Raymond let go of my neck; I felt his weight lift off me, heard him panting, dimly saw him get to his feet and brace himself against the sway of the car. He was giant then, looming, swaying-a massive silhouette outlined against blobs and flickers of light, against a blur of confused shapes sliding past the open door. He kept staring down at me, and I thought through sweeps of pain: Move! He’ll kill you if you don’t move. But except for helpless little twitches, I could not make my body respond.
He turned away abruptly, lurched over to the door and leaned out. The blobs and flickers of light, the blur of shapes, were slowing down. He glanced back at me again, hesitated-and disappeared. Now you see him, now you don’t. Gone. Poof, like magic stuff.
Jumped off, I thought. For God’s sake, move!
But all I could do was lie there, jouncing and swaying and twitching. Slowing down like the train. Going away like Raymond. Going, going…
Gone.
Chapter 13
There was light shining in my eyes. I reached up and swiped at it, the way you’d try to brush away an insect. But the light would not go away; it just kept shining, hot and bright, burning into my skull like some kind of powerful laser beam.
Somebody said, “Come on, ’bo, wake up. You can’t sleep here. This ain’t a frigging hotel.”
I turned my head to one side, to avoid the light, and realized I was lying stilclass="underline" no more jouncing and swaying. I opened my eyes. Dusty floorboards came into focus in a wide splash of light. Boxcar. Raymond. Christ, Raymond!
I rolled over and tried to lift up; my left arm was numb and wouldn’t support me and I sprawled face down. When I tried it again I used my right hand, and this time I made it up onto my knees. The back of my head throbbed as if somebody was beating on it with a stick. A wave of nausea washed through me; bile pumped into the back of my throat, clogged for an instant, then rose again. I knelt there with my head hanging down, vomiting.
“Drunk,” a different voice said disgustedly. “You’d think these tramps would learn-”
“Wait, Frank,” the first voice said. “He’s not drunk-he’s hurt. Look at the back of his head.”
Part of the light moved at the same time I finished emptying my stomach. “You’re right. Shit, it looks stove in.”
“No, it’s not that bad.”
“Bloody as hell. Hey, ’bo, what happened? You been in a fight?”
I pawed at my mouth, got one foot down under me, and managed to heave myself upright. The boxcar’s side wall, the one with the door in it, was only a couple of steps away, and that was a good thing; I would not have stayed on my feet if it had been any farther away. As it was, I hit the wall sideways and slid along it to the edge of the door, knees buckling, before I caught myself and hung on.
One of the voices said, “Hey, take it easy,” and a hand grabbed hold of my shoulder to steady me. But it was the left shoulder, the bad one, and I made a noise in my throat and shook the hand off. I could see the two men now, even though both of them were still shining big electric torches at me. A different kind of light, artificial-looking and faintly greenish, spilled into the car from outside.
I looked away from them and out through the door. The freight yards. The artificial-looking light was coming from the strings of sodium vapor arcs that crisscrossed the work areas. It made the rails gleam, and for a couple of seconds I imagined they were moving, writhing along the ground like big silver snakes. The smells of oil and hot metal came to me from somewhere; I thought I was going to vomit again.
“We better get him some first-aid, Frank,” one of the men said. Yard bulls, that was what they were. Railroad security cops. “He needs a doctor.”
“Yeah.”
No, I thought, get the police, I got to talk to the police. I tried to say the words, but they seemed to lodge in my throat like fragments of bone. Something wrong with my voice. Something wrong with my head, too. It ached like fury; the pain was so sharp I couldn’t think straight.
Shit, it looks stove in…
I put my hand back there: wet, pulpy. Jesus! I pulled the hand down and looked at it, and the fingers were stained with smears of blood; the artificial light made the stains look dark and unreal, like shadows clinging to my fingers.
My knees buckled again. One of the bulls caught hold of me, braced my body against his. “Easy, ’bo,” he said. “We’ll get you mixed up. You’ll be okay.”
“Can he walk?” the other one asked.
“If he can’t we’ll have to carry him to the first-aid station.”
I got a word out; it sounded thick and clotted like the blood on my head. “No…”
“Don’t try to talk. Frank, jump down and take his legs.”
“Police,” I said, “call the police.”
“Sure. After we get you a doctor.”
“No, the police. Quick. He’ll get away…”
“Who’ll get away?”
“Raymond. No, Dallmeyer.”
“Somebody must have robbed him,” the other one, Frank, said from outside. He was down on the ground now, looking up at me. “Goddamn jackrollers.”
“Listen,” I said, “you got to listen. Not robbery-murder. He killed Bradford.”
“Murder?” the bull holding me said.
“The police, call the police.”
“All right, we’ll call them. You let us take care of you first. Okay?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Okay.”
The hands shifted, slid around under my armpits. He lifted me, and Frank took hold of my legs, and they lowered me down out of the car. I could stand up all right, but Frank yelled, “Hey, you guys give me some help,” and pretty soon two other men were there and more hands were supporting me. The first bull jumped down. He had a handlebar mustache, the biggest one I’d ever seen; I found myself gawping at it.
“You boys take him to first-aid,” he said. “I’ll notify Buckner.”
The hands moved me away, half-carrying me. I had a confused impression of lights, rail cars, gleaming tracks, corrugated-iron buildings; of faces and orange hard hats and muttered voices. Then we were inside one of the buildings, and there was a cot, and they made me lie down on my stomach. Somebody said, “Holy Mother, will you look at that?” and somebody else said, “Get some antiseptic-quick.”
Sharp stinging pain.
I yelled-and blacked out again.
When I came out of it there was another light shining in my eyes-a pen-flash this time. I was still lying on the cot, turned on my side now with my right cheek against a pillow. The guy with the light was standing over me. “No, don’t close your eyes,” he said. “Keep looking at the light.”
“Doctor?”
“Yes. Do you feel nauseous?”
“A little.”
“Need to vomit?”
“No.”
“Can you see me clearly? Any double vision?”
“No. I can see you.”
“Do you know where you are?”
“Freight yards,” I said. My head still ached hellishly, but most of the disorientation seemed to be gone. I told him that. I told him my name, too, for good measure.
“Can you remember what happened to you?”
“Yeah,” I said, “I remember.”
He stepped back. “Let’s see if you can sit up.”
It took me a few seconds, but I managed it. The room swam a little at first, then settled into focus and stayed that way. There were three other men in it: the yard bull with the handlebar mustache, a thick-necked guy wearing one of the orange hard hats, and a heavyset, graying policeman in uniform.
The doctor put the light in my eyes again for a couple of seconds, switched it off. He was middle-aged and trim, the kind who probably played tennis as well as golf. “Mild nausea,” he said, to the others as well as to me. “Slight dilation of the right pupil. No apparent retrograde amnesia. Concussion, certainly, but it doesn’t appear to be any more serious than that.”
I said, “All the blood…”
“Skin lacerations. You have a bad bruise, too. I’ll have an X ray taken at the hospital to be sure the skull isn’t damaged.”
“Hospital?”