Riddle Afield was a steam gunner in the Tinker Wars.

 

When I say steam gun I ain’t talkin about one of them things they use what to wash subway cars down in the yard.  Those they call steam guns.  An they ain;t hardly do no good nohow.  Cars still covered in graffiti an flyers an pigeon crap.  That’s a whole racket that is.  Somebody got a cousin somewhere owns a company makes them steam wands.  Betcha that’s the case.  Buy up them wands, give some jobs to some low income types to appease the masses, have them in the yards at three in the morning wavin steam around, like it do some good other than to make a night atmospheric.  It don’t.

 

Anyhow, steam gun’s got nothin to do with that.

 

Steam gun was like a cannon with a boiler.  Boiler is like what you got in the basement.  ‘Cept they mostly call it a water heater in your basement.  These days they do, anyhow.  Water goes in, little fire burns under it, heats that water, sends it up to your shower.  Mmm, nice hot shower on a cold day, nothin like that.  Anyhow, that’s how it works you got a landlord who isn’t in a racket tryin to drive tenants out so’s he can get in new ones on a new lease that costs them more money. 

 

Little off the track there.  Got me a landlord puts rats in the halls, turns off the boiler, don’t fix leaky pipes, don’t have no garbage pickup.  Got landlord issues I do.

 

Anyways, steam guns.  They got boilers, too.  But ain’t a hot shower kind of boiler.  Got the kind of boiler could drive a train.  Drive two trains.  Some of them steam guns got boilers so big and so powerful, they could drive ten locomotives up a steep grade in the snow. Steam gun like that gets loaded down a barrel that’s just about as wide as a cask.  A cask is like a barrel itself, but the kind you put stuff in, not the kind you shoot from.  See in the basement of a winery, see all them big barrels?  Casks.  Picture on of them made from iron, solid through.  Picture the cannon you gonna shoot than from.

 

That the kind of a gun Riddle Afield was on in them Tinker Wars.

 

Big gun.  Giant gun.  Boiler at the base of the barrel, furnace fire blazin, boilin a tank of water big enough for five classes of twelve-year-olds to swim in all at once on a hot summer day.  ‘Cept you wouldn’t want to swim in there on a hot day.  Nor on any other day.  Wouldn’t want to dip a toe in there on the coldest day of the year.  Stick your toe in there, it be cooked tender to tough in a second.  Hot, bubblin, roilin, steamin.  Steam fills a tank right at the back end of the gun.  Fills it and fills it and fills it.  Pressure builds in there, kind of pressure someone would be crushed by it.  Pressure, it’s like weight.  Like pounds of it.  Thousands and thousands of pounds of it in that tank.  And when it hits red on a dial on the side of the gun, then it’s time.  Got that iron cask down the barrel.  Fitted in there so tight it had to be rammed in all the way.  Iron plug in the neck of an iron bottle.  Needle hits red and the steam gunner grabs a lever, squeezes, and pulls.  Got to be a big man a steam gunner, got to be a strong man.  Those guns, no one wants them goin off by chance, so’s that lever is massive hard to pull.  Trip an fall against it, it ain’t gonna pull.  Takes four normal men, or takes one big, mean steam gunner.  Man with calluses instead of skin, man with the smell of singed hair always floatin around him.  Despite the fact he got no hair of his own.  Burned off from the heat of the gun, all of it, every strand.  Steam gunner got eyes on him, keeps them behind goggles, keeps them safe from the heat and the flames and the steam.  Eyes like hawk eyes.  Eyes to see far over the horizon, so’s he knows where that cask is gonna hit when it runs tired of fightin gravity and comes to earth and shakes the bones of everything it doesn’t flat crush.  Got to keep them eyes sharp.

 

Eyes the target does the steam gunner, flexes the muscles in his legs and back and shoulders and arms, squeezes and pulls and, man-o-man-o, WHOOSH goes the steam out of that tank, all that pressure at once, crams itself behind the cask where there just ain’t enough room for it so it’s got to have more and it pushes and pushes and the cask it tries to stay put cause it’s crammed in tight like it wants but the steam is stronger and it says GIT OUT, CASK!  And the cask, it gets the hell out.  BANG flyin up the barrel and into the air and gone, like nothin you ever saw and too fast too see anyhow it’s over the horizon and lookin for the spot the gunner sent it to.

