LITMIR.BIZ

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went. Even at the slower speed, I had to sprint hard to accommodate the momentum, but I didn’t fall on my head. I made it to the grass in a hurry and slowed to a trot, then finally stopped. The brakes were on to stay now and slowly the long rattler ground to a stop. Far down toward the caboose a lantern swung beside the train, coming in my direction. I turned and walked into the trees toward the river.

      The grass was high and damp around my ankles. It was dark among the trees and they were thick enough that the carnival lights threw no gleam. I heard the music of a calliope faintly. It didn’t thrill me.

      My stomach had begun to ache. I needed food. But even more I needed a drink. I could feel it spreading through me, the awful thirst that isn’t really a thirst, but a painful, desperate hollowness in every part of you. To “drive a guy to drink” is more than a figure of speech. But the “drive” comes from inside yourself, brother, and once it gets started, it never lets up.

      I glanced toward the carnival lights. That was maybe a place where I could get a drink and a meal for a few hours’ work. I might even get a steady job.

      Steady. I laughed to myself. Good and steady, I thought—till the next time I passed out—or ran into some redhead.

      I turned in the direction of the lights and took a couple of steps. I stumbled over a rock. Somebody gasped. The sound came from within six feet of me. Without looking, I grabbed up the rock. It was the size of a small grapefruit. I straightened and swung around in the same motion, the rock poised in my right hand. The gasp came again and turned into a word.

      “No!”

      There was a girl crouched against a tree. Her feet were bare and white against the dark grass. She carried a small bundle under one arm.

      I stood still, holding the rock, and we stared at each other.

      She was maybe thirteen. Maybe twenty. She was crouched down so I couldn’t be sure, but I guessed that if she stood up straight, she’d be around five feet two. Her small white face was ghostly against the dark trunk of the tree. Her legs were bare like her feet and the dress she wore was plastered wetly against her thighs. Her hair was long and wet and hung stringily down around her face. She was shivering.

      “Where did you come from?” I asked.

      She didn’t answer, just crouched against the tree, staring at me. It was a stupid question anyway. Clearly she had come out of the river. If this was the beginning of an attack of D.T.’s, I was running right on schedule.

      I tried to take it easy, but my voice came out harsh.

      “I won’t hurt you,” I said.

      She shifted the bundle across her body and held it under the other arm. Her face remained motionless and her eyes stared darkly out of it.

      Finally she spoke and her voice was flat, dull, without life or spark. It was a grown-up voice coming out of a little girl’s face.

      “They didn’t send you—to get me?”

      “I just got off that train,” I said, jerking my head back toward the tracks.

      “Where is it going?” she said.

      “I don’t know. I got off because I didn’t know.”

      She straightened a little against the tree trunk and pushed some of the wet hair away from her face.

      “It’s going away,” she said.

      “Any minute now.”

      I had begun to shake. I held tight to the rock, trying to keep a grip on something—anything.

      Her face had moved now. She was staring past me toward the tracks. I glanced that way, saw the swinging red light of the brakie’s lantern returning along the train, moving toward the rear.

      The little-girl face turned back to me.

      “Will you help me?” she said. “I have to get on that train.”

      “I just got off the goddam thing,” I said.

      When she’d asked for help a flicker of hope had risen in her voice. But it didn’t last.

      “All right,” she said dully and moved away.

      She walked toward the line of trees that bordered the right-of-way, stumbling as she went. She carried the bundle against her left hip. She didn’t look strong enough to make it as far as the train, thirty feet ahead.

      I caught up with her, put my left hand on her shoulder. There was a single line of trees between us and the track.

      “Wait,” I said. “Don’t try it till it starts up. They might haul you off.”

      She stopped, staring ahead toward the train.

      “As soon as it begins to roll,” I said, “head for one of those empty box cars. You’ll have to jump to get inside.”

      “All right,” she said. She didn’t look at me.

      From far ahead came the sound of the bell, wavering in the night. Then the whistle, sharp and shrill, and out from under the whistle, the new head of steam.

      The noise from the train had drowned out the approach. The girl and I heard the footsteps shuffling through the grass at the same time. They stopped when we whirled around.

      The guy who stood there, five feet from us, was as big as a boxcar. His shoulders were wide, thick and sloping. His hands hung beside him like a couple of sides of beef. He wore a dark hat pulled down over his forehead. His face was smashed and swollen. If he had a neck, it wasn’t visible.

      The girl didn’t gasp. She didn’t move. She was frozen. Although we weren’t touching, I could feel the tension in her.

      “Where in hell did you think you was goin’?” the big one asked.

      The girl didn’t answer. I heard the couplings grind as the long train tightened up, ready to roll.

      The ape man had eyes only for the girl. He didn’t even seem to know I was there.

      “You ain’t goin’ nowhere,” he said.

      He said it the way you might say, “It looks like rain.” It was a simple statement of fact. Only he had the beef to back up his statements.

      I glanced at the girl. She seemed tinier than before, with his huge bulk towering over her. She clutched the bundle in both arms, her shoulders hunched forward, her white face a mask of terror and defeat. Behind us there was the grating rumble of the freight as it began to roll.

      The big bruiser took a step toward the girl. She made a sound, a low, moaning sound like a sick animal makes to warn you off. It cut me inside, as if I had swallowed a razor blade. The guy reached toward her with both of his beefy hands. She seemed to shrink down into the ground, though actually she didn’t move. The sound she had made was still slicing at my lungs.

      I swung my right arm up and over and let go of the rock. It struck him in the side of the head and the noise it made was about the same as if I had hit the frame wall of a house. He twisted his face toward me, as if he had noticed me for the first time. His mouth was open. Then he fell, straight and stiff to the ground, like a tree might fall. The rock lay on the ground near his feet.

      I knelt beside him and went through his pockets. In the right hip pocket was a worn, smooth wallet. I looked inside. There was a ten, a twenty and a couple of singles. I took them out. Something pulled at my sleeve. I looked up and the girl was staring down at me.

      “The train,” she said. “It’s moving.”

      “Yeah,” I said.

      I wasn’t through. He had some other pockets. One of them, his left coat pocket, bulged out around a large, smooth hump. I pulled it out. It was a pint bottle, labeled straight bourbon, and it was half full.

      The girl pulled at me again. I straightened up, shoving the bottle into my coat pocket as we moved toward

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