Chapter Three

David keeps his eyes closed.

"I don't know either," the voice says. The hands against his chest are warm, and very close. David licks his lips and tastes a number of things.

"Just get out here, alright?"

The hands push and he thinks the word coax, he thinks the word probe. He feels as though he hanging by a rope. The rope runs through his guts. The rope runs through his guts to the ground. David does not open his eyes.

"Go."

In his body is a wave and it is breaking.

"Go!"

David wakes up. He is shuttling across the country.

The sound that comes out his throat is foreign, and for a moment in the darkness he does not recognize it as his own. His hands are ghosts in the black, his breath close and hot. His ears ache with machinery. He can hear everything - the discipline of gears, the growl of coal fuming, the union of steel and steel. And then, familiarized, everything fades. Lying still, sweating in the darkness of his sleeping compartment, David remembers where he is.

Through to San Francisco in less than four days, the fat poster letters had said when David and his father arrived at the station. Luxurious cars and eating houses on the Union Pacific.

"Four days," his father had shaken his head, the corners of his mouth tightening at the pain in his arm. "You look at that, David. The world is getting smaller all the time."

It is, David thinks. He is sweating, stripped down to his long johns and still suffused in heat. Restless, he kicks himself onto his side, feeling the slide of ghost palms along his chest. He shakes them off. Not now.

"I want you to take advantage of this now," his father had told him, resolutely carrying his suitcase. "I never got to travel when I was your age. Never got the opportunity. You carry on like this and you're going to see the world!" David had obliged him the forced joviality. They both knew.

He presses the heels of his damp hands against his eyes. He doesn't like the finality of this compartment, the drawn curtains, the low ceilings. It is like being underwater, he chokes on it. He has been dreaming again, and cannot remember of what. His hands, independent creatures, track the corners of his mind, rest against his face, his chest. He discovers, with acute embarrassment, that he is hard.

"God dammit," he breathes, rolling onto his front. "God, god, god dammit."

"Listen, son," his father again, his face in the back of his mind, the long, stern nose, the intellectual lips. The train was leaving. David had one foot on the step. His father's hands, broad and familiar, clasped tightly on his shoulders. "Your mother and I are very proud of you."

David swears again. His body sways like he is on a tight hinge. The sweat on his lips is salty, bitter to the taste.

-

The mornings are different here. They do not glow.

Light is meted out according, David suspects, to the price of compartments. Though, again, he has no way of proving this; was he not promised the best? The sun forces its way in through the small, oily windows, shedding its actuality on the meagerness of his suitcase, toiletries, the smallness of him. The one pillow on the bed, the one pair of shoes by the sliding door, the one tooth brush in the cup. By the third morning traveling he has resigned himself to it.

"You'd think you were a rhododendron," his mother would say to herself wonderingly upon walking into their bedroom, early mornings, to find him already out on the fire escape, face turned upwards. "I should water you as well, maybe. Would you like that, David?"

It is more difficult to shave. He notes this on this same third morning, cutting himself for the fifth time this trip. "Shit," he swears, and the word is sticky and satisfactory in his mouth. He scoops up water in clammy palms. "Son of a bitch."

"What happened to you?" Sarah's voice, colored with laughter. "You get in a fight?"

"Shut up,"

"Did you use Poppa's razor?"

"Sarah!"

There is time now, so much of it, riding in his compartment with him, tugging at his ear like a child. He is not used to this sort of leisure and comes to awkward terms with it, passing the time with his forehead pressed to the window, blue eyes fastened somewhere past the horizon. The countryside serves as distraction; he finds himself grudgingly impressed with the sights. Used to the squat, crooked teeth buildings of New York, the wide-ranging fields and lone silo sentinels captivate him. He spends hours watching Ohio and Idaho fly by; feels something stirring deep in his stomach at the strange, dry cliffs of Montana; has the shrill and giddy pleasure of watching storm clouds gather at the root of the horizon in Nebraska. And fleetingly, in between the occasional head of cattle, the clearest blue sky, or a dash of wildflowers streaking like paint across the window, he sees something. Hard to say what; perhaps the hint of light growing bigger, expanding, washing across the plains in a warm, golden mist.

-

In the daytimes he preoccupies himself with his notes, the sparse facts he had taken the time to record from the New York Library and the few photos he had pillaged from the Tribune's records. There is only so much to be done with them, however, and he usually lapses into the old lines of his thoughts – his family, his apartment; the slim, sweet regularities that he always took for granted. David has never liked the furtive shift of change. He has his coffee refilled time and time again by the pretty girl with the slim, white hands, and never has the courage to say a word.

"The Rosens' boy down the street just got married," his mother says. "Lovely girl, her father's an Irishman, but the mother is respectable enough." And she rounds on him, scolding by turns: "You know what you're doing to your mother, David? You know how Mrs. Rosen asks after you? And what do I have to tell them after twenty three years?"