 

Only it don’t happen like that. Like one thing after another.  It happens all at once.  And it don’t sound WHOOSH and then GIT OUT, CASK and then BANG.  More it’s all one thing.  WHGITOUTSHBACASKNG!  Just all at once.  A single sound faster than thinkin and louder than thunder.  Steam gunner loses his teeth early from the rattlin they take.  An ain’t no matter how much cotton they stuff in theys ears and how many yards of cheese cloths they wrap around and around ‘em, theys hearin ain’t too hot neither.

 

Still, better than bein on the other end when the cask from one of them guns returns to earth.  Travel so fast, the front end goes red from the friction.  (friction is what you got when things rub gainst each other.  Like rub your hands together real fast and feel hows they heat up, that’s friction.) Steam gun cask gets friction from the air, that’s how fast it shoots.  So one end is red and hot, other end is black and trailin steam an pretty hot itself, but not so hot as the front.  Call that contrast.  One thing is one way and the other thing is the other was and the difference between them is how they contrast one another.  That contrast between red hot and black hot, it makes something like a giant iron cask unstable.  Makes it less rigid than if it was all black (rigid means stiff, hard), and less pliable than if it was all red (pliable is like how somethin can bend or drip or squish.) So what happens when that damn cask hits ground? 

 

It shatters is what.

 

Hundreds, thousand pieces, fragments is what, some red hot, some black, spray and whistle, slicin, cutting, lodgin in things, makin a mess.

 

Ugly.

 

Man on the field, woman too, they hear when that steam gun goes off, no matter how far, they hear that fast thunder.  Look up, look for a black dot with a red tip, trailin steam, look for it and where it’s comin to, an they theys run somewheres else. 

 

But don’t matter too much.

 

Cask hits, shatters, sprays, and it sprays far.  Runnin ain’t much good.  Bestways thing to do, bury yourself deep.  Maybe it saves you, maybe it don’t.  If it don’t, you just saved some work for the local burryin man.  An he’ll thank the memory of you, cuz he’s got plenty of burryin to do after the cask drops from a steam gun.

 

Riddle Afield was a steam gunner in the Tinker Wars.  Last one left.  Big, that goes without sayin, got none of his own teeth left, got brass hearin aids screwed into both ears, scars where hair is on most folks, muscles where skin is on most folks.  Wears a great coat from the Tinker Wars.  Medals and such on the front for bein the best steam gunner ever.  Wears his goggles still, to protect eyes that are so sharp, they see round corners and behind his back.  Left side of his body, it’s gnarled (means twisted and hard and knobbly, like an old limb on an old tree front of a scary house on a block where ain’t nobody livin.)  That side of his body got that way from bein closest to the steam guns, closest to the fire an the steam and the fast thunder.

 

When Riddle Afield laughs, sounds like the old echo of one of his guns.

 

But he don’t laugh much.

 

They day he showed up at the old voodoo man’s iron building, that same day Shdding Lyttle was holding the baby Necrotic Culver in his arms and they was both realizin without knowin what they felt that they was in love, that day Riddle Afield laughed.  Broke half the windows on the street when he did.

 

What made him laugh is part of the story.

 

What he come to the old voodoo man for is, too.

 

Came to the old voodoo man to sell somethin, somethin he knew that old man had the covets for (covet is like when you want somethin so bad it’ all you think on.  that toy ya saw in the shop window an all you can think is how much better life will be when ya get it, that’s a covetin toy.)  For years Riddle had no-wayed they voodoo man.  Wantin to keep his eyes for when the wars came again and he could be back beside one of his guns, bringin the fast thunder, hurlin casks on the unexpectin.  But now he had a covet of his own, an he come to the old voodoo man ready to swap one of his hawk eyes for what it was he wanted. 

 

An he saw Necrotic Culver, and he laughed, and glass broke all over, and what he was covetin for changed on an instant.

 

Shivers it gives me, right into that foot I don’t got anymore, foot that was taken from me by the piece of a steam gun cask in the Tinker Wars, gives me shivers to think on that man, Riddle Afield, and makes me sharpen up my knife to think on his throat.

 

Go on now, let me stew a little on the past.  Come back later and I’ll tell you more.  Go on, my foot’s shiverin, an I want to be alone.

 

-c