Free Hellfire by Jeff Provine Page B

day was market day. The train yard had six lines of rails where cars were traded out, and all six were buzzing already in the morning. The passenger train spat out well-dressed customers like Tom Husk onto the brick platform next to the station. Boys in caps chased after them with hands full of rock candy and sugared fruits, offering anything for a few coins. Black porters in garish, red uniforms hauled luggage and crates out of the baggage cars. Only the shrill whistle of steam could be heard over the roaring din of voices and bodies.
    Husk looked back over the trains. Cattle lowed and stamped awkwardly in their wooden cattle cars facing east. They must have arrived from up the Texas Trail, probably as confused as any creature alive since leaving their pastures on a ranch a day or two before. Some of the cattle were being emptied out by men with wide-brimmed hats and long willow rods. The rest would be shipped east to hungry folks as far away as Ohio.
    The farthest track stood beside the rock-covered embankment that led down to the Red River. Its water was as rusty as its name, carrying mud and loose debris down from Indian Territory. A tall steamboat rested at the port. While men worked cranes loading crates destined for New Orleans, a gang of elderly men in straw hats sat in the shade, several of them fishing.
    Husk straightened himself up and rested his hands by holding the lapels of his gray suit. He liked this suit: light-cotton fabric, grown in Gloriana, manufactured in Gloriana. It showed what a great state this was. The cut was that of a businessman, not too fancy and not too plain. Too fancy, and common people wouldn’t want to talk to him about anything other than how much money he had. Too plain, and the people with money wouldn’t want to talk.
    Reporting was all about getting people to talk. First, he had to find someone who knew something worthwhile. Every town had gossips, but they could talk for hours about something that didn’t matter or couldn’t be printed in a paper without a libel case. The men working the train yard probably knew a share about the train crash story, but Husk imagined their boss had already told them to keep tight lips and refer snoopy journalists to him. He might as well ask the bricks on the platform.
    If there were anyone who knew a story, and had the time and the druthers to share it, it was old timers. Husk looked back over at the band of men out fishing. They might have a lead or two, and men out shooting the breeze would make it clear whether they knew something. He hopped off the safety of the brick platform and down to the gravel-spotted train yard. Husk’s boots crunched on the rocks and then went quiet as he reached the grassy edge.
    The cool breeze from the shady bayou cut right through the warm morning sun. It would be sultry this afternoon, but now it was practically pleasant. Far from the bustling train yard at the edge of the trees, the old men had a comfortable spot to wait out large river fish.
    They looked up from beneath their straw hats. All of their thin lips were pressed tight. Several of them were chewing.
    Husk tipped his hat. “How do, gentlemen?”
    A slow, grumbling chorus of “how do” came back.
    Husk nodded to the pair of men with fishing poles leading down to the water. “How’re they biting?”
    “All right,” one replied. “Boats churn up the water plenty, but the catfish are back out, at least.”
    Husk hummed in agreement. He wasn’t much for fishing, but getting the story was all about making the talker comfortable. In his career as a journalist, he had gotten just about anyone to talk about anything, from neighbors cavorting in the dead of night to the baker’s wife admitting he used two-thirds the amount of dough for each biscuit than he did five years before. Nothing sold papers like people thinking they were being cheated, unless it was something terrifying. With trains crashing and the Rail Agency being even more secretive than