Everyone on This Train Is a Suspect

“Yeah, that’s what’s so funny about it. It’s absurd.” I felt like a comedian trying desperately to save a crowd, the only choice being to double down on the joke and make something funny by sheer force of will. This was funny, right? “He must have thought I was someone else. I have no idea what he was apologizing for.”

Juliette scratched her forehead and sucked air through her teeth. “You haven’t seen it, have you?”

“Seen what?”

“I’m sorry, Ern, I just didn’t think you were in the right headspace—”

“Right headspace for what?”

A loud clap of hands interrupted us. The staff member who had been defusing McTavish now commanded the attention of the cabin. A stockman’s Akubra hat was snug on his head, hair hanging underneath like vines. His shirtsleeves were rolled up to reveal sinewy muscled forearms, the type that could hold down either a sheep for shearing or a disgruntled alcoholic Scotsman. He waited for the room to settle—the table of rebellious seniors took the longest—and then spread his arms widely.

“Guests,” he began, and I recognized his voice from the intercom, “on behalf of me and my team, I’d like to welcome you to the start of our historic journey aboard the Ghan. I invite you to reflect on the traditional owners of the many lands we will travel through on our journey, including my people, the Arrernte people, whose lands you may know as Alice Springs, and the Larrakia people, on whose land we begin our expedition today.” He paused to a round of applause. “My name’s Aaron and I am your journey director. I hope we’ll get to know each other well over the next four days. I’m here if you need anything, as is Cynthia”—he pointed behind the bar—“who will keep you both caffeinated and intoxicated. So out of the two of us, she’s the one to keep on your side.”

This was met with the half chuckle that meets the basic expectation of a pause and a smile in a formal speech.

“And now for the exciting part. Our end of the train has the special privilege of hosting the Australian Mystery Writers’ Festival’s fiftieth anniversary”—a clap—“for a trip filled with scintillating insights into the minds of some of the country’s best writers.” Clap. “We will be departing momentarily, and the first session, a meet-and-greet panel with all the guest authors, will be held at midday.” He paused again, but the clapping had run out of stamina, and this was welcomed only by the plodding slap of a couple of hands. “But before we start the fun stuff, we will be serving breakfast.” This rejuvenated the applause, with perhaps the most enthusiastic response yet.

“This Writers’ Festival has the run of eight carriages, including this bar, the Queen Adelaide Restaurant and the Chairman’s Carriage, which we have specially borrowed for this trip from our friends at the Indian Pacific. The Ghan today has two locomotives hauling thirty-five carriages, at a length of seven hundred and eighty meters and with a total weight of one thousand four hundred and fifteen tons.”

I expected people to be disappointed by the replacement of breakfast with statistics, so was surprised to hear a murmur through the crowd, one of both interest and opinion, as if several people were scratching their chins and agreeing Yes, I was thinking that was an appropriate weight for the journey, which taught me a lesson about hobbyists I should have already known: everyone’s an expert.

Aaron continued to list off figures, and I quickly realized, from the bent backs and leaned-forward concentration of the guests, that Andy’s fellow ferroequinologists found this dull tirade of data frothingly exciting. “Across our two-thousand-nine-hundred-and-seventy-nine-kilometer journey, we expect to use seventy-five kilograms of barramundi, sixty-two kilograms of cheese, over a thousand bottles of wine”—this got a small cheer from the rambunctious retirees—“and approximately forty thousand liters of fuel.” This was again met with a murmur of definitely educated opinions on the fuel required for the trip, this time with a line of dissent (easy to identify—it’s a semitone lower in a murmur): I would suggest that they could do it in thirty-nine if they optimized the engines.

“I hope they’ve got a coupon,” Juliette whispered, leaning forward.

I snorted, which turned Aaron’s attention, and therefore that of the rest of the room, on us.

“Did we have a question?” He meant it genuinely, but it was impossible to not feel spotlighted.

Juliette’s cheeks flamed. “Oh, sorry. Just a joke.” When Aaron continued smiling gently at us, Juliette added, “I just thought you might need a coupon . . . for the fuel . . . Four cents a liter on forty thousand liters . . . it’s a solid discount.”