Chapter 84

The rhythmic clacks of the train wheels and the thin smoke from his cigarette streamed away behind him on the wind. The noise of the train was loud when there was nothing between it and his ears, sure, but it struck Harvey as a peaceful noise, and he didn’t find it unpleasant. Come to think of it, for some reason he’d never had a problem with ambient noises like the rumbling of a train or the clamor of a gambling house. Eventually being treated as the master had gotten too creepy to stand, and he’d escaped to the deck. Now he was leaning against the guardrail, enjoying the wind and having a smoke. When he was all by himself like this, letting his mind wander and puffing on a cigarette, he could almost believe that the world had always been a peaceful, problem-free place. His bangs had gotten a little long; they tickled his nose as the wind blew them about. My hair’s getting annoying… In the act of shaking his head to get rid of the offending strands, he accidentally lost his cigarette in the wind. “Ah—” He gave a plaintive cry and turned around, but after a moment’s dance on the wind like a flower petal, the white stick disappeared into the distance. There’d still been a lot of it left, too. Harvey gave up on smoking and let his gaze roam the slowly unrolling scenery of the wilderness in the distance. The cloudy right half of his vision lightly overlaid the left. It was still rough enough to focus on things at close range that it gave him motion sickness, but if he looked into the distance it didn’t feel so wrong, even if his vision itself wasn’t that good. He idly wondered which way was east. I still haven’t managed to keep that promise, have I…? They should have parted two years ago at the mine in Easterbury, but instead Harvey’d ended up dragging him from one corner of the world to the other ever since, making him worry all the time…and now here he was breaking down, and he couldn’t even leave the radio anymore. Harvey thought if he’d tried a little sooner, he could’ve separated the Corporal from the radio and let him rest in peace. Oh. In that moment he realized: now that things had come this far, did they really need to force the radio back into working order? Dead people were supposed to fade away, weren’t they? It hadn’t occurred to Harvey to take that kid with him, and he still didn’t think he’d been mistaken not to. And he thought it was only right that the ghosts at the bar had disappeared after seeing the bartender off down his new path in life. And yet—How long do we intend to keep the Corporal pinned to this world? “Ugh…” He sighed disgustedly at himself. Talk about a shitty thing to realize. If I hadn’t had that thought, I wouldn’t have to worry about this stuff…for that matter, I just lumped Kieli and me together as “we,” but maybe I’m really the only one who needs to get his act together here. “Harvey?” broke in the girl’s voice all of a sudden, catching him with his expression totally unguarded. His face abruptly froze. When he schooled his expression and turned around, Kieli’s face was peeking out from around the connecting door. “You were gone so long I got worried. What are you doing?” “Nothing, just looking around outside, letting my vision adjust,” he answered, just as he had once before. He looked away from her. Inside, he thought with a little contempt, You’ve got a nice convenient excuse whenever you want to be alone now, don’t you? Not that she won’t see through it right away. Kieli looked every bit as unconvinced as he’d expected, but he pretended not to notice. She didn’t press him any further; she merely closed the door and came out onto the deck with him. “Where’s the Corporal?” “I left him sitting on the shelf. He was being way too bossy.” Kieli’s pout as she grumbled this was so entertaining that Harvey couldn’t help laughing a little. He wondered if that was what he always looked like when he was fed up with the Corporal’s lectures. “Sheesh, you act like it’s not your problem. You’re enjoying being ‘Master’ a little bit, aren’t you, Harvey?” Kieli said, looking even more cross. “No, no, of course not. I hope he goes back to normal soon. Yeah.” He recited this speech in a deliberately unconvincing monotone, and then since he was already distracting her, he went ahead and got himself another cigarette. The blatantly suspicious glare she gave him hurt as though it was physically boring into his cheek. Kieli sulked at him for a while, but eventually she just clucked her tongue in annoyance and looked away, coming up to stand next to him and lean on the guardrail, too. “I hope he gets better soon…” she murmured quietly to the ground below them, her voice carried away behind them in no time by the same wind stirring her long hair. “…Hey, Kieli,” he began, pretending to gaze off into the distance even though he couldn’t really see that much. Kieli looked up at him and blinked. He started to go on, but then he hesitated with his mouth half-open around his cigarette. After a little thought, he ended up saying something completely different. “I need a light.” He glanced at Kieli out of the corner of his eye. She looked confused, as if she was trying to work out what that meant. After a beat she seemed to get it, and fell speechless. Then: “See, you really are enjoying it!” she accused him indignantly. He started to smile and take it back, but before he got the words out he realized he was about to lose his cigarette in the wind again. “Ah—” He was going to seriously grieve if he lost this one. He hadn’t even lit it yet! Luckily he managed to reach out and grab it at the last moment. Somehow after that he ended up staying in that position with half his body leaning out over the railing, just letting his gaze wander the horizon. “I wonder if Easterbury’s that way,” he said, half to himself. Gripping the back of his coat, Kieli craned her neck to peer up at his face. “Harvey…what’s wrong?” “Mm. Ah, it’s nothing.” She looked worried, so Harvey shrugged it off with a casual “I guess that was a weird thing to say.” He guessed maybe it was far behind them, a long, long way southeast of here. There was no way he’d see even a shadow of it from here, obviously; there were only the gently rolling hills of the wilderness on the horizon. The gradually curving train tracks stretched out beyond that horizon. So, these tracks go all the way to Easterbury, huh? I want to ask you a favor— The radio’s words echoed in the back of his mind. —When I break down and stop working for real, take me to Easterbury. To that grave at the mine. Would he end up going to Easterbury before too long? He didn’t know whether that was the right thing or not, though. Which choice came the closest to the right answer—? Harvey’s conclusion was postponed for another day, and only the sounds of the wind and the train’s wheels made it to the distant east, left behind as the train itself headed ever westward.