Sarah generally managed to escape their mother's tirades the way she did everything – smiling sweetly, slipping sideways on ballerina feet, calmly removing herself like a shadow vanishing. David, more solid, clumsier, could never do such a thing.

"I don't know, ma," he mutters to himself now, examining a print of the Van Pyke well. The proud faces, the tender moustaches, the serious set of the lips. "Maybe I haven't met the right girl yet. Maybe I want…" but this he could never articulate. Something like what his parents had, something that ran deep and could not be distinguished. Something different at the same time.

"Coffee, sir?" The girl asks. David looks up, suddenly aware of the childish nicks on his jaw.

"Umm…um, yeah. Yes. Yes, please."

Her eyes remind him stupidly of lamps, shining. She takes his cup in her hands.

"Now there's a nice girl," his mother says, lines of her mouth set. "Would it kill you to say hello, David?"

Yes, David thinks, watching as she gives a brief, perfunctory smile and moves towards the kitchen car. Yes it would.

In the evenings he does as he is expected to, and joins the traveling bachelors in the dimly lit leisure car for a hand or two of whatever game is most favored that night. The lowered lamps and the steady profusion of alcohol make him feel as though he is sleeping. Not breathing. As the youngest he is gently, ritually mocked.

"Take those kids in Boston," Says Fitzsimmons, a Philadelphian with an impressive, ginger moustache. The coffee girl appears behind him, bearing gin this time. He nods absently. "Protesting like that over something as simple as a kiss in a canoe. What do you say to that, young Jacobs?"

David smiles to himself, not looking at the girl, rearranging his cards.

"Shameless," a corpulent man from Queens interjects. "What a thing to get all up in arms over. There's turmoil abroad, you know. There are people starving. There are wars."

"I wasn't asking you, Phillips, I was asking our younger gentleman. Not, of course," a roguish grin, "that I am implying that he's any authority on the matter."

"The boy's at the age where he may as well be in one of those canoes himself," another man slyly offers, and in the rough chorus of answering laughter, David is saved from answering.

"More gin, gentlemen?" The waitress asks.

"Top it up!"

David makes the mistake of locking eyes with her. They are luminous, sweetly set. Green. Once again he is a child.

-

"David, you didn't!"

Sarah actually pressed the fingertips of one slim hand to her cheek, as though she had been slapped.

"What?" David shot back, cornered. He sat at the kitchen table, knees tight from the caffeine and nerves. "I was being honest! And…and inquisitive…and, um…"

"David," Sarah said in that firm voice that seemed to lend her the ultimate, sisterly authority. "You can't ask a girl how many times she's been kissed."

"She asked me first!"

"So?"

Sarah whipped the dishtowel at his shoulder as she passed, already laughing. David shifted in his chair, furious, as she moved towards the mantle and began to dust.

"So…so she shouldn't ask me questions that she doesn't want…you know…"

"David, you're acting like a child," she said pragmatically, shooting a knowing grin over her shoulder. "What business is it of yours anyways?"

"I was paying for her coffee!" David countered, voice growing shrill.

"And she was being nice enough to go for lunch with you in the first place!"

"I was being nice!"

"That's not a nice question!"

"What? No one's ever asked you that?"

"No!" Sarah said, raising her eyebrows. She lifts a stern, family photo taken years ago, and her hands are steady. "Not even…well, no one." The slim beginnings of a blush pushed up from her collar, but David was not paying attention, slumping down into an uneasy curve in the unforgiving chair. He pressed the heels of his hands to his forehead, his eyes, his mouth.

"I wouldn't've been mad or anything," he mumbled against his palms

"You say that now," Sarah said, shaking the towel out. The dust colored the air, made it softer. "But what if she'd kissed three men before you?"

"I don't care,"

"Four!"

"I don't care, Sarah."

A silence. Sarah replaced the photo carefully, angling it, running the soft pad of her finger along the edge of the mantle, outlining the grooves in the wood.

"Really?"

-

"Santa Fe!" Phillips repeats, eyes widening under thick, bushy brows. "What in the devil's name are you going to Santa Fe for?"

"A beau would be my guess," Fitzsimmons, grinning at him across the table. "A romance! Tell us all about her, Jacobs."

"Nothing like that," David says, giving a perfunctory smile. "Just a story. I'm a reporter for the Tribune in New York."

"Most certainly a romance," Fitzsimons tells Phillips, eyeing David with no small amount of cunning. "Very modest, our young Jacobs."

"Very modest indeed," another man laughs, watching Phillip's mouth work in consternation. David laughs too; there is not much else to do. The pile of cards in the center of the table is disorganized, slippery. He shifts his own hand, rearranges them in awkward fingers. With no sunlight coming in from the windows it is difficult to discern the exact expressions of the men across from him.

"The Tribune you said?" Fitzsimmons asks, his voice casual, overlying a keen, intellectual edge. David looks up.

"Uh…yes sir."

"Sir!" Fitzsimmons barks; his mouth is full of blue smoke. The gentlemen around the table laugh. "Now, now, son, I may be old but I'm certainly not sir. Not yet, by God. Call me Fitz."

