D: L&L - Part 47 | Dot: Iron & Dust

We left the Dog & Pony not long after dawn, the sky still an empty grey that felt like the world had stopped breathing. Turlo flew ahead, scouting. The Scarecrow walked beside me, silent, straw leaking from his cuffs like blood from a wound, and I wondered if any straw would do to patch him up, or for that matter, could he just shove anything in there. Not like blood. Not like Afghanistan. 

I didn’t ask. Neither of us said much, and he seemed to be in his own scraw, stitched head most of the time anyway. Somewhere overhead, a fleeting glimpse of a dark speck in the air, was Turlo, the strangest creature I’d run into in the strangest place I’d ever been.

I thought about Herat and our brief time in Kabul and Kandahar. I thought about the maps we’d spent hours devouring, and I thought about the little map of Oz we’d looked at. Nothing was the same; both places were the same -- unknown hostiles, territory with some landmarks but only truly known by the locals, almost no intelligence about what kinds of forces we’d come up against, and the things we did know seemed as impossible as everything else I’d seen here since I landed — day before yesterday? I wasn’t even sure now.

Where was my house? I had a sense that it was behind me somewhere, and the map might come in handy if I was ever even going to try and find it again. For now, there was only forest to the right and corn to the left and a dark line of steel or iron going down the middle.

The Yellow Brick Rail cut through Munchkinland like a scar—an old imperial line that gleamed even in the dim morning light, half-buried in purple dust and drifting grit. Every few hundred meters, I saw pieces of what might have once been Munchkins, probably. Or something else. It was hard to say, and I didn’t want to take a closer look. For his part, the Scarecrow seemed to stare straight ahead, and I couldn’t tell what that meant for them, for him, or for me.

We walked along the side, keeping to the scrub. My boots crunched over glassy bits of yellow brick, pulverized under decades of iron and neglect. I kept Toto low at my side, finger resting just off the trigger. I didn’t trust the quiet. 

In Herat, we went village to village, walking through towns peopled by ghosts. They’d locked themselves indoors, as instructed, but the silence was always the worst. The anticipation. The anxiety that came with closed door after closed door at our backs as we walked, spread out to keep us all from being taken out by a lone gunman or a grenade. Always the threat that something would happen, someone would appear — and maybe not even someone dangerous or armed, or maybe dead a few seconds later because we just didn’t know.

That’s when we heard it.

A chugging, clanking, scraping sound, echoing down the line from somewhere up ahead. Rhythmic. Mechanical. The Scarecrow stiffened. Turlo swooped low from the horizon, his shadow flickering across my boots before he landed lightly on a bent signal post.

“Train’s coming,” he said, picking something from between his teeth. 

“No shit, Sherlock,” I muttered. If he was our advanced scout, I might as well be walking through Oz blindfolded.

He ignored me, or he simply didn’t know who Sherlock was. “Not moving fast. Looks like it’s dragging half a forest behind it.”

We climbed the embankment, rocks and dirt falling away in clumps under my boots, and I saw it: the main engine, looming out of the morning mist. A great brass and black iron monstrosity, gears screaming in protest, a stream of acrid smoke belching from twisted stacks. The cowcatcher on the front was caked with mud, straw, and something darker that glistened wet in the faint morning light.

And then I saw him.

A figure, trudging ahead of the engine, walking just off the track in the gravel. An old man in patchwork clothes and a battered hat, dragging a spade behind him. The blade left a furrow in the dust. His gait was slow, hunched, as if the weight of the world sat square on his shoulders.

I stepped out onto the ballast stones, keeping Toto ready but low. The Scarecrow said nothing, just tilted his head like a curious crow. And Turlo was aloft again, circling overhead, hopefully doing more with his eyes than he’d done before. How anyone could have missed this monstrosity in the distance was beyond me. Maybe it turned invisible. I’d seen weirder in the last twenty-four hours, I told myself.

The train was a ways off, half a click or so, giving us time. I looked at the Scarecrow, but he seemed unconcerned. “Is that it? Is that our ride?”

He nodded, not looking my way.

“Is that — who’s the guy out front?”

Scarecrow hesitated, almost as if he couldn’t remember, or there was a conversation going on in his head he couldn’t yet interrupt.

“Oliphant. Oliphant Cobb. Chief Engineer of the YBR. And his sidekick, his engineering buddy up in the cab would be Smalls. But I don’t know why Cobb is walking.” He looked at me then, then back at the train, and suddenly he started walking. “And I don’t know why he has Smalls’ spade.”

I looked down the line at the engine sputtering forward, almost as if it was being pulled by the gnarled old man walking in front of it. Scarecrow wasn’t concerned, his boots clumping down the embankment until he reached the metal tracks, and then he was on his way. I scrambled after them. If he wasn’t worried, I wasn’t worried. He clearly knew the guy, and I hadn’t heard a peep from Turlo. Safe? Safe enough. But I kept my right hand on Toto’s grip, felt a little of the old anxiety welling in my belly.

