Page:Weird Tales volume 38 number 03 CAN.djvu/94

 rusting cars were to be nuzzled into their final resting place in the yards and the rails were to be torn up immediately for other, more vital usages.

HE el train that last trip was packed with dignitaries and reporters, the Mayor, and other notables, but still Jack managed to get aboard. There was much excitement, and the Sanitation Department band played bright, hopeful airs on the 109th Street platform. This depressed Larue even more than he had expected to be affected by his last trip. He wondered why the death of something should be celebrated by a bind, and a poor one at that, playing off-key military marches. It seemed unfair. Taps maybe, like they do over a dead hero. A bugle and some guns fired off. Damnit, he was going to miss the old rattler.

He reached into his hip pocket as best he could in the crowd and felt reassuringly of the bottle cached there. The train jerked to a start and there were huzzahs from the small crowd on the platform. The Sanitation band tooted enthusiastically, its horns and inexact melody blaring off into the distance as the train put worn ties between itself and the starting point.

Larue cautiously began to edge his way forward. Between cars he made himself small, reached into his hip and got the bottle there up to bis lips. He took a good enough swig to half empty the precious Scotch, then with more elan he shouldered his way forward again.

Slowly, as though reluctant to complete its last journey, as though clinging to every moment, every familiar squeak and rattle, as though caressing for the last time each inch of used and faithful track, the el cars nosed their way around serpentine bends and clickitied out onto the West River Bridge. Pedestrians waved from the bridge way, Jack noted, as he peered out the side windows. He also noted that crews were already standing by to begin the work of demolition. The crowd in the el cars was happy and carefree. Here and there, the foundry worker recognized a face that had crossed back and forth with him many times in the past. He didn't know them beyond a nod or a smile, but they were the veterans who, he felt, could sense the real tragedy of this thins; as he did. The others, the petty officials, the nosing sour reporters, Chief of Police Frost—a man Larue recognized by his pictures, large-jowled, blank of expression despite the smile frozen on his face—all these did not belong. The el to them was a source of revenue or a cause of lack of revenue, the source of a story, or just a responsibility. For all of them, its iron and steel frame and heart and guts could be wrenched and torn asunder and hauled elsewhere to be scalded and molded into new unrecognizable forms.

Larue finished the rest of his Scotch, picked up in spirit correspondingly, and reached the front of the foremost car, all about the same time. Some of the joy-riding passengers had pulled open the windows and were looking curiously out. Larue stuck his head through and looked back the way they'd come. Already, like the wake of a speedy motor launch coming together in the distance, little ants of men had flung themselves from either side upon the track. Even at the steadily increasing distance, Larue could see the morning sun glinting on a swung pick or raised crowbar. He pulled his head in as the train rattled off the bridge ramp. A couple of florid-faced, straw-hatted men in the back of the car, with construction buttons on, started a few bars of Casey Jones, but the song died a self-conscious death. Larue looked at them with contempt. Construction, bah, Destruction, that's what it was.

He nodded at an old-time passenger he knew and lurched forward against Pete's door. The tram was slowing as he leaded against the compartment and pulled at the knob.

"Hello, Pete," he mumbled as the door opened. There was Nevers sitting as ever, hunched and intense over his controls. Nevers said nothing.