The Damaged and The Cobra

In fact, he smelled like flowers.

  “Prettiest darn bull I ever seen, no joke.” He withdrew his hand and turned back to Barnes.

  “So you’re not a hobo, right?” Lark said.

  Both Bob and Barnes gasped and looked at her, wide-eyed.

  “No, I ain’t no blasted, dog-eatin’, night-stabbin’ hobo!” Bob said with a slapped look. “Why, I’d walk right up to the hobo queen herself—” he and Barnes spit on the ground at the mention of this person— “and split her head with a brick if I was able!”

  “Sorry, Bob,” Barnes said.

  “Yeah, I didn’t mean to—“ Lark began.

  “Okay, okay.” Bob said, waving aside the apology. “He said you ain’t wise. No harm done. Matter of fact, your hobo problem is why I’m here.”

  “She saw him a couple days ago,” Barnes said. “And I had to put out one of their fires this morning.”

  “The one at the convenience store, yeah?” Bob said.

  “That’s the one,” Lark answered.

  Bob took off his hat and rubbed the back of his neck, looking contrite. “That’ll be partly my fault. Tried to punch one of them hobo’s tickets last night, and he set the place on fire. I got the clerk out, though.”

  “Hobos? As in more than one?” Barnes asked.

  “Yep,” Bob said. “I been walkin’ up on three of ‘em.”

  “We are walking up on three of them,” Barnes corrected.

  Bob’s eyes lit up. “I didn’t want to ask, but you’ll help me out?”

  “I walk the walk, Bob,” Barnes said. “I may not be a dyed-in-the-wool tramp, but I’m game.”

  “Hell, son, you got a quarter from the One That Stays. You punched Marty Guts and the Orchard Brothers. That’s more than good enough in my book!” Bob beamed as he shook Barnes’s hand again. “This is blamed exciting, that’s what this is! Wait’ll I tell the boys!”

  Bob turned and started walking away. “Meet me under the bridge one mile east of the train yard. Nine sharp.” He went on his way lightly, whistling a tune. Lark recognized it as ‘Don’t get Around Much Anymore’.

  Lark watched Barnes watch the Tramp walk away. He was smiling. She was so lost, it wasn’t even funny. “You’re going to have to drop a few bits of info on me, Barnes. If I’m going to be involved in this.”

  “You don’t have to come,” Barnes said, not smiling anymore, looking in her eyes. “It’s going to be dangerous.”

  “I’m in, remember?” But she was starting to regret it.

  At eight-thirty, they left Barnes’s house dressed all in black, Lark with her sidearm clipped on her belt in the small of her back, hidden by a hoody. Barnes was carrying a massive olive-green knapsack that clinked and rattled, full of something that he’d brought up from his basement, the only place in his house that he would not let her go. She’d switched her cruiser out for her old, blue Camry, and they piled in. She eased the clunky car out onto Davenport Street and aimed it at the train yards.

  “You know what bridge we’re going to?” Barnes asked.

  “Uh huh.” After their conversation with Whistling Bob, Lark dropped Barnes off at his house and she spent the rest of the day on duty. Through every report and phone call, her mind dreaded the coming night. She was going to go kill some monsters, and she had butterflies the size of Mothra, and everything in her head was telling her to just leave Barnes to his business and wait for him. But then, wait for him like what? Watch out the window like some dutiful wife, some weak sister hoping not to get ‘The Phone Call’ in the middle of the night? That wasn’t her.

  And there was that little part of her that was saying, ‘Don’t be stupid. These are amazing things. Frightening? Yes, but also more terribly exciting than anything else you’ve ever experienced. This is the magic stuff, the monster stuff, the gods and devils stuff, dummy. How many people get a chance to even realize it’s all true? How many people get to wade right into it next to the man they love?’ And that fiery ember of a voice, that sparky whisper in her brain, it was getting stronger and stronger, pushing the fear away inch by inch. All in, yeah?

  “Your pal Bob said all kinds of crazy stuff today,” Lark said as she drove. “Explain some of it to me, huh? I’m tired of being in the dark all the time.”

  “Well, let’s see…” Barnes began. “Whistling Bob is a Tramp. They’re the opposite number of a hobo. Tramps are good to hobo’s evil, right?”

  “Okay.”

  “Tramps are wanderers, singers, men of nature, living on the outskirts, the in-between places.” Barnes said. “In my…uh, youth, I learned about tramps and hobos from my uncle Jack.”

