The Ravaged, page 7
“Look, I’m not a spiritual man,” he says. “Not really even religious, for that matter. For the sake of me buying into what you’re suggesting, let’s say I believed even a hint of what you’re trying to tell me. What is my dream telling me that I don’t already know?”
“Sounds like you maybe never dealt with your mamá’s passing. Or her leaving your father. Maybe the fire is a way of removing something. But then you chase him. Like you’re after something. What are you chasing, Jack? Did your father or mother speak to you?”
“My father did speak to me, but it was a lot of crazy nonsense. Like I told you, I haven’t seen that man since my mother left him. I don’t even know if he’s alive. Muerto, maybe.” He feels sluggish, as if his mind were covered with a thick film. Before Fabiola can say anything else, he asks, “Could I maybe get a cup of coffee, assuming that’s what you’re drinking?”
“Of course, Jack.”
Splashing water onto his face from the kitchen sink, Jack blots off with a towel. Feels the doughy flesh under his windburned chin and jaws, the white hairs that had sprouted along his eyebrows, the shadow of frosty stubble, and the dimness of his blue eyes. In business, he can do anything, but now, stripped of his family, with no money, he realizes he has nothing. No formidable skills. Nothing he can do with his hands. He isn’t athletic or mechanical, never was. Laying the towel on the sink, turning around, walking to the kitchen table, where a clay cup sat with steam rising from it. Reaching for it, he says, “This is only coffee, correct?”
Fabiola nods. “Sí. Sólo café.”
Raising it to his parched lips, he sips. It warms his mouth, his insides, its sharp, fresh taste enlivening his senses. “Thank you,” he says.
Seated across the little square table, Fabiola raises her hand. “No need to thank me. You’re my guest.” She regards him in silence for a moment. “You know, I dreamed my husband’s, son’s, and grandson’s death the night before. It’s a cruel thing to admit, having that intuition, that premonition, but it’s true.”
Jack is at a loss for words. How is he to register this confession of witchery? Better yet, how is he even to accept it as fact? But he is in her home, so he shows respect. “I cannot imagine the weight of that,” he says. “I imagine that it is a heavy burden to admit, to carry.” He sips the coffee and says, “Back in America, in the world I come from, this is all crazy talk. Nonsense. I mean, all this is a lot of mumbo jumbo. It’s a huge amount of information for me to gather and translate, and it’s really hard for me to accept any of this as real. But I’ve lost so much. And you’re correct, I have not dealt with any of it. I don’t mean to come across as disrespectful, but I don’t know what any of this means, I’ve never really had to sit down and realize that everything I once had in life is now my past—a past I was never really present for. I was always working. I buried myself in my work. And that’s why I loaded up a backpack and bought a plane ticket.”
“You ran away from a world that you controlled. Because you couldn’t control what you had lost.”
Jack sits reflecting on Fabiola’s words. “You’re correct. Maybe I need to employ you to council me and the people I work with.” Jack laughs at how Fabiola is such a simple person, yet she is so spot-on. And he realizes it at that moment. But all this—his situation, his meltdown, the dream—is still hard to accept. “Regardless, you have to know that for me, in my world, this is a lot of crazy talk. I come from a world where things have to be concrete. I need facts. If I can’t see it or touch it, if I can’t hold the product, I can’t quantify it.”
“What more do you need than the here and the now?” Fabiola lets those words sit with Jack, then says, “What if I told you that the night before I saw you, I dreamed of a man? A tortured soul. Crazed and dancing to his own lunacy in the streets of San Pedro? Would you say I am crazy?”
ANNE
Clang and rattle of steel on steel. Wheels clatter over rail joints, Anne and Trot feeling every bump, sway, and vibration. Elbowing Trot and directing his attention to the round opening at her left, to the scuffed Doc Martens worn by someone in the opposite compartment. Anne spreads her feet and bends into a squat, and a second later she is looking into the eyes of a young black girl. She seems too young to be riding a freight train on her own. Her head is covered by a military olive-drab bandanna. She is holding a rolled-up blue sleeping bag against her stomach. Behind the sleeping bag, she wears a Jack Daniel’s T-shirt that once was black, now faded a dingy gray. Her full lips break into a smile, and she comes forward, stepping and working her way through the opening until she is standing before Anne and Trot. Putting out her hand, she almost shouts, “Name’s Cinnamon.”
