Trolley No. 1852 Read Online Free PDF Page A

darkness.
“Time.”
    “ Time? ”
    “I don’t know how to
explain it”—he rubbed his brows—“but each and every time I been,
it’s seemed like I been there for hours. I could get on with three or
four different girls, too, and when I get out’a there I think it’s
got to be noon at least… but then I look at my watch and it’s
scarcely four-thirty in the morning or quarter till
five.”
    I staved off a chuckle,
for Erwin was permitting his oblique sense of abstraction to
supervene the much more primal reality that he must not be
possessed of much sexual endurance! Then again, how much endurance
would I be
capable of given the sheer infrequency of my own sexual
experience? Laughably little, I suspected, for so long ago it was that’d I’d
been married.
    Several more minutes passed, and my current
hopes passed as well. The B-Line would be arriving shortly. “Drat,”
I said. “It appears that tonight’s not our night, Mr. Erwin,” but
no sooner had I spoken the words than Erwin turned with an enthused
lurch…
    At the end of the street, like something
first semi-tangible slowly materializing from the dark’s secret
ether, a bulk shape began to form. Crackling sparks grew less dim
(no doubt the sparks of electric transference from the ever-present
power wires looping overhead), companioned by a faint and very
ghostly circle of yellow light at the shape’s forward-most area
which made me think of a dying cyclopean eye. The squeal of
bearings caught my ears, then the grate of an air-break…
    Erwin uttered, “This is it.”
    The vehicle’s forward lamp shined so faint
it scarcely served a purpose, but finally there came another surge
of gas into the closest street-lamp, and this is when I got my
first full glimpse.
    It was an older-style trolley, opened all
around in a vestibuled fashion (in other words, lacking windows)
and was of the antiquated twin-car, double-truck type whereas all
city trolleys that I’d seen were single-carred. Flaking yellow
paint, quite a murky yellow, covered all of the decrepit vehicle’s
side panels.
    “This is most
definitely not a
city trolley,” I muttered to Erwin.
    “No, Mr. Phillips. It’s
a private trolley. It’s not from the city transit system at
all.”
    A private trolley…
    At the forward car’s head,
I spied the motorman’s station, little more than a cubby; the
capped motorman himself stood scarcely moving at the controller
handle. In the drear, his face looked dead-pan, bereft of life;
indeed, the darkness reduced his eyes and mouth to black slits amid
a waxen pallor. Above the frame of his look-out, the car’s
identification number could be seen in black-stencil
letters: No. 1852.
    The vehicle squealed to a halt. Erwin, in an
excitement that seemed touched by fear, grabbed my arm and urged,
“The conductor’ll size you up ‘cos you’re new, but don’t worry.
He’ll let you on since you’re with me.”
    “Size me up?” I had to question.
    “They don’t let ruffians on.”
    “Oh,” but in a city aswarm with ruffians and
every other manner of human flotsam, the policy was to be expected.
“But who enforces order, should the conductor mistakenly allow some
roysterers aboard?”
    “The motorman,” Erwin answered in a whisper
tense with unpleasantness. “I seen it happen once. Hobos, all riled
with liquor, jumped on and started a ruckus, but the ruckus didn’t
last long.”
    “The motorman’s something of a tough
customer, I take it.”
    Erwin looked troubled.
“Let’s just say that them hobos are probably still in the hospital.”
    Oh, my, I thought.
    “Come on!”
    The overhead cable sparked
and crackled. I followed Erwin up the sheet-metal steps of the
first car, and in doing so, I noticed other silent riders sitting
among the wooden cross-seats; however, the wee hour’s dimness
reduced their faces to smears of shadow. The metal floor tapped at coming
footfalls: the boots of the conductor, a short but sure-footed
figure, who