Devil's Train
By David Payne 

	Salzburg, Austria. "This sumbitch is a brook trout," the Webster says. The fish lays sprawled across his huge wet palms, gasping from exhaustion. He cradles it as if it were a baby. Like us, the brook trout, West Virginia's state fish, is a newcomer to Europe, stocked here a century ago.
	"Live long, my friend," he says as he releases it. 
	The Webster reaches into what is probably one of the last cans of Copenhagen snuff on the continent and puts a three finger chew between his cheek and gum. He spits into the icy water, the fine, black snuff granules swirling in the current.
	He casts his fly far upstream, sits on a rock and returns to his pocket size volume of King Henry IV, Part One, glancing upwards occasionally at his drifting fly.
	We see an Austrian man upstream, casting. He stands there, wading thigh-deep in the chilly water, the hem of his green wool coat skimming the misty surface. We wave. He walks toward us. 
	“Gruss Gott,” I say.
	The man hacks phlegm into the water. The thick, yellow clump floats downstream, the swirling current tearing at it. A minnow inspects it, sucks the clump into its mouth and swims away.
	The man says his name is Heiko and tells us matter-of-factly that this isn't a stream at all but a big medieval ditch that they used to use for flushing human feces from Salzburg's city streets and into the Salzach River. 
	Heiko casts his fly back out in the stream. A trout takes it the instant it hits the water. 
	He sets the hook, his American-made Plueger fly reel clicking as he reels in slack. He fights the fish for several minutes, playing it delicately. It is a big brown trout, swimming in shrinking concentric half circles as Heiko reels it in. 
	The hair-thin tippet connecting the fly to the fly line breaks. The trout streaks away, leaving floating a tangle of line and tippet at Heiko‘s feet. 
	Heiko wipes a bead of sweat from his forehead and lights a cigarette. "It is only right," he says in English, "that the fish must win sometimes."
	"I suppose so," I say.
	As Heiko untangles the thick clump of floating line, we walk a bit upstream and resume fishing. Aquatic insects rise to the surface, morphing from pupas into adult flies. They drift helplessly, drying their wings in the morning sun, preparing for their first flight. Trout gorge themselves upon the helpless insects.
	"I was meaning to tell you," the Webster says, as he casts upstream, "I was talking to this guy in the Austria Tabak this morning. He said that you could buy snuff in Budapest."
	"We're there," I say. "Thursday morning after class lets out." With our unlimited train passes, traveling was as simple as getting on a train. With it, we had been able to poach trout all across Europe and hopefully, we‘ll be able to replenish our depleted snuff supply.
	The Webster sits down on a rock and resumes reading, occasionally glancing upwards at his drifting fly. 

	Budapest, Hungary. I'm walking the cobblestone streets here and can't believe my luck. I've paid the equivalent of $8 for a Big Mac meal in Innsbruck and three bucks for a can of coke in Berchestgarden, Germany. Now I'm getting even.
	The sidewalks are the center of commerce--and socks, the hot sellers. I buy a pair for myself, hand-knitted acrylic-looking socks for a dime, postcards for a nickel, cokes for a quarter, and find a couple of brand-spanking new Johnny Cash and Led Zeppelin tapes for $1. Hell, yeah.
	Standing at the edge of the cobblestone street, I put in a chew of Copenhagen snuff, scraping the bottom of the cardboard can carefully, so as not to scratch off the flakes of wax. The stones in the street are not the smooth hand-cut stuff of Germany's and Austria's medieval streets, but boulders--craggy, ill-fitting, blister-your-feet and damn-near-knocking-you-down-when-you-walk stone. 	The rustbucket cars rattle on their worn springs as they putter along, their ancient exhaust pipes spurting noxious fumes.
	There's an old man's Mercedes up ahead, its driver's door held by wire. He drifts it into an intersection, bumping the clutch, trying to start it. 
	I run out to his car and push on the rear bumper. A well-dressed man in his mid-twenties helps. The Mercedes starts, idling roughly.
	The young man starts speaking to me in French. I shrug my shoulders. He starts speaking in fluent German.
	"Ich spreche English besser," I say.
"That was very nice of you to help that old man," he says. "He is my grandfather, and I am thankful for your assistance."
	"No problem," I say.
	"Where are you from?" he asks.
	"Elkview, West Virginia. America."
	"How much do I owe you?"
	"Nothing," I say. "Glad to help."
	"At least let me buy you a cup of coffee. My aunt owns this coffee shop over on the next street." We walk on, with him leading the way. The street is relatively empty, except for two scruffy guys peering under the hood of a rusty Mercedes that could have been Hitler's staff car and another guy walking on the other side of the street.
	The two guys working on the car jump in front of us, blocking our way. Another comes from across the street and stands to our side. I turn around. A fourth man stands behind us.
	"Do you have hashish, falsch marks, or dollars?" he asks.
	"Hell no," I say.
	"This man is simply here visiting," the young man who promised the coffee said. "He has done nothing. You should let us be on our way."
	Another man takes out his wallet and flashes an obviously fake badge. "We are police," he says.
	“Bullshit,“ I say. My punch surprises him. It is a good hook, landing square on his nose, smashing it.
	"You sumbitch," I say, as he lay dazed, blood spewing from his twisted nose. The others stand motionless for a moment, shocked by my boldness. 
	I kick the next largest one in the groin and run. They, except for the man laying on the sidewalk, clenching his groin, give chase. 
	I duck down an alley, overturning garbage cans in their paths. I turn around. The man who offered the coffee chases me also. He is the close behind, but the others have fallen back out of sight.	
	I run through a slow moving crowd on a brick pedestrian street for a couple blocks, lined with tourist-trap shops. I turn around. I think I’ve lost them.
	When I finally get inside the train station, I see the Webster sprawled along a bench, his hat over his eyes. I smack him awake.
	"Where in the hell have you been," he asks me. "You were supposed to be here fifteen minutes ago."
	"See that train on the next platform?"
	"Yeah. Where in the hell is it going?"
	"I don't know, but we're taking it." 