Oh, what the hell, Anne thinks. She’s making herself at home, might as well meet her halfway. She reaches out and shakes the hand. It is as soft and warm as the girl’s features. And she tells Cinnamon, “I’m Anne. He’s Trot.”
Cinnamon shakes hands with Trot and asks, “How long you-all been catching out?”
Anne’s head tilts sideways. “Catching out?”
Cinnamon laughs. Her teeth are Tic Tac white. “Train hopping. You must be a greenhorn.”
Anne tells her, “My first train. Yeah, a greenhorn. Situation at home was a total shit show.”
Out here, she realizes, they have their own language, their own “speak.” And Cinnamon tells her, “Hear you loud and clear, girl.” Shakes her head up and down. “What about you, thin man? What’s your history?”
Trot’s gaze never rises from the rough metal floor of the hopper car, and he speaks as if reciting a passage of scripture or an alibi. “Started hopping trains when I lived in Texas. Ran with a group called the Recon Rejects. The folks got tired of warning me. Caught me the last time I ventured home, moved me to Tennessee with them. Same as Anne—got a shit sentence at home. My way didn’t line up with what Mommy and Daddy had planned for their son.”
“Gotta be careful out here,” Cinnamon says. “You got lucky hopping this grainer. It don’t always happen that way. Get a grainer with no porch, it’s not solid, just a skeletal crossbar. It’s what you call—”
“Yeah. A suicide ride,” Trot interrupts.
Cinnamon smiles. “Right, a suicide ride. Gotta ditch that bitch. I see you know your cars.”
Cinnamon seems to be feeling them out while offering up her wisdom of the rails. Anne would need a notebook to keep track of all the dos and don’ts of hopping freights.
“I know a bit,” Trot says. “Any idea where we’re headed?”
“If luck is with me and my research is correct, Alabama. Birmingham. But we need to scoot before it stops in the yard.”
“Bulls?” Trot asks.
“Oh, yeah,” Cinnamon tells them. “Rail pigs. But there’s a jungle I hang at down in Alabama. Group of crust kids. Kinda run by a skeez calls himself Dredd.”
“Dredd?” Anne says.
“Yeah, like in the comic book, Judge Dredd. Something he grew up reading. Huge fanatic. Dude is a total perv, though. Used to teach college.”
“How long you been riding?” Anne asks.
“Since I was sixteen. I’m twenty-five now.”
“Nine years.”
“Yeah, run away from home. Mother was no-account. Father got touchy when I got older—‘developed female qualities,’ as he spoke it. I had a boyfriend, couple years older. Started riding with him. Then we got separated, but I kept going. Was addicted, you know. No ties, no strings. Nothing holding me down.”
“That’s awful about your father.”
“Yeah, it’s a real letdown when you realize that family you see in the movies and the family you’s born into don’t live on the same block. That’s some make-believe Disney bullshit.”
“You got that right,” says Anne. “My home didn’t have no Peter Pan or Wendy. I was constantly at odds with my brothers and sisters. They seemed to think how we lived was the accepted norm. Where’d you call home?”
“Bluefield, West Virginia. Not much to talk about. Rural folk. Hard living. You?”
“Right around where we hopped this train—Johnson City, Tennessee. Mother’s a drunk. Father drinks, but he’s more into the abuse that delivers his point when you do something wrong. Big on the old fist upside the head or a heated kitchen utensil to teach a lesson.” Anne pulls up the sleeve of her sweatshirt and shows off some of her father’s fork-and-stovetop handiwork.
“Branded you good,” Cinnamon says, shaking her head. “That’s cruel. Real battle scar. How about you, thin man? How’s your parents?”
