The Obstacle Course (32 page)

“Keep running,” I yelled at them, “no nigger’s ever gonna shoot a white boy.”

He fired again, lower this time, the bullet ricocheting off the ground five feet away.

“Talk louder, genius,” Burt yelled back at me, “he can’t hear you tell him what he ain’t gonna do.”

“Shut up and keep running,” I yelled back, “we’re almost there.” I could feel my lungs burning, my heart pounding. I’d been scared that time the dog came after me, but that was nothing compared to this.

We could hear his heavy footsteps pounding behind us, gaining with every step. Then Joe, like a fool, turned and looked back to see how far from him we were, and his foot caught a battery cable. He fell heavily into the dirt, landing right on his chest.

I could tell in a flash the wind had been knocked out of him. Burt hesitated a moment, not sure what to do, but I grabbed him and pulled him along.

“He’s fucked,” I said, knowing it was true but feeling like shit anyway, “we’ve got to get out of this yard and then figure out how to break him loose.”

The tracks were close now, less than a hundred yards away, but as we approached them, almost running faster than a speeding bullet we were so pumped up from fright, we realized that the freight, even going as slow as it was on its approach to the trestle, was going to beat us to the crossing. We were trapped like rats between the train and the junkyard watchman.

“Son of a fucking bitch!” I exhaled.

We stood at the edge of the track as the train slowly rolled by. It was a long one, hundreds of cars, I couldn’t even see the end around the bend. The big Negro had Joe by the arm and was dragging him towards the tracks, right at us, figuring he had us pinned, getting close enough for us to see the big shit-eating grin on his face. He looked like the goddamn dog, except he wasn’t drooling as much.

I looked around, desperate.

“Let’s jump it,” I said to Burt, not even knowing I was going to until the words popped out of my mouth.

“Are you crazy?”

“Shit, it ain’t going more’n five miles an hour, we can jump off soon’s it clears that field over there,” I said, pointing to a field on the other side of the ravine, about half a mile away. “Come on!”

I started running parallel to the freight. Burt hesitated a moment, then took off running with me. I grabbed the side of an open freight car and swung aboard. It wasn’t that hard—the movement of the train slingshotted me right in, then I reached down and grabbed Burt by the arm and pulled him up alongside me.

From the safety of the moving train we watched the watchman run up too late, pure anger on his dark, sweaty face as he watched us. He had a good solid grip on Joe, who looked as miserable as any human being I’ve ever seen. Two hours earlier he’d been on his knees praying in church and now he was in the clutches of a junkyard nigger who would be doubly pissed, first because of us sneaking in and rolling the tires down the river, then because of me and Burt getting away. Joe was going to pay the price for all three of us. All for one and one for all, this time it would be only one poor sorry bastard for all.

At least he hadn’t gotten Burt and me. As the train pulled away from the junkyard I gave the watchman the finger.

“Shit, I reckon,” I said. I was smiling, I couldn’t help it, I knew Joe’s ass was in a sling but I’d hopped a freight, the first time in my life, something I’d always wanted to do.

“Poor Joe,” Burt sighed.

“Poor bastard is right,” I said.

“Better him than me!” Burt cracked, laughing. I did, too. I couldn’t help it, we weren’t laughing at Joe, we were laughing because we were scared, we were laughing because we’d made it.

We stood in the doorway as the freight train lumbered across the trestle, waiting for it to hit the field on the other side, so we could jump off.

“Fun fun fun!” I yelled. I was feeling lightheaded, from the excitement and the experience of hopping the freight. “Get ready now, we’re almost there.”

Right as I said that, the train started picking up speed, almost like the engineer a hundred cars to the front had heard me and was going to prove to me who was running this show.

“What the fuck?”

I leaned out the open boxcar door. The last of the cars had cleared the trestle—we were going straight again, on solid ground, and as it straightened out the train started moving faster and faster. Too fast for us to jump off.

“Now what, genius?” Burt turned to me, scared and angry.

I looked down at the ground moving under us. No way could we jump this train.

“We’ll have to ride it into Washington and hitchhike home. It’s better’n getting caught by some coon with a .44 in his hand, ain’t it?”

“I guess so,” Burt said, nervously.

