by the time it had reached the far side of Zephyr it would be running fast
again.
“I can’t write any apology, Davy Ray,” I said quietly. “Not tomorrow, not
the day after that. Not ever. I guess I can’t ever go back to school, huh?”
Davy Ray offered neither opinion nor advice. I was on my own.
“What if I was to go away for a while? Not long. Maybe two or three days.
What if I was to show ’em I’d rather run away than write an apology? Then
maybe they’d listen to me, don’t you think?” I watched the moving star come
nearer. The whistle blew again, maybe warning a deer off the track. I heard it
say Corrrrryyyyyyyyy.
I stood up. I could make it to the trestle if I ran to Rocket. But I had
to go right this minute. Fifteen more seconds and I would face one more day of
anger and disappointment from my parents. One more day of being a boy closed
up in a room with an unwritten apology staring me in the face. The freight
that was about to pass through always returned again. I reached into my
pocket, and found two quarters left over from some purchase of popcorn or
candy bar at the Lyric last winter when things were good.
“I’m goin’, Davy Ray!” I said. “I’m goin’!”
I started running through the graveyard. As I reached Rocket and swung up
onto the saddle, I feared I was already too late. I pedaled like mad for the
trestle, the breath blooming around my face, I heard the moan and clatter as I
pulled alongside the gravel-edged tracks; the freight was crossing, and I
could yet meet it.
And then there it was, the headlight blazing. The huge engine came off
the trestle and passed me, going a little faster than I could walk. Then the
boxcars began going past: Southern Railroad cars, bump ka thud, bump ka thud,
bump ka thud on the ties. Already the train was starting to pick up speed. I
got off Rocket and put the kickstand down. I ran my fingers along the
handlebar. For a second I saw the headlamp’s golden eye, luminous with the
moon. “I’ll be back!” I promised.
All the boxcars were closed up, it seemed. But then here came one toward
the end of the freight that had a door partway open. I thought of railroad
bulls bashing heads and throwing freeloaders face-first into steam-scalded
space, but I shook the thought away. I ran alongside the boxcar with the open
door. A ladder was close at hand. I reached up, hooked four gloved fingers
around a metal rung, got my thumb wedged there, too, and then I grabbed hold
with the other hand and lifted my feet off the gravel.
I swung myself toward the boxcar’s open door. I was amazed that I had
such dexterity. I guess when you hear a few tons of steel wheels grinding
underneath you, you can become an acrobat real quick. I went through that
opening into the boxcar, my fingers released the iron rungs, and I hit a
wooden floor sparsely covered with hay. The sound of my entrance was not
gentle; it echoed in the boxcar, which was sealed shut on the other side. I
sat up, hay all over the front of my outermost sweater.
The boxcar rumbled and shook. It was clearly not made for passengers.
But someone was indeed along for the ride.
“Hey, Princey!” a voice said. “A little bird just flew in!”
I jumped up. That voice had sounded like a combination of rocks in a
cement mixer and a bullfrog’s lament. It had come from the dark before me.
“Yes, I see him,” another man answered. This voice was as smooth as black
silk and had the lilt of a foreign accent. “I think he almost broke his wings,
Franklin.”
I was in the company of boxcar-riding tramps who would slit my throat for
the quarters in my pocket. I turned to jump through the doorway, but Zephyr
was speeding past.
“I wouldn’t, young man,” the foreign-accented voice cautioned. “It would
not be pretty.”
I paused on the edge, my heart pounding.
“We ain’t gonna bite ya!” the froggish cement-mixer voice said. “Are we,
Princey?”
“Speak for yourself, please.”
“Ah, he’s just kiddin’! Princey’s always kiddin’, ain’t ya?”
“Yes,” the black silk voice said with a sigh, “I’m always kidding.”
A match flared beside my face. I jumped again, and turned to see who
stood there.
A nightmare visage peered at me, so close I could smell his musty breath.
The man would’ve made a railroad tie look like Charles Atlas. He was
emaciated, his black eyes submerged in shadow pools and the cheekbones thrust
against the flesh of his face. And what flesh! I had seen summer-baked
creekbeds that held more moisture. Every inch of his face was cracked and
wrinkled, and the cracks drew his mouth back from his yellow teeth and
continued up like a weird cap over the hairless dome of his scalp. His long,
skinny fingers, exposed by the matchlight, were likewise shriveled, as was the
hand on which they were fixed. His throat was a dried mass of cracks. He wore
a dusty white costume of some kind, but where shirt and pants met I couldn’t
tell. He looked like a stick in a bag of dirty rags.