“Not abusive,” Trot says, puckering his lips, “They just never accepted my interest in the same sex. Couldn’t get that their young man liked other young men, like being queer was a choice. They saw it more as a terroristic threat to their cozy little lives. Tried sending me to counseling. Private schools. Public schools. Christian Summer Camps. Group therapy. You name a supposed cure for being gay, they tried it on me. It was easier than just accepting what I was.”
“That sucks five kinds of ways,” Cinnamon says as she sits down. A big brown North Face pack cushions her back from the grainer wall.
Everyone’s bones are rattled from the train travel, but the tension begins to ease with the passing of words, and the sense that no one here poses a threat to anyone else.
“How much you know about freight hopping?” Cinnamon asks Anne.
“Only what Trot’s told me, which ain’t much.”
Cinnamon says, “This train here is run by Norfolk Southern. They run the tracks through half the Midwest, North, South, and East. Then it switches over to Union Pacific—they go west and north and south. They’s certain cars you want and some you don’t when you’re catching out or, uh, hopping freight.”
“Grainers are best, least in my experience,” Trot says. “It’s what we looked for back in Texas. Or boxcars.”
“Grainers with the double barrel like this one are a sweet ride. Boxcars are good. Gotta be careful, you hop one. Sometimes, they carry vehicles inside, could crush your ass. Also, the doors—good idea to jamb the track with a railroad spike, cause that son of a bitch shuts on you, you’re trapped till someone in the yard opens it a day or a month later. If you’re still alive, you’re caught.”
Trot doesn’t say anything, lets Cinnamon have the stage. Then he says, “I hear they’ll beat you silly and then call a bull, and he beats your ass too.”
“Some of those yard dogs are cool,” the girl says. “If you cool with them, they might let you go. Shit, some will even be friendly, let you know where the train’s headed, and if it’s not your direction, they’ll let you know a train that’s coming in and headed your way. Some even give you a bull’s schedule so you know when it’s safe to hop on from the yard. Others will turn your ass in. Toss you in the clink. Get a hefty fine.”
“How about tankers?” Trot asks. “I hear they’re a no-go.”
“Got that right. No room to ride. Gotta watch the junk cars, too. They can be dangerous as fuck. Some loaded with scrap steel that’ll shift and crush you. Get some loaded with coal. I had some friends riding in an open-top gondola. They was sleeping inside when it was empty, didn’t wake up when it stopped, got loaded with rock. Crushed their asses.”
“Shit! That’s horrible!” Anne says.
“It is, but having the variety of cars means more places to hide when traveling, you just gotta pay attention, be on your toes.”
“And you learned all this in nine years?”
“I’ve rode a lot of trains in them nine years. Met a lot of different folks out here, each carrying different knowledge from their travels and encounters. Some good, some not so. You gotta know your shit, pay attention. Ain’t no joke. I’ve met people that wanna follow me, pay me money to do things.”
“What kinda things?” Anne asks.
“Sexual things. Being a girl out here is dangerous. Ain’t gonna lie. Best get you a blade. Keep it sharp and available. You’ll also meet people that’ll watch your back; you just gotta return the favor. They’s people you will meet that will be like a real family. Lot of freedom, but it comes at a cost of your livelihood. Out here, payment is your attention or your life.”
“You ride any intermodal?” Trot asks.
“Yeah, they’re the fast track. Get you to where you’re headed in a hurry. They get hotshotted, don’t have to stop anywhere.”
“What’s ‘hotshotted’?” Anne asks.
“When they don’t have to stop in the yard, got clearance to blow right on through rail yards. They’re double-stacked containers. Good, steady ride. Loaded with lighter freight, usually consumer goods.” Pulling a water bottle from her side, Cinnamon removes the cap, takes a sip. Swallows. “Y’all want any?”
Anne waves her hand. “I’m good, but thanks.” She’s feeling comfortable, then remembers about her brother. About whether she might have killed him, or just left him for dead.
