Boxcars and Stockyards
The night of the botched raid, Louis was waiting down the road, sitting in the rented pickup hitched to the trailer full of livestock, four stereo speakers facing outward mounted on the trailer’s roof and concealed under a tarp, ready to spin out the sounds of neighing and snorting, and the thud and clack of hooves. When the commotion started at the stables, and he saw, in his rear view mirror, men running across the road and down through the field into the woods, he knew this was a fatal error, but he played his role to the end, despite his earlier misgivings, cursing the fact that he had listened to those stories of the lovelorn uncle and his pain and his child train of hope and glory.
Perhaps because he was looking down, punching the keys on his phone to warn off his freelancers, perhaps because his truck door window was partially shut against the autumn chill, he wasn’t aware of the footsteps crunching toward him as the lone guard whose nightly job was to patrol the perimeter approached then stopped in front of the hood of his pickup. The man, rifle ever at the ready, came around to stand in front of his window. Louis had just made the motion to raise his phone to his ear, when the shot rang out—no questions asked, no mercy granted. His body slumped forward, then slid off the steering wheel, hitting the dashboard, pushing down the switch that turned on the deception tape and activated the speakers. The strangeness of the ensuing sounds confused and unnerved the gunman. His Zastava—his only courage—was no match against the unseen or the unknown. He abandoned his kill and took off down the road in the direction of the stable search party.
Minutes later, acting on the report of Louis’ attacker, that search party came doubling back, running up to the truck and trailer, rifles also at the ready, and found Louis slumped over in the driver’s seat, shot through the temple, his salt and pepper hair darkening as his blood soaked through it. The noise of the faux traveling show continued to rise up through the speakers into the inky sky, bewildering and eerie, swirling through the silence of the desolate road and still October air, spooking them. Ghost horses were galloping through—the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, the specters of Sleepy Hollow—evoking the scent of fear, the phantom rustling and trembling of roadside branches, bent and curved by invisible passersby. After fumbling around, one of the men was able to locate the button on the dashboard to switch off the tape, and the night became silent. They walked around, still on edge, to the back of the trailer and flipped the latches on the doors, swinging them wide open. Shining their flashlights into the interior and seeing cattle, and only cattle, the realization flooded over them that they had been had, the Lipizzaners long gone, and in their rage and humiliation they swung their Zastava M70’s around and emptied their magazines into those unfortunate beasts trapped in a stockyard of war rather than commerce. The report of the assault reverberated against the trees that lined both sides of the road, and steam issued from the trailer as warm blood hit cold metal.
* * *
A hundred or so kilometers away, the Lipizzaners were being loaded onto the train bound for Hungary. The getaway trucks and trailers were left on the side of the road parallel to the train tracks, abandoned like rocket boosters falling off into space. As for the two victims, Tulipan Sava and myself, our little band of thieves had irrevocably cast its lot, and there was no imaginable way to seek further medical attention for a dying horse without papers or for the wounded and bleeding foreigner. Dr. Landru had wound a pressure bandage fashioned from Richard’s shirt around my mangled forearm and shot me up with cefazolin, had attended to Sava, and the stallion and I were put in the last car—empty because of the three mares not rescued from the stable. Landru rode in attendance with us, holding my arm above my head. We had to get over the border. The freight train to which our last four cars were attached needed to depart on schedule; being late would only make the dicey border crossing more problematic. Any remaining sense of stability was fast disintegrating and we were in mental free fall. Barton was in internal turmoil over many things, not least his partner’s emotional state—Erik was shaken by his shooting of the attacker back at the stable; he felt he had crossed a line and there was no way to crawl back over it. Everyone was increasingly concerned about not having heard from Louis. Richard remained outwardly collected and in charge, but the blood had drained from his face and what was going on inside his head was unfathomable.
When we got to the border, the crew showed their passports, forms were signed and stamped, the first few boxcars were inspected, then money changed hands and the train was sent on its way. We crossed into Hungary, gained a measure of safety, and Tulipan Sava was euthanized. After this brief bout of consciousness, I blacked out again.
