Page 105 of Whistle

Harry laid a hand on his shoulder. “Anyway, I just came up to see how you were doing, and let you know your mom will be okay but she’s a little upset.” He took a moment to admire the train set. It consisted of a steam engine, a gondola car with three large canisters that looked like milk jugs, a flatcar with a load of barrels, a coal car, and a caboose.

“That’s a pretty nice setup you have there, Tyler.”

Sadly, the boy said, “I guess.”

“Why don’t you turn it back on, show me how it works.”

Tyler turned the throttle on the transformer and the train started to go around the loop.

“I love the sound it makes,” Harry said. “That choo-choo sound.”

“It’s supposed to have a whistle, but it doesn’t work.” To demonstrate, Tyler pressed a red button on the transformer labeledwhistle. The engine did not make a sound.

“See?”

“Let me try it.”

Tyler took his thumb off the button. Harry shifted over, pushed down on it with his thumb.

Felt a small tingle.

Held his thumb there for several seconds. Harry could hear nothing out of the engine but thechuffchuffchuffchuffchuffchuffchuffsound it had been making all along.

But then he thought he did hear something.

“What was that?” he asked Tyler.

“What was what?”

Harry took his finger off the button, listened. He didn’t hear what it was he’d thought he’d heard a moment earlier.

“Do your neighbors have a dog, too?”

The boy nodded. “Scruffy.”

Harry got up, went over to the window, and raised it open far enough to feel a cool breeze blow into the room.

“Tyler, hit the whistle button again and hold it.”

Tyler did as he was told.

Next door, a dog began to howl and bark furiously.

Thirty-Four

As his stay in Lucknow continued, Edwin Nabler could not have been more pleased with how things were going.

Since opening his shop here he’d sold nearly two dozen train sets, and results were trickling in. Best to go slow. Not a good thing to attract attention too quickly, and he felt he was just riding the edge of that. But there had definitely been some successes.

You had to take your time with these things. Just as good food took time to prepare, enabling chaos was something to be embraced artfully. And again, to follow that analogy, some foods were made for elaborate feasts, and other were designed to be appetizers. Every set that went out the door had a different level of potency. It wasn’t so much a quality control issue. Nabler didn’t let anything leave the store that wasn’t top-notch. But just like if you ran a deli, sometimes a customer left with nothing more than a wedge of Brie, while the next guy ordered a Smithfield ham. They catered to different appetites but both had to be delicious.

So one train set, once it had been set up in a household, might spark nothing more than a flooded basement or a nasty argument or maybe a bird flying through the window and landing in a bloody, feathery heap on the dining room table. But a set with a little more oomph to it, well, who could guess what kind of mayhem would ensue? Explosions? Missing limbs? Decapitations?

Suicides?

That woman in the bathtub was a nice one. Hit that right out of the park, Nabler thought, giving himself a mental pat on the back. Perhaps, of all the toys he had prepared, that one had the most life—or death?—in it. He didn’t think that little set was done yet. It had potential, even if that dead woman’s husband was packing up the engine and cars and track and hoping to hand it off to someone else when the opportunity arose.

Nabler had been working through the night on the layout in the back of the shop. He had little use for sleep. Occasionally he would sit down for a spell, and there was no doubt his work was taking a toll, but closing his eyes and tuning out for seven or eight hours at a stretch had never been part of his routine. Yes, it was about time he found someone else to take over.

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