Cinnamon lays her head back. “Feels good to meet new people. Just came from up around Roanoke. Got a whore’s bath. First one I had in while. Out here, it’s good to stay dirty. Build up a good stench. Keeps the predators at bay. Take their focus off your female attributes. Less your sexuality is exposed, the better, until you find someone you can mesh with. And trust me, you will. But being dirty will save your skin.”
Anne and Trot sit back, listening to the steel grind over the track. Anne asks, “How long you think we got before we’re in Alabama?”
“Many factors to that question. Depends on how often we slow down for curves, track switching, if something breaks down. If there’s a shift change, they gotta stop somewhere and let another crew meet them to take over. Hopefully, it’s only a few hours. We can knock off some rest and just chill until then.”
“How do we know when we need to jump off?”
“Trust me, I’ll know. It’s my stomping ground. Just sit back, find your calm place, and enjoy the countryside.”
Leaning her head against the wall of the grainer’s compartment, she feels the metal’s vibration in her skull. Eyes closed, backpack cushioning her spine, she sinks into the soft ebb of the adrenaline. Her limbs feel heavy, weighted. Her entire self is sliding, free-falling, hitting warm water. The calm starts in her toes, traveling up her shins, knees, thighs, through viscera, rib cage, chest, shoulders, and down her arms until all she can see in her mind’s eye is her brother, sprawled facedown on the kitchen floor.
Next thing Anne knows, her neck is aching. Her legs are full of thumbtacks instead of blood, poking around beneath the skin, pricking her marrow. Her limbs have lost the rigid support of bone; they are asleep, hanging from her like heavy vines. Eyelids part, and her blurred view comes to focus on Trot and Cinnamon over her, one arm shaking her to wake up while an index finger to the lips shushes her. Anne reads Cinnamon’s lips. “We all zombied out, missed our jump. We’re in the rail yard. Gotta motor outta here without getting caught.”
Following Cinnamon and Trot out of the circular hole, into the daylight, jumping from the steel porch to the gravel, brutish voices coming loud behind them.
“Hey! Hey, what the fuck do you-all think you’re doing?”
Cinnamon yells, “Run!”
HUNTER
“It’s called collateral,” Hunter tells Itch. Straddling the worn leather seat of his knucklehead. Pressing his crazy locks behind his ears, he straps his flat-black Street & Steel half helmet under his chin. “The shit were you thinking? Shorting a guy you’re selling weed for. You think he’d just let it go?”
“I thought they took it pretty damn good,” Itch tells Hunter, standing like a stranger between him and Nugget. “Figured they’d take it out of my salary for selling their shit, that I’d get everything straight when we got back from Cali.” Fixing his half helmet, sliding on his shades and leather jacket. “Who am I riding shotgun with?”
“You mean riding bitch? Sure as shit ain’t me,” Nugget tells him.
“Thought they took it pretty good? And you think somebody who grows weed in Kentucky for a living just lets people do that?” Hunter asks, sliding on a pair of black leather gloves with skulls decorating the knuckles. He fires up his motorcycle.
Yelling over the engine, Itch says, “Well, when you put it like that, I s’pose not. But I ain’t like everybody else.”
“You got that right,” Hunter tells him. “Get your bony ass and half-baked brain on the back, but remember, no fucking foreplay.”
Itch slides onto the back and tenderly wraps his beefy arms around Hunter’s chest.
Hunter says, “Cut the shit.” Pauses and asks, “Why would you pull some shit like that? That’s like me building a custom bike for a customer for an agreed price and they decide to only pay me half after all the time and money I put into it. Thinking they’ll pay the rest in their own sweet-ass time.”
“Like I said, I’s thinking I’d get the rest of the money when we got back from our trip.”
Beside Hunter, Nugget shakes his head. He runs a hand over his smooth skull, then pulls on a pair of leather gloves. Laughing, he talks over the rumble of the bikes. “It’s like Hunter told you: they took your bike as collateral. Now we gotta go and get it back. Fix your fuck-up. How much you owe them to get it out of hock?”
Itch holds up three fingers.
“Three hundred?” Nugget yells. “That ain’t so bad.”
