Hellfire by Jeff Provine

“Well, thank goodness he’s all right. Please, Sheriff Blake, was it? Have a seat.”
    “Thank you.” Blake sat. His legs were more worn out than he would have thought walking across town. The ride back on the train would be a nice rest.
    “Now, what happened?” Mrs. Kemp asked.
    Blake fidgeted with his hat. “We’re not exactly certain on that.”
    Mrs. Kemp leaned her face closer. “Oh?”
    “It’s a bit of a puzzle,” Blake admitted. “The train went runaway. We know that much. Your son, Nate, had enough sense to climb back over the tender and loose the cars, but...”
    “But?”
    “We haven’t found the engineer.”
    “Oh no, Jones!” the girl, Ann, called from the fireplace. “He was so nice. Do you think he’ll be all right?”
    Blake had to shake his head. “I don’t know. The Rail Agency said that they would conduct the search for him.” He wondered if they meant it.
    Mrs. Kemp let out a long, low whine. “He was thrown from the train? Bless his soul.”
    Blake nodded slowly. There was more to tell, more he wanted to ask about Nate’s sanity. There wasn’t much worse than breaking bad news.
    “Mrs. Kemp, I have to tell you… Has Nate ever had a history of Stoker’s Madness?”
    She narrowed her eyes at him. “No. Nate’s a good boy. Sure, he had some problems when he was a boy, but he hasn’t hurt anybody, not permanently.”
    “Has he ever mentioned… seeing things in the fire?”
    “Seeing things?” Mrs. Kemp blurted. “Good heavens, no! Nathan’s not crazy. If there’s anything wrong with him, it’s that Newton’s Catalyst the railroad uses.”
    Blake looked up at the cooking pots full of laundry. Several rested on the floor while one sat high on a stovetop. “You don’t use any here?”
    “Of course not. Nathan tells me he could work extra hours and buy me some, how much we’d save in the long run on firewood and coal, but I won’t have it in the house.”
    “Why not? Everybody has at least a pinch they use from time to time.”
    “Not me,” Mrs. Kemp said firmly. “That stuff makes the whole house reek of Hell itself.”
    Blake tried not to roll his eyes. It was the old wives’ tale about the Catalyst getting its heat from the proverbial Lake of Fire. Blake was a God-fearing man, that was how he was raised, but the Good Book was about leading a righteous life in the here and now. The geography of the afterlife was for someone else to worry about. He had enough problems on the Earth to wonder about what was above it or beneath.
    “I’m not a fan of the smell myself,” Blake agreed. “I only let the boys down at the sheriff’s office use it in the stove on cold winter days.”
    “You shouldn’t even do that.”
    “Oh, well, I just can’t argue with them when it comes to how much we’d spend on heating coal otherwise.”
    “‘The love of money is the root of all evil,’”Mrs. Kemp quoted.
    Blake pursed his lips. “Good point from the books of Timothy, but I reckon there’s half of the Proverbs that tell us to be prudent with our money.”
    Mrs. Kemp hummed a little. “You’re rather well read, Mr. Blake. Not too often you hear someone familiar with the Word.”
    Blake shook his head. “As a kid, I remember a church on every street corner. These days, it’s hard to find one around these parts that isn’t a social club or boarded up.”
    “What happened to us all?”
    “I suppose we just got too busy,” Blake said.
    A bell rang. Ann jumped up from her place by the fire where she shuffled coals to keep the pot boiling.
    “Good girl, Ann,” Mrs. Kemp called as her daughter clomped down the stairs. She turned back to Blake. “I try to raise my children right, but it seems all they want to do is get out of the house.”
    Blake nodded.
    “Do you have children?”
    Blake shook his head. “No, ma’am. Never married. I suppose I’ve always been married to my work with the law.”
    “That’s too bad,” Mrs. Kemp said. “Children are a joy.