We sat on the edge of the boxcar and watched the scenery roll by. The tracks run alongside the Washington-Baltimore Parkway. As we moved along we waved to people in cars driving alongside us, especially a load of high school girls, who waved back. From this distance they would’ve thought we were men, or at least boys their age. They would’ve wanted to meet us, since we were brave enough to pull a dangerous stunt like this.

“I do believe I’ll get me a little pussy tonight,” I said, lying back like a rajah. I was thinking of Ruby, we could swing by her place. Maybe her friend would be there, too. Burt’s eyes would pop out of his head when I sauntered in there real casual-like.

“I reckon I will, too,” Burt said. In his dreams, I thought, this time I’d call his bluff. The pro. If any of us was the pro now, it was me.

Suddenly I started laughing, giggling like one of the girls at school.

“Did you see old Joe’s face when we pulled out of there?”

“I’ll bet he damn near shit his pants.”

We laughed as we lit up cigarettes, hunching over against the wind, watching the world pass us by.

The afternoon sun moved across the sky as we crossed into the outskirts of Washington. More and more tracks started joining ours, crisscrossing each other, electric wires buzzing overhead. Afar off to the right, in the hazy, smoky distance, we saw the tail end of the long lines of passenger cars docked in Union Station. We stood in the doorway watching as the train started to slow down.

“Does it look like we’re turning off?” Burt asked uneasily.

I took a quick glance at where he was looking. “Hell no, what’re you talking about, we’re going right into the station.”

“Well, how come then the station’s over to the right there and we’re peeling off to the left?”

“That’s just the main building,” I told him, feeling confident, “the freight yards’re spread out all over.”

“I guess so,” he answered, not sounding very sure about it.

We stood and watched as the train slid by the station, passing it on the right, watched as the station slowly passed completely out of view, the train still on the move, heading down towards southeast Washington. Although it wasn’t moving with any real speed the train was moving too fast for us to jump.

“She must be going on down to the Navy Yard,” I said, cogitating on it.

Burt looked over at me. I was worried and I couldn’t help but show it, and that scared him even more.

We sat in the boxcar as the train rolled through the Virginia countryside, not looking at each other, glum and angry and nervous. Burt was more than nervous; scared’s more like it. I was scared, too, but not as much, I’ve hitchhiked more places than him: what goes out must come back, that’s one thing you learn being on the road. It was beautiful; rolling country, green hills and leafy trees, horses running behind white fences, like out of a storybook, very pretty to look at if you’re not concerned with getting the hell out of it. Neither of us had a watch, so we didn’t know how long we’d been riding. A couple of hours, anyway.

Needless to say, the train hadn’t been going to the Navy Yard. It bypassed Washington completely, going east of Union Station and then dropping right into Virginia, through Arlington, Fairfax; from the way the sun was dropping it looked to me like it was heading southwest. For all I knew it could be going clear to New Orleans, or Mexico for that matter, I know about hitchhiking but I don’t know jack-shit about trains, I’ve always wanted to, though, like I’ve always wanted to get away and be on my own for real. It’s just that this wasn’t the time and place to do it, but beggars can’t be choosers. Anyway, we’d have to stop sooner or later.

“Now what, genius?” Burt asked again, staring out the open boxcar door. He’s like a stuck needle in a record with that expression. He was freaked out, not even trying to hide it. He may be the pro on the Ravensburg Junior High playground, but out here he was just another scared kid, scared of not knowing where we were going, scared of what would happen to him when he finally got home. I was scared of that, too, but there wasn’t anything I could do about it, so I just watched the scenery.

“It’s got to stop pretty soon,” I told him, like I knew all there was to know about riding freight trains, “we ain’t that far out of D.C.”

“You don’t even know where we’re at,” he said, totally disgusted.

“The hell I don’t.”

“Where are we?”

“Somewheres in Virginia.”

“Shit.” He hocked a big lugy out the door. “That could be anyfuckingwhere.”

This was true, so I kept my mouth shut. One thing we had to do was stick together, if we got at each other’s throats we’d be doubly fucked.

As we moved south the sun moved west, almost to the ridge of the mountains. I looked out the door. Up about a mile I could see a small switchyard, some boxcars sitting on a side track. Our train started slowing down.

