HE'S MY BROTHER

Chapter Four - Home Sweet Home

It didn't take long for Lammergeier to decide that he didn't like living at the Knapford roundhouse, and it had nothing to do with the stabling itself or his shed-mates.

He actually, for the most part, liked the other engines who lived with him. The new roundhouse had eight extra large berths and six of them were currently occupied. At one end were the three Canadian engines. Justin, Francois and Guy. All were large, impressive-looking locomotives who'd been shipped over together several years ago, complete with their own engineer, Christophe Pelletier, who'd just retired back in Canada and who'd initially meant to only stay long enough to get the local engineers up to speed as to their new foreign engines' maintenance and operation. Somehow his temporary stay had stretched into months and the prospect of retirement began to suck and Christophe had come to accept that he was just not done fooling around with his beloved steam locomotives. Lammergeier gathered that there was some special history between the man and Guy, the big Northern loco, and that the other two had once been crewed by the Doyons, so the arrival of the Canadian contingent had been something of a family reunion, as it were.

Lammergeier had been given the other end berth on the western side of the building so he could have a bit of privacy while getting used to his new routine, and next to him, of course, was his own dear brother, Adler. And next to Adler was a true curiosity, an enormous tank engine named Hurricane, who also had ten driving wheels. He was the only one of his kind ever made and had been rebuilt in the past into an articulated mode, in order to better work within confined areas. Unfortunately for him and despite his rarity, his former owners had decided to chuck all their steam locos in favour of more diesels and he'd been lucky to have come to the attention of Sir Topham Hatt, who'd been quick to snap him up. The other steam engines who'd been working with him were also put up for sale at the same time and they were unusual enough that they'd been bought by a friend of Sir Topham's, the owner of the Island's railway museum, Sir Robert Norramby. Those engines, Lammergeier hadn't met yet. As for Hurricane, Lammergeier thought him a rather common sort, although the others, even Adler, seemed to really like him, and for that reason, the new 48 was keeping his opinion to himself for now.

The remaining two berths were reserved for visitors or occasional residents. One of those occasional residents was stabled in the Knapford sheds right now, the big green engine Lammergeier had met in the forest—Henry. Henry usually lived in the Tidmouth roundhouse, but had been moved over to Knapford for pure convenience's sake because his crew, Denise and Pierre, were drawing double duty again and looking after both him and Lammergeier. Henry was not only fine with the move, but quite delighted. He'd gotten to know the Canadians and Adler very well in the past and was glad to be able to spend some time with all of them again. And while Lammergeier never said much to him, the other new guy in the shed, Hurricane, was funny and cheerful and eager to befriend the only other 'local' engine, as he baldly put it, so Henry turned out to be well served when it came to company.

Lammergeier was much less thrilled with the whole setup than was Henry. He'd expected that Denise and Christophe would continue on as his crew and had been rudely shocked to find himself relegated to second stringer status and having to share Henry's crew instead. Denise he was still fine with as his driver—and he still rather liked her—but her husband serving as his new fireman he wasn't sure of at all. He looked friendly enough and smiled a lot, yet had the same unnerving ability to look right into him as had Christophe. On the other hand, he did build beautiful fires and had a real knack for putting a spectacular shine on an engine's paintwork. Lammergeier reluctantly decided to keep his complaints about the crew situation stashed securely alongside his hidden opinions about some of the other engines. He didn't even know whom he could complain to anyway. Adler had begun to give him impatient looks anytime he tried to criticize his current living conditions.

No, what irritated Lammergeier most and made him regret having to live at Knapford more and more as the days went on was simply the sheer numbers of humans who seemed determined to hang about the roundhouse at any given time. Part of it was that a lot of the people who crewed the engines happened to live right in the town of Knapford itself—the Doyons and Christophe included—and because they could walk to and from work, they tended to dawdle when their workdays were done or sometimes just dropped by to visit during their off hours. Even Sir Topham Hatt was guilty of this. His main office was in Knapford Station and he apparently thought nothing of wandering over if he wanted a break at lunchtime or wanted to show off his fine new modern roundhouse or his 'foreign fleet' to visitors. The only visit by Sir Topham which Lammergeier ever truly appreciated was the very first one, when he came by to see how his new 48 was settling in. It made for the perfect excuse for Lammergeier to gloat some more about his speed record, but it also precipitated the first really serious argument between the two German engines.