* * *
Twenty-two miles inside Hungary, the train pulled into an unscheduled stop at a depot, deserted at this time of night, near the Kiskunhalas airstrip. The only light was from the train itself and then suddenly from several trucks and trailers in a field across from the tracks. One of the crew went to the depot shack and unlocked it in order to switch on a single platform light which immediately attracted a swarm of flying, diving insects. Richard jumped out of his boxcar and went across the tracks and over the field to where the local recruits were getting out of their vehicles. He spoke to them, giving them instructions, then turned and trudged back towards the train as they followed him. He was on his cellphone and in just his t-shirt, talking agitatedly to whomever was on the other end of the line. As soon as he stepped back onto the platform, Dr. Landru grabbed him and led him a few yards away. They were deep in conversation when Erik came up and silently joined them. The three men stood under the platform light, a tableau of actors spotlighted in a stage drama. Everyone was looking to Richard to make the hard decisions, to decide how the act would end. With Louis absent from his usual peanut gallery.
The German women and Barton and Robin slid open the doors of the last four boxcars, and with the help of the crew, pulled down the ramps and started leading the Lipizzaners out one by one until only the last car, eerily silent, remained to be unloaded. As the horses passed by on the way to the next phase of their journey, their neglect was illuminated by the platform light—rib cages fully visible, hip bones prominent—shocking the train crew. It was a hard thing to look at in a world full of terrible things forced into view, but there was also a small sense of comfort that, amid the insanity, these twenty-one Lipizzaners were going home. They turned the horses over to the grooms who lead them across the field to one of three trailers: one bound for the airstrip near Kiskunhalas, the other two heading in the opposite direction for the long serpentine journey back to Lipik. Richard continued speaking with Dr. Landru, continued supervising the offloading of the horses, continued his mobile conversation, phone plastered to his ear, all the while keeping his back to the sinister beckoning of the last boxcar; not allowing himself to face the dark consequences of Louis’ ruse and of what they had done; fighting the torrent of guilt that threatened to overpower and devour him over his arrogance in thinking he could save what he loved through force of will alone; holding on for dear life to his focus and that very will to go forward.
With the three cars unloaded and his consignment of horses secured, Barton walked back up the station platform toward the gaping stillness of the farthest boxcar door, a nightmarish sensation tingling at the back of his neck, that cowboy charm of his one of the many casualties of the night. He continued up the ramp and peered into the blackness. He bowed his head and stood there for a moment, flies escaping from the boxcar buzzing around his ears and shoulders, then turned and walked back down the ramp. He strode past Richard, Dr. Landru, and Erik, giving them a hard stare, then, reaching the pickup hitched to the larger of the Lipik-bound trailers, got in and slammed the door shut. He stared straight ahead as Erik joined him, getting in the passenger seat. Although Erik started arguing with him before he even sat down, Barton continued to glare ahead and only broke his trance to look down to grab the gearshift and start the long journey to the Lipik stables. The two dressagers had started to muck out the train, eager to command the second trailer and head home. Richard, Robin, and Dr. Landru remained on the platform, Robin replacing Erik in the tableau, Richard still on his phone. This last group’s task was to transport the remaining horses and collateral damage to Kiskunhalas. There they would be met by a medic and all would fly out to Zagreb.
The crew master, anxious to wrap up this dangerous stunt, made his way up the ramp to discharge the last boxcar. Nobody was telling him anything and the train needed to proceed to its destination. At first nothing was visible due to his eyes adjusting from the bright platform light. Slowly, a misshapen form emerged from the darkness. As he moved closer, his attention was claimed by the smell emanating from within, a smell reminiscently familiar and unwelcome. He, too, was struck by a sharp urge to turn back. To leave everything unknown. To slip back in time before this whole sorry escapade took place. In no way was it worth the money. He didn't move, though, and saw through his improving vision—as if water was draining and sunken shapes appearing, as if the tide was retreating and revealing—that the largest, darkest shadow was actually a girl sitting on the floor, leaning back against the wall of the boxcar. In the murkiness, her form continued and flowed into another being, now emerging as a horse, lying on its side, still and dead. The girl . . .? She was alive. She slowly turned her head toward the light of the open door, and he saw in her eyes that whatever had happened here would scar, would not be fleeting, but permanent. The horse's head pressed up against her thigh, and her right arm, swaddled in some shirt or something soaked through with blood, rested on the dead horse's neck, encircling his head, pulling him toward her, comforting him on this disturbing journey, so that the girl and horse merged into one being, one catastrophe, and there was no boundary between the destruction of the two.
Image: To slip back in time. Source: Detail from "Red Cross Train Passing a Village," Gino Severini, 1915, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York City, NY, US [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons, edited by J. Weigley