There was nearly a mile of train behind them. Being in charge of a hundred cars of coal rumbling slowly across Canada meant big-time responsibility to Wesley Martell. He often pictured how his train looked from the air, a giant metal caterpillar picking its way through the mountains, the engine like the insect’s head, and himself, CP conductor, Martell, the brains in that head. This mile of hardware stopped, started or stayed at his say-so, and that made him feel good; made him more of a man than those jockeys braying into portable phones you saw on the sidewalks in Vancouver. No kid was ever going to look at those guys with big, wide, jealous eyes when they went about their business, least not the way they looked up at him in his cab, when he hi-balled his monster load through a station waving down at them like an oily Father Christmas.

But Martell didn’t get to be conductor, the big cheese on this buggy, without expecting a crumb of respect from his crew. Part of that respect was the civility to pass the time, jaw a little.

Seemed like this crew didn’t know the meaning of the word respect, sitting there like two dumb fucks, lost in their own dumb thoughts.

Wesley Martell didn’t much like to be left alone with his thoughts: too much track gazing and those thoughts had the habit of chucking up things he’d rather not meet again, thanks. Especially on a night haul, when the lights of the train illuminated a few yards of the track ahead, making it dance and gyrate on the edge of darkness like something alive. No, he’d rather talk. Talk was life. Silence was a kind of death, and he’d had enough silence on this journey.

Ten miles back Henry had said something to Joshua that Martell didn’t catch, and apart from that, nothing. Not a sound except the clacking of the wheels on the track and the throaty roar of the engine. So when the Corkscrew Tunnel rolled round, Martell took his shot.

Back at the depot, Joshua and his tunnels were the butt of an endless running joke amongst the local crews, and Martell was damned if he wasn’t going to use anything he could to get a little spark into this seven-hour bitch of a shift.

Joshua was still, quiet, and white. He had it coming.

‘Best keep a hand on that throttle, engineer. Think I saw something movin’ in there.’ He threw his head back and wheezed out a guffaw.

He laughed alone, but Henry turned his head slightly towards Martell before returning to gaze vacantly out of the window.