I pointed out the door to Burt, who looked.

“We’ll be off this mother in two seconds flat,” I told him, feeling pretty smug after all that nervousness. I knew I’d fucked up, kind of anyway, but we could get off now, hitch a ride home, and it would still be better than having got caught back there at the junkyard.

The switchyard was coming up fast now. We stood in the doorway in anticipation. Another minute and it would be going slow enough for us to jump off.

As the train approached the yard (coming to a stop now, in five seconds I was going to yell at Burt to jump), a bum suddenly appeared out of the weeds at the side of the tracks and jumped into our car, moving with an agility that came from years of jumping trains, like the way I move over the obstacles at the Academy. He skittered into our car and gave us a wild look.

“Don’t stand in that doorway like that,” he yelled urgently, his voice hoarse and shot, “you’re a goddamn three-alarm fire with cowbells!”

As we looked at him in puzzlement, frozen for a moment at his unexpected entrance, he grabbed us roughly and hauled us into a dark corner of the boxcar. I turned away from him in disgust as I got hit with a blast of his foul whiskey breath, right in my face. The guy stunk like a pigsty, he probably hadn’t taken a bath or brushed his teeth in a month.

I twisted my arm out of his grasp. “Let go, goddamnit, we’re getting off here!”

“Are you shitting me?” He pointed outside.

A few cars away, we saw a railroad detective pacing down the line.

“You see that sum’bitch out there?” the bum told us in a deep southern accent, his vocal cords almost shot from all the booze he must’ve drunk over the years. “They’s three of them in this here yard, they’d as soon break your goddamn head as scratch their ass they catch you riding one of their cars. You jump off in this here yard, son, you’re committing suicide.”

Burt exchanged a fearful glance with me.

“Duck down now and don’t breathe,” the bum commanded, pulling us further into the car.

We hid behind some crates as the detective peered into the car for a minute before moving on, not seeing us. Almost immediately, the train jerked and started moving again.

Burt turned to me, his eyes as big as dinner plates.

“How the hell are we supposed to get off now?” he cried. He was really shook, beyond normal scared.

“You’ll have to wait till she pulls out of the yard before you can jump,” the bum told us, leaning back against the wall of the car and sliding down to a comfortable sitting position. He was home, like he was sitting in his living room. In less than thirty seconds, he was fast asleep.

We crabbed to the edge of the car and stood in the doorway. The train was clearing the yard, moving fast, too fast for us to jump out. I turned to look at Burt. He turned away.

We watched the yard vanish in the distance.

It was getting late in the day, the sun sitting on top of the mountains in the west, which I figured to be the Blue Ridge Mountains. I’ve been here before, with Joe and his folks, to Luray Caverns, it was beautiful up there, we went in the fall when all the leaves were turning, like in a postcard. We’d gone down into the caverns, seen thousands of stalactites and stalagmites, plus the added attraction of about a ton of bat shit on the walls and floors. No bats, though, they only come out at night is what the guide told us.

“You ever been to Luray Caverns?” I asked Burt.

“What kind of stupid question is that?” He was so mad at me he liked to have killed me.

“Just asking. I have, with Joe.”

“Big fucking deal.” We were sitting on the other side of the boxcar from the bum, who seemed to be sleeping.

“If you’d ever been there you’d know it was a big deal. Miles and miles of caves, really cool ones, you could spend days in there exploring them.” I was trying to cheer him up, get his mind off our problem.

“The answer is no.”

“Just wondered,” I said.

“Just shut the fuck up, Roy, okay?”

“Excuse me for living,” I said. He was scared shitless, that’s why he was acting so dumb. Like it was all my fault. Nobody made him jump on the train, he could’ve stayed back there with Joe and taken his medicine. I knew that if he had stayed back there instead of jumping on with me he’d have thought differently, but it wasn’t the time to remind him of that.

“Shit,” Burt said, looking out the doorway again, “we’ll never get off this fucking train.”

He was close to breaking down, I could hear it in his voice. That’s all I needed, being on a freight train in the middle of nowhere, in the same boxcar with a drunken bum, and my best friend starts crying like a baby.