	We find an empty second-class smoking cabin inside, just as the train starts moving. We sit down on the twenty-year-old upholstery, riddled with cigarette burns. I explain to him what happened.
	"Did you whip their asses?" he asks.
	"I broke this one sumbitch’s nose and smashed another‘s nuts," I say.
	"Want to go back and get the others?" he asks. "I'll watch your back."
	"Hell no," I say.
	The Webster takes a can of Copenhagen out of his pocket and packs it, his index finger noisily striking the metal lid. He gets himself a chew and hands me the can.
	"Did you find any snuff?" I ask.
	"No, but this cigar shop owner said they eat it like candy in Sweden."
	It's settled. On the word of a cigar shop owner, we plan to travel a thousand miles. 

	Munich, Germany. We board the train to Copenhagen and walk the entire length of it, looking for an empty compartment. We finally find one in first class.
	We sit there sipping Jim Beam until a conductor makes us go back. We go to a second-class smoking compartment. A man takes up two of the three seats on one side. He looks Hispanic but has blue eyes.
	The Webster and I pass the Jim Beam back and forth, loudly talking about women and trout, hoping he'll get annoyed and leave. He doesn't. He breaks the paper seal on a bottle of scotch instead.
	We start singing. "Copenhagen, it makes your dentist queasy. Copenhagen, you can see it in my smile. Copenhagen, quitting’s  not that easy. Copenhagen, it'll drive your woman wild." Soon he joins in, singing the only word he understands: "Copenhagen."
	"My girl thought she would surprise me," we sing, "when she slipped me her tongue, but her surprise was waiting there between my cheek and gum."
	"Copenhagen," sings our trio. We stop singing to drink.
	"Gehst Du nach Copenhagen?" he asks.
	"Nein," I say. "Wir reisen nach Halsingborg, Sweden."
	The man's name is Johannes, he says. In Brazil, he was once a boxing champion, he says. He pulls this magazine from his briefcase and shows us a picture of him a few years younger and many pounds lighter, standing over a dazed opponent. He says he's now an insurance agent in Chemsee.
	"I eat pies now," he says jokingly in broken English, pointing at the picture, then at his bulging belly. We laugh and sip our whiskeys. We pull some cans of cheap Austrian beer to chase.
	The Webster pulls out of his backpack a small cassette player, which he used to tape lectures. He pops in a cassette of Hank Williams, who sings his tortured soul out as we throw crumpled cans on the floor. 
	“The Devil’s Train is long and black,” Hank moans, “it rides on rails of fear. It’s heading for destruction now…”

	The Webster is slapping my face. It is still dark outside. The floor is covered with a heap of trash, candy bar wrappers, and crumbled Pringles potato chips. There’s an eerie silhouette of the Webster clean, marking the spot where he dropped. 
	"That fat bastard stole our fly rods and my Hank tape," the Webster says, still slapping me.
	We run from car to car, looking in each compartment. We find Johannes passed out in an empty first-class cabin. Our fly rods are there beneath his head.
	The Webster kicks his head, freeing our rods, then takes the Hank Williams tape from the big man's shirt pocket. I catch a glimpse of the cover photo: Hank leaning on a jukebox. Johannes mumbles. The Webster tries to kick him again, but I block the blow with my foot.
	I inspect the rods. They are unhurt. "Let's get out of here," I say.
	"What the German word for a weasel's dick," he asks.
	"What?" 
	"You heard me."
	I thought for a minute. "I think Wieselpenis should work," I say. 
	A minute later, the Webster emerges from the compartment, smiling.
	"What did you do," I whisper. "You didn't kill him, did you?"
	"Hell no, but when he wakes up and looks at himself in the mirror, he'll know not to mess around with Elk River boys."
	We move to a compartment three cars back. A conductor barges in, screaming in German. I look at the Webster. "You bastard," I say. "You killed him."
	He smiles.
	The conductor leads us back to our old compartment and points at the trashy floor. He tells us we must pay 50 marks because we trashed it. I translate for the Webster.
	"Hell no," he tells the conductor in his thick Webster County English. "We ain't paying a Pfennig."
I tell the conductor everything, except the part about us drinking bourbon, throwing beer cans on the floor, and the Webster kicking Johannes in the head. We offer to clean the compartment and pay nothing. He agrees.
	"We do not tolerate stealing. I am sorry this happened to you," he said in German. He assured us Johannes would be turned over to the proper authorities. 	We’re amazed that he actually believes us.
	The train stops at a little station as we pick up beer cans and crumbled chips. I see Johannes outside, talking to police, scarcely able to stand. The officers cough, trying to suppress laughter. 
	I see the word Wieselpenis written backwards on 
Johannes’ forehead. 
	The Webster pulls a black permanent marker from his pocket and smiles. 