  “Was he the uncle that raised you? Or was he the one that—“

  “The one who raised me. Anyhow, long story short, I walked the walk of the tramp alongside Mumbling Jimmy Wagner. He showed me all the things I wanted to know about tramping and hoboism.”

  “What happened to him?” she asked.

  “We had a falling out because I decided not to continue the walk.”

  “Because you didn’t want to be a tramp?”

  “Right.” Barnes sighed. “It was an incredible time, and we did incredible things, but I suppose I just didn’t have it in me to devote my life to it. Jimmy died a few years ago, from what I’ve heard, in a battle with hobos.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry.”

  “It’s okay, actually. To die on the road, on the walk, that’s what every tramp wants.”

  “Huh,” Lark said. “Who’s the one that stayed?”

  “The One Who Stays. He’s the King of the Tramps. He’s the only tramp that stays in one place.”

  “Where’s he stay?”

  “An old tin-roofed shack in North Carolina.” Barnes smiled. “Gave me a quarter once, because I saved his life.”

  “A quarter? That’s all his life was worth?”

  “That’s not it,” Barnes said. “No tramp gives away money. Ever. It’s a rare thing to receive a quarter from a tramp, especially the King of the Tramps.”

  Lark shut off the headlights and rolled to a stop near the bridge. She and Barnes picked their way down the slope, through the trash and the weeds. The large, waste-choked creek bubbled by, pretty but forever undrinkable. A cold breeze sidled through the trees like whispers, and the soft glow of a fire flickered from underneath the bridge. Bob was there, sitting comfortably on a sandy bank, and a small fire burned in the breeze. It was a fire that burned in the dirt, no fuel, a magic fire. The tramp was eating a can of beans. His friendly face shined when he saw them approach.

  “Howdy, howdy!” Bob said. “Come have seat by the fire. I’m just finishin’ up my supper.”

  Lark sat on the ground, and Barnes leaned his olive bag against the graffiti-covered concrete wall before he joined her. She marveled at the small fire, which gave off a lot of heat for its size.

  “Tramps can make fires, too,” Barnes said, as if reading her thoughts.

  “ ‘Cept ours ain’t used for cookin’ dogs over an open spit or makin’ baby stew,” Bob said through a mouth of beans, eaten right out of the can with an ancient wooden spoon. He eyed Lark carefully. “This’s gonna be pretty hairy, girl. You sure you want to walk with us?”

  “The truth?” Lark hesitated. “I’m not sure at all. But I’m going.”

  Bob nodded at her. He finished his beans and tossed the can in the air. It disappeared. He snapped his fingers at the fire, and it went out. It took a second for her eyes to adjust, and when they did, the two men were already up, Barnes picking up his bag, and Bob brushing the sand off his natty suit.

  “Well, let’s walk,” Bob said.

  And she followed them out onto the road.

  “We’re not taking my car?” Lark asked.

  “They’d hear us coming,” Barnes said. “And Bob won’t ride.”

  The streets were deserted and cold as they walked towards the darkened, hangar-like buildings of the abandoned train-yard. There were no cars because nobody had any earthly reason to be in that
boarded up and forgotten part of town. The wind kicked up memories of grease and burnt coal, and the old tracks snaked off in all directions, presumably to nowhere, iron veins long dead, bloodless and finished. They stopped right before entering the yards.

  Barnes turned to Lark, and he put his hand on her shoulder. “You’re no pushover, Lark,” he told her quietly. “I know that. But you’re back-up on this one. This is a whole other thing. Just stay near me and watch my back. I’m asking, not telling. Okay?”

  She wasn’t going to argue. Not when it was monster and magic time. “I got you,” she said, and she drew her pistol. She followed them in.

  Barnes and Bob, much to Lark’s chagrin, had absolutely and completely stopped making noise of any kind. It was spooky. No footfall, no movement of clothing, even Barnes’s clunky olive bag, none of these things made the slightest hint of any sound. Lark followed the best she could, as quietly as she was able.

  It didn’t take them long to find the hobos. Bob crouched next to a pile of rusted machinery and motioned for her and Barnes to come closer. She strained to see through the tangle of cold, ruined metal that was heaped next to a corner of one of the cavernous buildings. She found a spot to look though, and she could see them.

  The three hobos sat around a fire sixty feet about away from Lark’s vantage point. They looked almost identical. They had on the same filthy clothes, the same crooked top hats and toe-showing leather shoes, and their red bandanna-on-a-stick bindles sat beside them. Their faces were reddened from sitting too close to their fire, and they were eating, slopping on something