The Amalgamation Polka Read Online Free PDF Page B

from wandering. You got to have the shout, all the folks walking in a ring in the proper direction. You got to put the things of the dead person on top of the grave, so many things. And if the coffin ain’t carried properly to the cemetery, the dead person’s naturally all confused and upset. Might be able to find his way back home and bring all his troubles with him.”
    “Could he come here, to our house?”
    “If he died here. But ain’t nobody died here lately that I know about.”
    Liberty mused over these facts and said, in a quavering voice, “I think the dead man’s in the barn.”
    “Well then, baby doll,” declared Euclid, “reckon we’d better head on back and take a peek. Anyway, looks like our fishy friends heard us speculating about dead folks and got spooked. But they’ll be back tomorrow and so will we.”
    Though the day was rapidly approaching the near shadowless glory of high noon, the woods seemed darker to Liberty coming back than they had going out and every slight crack and rustle sounded a clanging bell of alarm.
    The barn sat isolate in a clearing up behind the house, implacable as a rock, old, gray, hard-edged by the sun, a structure obviously built to contain the meanest thing, no matter its size. The open door gaped like a devouring mouth, black, abysmal, utterly toothless.
    Liberty waited outside, careful to keep Euclid’s body between himself and whatever might come lunging out of those gloomy depths. He could hear Euclid’s reassuring calls as he searched each dusty stall and corner. “Nope, nothing here. Nothing there, either.” The wagon, partially visible in the shadows just within the doorway like a quaint artifact on display, appeared to have been neither moved nor touched in years. Its bed was empty.
    Several weeks passed.
    At last Euclid emerged from the barn, wholly intact and thankfully unharmed, shaking his head and brushing chaff from his hands. “Looks like that’s one dead man done hightailed it out of here some time ago. Stepping lightly, too, didn’t leave a single track. Don’t look so disappointed. Never know when another dead man’s likely to come traipsing through.”
    “I think he went away on the train.”
    “The train? What train is that?”
    “The one Mother told me about, that runs under the ground.”
    Politely restraining himself, Euclid responded to this news with a considerate chortle. “Whew, you sure tiring me out now, turnip. What a heap of knobby stones you chucking at me today.”
    “I’ve heard it.”
    Indeed, he had often imagined the polished rails gleaming invitingly away down a dank, lamp-lit tunnel, and between futile wrestling bouts with his tenacious bed linen he had ruined the sleep of many a night, lying as still as he could, his breath controlled to an almost noiseless sigh, listening with every unabated nerve of his body for the telltale clack of the wheels, the rumbling chug of the engine, the long, piercing, seductive cry of the whistle.
    “I ain’t disbelieving you, Liberty, I’ve heard that blessed train, too. And so, I expect, has our dead friend, done caught himself a ride to the far place. But let me tell you, baby doll, you plan on passing along that particular route, travel light, get to the station early, don’t argue with the conductor and be kind to those you meet along the line, ’cause you never know when that bullgine might blow up or the coach jump the tracks.”

One evening in the late spring of 1846, Liberty not yet two, the ominous detonation of a giant’s boots was heard thundering across the porch, over the threshold, down the hallway and into the parlor, where burst a big, loud, bushy man with guns at his hips and warts on his hands. He was wearing a crumpled oilskin cap of enigmatic hue and a ratty green duster. From a face dark and filthy, sprouting a black beard of such unkempt weediness it would have surprised no one had something wild emerged, a set of fierce, quick eyes blazed like coins at