What happened was that while Adler was already well aware that Lammergeier had established a new max speed for their class (no thanks to being told about it umpteen times by the establisher himself), what he hadn't known was that Sir Topham was Lammergeier's driver during the trial itself. In fact, it struck him as so unlikely that Adler didn't dare ask for further clarification when he started to clue in while the boss was still there, conversing with them, for fear of inadvertently offending the human. As soon as the Fat Controller had left, though…

"Did I hear right?" he'd asked. "Sir Topham Hatt drove you?"

"That's right," Lammergeier replied, rather smugly. "I told him to take my throttle just before I started my run and he did, and he drove me back to the steamworks afterwards too."

Adler blinked, and blinked again. "You never mentioned this. But surely he's not…very practised."

"No, but so what? I mainly drove myself and let him think he was doing it all."

Lammergeier's casual admission shocked the other engine.

"You shouldn't have done that," he warned in a low, worried voice. "It's not right. You could have gotten yourself into a lot of trouble."

"What's not right is being yanked around by some heavy-handed lout!" Lammergeier fired back irritably. "I won't stand for it anymore. I don't care who it is!"

"But Sir Topham Hatt is—"

"I said I don't care! And stop trying to defend him. He's a lousy driver! I won't tolerate poor driving any longer, I won't! I've had it with humans pulling at me and jerking me around and not knowing what they're doing. If some stupid person wants to climb aboard and try working my controls, fine, I can't stop them. But I can at least protect myself by overriding their commands if they're bad ones!"

Adler regarded his brother with silent grave concern while he ranted on. It was the first time he'd had any inkling that Lammergeier was, in his own way, as damaged as he himself had been when he first arrived on Sodor—it was just that Lammergeier's damage had gone a different way. He'd never seen his brother blow up like this, never. He'd always been the liveliest and sometimes rather sarcastic one of the three 48s, but Adler couldn't recall him ever expressing such downright vicious sentiments towards humans and the thought of him deliberately deceiving one of them seemed inconceivable. Lammergeier had always been obedient to a fault when they were working together back in Berlin; it was built into them to be so and to want to please their human masters. But somehow during the intervening years, Lammergeier's desire to please had taken a terrible turn.

"I don't know what to say to you," Adler admitted once his brother had finally wound down and run out of words. "Obviously you have your reasons for feeling the way you do and I wish you'd tell me what they are. You do know you can talk to me and tell me anything…don't you?"

"Sure," Lammergeier replied, sounding rather tired in the wake of his tirade, "but there's nothing to really tell. I've just gotten fed up with tolerating bad driving. And it's not like they're all bad. I do like that woman driver. She does a good job."

"Yes. Denise and Pierre used to crew me too, when I first arrived. She has good hands. So does Pierre—he filled in for her sometimes on long jobs. He's surprisingly gentle with the controls."

"He hasn't tried driving me yet…" Lammergeier remarked. Then a stray thought occurred to him. "Say, what happened between you and Denise back when you first started working here? When they took me out on the lines for the first time when I was still up at the steamworks, that chief engineer made some comment about you needing to be yelled at to get you moving at all."

"Oh. That." Adler looked embarrassed. "It was just a misunderstanding."

Lammergeier grinned, back to his old self. "No it wasn't," he said. "Spill it, oh brother of mine."

"All right. Why not? This was back when I was about to go out on my own first test run. Mister Baker and Mister Pelletier were both aboard to monitor me, given that I was a new class of engine for both of them, and Mister Pelletier had gotten up a good fire, but we had to wait on the actual crew because they'd been delayed for some reason. When they did arrive, they came in from the office side of the steamworks and I couldn't really see them, I could just hear them."

Adler paused, still a little embarrassed, but amused too now that time had softened the memories.

"You have to remember," he went on, "I was a little…emotional back then. I'd just come out of a bad situation and didn't have very good control of my temper in particular. When the Doyons first climbed aboard—for of course it was them, I found out later—I thought it was a driver who'd dragged along his girlfriend to try and impress her by showing her the big new German engine and that made me very angry. Just the thought of him taking it all so lightly and messing up my one chance to make the best first impression possible… They tried to roll me out, but I refused and slammed on my brakes and started insisting—still trying to keep it a little polite but I was mad—please! get that woman out of my cab! she shouldn't be here! please take her out! Well! You can guess what happened next. 'That woman' suddenly screamed at me and it was in German and I was so startled by that that I jumped ahead."

Lammergeier laughed, already delighted by the image. "What did she yell at you?" he asked.

"I can't repeat it. The command to "go!" was about the only word I'm comfortable relating. Needless to say, I obeyed."