"Alright, uh, Fitz," David smiles sheepishly. The name is the sharp prickle of soda on his tongue.

"Fantastic paper," Fitz tells him, placing a card carefully down on the pile and sniffing. "What I wouldn't give for an outfit like that in Philadelphia. I read every edition when I spent a summer in the Bronx, 1896. Although I've heard it's changed hands since?"

"In 1901," David admits, watching as the man beside him places a card down on the pile.

"You worked under Filbert's editorship?"

"I started in 1903."

"Fantastic," Fitz gives a small smile. "Warms the heart to see such a young man already doing such great work, doesn't it gentlemen?"

There are murmurs around the table, although David is certain most are just in anticipation of his move. Fitz smiles, showing small, foxish teeth. In the darkness, David feels as though here is something hiding behind those teeth, alert, ready to spring. He tosses a card in, stung, thinking of the work he is doing, and what he feels he should be doing, existing somewhere just outside of his reach.

-

In Omaha the motion that David has come to count as a heartbeat slows to a stop. The passengers have their luggage moved to another train, make the connection, start heading south towards Santa Fe. David barely bothers to set up his things again in his new, still darkened compartment, pressing his forehead against the small window, wondering if the coffee waitress is switching trains to or if she is headed back towards New York, still serving with her pretty hands, cultivating the distance between their bodies.

Fitz is on this train as well – David has seen him in passing, has caught the sly teeth and the ginger moustache, but has not gone out of his way to say hello. Without the barrier of the other gentlemen he imagines a reunion to be awkward, unnecessary. Fitz's interest in him seemed to purely extend only to his imagined pranks and misdeeds, perhaps things Fitz had even done himself, or had wanted to do. He spends his last day traveling in the dining car again, his notes reluctantly spread before him, white and sparse. He begins to work.

Chewing on his lower lip, he circles dates, times, American names: Summers. Drake. August 3rd, 1903. Doheny. California's Petroleum Queen.

"Get your facts straight, first," Denton says in the back of his head, circling around his chair, leaning on the table next to him. "No point in building a skyscraper if your foundation won't keep it standing."

David's scowl deepens as he circles a graph, outlining the rise in productivity. What was the point of all this research when all Williams wanted was a clever turn of phrase for the "of interest" section?

"Always have more than what you need," Denton advises. "Better to edit down than to try and beef up."

David turns the page. A few notes on Santa Fe and its history, riddled with Spanish names and Apache expressions that make his tongue feel thick and inexperienced. A quote from Horace Greeley – something for Walters, he thinks with a bitter twinge. A good old slice of Americana.

"A good reporter doesn't let his feeling get in the way," Denton says closely in his ear. "A good reporter writes what he sees, what he hears, and what he knows."

When David looks out the windows now he sees more and more the sweet, slopes of green that colored Ohio and Idaho turning to dust; dust that stretches on towards cliffs, dry river beds, bristles and bursts of brown dead grass. Oklahoma turns to Texas, Texas turns to New Mexico. David thinks of Santa Fe and feels as though he has swallowed steel wool; he cannot fathom why, all his costs have been paid for and the town is civilized, despite what his mother may think. The article he could write blinded.

"Every tiny project is important," Denton reminds him doggedly. "Irrelevant as it may seem, you must be ready to defend every word."

He is not concentrating. He tries out a few openers in his head, almost half sure he could finish the project without seeing the well at all. Van Pyke oil well still up and running after two years! Two miles off the capital of Santa Fe, New Mexico's most faithful well still gushing…

"Edit it down," Denton urges.

Two years of oil, jobs, and stability in Santa Fe, New Mexico!

"The fewer the words, the more powerful."

Anywheresville, U.S.A., boasts of two-year oil well!

Denton's knee jars his and he has to stop.

He realizes he is breathing hard, that when he touches his fingers to his forehead they come back wet. There is no one across from him.

The train rumbles on.

-

The coffee girl is smoking a cigarette in the small compartment that bridges the dining and kitchen cars. David is standing at the door and she looks at him like a lady might look out at someone from a painting. David looks at her hands and can see the bones at the same time. They are milk white, thin, radiant in the dark. It is too dark.

He knows it is a dream, because they are in New York again, the buildings are crowding up against the windows, rough edges scraping the glass. Following him. In a stack of newspapers David sees a collection of familiar faces, of himself, grimacing. The girl blows a hot plume of smoke against the side of his face and when he looks back she has turned into someone else.

-

When it stops in Santa Fe it is the middle of the night. David feels the slowing of engines in his sleep, the quiet, understated halting. He turns over, murmurs something, can barely breathe. In the morning he will repack his sparse things, self-consciously smooth the sheets, move to step out in to a morning. It will be a morning of a different breed, though; a different creature. When his foot hits the tarry wood of the station floor, cap tilted back to catch the light, he will finally see what the fuss was about. The sun, everywhere.

Heart betas Falco and PolyesterRage whipping me into shape.