that the night would be best spent sleeping in the yard. There was already a good provision of blankets, and docile wild fowl that strolled the plot were easily caught for food.
Fire spat and crackled, launching spiralling embers into the night. Metal skewers were adorned with meat, dripping fat onto the coals with erratic sizzles. A wolf called for a mate far out in the desert, its call carrying far into the night. Insects chirped to one another, some taking to their wings and buzzing past the open flame.
Franco turned a skewer, scrutinizing to see if it was ready yet in the light of the fire. Disappointed, he set it back.
‘Cards?’ Pappy offered to pass the time, producing a well-worn pack from a satchel.
‘I’ve never learnt.’
Old features compressed in confusion. ‘Not a single game?’
‘Not a one.’ Franco looked blankly, feeling as though he had committed some grand crime. For all intents he may as well have. To his grandfather, cards were a rite of passage for any young man, as much as their first drink and taste of a woman.
‘How have you lived this long and not learnt how to play a few hands? Next you’ll be telling me that you get drunk from a single bottle.’
‘Big talk from an antique who has never used a razor. I have never seen you without a beard. Bet you were born with it. The agony that your poor mother endured …’
‘It’s better than the scrappy thing that you call facial hair. I bet it’s taken you years just to get it that far.’
Franco snorted, conceding. ‘All right, all right, just cut the deck, old man, and teach me how to take your money.’
After ten hands, the rules were finally beginning to settle, as was Franco’s luck. When the last of the pocket change was used, the pair resorted to the carcass bones of their now spent meal to settle hands. The gruesome pile of makeshift chips was stacked greatly in Franco’s favour.
Pappy swore, stating that the concept of beginner’s luck might actually be accurate. Begrudgingly he dealt the next hand.
‘Spill a story about the old days,’ Franco said. ‘You’ve never actually told me about when you worked on the tracks. Sort of kept that one secret from me growing up.’
‘Not deliberately, you understand. You never wanted to listen so I never took the time to tell. It worked out fine.’
‘I’m listening now. You spent days out in the desert, right?’
The cards were turned and scrutinized. This time the old-timer avoided a bad hand from the outset.
‘It was difficult, for sure. The firm would scoop up anybody to take to the trains, burn them out and then send them out the door. You needed grits to hold out against what they put you through. There was five of us contracted, taking us from the east mining routes to the mills that were springing up down south. It was relentless. Dragging tonnes of ore day and night normally resulted in us in sleeping in the cab to take shifts. Brothers were we, tight as tight we could become. They were blood and there were times when that fact kept us alive. We looked after one another. We were family.’
‘So it was all good?’ Franco drew from the deck.
Pappy wiped spilt water from his steely whiskers, laughing at Franco’s words, taking another card and raising the ante by a pair of rib bones.
‘Oh no. I said we were family. Have you ever seen a family that didn’t argue, or have one who didn’t want to kill another?’
It was a fair point and one Franco dwelled upon for a moment whilst watching the old codger ramble on. He had been a thorn in his side since he was a youngster, stopping him from doing this, doing that, but these were actions always undertaken out of love in lieu of absent parents.
‘We ate, we slept, we argued. It was not unusual to find the cab filled with cards, a veritable gambling den it were. Money changed quickly, from one hand to the next. It was all we could do to be entertained when left out here. I was young, stupid – not too much older than you are now. Those days they got anybody with a back to break to build what you see now, and plenty got broken in the process. Fat lot of good it did. This region is still a dustbowl. Plenty die out here without a coin, without a hope, and without a measure of enjoyment in their lives. And let me tell you something …’
Pappy folded his hand without warning. He slapped his cards down and beckoned Franco to claim the pot. That he did, with the grandest of smiles, unaware that the cards may have been something quite different than what he had been told.
‘… nothing soothes the soul quite like them.’
* * *
The dawn chorus of birds was soon joined with the sharp scraping of metal. Over and over the spade bit into a mass of coal, transferring it from its place on the adjoining tender to the locomotive itself. Franco grunted with every scoop that was fed into the train’s gut.
‘Okay, pile it in; it’s doing good,’ Pappy crooned, checking dials and easing valves with precise turns.
Coal clattered by the spadeful, tossed into the hellish heat of the firebox. The coals burnt white-hot, brilliant in their illumination, coupled with a swirling wash of tempered flame. It was quite incredible and mesmerizing to behold. Franco had heard stories of such fires turning metal into raining slag, where it could bend like rubber or drip like water. But to see it was quite extraordinary. To feel it was akin to standing at the precipice of the end of all things.
Over and over the shovel worked, scooping from the tender behind, where scant measures of coal sat where it would have previously been filled to a height that dwarfed both men.
‘What are we up to?’
‘Pressure is at one-seventy. Keep it going,’ Pappy encouraged, making his adjustments.
Another few heaps were tossed into the train’s stomach, which it consumed in delight. Finally Pappy signalled to stop with a wave of his hand.
‘That should be enough; close her up.’
With a heave of a latch the firebox door was brought shut, two slides of metal scissoring together and sealing the blaze inside. Finally Franco could take his first breaths without his throat being scorched by the hot air. Sweat soaked his face. His skin itched and was reddened.
He recalled an old children’s story about a creature that lived out in the dunes, swimming under the desert like a fish. When it breathed, it was as if the sun itself resided in its core. It was a fable for sure, but oddly poignant and Franco assumed that if it was a truth, then it would have been quite similar to this here boiler.
For a brief moment it could have been mistaken that Pappy’s hands lingered on the Johnson bar. Even to Franco it seemed that his cracked lips trembled in a silent prayer before heaving the bar forward. Pipes juddered. Steam blasted outward, dousing the ground in a blanket of white.
‘Hold the cylinder cocks and seal ’em up when I say so,’ he ordered.
Franco got himself ready.
The train juddered slightly in response.
‘Okay, now,’ his grandfather confirmed.