His brother laughed even harder. "I suppose you forgot about your brakes and slipped your own wheels, too."

"I did," Adler admitted. "Showers of sparks thrown up by every one of my driving wheels. It was so mortifying. The only good that came out of it was that the people in the cab found it funny and were more entertained than angry with me. Mister Baker called it a…cultural misunderstanding, I think it was."

"Some misunderstanding. I suppose you apologized to Denise afterwards."

"First chance I got. And multiple times later."

"I knew you would. You're such a sanctimonious prig sometimes."

"Why, thank you," Adler replied, and then both of them were chuckling together, back to being friends again, their brief tiff overcome.

Lammergeier still hadn't offered up any further background for his angry outburst about inconsiderate humans and Adler didn't ask him about it. He knew that his brother was one of those engines who hated to be pried at and that he'd only become silent and sullen or sarcastic and confrontational if provoked. Still, Adler had gleaned quite a lot from the incident. It helped explain, in retrospect, his puzzling hostility towards visitors in the yard. His first encounter with the apprentices, for example, who more typically hung out at the Tidmouth sheds… They'd come over with their instructor just a day or two after Lammergeier had first arrived in Knapford, on a morning when the two 48s were the only engines left in the roundhouse. The instructor, Mister Ray, had made them gather in front of Lammergeier's buffers and had even made a point of introducing them, but that part of it hadn't gone very well.

"So, this here's Lambchop," Mister Ray had said, "the new guy you might have read about in the paper. Guess I don't need to tell ya that he's related to Adi."

The young apprentices had all politely said their hellos to the engine, a couple of them tittering a bit over his name. But Lammergeier, all he did was stare back at them as though he'd suddenly been beset by a swarm of disgusting insects, his mouth stubbornly clamped shut. Mister Ray, who was just as wise as he was old, clued in at once.

"Okay!" he'd exclaimed. "Looks like the English ain't there yet." He moved over to stand in front of Adler's buffer beam instead.

"Hey, Adi, how ya doin'? I'd like to give the kids a lesson on comparing the two of ya. Just the externals, don't even need to go in yer cabs. You good with that?"

"Of course, Mister Ray." Adler replied. "Vhatever you need. Neither of us hef jobs today."

"Outstanding. Tell yer brother there what we're planning. Okay, kidlets! Come on back here!"

The lot of them moved deeper into the sheds, between the two engines. Adler took the opportunity to glare over at Lammergeier and scold him, in German of course.

"What is wrong with you? You made yourself look like an idiot just now! Not to mention that it was very rude."

"Why are those people here?" Lammergeier growled. "Aren't there any regulations about unauthorized personnel in the roundhouse?"

"They are authorized, you nitwit! They're trainees, from the apprentice programme. Their instructor, Mister Ray, is a very experienced driver and a very nice man."

Lammergeier just grumbled to himself while Adler continued to glower at him. Both engines could hear the man laying out his lesson plan.

"…same class, but that don't mean they're identical. Now these two, they're not even close. They got one big difference between 'em and it's somethin' you can see from outside and it ain't in the cab—that's the only hint I'm giving ya. Don't bother gettin' in their cabs and buggin' em 'cause the difference ain't there, got it? The rest of 'em, outside only, go for it."

One of the apprentices, who was evidently the wag of the class, shot up his hand.

"Oh! Oh! Mister Ray? Is it that their nameplates are different?" he asked in an impossibly perky voice.

The other trainees laughed. Mister Ray snarled something, but lovingly so. The only person who remained positively and absolutely unamused was Lammergeier, who ground his faux teeth together in his frustrated exasperation.

"Daemlicher Bengel," he muttered, a judgement which both acknowledged the last speaker's youth and questioned his intellectual capacity. Adler frowned at him. Again.

"He's joking," he admonished. "You know what a joke is, right? Or did your sense of humour get shot off during the War?"

But Lammergeier refused to let himself be jollied out of his sour mood, which curdled into outright anger once the apprentices retrieved some short wooden ladders and used them to climb up onto both engines' running boards. Only the presence of their instructor, who'd moved to stand by Adler's front buffers again, kept him from snapping at the youngsters and telling them to get off him. Adler, by contrast, watched his visitors with keen interest. He already knew what the difference was that Mister Ray wanted them to notice, and they were certainly having a good go clambering about comparing smoke boxes, domes, the plating over their boilers, and everything else in the meanwhile—one boy was even counting rivets.

Eventually, the lot of them climbed down again and began examining the engines' undercarriages and the exteriors of their cabs and tenders. Adler looked back over at his brother. He still appeared irritated beyond belief.