It took a moment to catch up to the Scarecrow, and we walked in silence — his face a mask, and mine? Well, I just wasn’t in the mood to kill this old guy, if he turned out to be another zombie. There was no way to know if the fog turned humans the way it turned the Munchkins, and I didn’t want to find out.

As the old man drew closer, I could see his face under the brim: skin like cracked leather, eyes milky with exhaustion, and a tattered shirt that twisted in the breeze. The spade he dragged was coated in dark stains, crusted along the edges. Blood, I thought. But old blood. Dried. Flaking.

He didn’t notice us until we were nearly on top of him. His eyes flicked up at me, and he blinked once, twice, as if trying to clear away ghosts.

“Morning,” I said quietly.

He stopped, swaying slightly, his free hand trembling where it clutched the handle of the spade. His lips worked for a moment before words came out.

“Train’s coming. Gotta clear the line. Gotta keep it moving. If it stops… it’ll wake up again. Don’t want it waking up again.”

I frowned. “Who wakes up?”

He rocked his head, as if erasing the question from existence. “Can’t stop. Got to keep walking. Got to keep shoveling.”

His eyes darted to the Scarecrow, lingered for half a heartbeat, then returning to me. They narrowed, suspicious, but there was no anger in them. Just confusion. And bone-deep exhaustion. “I don’t know you, but him…him I know.” An accusing finger aimed itself at the Scarecrow, but I stepped forward, ignoring the faint tensing in my companions. Up close, I could smell him: old sweat, iron, and a sour note like rotting mushrooms. He was trembling. The spade shook in his grip, scraping against the gravel with a mournful rasp. He could barely hold his hand up, and I readied myself to catch him if he fell.

“Hey,” I said, softening my voice the way I used to with wounded civilians. “When’s the last time you ate?”

He blinked again, as if trying to parse the words. His knees buckled, and I grabbed his elbow before he fell. The spade clattered to the track bed, and he sagged against me, bones sharp under thin skin. His shirt came away in pieces as I wrapped him up, and underneath I could see scratches and gouges of skin missing, caked blood around his ribs. He was skeletal, worse than I thought.

“Don’t… don’t let it wake up…” he whispered against my shoulder.

“It’s not waking up,” I said, though I had no idea what I was promising. “Not today.”

Turlo fluttered down, wings folding behind his leather jacket. “We can’t haul him all the way to the city,” he said bluntly. “He’ll slow us down. Leave him.”

“Shut up,” I snapped. “Find me water. Let’s get him on the train,” I said, trying to calm my voice. And when I looked up, Turlo was pulling a sack of water from his back. He handed it over, and I pulled the stopper and held it to this Oliphant Cobb’s lips. They were dry and cracked, and they barely seemed capable of meeting the mouth of the sack. Water spilled down his chin and chest, dripped in the dust underfoot, but I waited, letting him get a sense of himself and begin to drink.

The Scarecrow crouched down, one long-fingered hand brushing the spade. His head tilted, eyes glittering like coal dust in shadow.

“Oliphant. Where’s Smalls?” he murmured.

The old man’s breath rasped in and out around the mouth of the sack as he gulped water. His eyes flickered open, locking onto the Scarecrow. Recognition, maybe. Or fear. And he coughed and sputtered, pushing the sack away, and ripping himself out of my arms with a strength that surprised me. I stumbled back, pulling the sack closed before we lost all our water.

“You’re… dead…” he whispered.

“Not yet,” the Scarecrow said softly.

“Cobb,” I said,leaning in, gripping his shoulder, and this time he didn’t pull away. He stared at the water sack, and I handed it over. “Oliphant Cobb. We’re going to the Emerald City. You hear me?”

His eyes rolled back, then focused again as he gulped down a few more mouthfuls of water. Tears welled, carving tiny clean lines down his filthy cheeks, matching the streams of water dribbling out of either side of his mouth. When he pulled the sack away, handing it back, his voice was clearer, deeper, less of a rasp and more commanding.

“Tell her… tell her I kept it clear,” he whispered. “Tell her… I never stopped…”

Then his eyes slid closed, and he fell into my arms. I eased him down onto the grass beside the track as the train chugged slowly past, its steel wheels slicing the morning silence into jagged pieces.

“Whose driving that thing?” The Scarecrow turned, watching the engine ramble by at a walking pace. I followed his eyes, and we found the engine empty, the coal car lumbering silently behind like its only companion. “Where’s Smalls?” said the Scarecrow again, and he turned and looked at the old man. “This is his spade. I’ve never seen him without it.”

“All aboard,” I said, and I hoisted the old engineer over my shoulder. My rucksack had been heavier, and the old man was just skin and bones. “Let’s find out. And I’m already tired of walking.”