I was frozen with terror, waiting for the blade to slice my neck.
The wrinkled man’s other hand rose like an adder’s head. I tensed.
He was holding a package with a few Fig Newtons in it.
“Well, well!” the foreign man said with obvious surprise. “Ahmet likes
you! Take a Fig Newton, he doesn’t speak.”
“I… don’t think I…”
The match went out. I could smell Ahmet next to me, an odor so dry it
threatened to crisp the hairs in my nostrils. He breathed like the rustle of
dead leaves.
A second match was struck. Ahmet had a black streak across his pointed
chin. He still held the Fig Newtons, and now he nodded at me. When he did so,
I thought I heard his flesh creak.
He was grinning like warmed-over Death. Baked and crusted Death, to be
more exact. I slid a trembling hand into the package and accepted a Fig
Newton. This seemed to appease Ahmet. He shambled over toward the boxcar’s
other side, and he knelt down and touched the match to three candle stubs
stuck with wax to the bottom of an upturned bucket.
The light grew. And as it grew, it showed me things I wished I didn’t
have to look at.
“There,” the foreign man said from where he sat with his shoulder against
a pile of burlap sacks. “Now we see eye-to-eye.”
I wished we’d been back to back with five miles between us.
If this man had ever seen the sun, the Lady was my grandmother. His skin
was so pallid, he made the moon appear as dark as Don Ho. He was a young man,
younger at least than my father, and he had fine blond hair combed back from a
high forehead. A touch of silver glinted at his temples. He was wearing a dark
suit, a white shirt, and a necktie. Only I could tell right off that his suit
had seen better days from the patches around the shoulders, the cuffs of his
shirt were frayed, and brown blotches marred his tie. Still, there was an
elegance about this man; even sitting down, he commanded your attention with a
stare that had a trace of well-bred haughtiness in it. His wingtips were
scuffed. At first I thought he was wearing white socks, but then I realized
those were his ankles. His eyes bothered me, though; in the candlelight, the
pupils gleamed scarlet.
But this man, and Ahmet the dried-up one, looked like Troy Donahue and
Yul Brynner compared to the third monstrosity in that boxcar.
He was standing up in a corner. His head, which was strangely
shovel-shaped, almost brushed the ceiling. The man must have been over seven
feet tall. His shoulders looked as wide as some of the wings on the planes at
Robbins Air Force Base. His body appeared bulky and lumpy and altogether not
right. He was wearing a loose brown jacket and gray trousers with patches on
the knees. The trousers looked as if they had gotten drenched and shrunken
while he was still in them. The size of the man’s shoes astounded me; to call
them clodhoppers is like calling an atomic bomb a pregnant grenade. They were
more like earthmovers.
“Hi dere,” he said as his shoes slammed on the timbers and he came toward
me. “I’m Franklin.”
He was grinning. I wished he hadn’t been. His grin made Mr. Sardonicus
look unhappy. What was worse than his grin was a scar that sliced across his
Neanderthal forehead and had been stitched together, it seemed, by a
cross-eyed medical student with a severe case of hiccups. His huge face looked
flattened, his shiny black hair all but painted on his skull. In the
candlelight, he appeared as if something he’d recently eaten hadn’t agreed
with him. The misfortunate oaf was a sickly, grayish hue. And lo and behold!
There from each side of the man’s bull-thick neck protruded a small rusted
screw.
“You want some wadda?” he asked, and he held up a dented canteen. In his
hand, it seemed the size of a clamshell.
“Uh… no sir. No thank you. Sir.”
“Wadda washes down da Fig Newton,” he said. “Udderwise get stuck in da
troat.”
“I’m okay. Really.” I cleared my throat. “See?”
“Hokay. Dass fine, den.” He returned to his corner, where he stood like a
grotesque statue.
“Franklin’s a happy sort,” Princey explained. “Ahmet’s the quiet one.”
“What are you?” I asked.
“I’m the ambitious type,” he said. “What type are you?”
“Scared.” I heard the rush of wind behind me. The freight train was
speeding now, leaving Zephyr sleeping in peace.
“Sit down if you like,” Princey offered. “It’s not too clean in here, but
neither is it a dungeon.”
I looked longingly out the door. We must’ve been going…
“…sixty miles an hour,” Princey said. “Sixty-four, it feels to me. I’m a
good judge of the wind.”
