Saint Oswald by Jay Bonansinga (motivational novels .txt) 📕

above the walkway with warm yellow light, and the engines drone a low basso-profundo growl that resonates up through the metal skin.

The last passengers of the night—a rumpled businessman with a suit-bag and a middle-aged nun in full habit, lugging a tuba case—are being helped on board Car Number One by a skinny, African American porter in a blue cap and starched blue uniform.

“All aboard, folks!” the porter calls out when he sees Oswald and the old woman approaching. Oswald helps the old lady maneuver her way around a cloud of steam and across the corrugated metal threshold. The porter takes her hand and helps her up the stepladder.

Oswald comes next. Duffel bag slung over his shoulder, he ascends the steps two at a time, his big boots ringing on the metal treads.

He reaches the carpeted cabin level, then makes a sharp left, edging his way down the aisle, looking for the seat with the best vantage point.

Unbeknownst to Oswald, down on the walkway, one last passenger materializes like a phantom emerging from a penumbra of steam, hurrying toward the fore-hatch.

She wears a makeshift veil across her face—the black scarf obscuring her features—and a tattered, black, pleated tablecloth that she found in a dumpster outside the Wells Street flophouse, cinched around the waist of her black jeans—all in the hopes that people will mistake her for an Arab or maybe a Hassidic wife or something.

The young woman vaults up the steps, her ragamuffin disguise flapping behind her.

Minutes later, the steps are pulled up.

The engine hisses, and the train starts to groan out of Union Station.

The first leg of the journey finds the train clacking slowly through the vast gray gulag of switchyards and sheds due south of Chicago, the endless maze of derelict freight-cars stretching as far as the eye can see, lined up like tombstones in the twilight—and it’s a long while before Oswald senses anything wrong.

In fact, for those first forty-five minutes or so, as the cabin gently pitches and bumps through the night, everything goes right.

Shortly after departure, on his way to the restroom, Oswald sees Freddie “Forty-Five” Felson at the aft end of that first car, last bench seat on the left, dozing like a baby, a Chicago Tribune tented over his sunken chest, his head lolled against the window.

Oswald doesn’t make a big deal out of his discovery, just makes a mental note, and then continues on to the head to relieve himself.

Back in his seat, Oswald does a quick threat-assessment. The businessman is two seats in front of him, buried in a Wall Street Journal, smelling like a civilian. The nun—sans her tuba—is one seat ahead of the businessman, lost in a romance novel. If she’s a shooter, Oswald will eat his duffel bag. The others are even less threatening: an old lady with a bum hip in seat 12-B, a pimply-faced young sailor two seats over in midshipman whites and a crew cap.

Oswald can smell a contractor a mile away, the walk, the stare, the way a shooter will look at nothing straight-on, the way they’ll just sort of scan a room like someone perpetually driving at night. None of these folks fit the profile. And Oswald has seen all varieties. One time he ran into a lady clip-artist who was so fat she looked as though she might be moonlighting in a freak show. But she was also a whiz with a garrote wire. She could take a guy’s head off while he was in the middle of a sentence.

Oswald settles back into his big cloth reclining seat and plans out his next move as the train wends its way through the darkness. Past dark refineries, past the churning steel mills of South Chicago.

The gentle rocking motion of the train—accompanied by the muffled drumming of the wheels, the passing strobe of signal lights and vapor lamps—calms Oswald and puts him in a thoughtful frame of mind. For a moment he almost feels as though he might have a future.

Barring any unexpected shenanigans, Oswald’s plan is to get Felson off the train at the next stop—at gunpoint, if necessary—and then talk some sense into the asshole. No state troopers or chickens or water parks or golden showers this time. This one is going to go smoothly.

Out of the corner of his eye Oswald notices something in the window.

At the top of the smudged glass, just barely visible behind the blur of passing factory spires, a full moon rises behind a tattered skein of clouds. Pollution has turned the great luminous sphere a dull shade of orange—like the color of dried blood—and the sight of it sends a cold shudder down Oswald’s spine.

The moon is talking to him: You should have told Gerbil the truth, ya stupid fat half-breed.

Oswald turns away and checks his weapon tucked into his ankle holster. The Ruger’s butt is cold against his shin. He checks the safety. Better to keep it on. Better to be discreet this time. He smooths out the cuff of his jeans against his boot. Then he sits back against the headrest. He hears somebody snoring.

He is about to lean against the window and rest his eyes when the first sign of trouble comes. It announces itself with a sudden jolt—nothing spectacular, just a subtle little jerk of the undercarriage—as though the train has abruptly shifted gears.

Oswald sits up. Eyes wide. Blinking. He’s no expert, but something about that little nudge sets his teeth on edge. Trains this size don’t jerk like that.

Ever.

Then the second jolt comes, and Oswald is sure now something is wrong.

35.

“Whoa! Whoa! Whoa!—Don’t be touchin’ that one!—That there’s the throttle!”

The engineer, Old Charles McDaw, Chuckie-D to his friends, clamps an age-spotted claw down on the boy’s hand in the dim light of the control cab. The white-noise of the engine surges behind them, a ghostly thread of sparks jumping up across the side window.

Marky-Mark rears back suddenly at the old man’s touch, which feels