"And for better than thirty years, junior," Cooper pointed out, stabbing one of those fingers at Valentine as if threatening him with a dagger. "Nope, not a bird to change its tune, not me. So many came and went there. Ducks-the lot of them, quack-quack-quacking out their lives before flying south. I wasn't set to fly, though, not by a long shot."
"No?" Valentine said, having given up the fight to make sense out of the man after an inquiring glance or two exchanged with the others. He wondered what Molly had written, and if her mother's health had improved.
"Naw, I was quiet as a broke television. If you're up to your neck in shit, don't make waves. Kept me kicking these years. Till them Nazis showed up on their way north and spoilt it with that big train. They messed me up, but they'll get theirs. Now, I know my history, boy. I've read mor'n books than you got fingers. I know the Nazis got beat once, and we'll beat'em again."
Valentine stirred from musings. "Nazis?"
"That's the problem today, nobody's got no schooling. Yeah, Nazis, Mr. Lootenan. They were the bad guys way back when the world had the old-time black-and-white life."
"How do you know they were Nazis?" he asked, picking up his pencil.
"First I thought they were just train men like me. Most of'em weren't much to look at. Thin and sickly kinda, so I assumed they was just railroad men on short commons. What I call the old "gun to yer head" Railway Local Union Nine Em Em. See this good-sized train come through, not the biggest I've ever seen, not by a long shot, but armored engines and caboose and all. I see these guys drinking coffee when it's stopped between, relaxing between the cars on break like. So I figure I grab a cup while it's hot and say howdy, 'cause I had a spare cigarette to trade. I climb up, and they get all exhilarated. Haul me to the caboose, where this big shot fancied-up general starts giving me the onceover. I got thirty years' worth of work stamps in my ID book, but does that cut anything with him? Prick. No, sir. Says I'm spying, as if a bunch of closed boxcars are anything worth spying on. Everyone's all saluting and calling him Generalissimo Honcho or something. Then they take me when the train leaves and start all zapping me with this electric stick. Oh man, I cried, no no not a spy."
"This general, he was in charge of the Nazis? Did you see a name, perhaps on his uniform?"
Cooper winced, as if the memory slapped him. "Oldish, sir. Not oldish and healthy, oldish and dried out, skin like a wasp nest in winter. Thick, wiry gray hair, cut real luscious 'n' full. Little shorter'n me, and I'm only five seven. Pink-eyed, too, like he was hungover. Had a voice like an old wagon running on a gravel road. I've never heard a young man talk like that. Old and squeaky and tired."
"Could you tell from the way they talked where they were from? Did they mention any cities?" Valentine asked again, keeping his voice casual.
"No, if he said it, I forgot."
"What about his men-you said they were thin and sickly?"
"Jest the ones hanging round the wagons. The ones that grabbed me, big burly fellows they were. Plenty of guns, high-quality iron from back then, or as good. Had somun'em oversize gorilla-men with him, too-tall, tall they were, those snaggletooth varmints. It was them that held me when they started in on me."
"I still don't see how they were Nazis," Valentine said.
The man rocked as he sat hunched over, eyes screwed shut. "No, I got a good record here. Check my book. Me a spy?" Cooper trailed off.
Valentine switched tactics. "I think you're wrong, Mr. Cooper. You probably just mistook them for Nazis when they were hurting you."
"I'm learned, I tell you. I can read, just don't get the opportunity. How could I tell? The flag, like they had by the millions in them pictures. On the uniforms, and on the flags in the caboose behind the General Honcho's desk. Wore it proud, the bastards. You'll show'em, though, like you did at the house."
Valentine wrote something on his clipboard. "Like this?"
"That's it, Mr. Lootenan. That's it. I bet you beat on them tons of times before, right?"
Valentine just nodded, to himself rather than to the poor man's words, looking down at the clipboard. He had seen that design before, here and there, and wherever he had encountered it, there had been trouble.
Written in pencil on the slightly yellow paper was the backwards swastika he'd heard called "the Twisted Cross."
"You're sure you don't know where they come from?"
"Naw. Why you need to know that?"
"You said we had to beat them."
"Course you will, Mr. Lootenan. Of course. But you don't have to go looking for them. They're coming for you."
It took Valentine a moment to come up with, "How can you be sure of that?"
"All summer, new lines is goin' in. Labor and materials already arranged. I was supposed to second a section chief. A new north-south running Dallas-Tulsa-Kansas City, and after that then three branch lines."
"Branch lines? Where?"
"Pointing like a pitchfork right at these hills.
Valentine camped in an accommodating wagon that night among three other Wolves who had given up their tepee to Poulos and his new bride. As the final earthy taunts and wedding-night stories died down, Valentine reread Molly's letter by the cold light of the rising moon.