I sat down, keeping my distance from all three of them.
“So.” He slid his hands into the pockets of his coat. “Favor us with your
destination, Cory.”
“I guess I… wait a minute. Did I tell you my name?”
“You must have, I’m sure.”
“I don’t remember,”
Franklin laughed. It sounded like a backed-up drain being Roto-Rootered.
“Haw! Haw! Haw! Dere he goes again! Princey’s got da best sense’a yuma!”
“I don’t think I told you my name,” I said.
“Well, don’t be stubborn,” Princey answered. “Everybody has a name.
What’s yours?”
“Co—” I stopped. Were these three insane, or was I? “Cory Mackenson. I’m
from Zephyr.”
“Going to… ?” he prompted.
“Where does the train go?” I asked.
“From here?” He smiled slightly. “To everywhere.”
I glanced over at Ahmet. He was squatting on his haunches, watching me
intently over the flickering candles. He wore sandals on his shriveled feet,
his toenails two inches long. “Kinda cold to be wearin’ sandals, isn’t it?”
“Ahmet doesn’t mind,” Princey said. “That’s his footwear of choice. He’s
Egyptian.”
“Egyptian? How’d he get all the way here?”
“It was a long, dusty trail,” he assured me.
“Who are you people? You look kinda—”
“Familiar if you’re a devotee of the sweet science. Boxing, that is,”
Princey said, shoveling words in my mouth. “Ever heard of Franklin Fitzgerald?
Otherwise known as Big Philly Frank?”
“No sir.”
“Then why did you say you had?”
“I… did I?”
“Meet Franklin Fitzgerald.” He motioned to the monster in the corner.
“Hello,” I said.
“Pleased ta meet ya,” Franklin replied.
“I’m Princey Von Kulic. That’s Ahmet Too-Hard-to-Pronounce.”
“Hee hee hee,” Franklin giggled behind a massive hand with scarred
knuckles.
“You’re not American, are you?” I asked Princey.
“Citizen of the world, at your service.”
“Where’re you from, then?”
“I am from a nation that is neither here nor there. It is an unnation, if
you will.” He smiled again. “Unnation. I like that. My country has been
ransacked by foreign invaders so many times, we give green stamps for raping
and pillaging. It’s easier to make a buck here, what can I say?”
“So you’re a boxer, too?”
“Me?” He grimaced as if he had a bad taste in his mouth. “Oh, no! I’m the
brains behind Franklin’s brawn. I’m his manager. Ahmet’s his trainer. We all
get along famously, except when we’re trying to kill each other.”
“Haw haw!” Franklin rumbled.
“We are currently between opponents,” Princey said with a slight shrug.
“Bound from the last place we were to the next place we will be. And such, I
fear, is our existence.”
I had decided that no matter how fearsome this trio appeared, they really
meant me no harm. “Does Mr. Fitzgerald do a lot of fightin’?” I asked.
“Franklin will take on anyone, anywhere, at any time. Unfortunately,
though his size is quite formidable, his speed is quite deplorable.”
“Princey means I’m slow,” Franklin said.
“Yes. And what else, Franklin?”
The huge man’s overhanging brow threatened to collapse as he pondered
this question. “I don’t have da killer instink,” he said at last.
“But we’re working on that, aren’t we, Silent Sam?” Princey asked the
Egyptian. Ahmet showed his hooked yellow teeth and nodded vigorously. I
thought he’d better be careful, in case his head flew off.
I began staring at Franklin’s neck. “Mr. Princey, why does he have those
screws in there?”
“Franklin is a man of many parts,” Princey said, and Franklin giggled
again. “Most of them of the rusted variety. His meetings with other
individuals in the squared circle have not always been pleasant. In short,
he’s had so many broken bones that the doctor’s had to wire some of him
together. The screws are connected to a metal rod that strengthens his spine.
It’s painful, I’m sure, but necessary.”
“Aw,” Franklin said, “it ain’t so bad.”
“He has the heart of a lion,” Princey explained. “Unfortunately, he also
has the mind of a mouse.”
“Hee hee nee! Dat Princey’s a laff riot!”
“I’m thirsty,” Princey said, and he stood up. He was tall, too, maybe six
four, and slender though not nearly the beanpole Ahmet was.
“Here ya go.” Franklin offered him the canteen.
“No, I don’t want that!” Princey’s pale hand brushed it aside. “I want… I