	We ride a crowded ferry across the choppy, windswept Baltic Sea to Halsingborg, Sweden. Many people have dollies, stacked full with cases of Danish beer.
	"Swedish beer must suck," the Webster says. I ask one of the Swedes. He says it does. The ferry docks in Sweden, spewing passengers and their cargoes of beer onto the empty streets.
	Sweden is closed. The streets are empty. The stores are closed. The Webster says it is All Saints' Day. The only person on the streets is this homeless guy who finds a discarded lollipop on the sidewalk. He picks it up, inspects it, and puts it in his mouth. The only store open is a little shop at the dock.
	"Do you have any snuff?" I ask the clerk.
	"What is this, this snuff?" he asks. The Webster taps his fingers on the counter and mumbles profanities.
I pulled out my last can of Copenhagen, its contents nearly gone. 
	"Oh, yes, snuss, he said, smiling. He pronounced it "snoose." "We have this. We have snuss." We buy two ten-can rolls for about $30 each.
	We walk along the rocky beach until we reach a small cove, a small, narrow finger of the sea reaches inland. Here our campfire will be hidden. 
	We build a fire and study our snuss cans, savoring our first look at foreign snuff in the firelight. It is packaged in cardboard cans, like our beloved Copenhagen. Two lions snarl on the plastic lid, a coat-of-arms between them. "Grove Snuss," it says on the side. On the bottom is stamped, "Orsakar cancer Socialstyreisen." 
	I cast a fly, a bumblebee I tied myself, into the Baltic. It vanishes and reappears as it rides the dips and crests of choppy waves, its gentle cadence hypnotic.
The Webster pulls Henry IV and the cassette player from his backpack. 
	Hank Williams moans out of the single crackling speaker, his lonesome, wavering voice mixing with the sounds of the sea. "In the twilight glow I see her,” he croons, “blue eyes crying in the rain.”
	"You know he died in West Virginia?"
	"Who?" the Webster asks.
	"Hank Williams. He died in the back of a car over around Oak Hill somewhere of a drug overdose. He already was about wasted away by then, addicted to morphine, whiskey and pills.”
	“Sounds like the life,“ the Webster says as he opens up a can of the snuss. We each take a chew. It reeks and tastes as bad as ramps smell when they cook. 
	"I didn't know that," he says. "Maybe his ghost is still somewhere in Fayette County, his tormented soul writing songs from beyond the grave."
	"I hope he finally got some peace," I say as I put of the snuss between my cheek and gum. "This snuff is nasty," I say, starting to spit it out.
	"Naw," the Webster says, spitting for emphasis. "This is cultural enlightenment."
	The sun dips below the horizon, and the Webster, his snuss-filled cheek bulging like a hamster's, builds a small fire by which to read his Shakespeare. 
	The air becomes cold, and I button up my coat. The sea, however, is comfortably warm, beckoning to me. “Love is like a dying ember,” Hank’s voice echoes across the cove, “where only memories remain.”
	I cast my fly into the choppy sea. As it drifts, I fall asleep. 

	I'm back in West Virginia, at a spot where Laurel Creek flows around a giant boulder, a chunk of a once craggy mountain peak eroded to a stump over the epochs. A gentle breeze filters through the trees, carrying maple seeds that spin like little helicopters as they crash into the stream. My fly rides up and down upon wind-driven waves, the gentle cadence hypnotic. A brook trout rises to the surface, sipping my fly into its mouth.
I fight the trout for several minutes, it stretching the fragile 8x tippet. I land it and put it in my creel basket. 
	The fish stands erect on its tail, bracing itself upright with its pectoral fins. It peers at me through the wicker. A tear trickles down its jaw.
	A half-drunk man, scarecrow thin with sunken eyes, puts his hand on my shoulder and winks at the trout. "Son," he says, his Alabama tenor voice wavering, "the fish must win sometimes."
	I awaken as my fly disappears in a violent splash of briny froth. I set the hook, fight the fish for a moment and land it. It is a weird fish, with spiny dorsal fins and bulging red eyes. Neither the Webster nor I can figure out what in the hell kind of fish it is.
	"Looks like it would be good eating," the Webster says. “I don’t know about you, but I’m pretty damn hungry.” 
	"No," I said, releasing the fish back into the sea. "The fish must win sometimes."