. The car slowed by the NO ENTRY sign then continued on its way, perpendicular to the street Walker was now on.