"What is up with you?" Adler demanded. "I don't understand your problem."

"Why do they have to be here?" Lammergeier complained. "We're not training engines! Why can't they go look at some…some tank engine or something?"

"Did you genuinely not understand what Mister Ray said? He's teaching them a lesson on comparing engines of the same class, that is to say…us."

"Well, it's annoying. This is supposed to be our time to rest and relax, not be bothered by a bunch of brats."

"Those 'brats' will be our crews someday," Adler pointed out. "Or do you think drivers and firemen materialize out of the ether, already adult and fully-trained? Show a little patience! Plus which, they're a huge help in getting us ready for excursions and display. You'll be glad to see those apprentices coming when it's time to be spit and polished for the enthusiasts."

This finally caught Lammergeier's attention in a way which began to crumble his indignation.

"They do that? I didn't know." He paused to reconsider. "Well, I suppose they do have their uses then."

"Of course they do. Now hush up and let's listen in while Mister Ray quizzes them. I'm thinking that that short little blond fellow—Joe's his name, I believe—might have figured it out."

Adler had it exactly right. One by one the apprentices admitted that they hadn't noticed any differences at all or offered up something that turned out to be wrong. It wasn't until Mister Ray got to Joe that he got back the answer he wanted.

"Their tenders are different," little Joe said with confidence. "Right where they attach. The couplings on the engines are the same, but the ones on the tenders aren't, and I think the tender on Adi was cut back a little too. The fronts on them look different just above the couplings."

"Correct! And very well stated. The rest of ya have a good look at what young Master Joe was talking about, especially that slope on the bottom fronts of those tenders. It's subtle, but it's there, and it's exactly the kind of thing you've gotta learn to see…"

"There. See? Not so dumb after all," Adler remarked. "That one will become a good driver. Mark my words."

"Ugh, fine," Lammergeier conceded, "and you can have him. He's not learning to drive on me!"

Mister Ray soon brought his trainees out front again, still talking about the individuality of locomotives and the need to recognize and appreciate the smallest differences between them.

"Sometimes it ain't even something physical. Their temperaments can differ too, sometimes a lot, and that can affect the way you need to handle 'em," he said. "Take these two here. Adi's about as nice and cooperative as it gets and he speaks excellent English. His own brother, Lambchop…same class, at least ninety-nine percent identical body-wise, yet he's sullen and unfriendly and his English ain't worth crap. That's how it goes. Okay, that's it for now! Go on over to the station and grab some snacks and we'll carry on in a half hour or so."

And he walked off, his trainees rushing on ahead of him, eager for some sweets and sodas. As soon as he'd passed beyond earshot, Adler burst out laughing. The look on his brother's face was priceless and he was still so stunned by what the man had said about him that it was a good half minute yet before he could talk.

"That-that… Who does he think he is?" he finally sputtered. "How dare he speak like that! He has no right."

"Oh, shut up," Adler said. "You have only yourself to blame for this one. You should have been at least civil to them and you weren't. 'Sullen and unfriendly' describes it perfectly."

It took the remainder of the morning for Lammergeier to get over his wounded dignity, and, again in retrospect, Adler now realized that he'd never really gotten over it. His brother continued to regard almost every visitor and especially strangers in the sheds with suspicion and resentment. The only exceptions were Sir Topham Hatt or anyone else he perceived as being in a position of power and authority, for whom he would become servile and respectful to an almost fawning degree. But it was a false servility, Adler soon saw with sadness, put on for no other reason than to further Lammergeier's self-interests and his obsessive need to protect himself. He didn't really like the VIPs any more than he liked any other visitor to the roundhouse, which was to say, not at all.

The regular drivers and firemen who crewed his shed-mates, Lammergeier tolerated. The only humans he ever seemed to express any genuine feelings for were the Doyons; his face would always brighten whenever he saw them bringing Henry back to the sheds late in the mornings or just after the noon hour because he knew that meant he would soon get to go out on the rails himself for a run. Denise and Pierre continued to do well by him, too. They got a job for him every day, usually something involving moving heavy freight, which he seemed to like doing best. Adler was glad that his brother was in the Doyons' care, even if just temporarily, and hoped he would warm to them well enough in time to want to confide in them about his troubles. Goodness knew that Denise in particular had helped Adler with his own issues in the past.

The big 48 began to wonder how Lammergeier would manage the day he was finally sent up to Ulfstead to be a display engine.

to be continued...