The locomotive clacked on past, and me and Billy Bob watched her string slide along in front of us. Flats, boxcars, three tankers in a row, more flats loaded down with pine logs big around as a privy, a refrigerator car, five coal gondolas, another link of box cars. Fifty in the string already, I thought. She won't be dragging more than sixty, sixty-five. . . .
Billy Bob said suddenly, "Granpa, look yonder!"
He had his arm up, pointing. My eyes ain't so good no more, and it took me a couple of seconds to follow his point, over on our left and down at the door of the third boxcar in the last link. It was sliding open, and clear in the moonlight I saw a man's head come out, then his shoulders.
"It's a floater, Granpa," Billy Bob said, excited. "He's gonna jump. Look at him holding there—he's gonna jump."
I spit into the grass. "Help me up, boy."
He got a hand under my arm and lifted me up and held me until I was steady on my cane. Down there at the door of the boxcar, the floater was looking both ways along the string of cars and down at the ground beside the tracks. That ground was soft loam, and the train was going slow enough that there wasn't much chance he would hurt himself jumping off. He come to that same idea, and as soon as he did he flung himself off the car with his arms spread out and his hair and coattails flying in the slipstream. I saw him land solid and go down and roll over once. Then he knelt there, shaking his head a little, looking around.
Well, he was the first floater we'd seen in seven months. The yard crews seal up the cars nowadays, and they ain't many ride the rails anyhow, even down in our part of the country. But every now and then a floater wants to ride bad enough to break a seal, or hides himself in a gondola or on a loaded flat. Kids, old-time hoboes, wanted men. They's still a few.
And some of 'em get off right down where this one had, because they know the St. Louis freight stops in Sabreville and they's yardmen there that check the string, or because they see the rundown shacks of the old hobo jungle or Ferdie Johnson's melon patch. Man rides a freight long enough, no provisions, he gets mighty hungry; the sight of a melon patch like Ferdie's is plenty enough to make him jump off.
"Billy Bob," I said.
"Yes, Granpa. You wait easy now."
He went off along the slope, running. I watched the floater, and he come up on his feet and got himself into a clump of bushes alongside the tracks to wait for the caboose to pass so's he wouldn't be seen. Pretty soon the last of the cars left the tunnel, and then the caboose with a signalman holding a red-eye lantern out on the platform. When she was down the tracks and just about beyond my sight, the floater showed himself again and had him another look around. Then, sure enough, he made straight for the melon patch.
Once he got into it I couldn't see him, because he was in close to the woods at the edge of the slope. I couldn't see Billy Bob neither. The whistle sounded one final time, mournful, as the lights of the caboose disappeared, and a chill come to my neck and set there like a cold, dead hand. I closed my eyes and listened to the last singing of the wheels fade away.
It weren't long before I heard footfalls on the slope coming near, then the angry sound of a stranger's voice, but I kept my eyes shut until they walked up close and Billy Bob said, "Granpa." When I opened 'em the floater was standing three feet in front of me, white face shining in the moonlight—scared face, angry face, evil face.
"What the hell is this?" he said. "What you want with me?"
"Give me your gun, Billy Bob," I said.
He did it, and I held her tight and lifted the barrel. The ache in my stomach was so strong my knees felt weak and I could scarcely breathe. But my hand was steady.
The floater's eyes come wide open and he backed off a step. "Hey," he said, "hey, you can't—"
I shot him twice.
He fell over and rolled some and come up on his back. They wasn't no doubt he was dead, so I give the gun back to Billy Bob and he put it away in his belt. "All right, boy," I said.
Billy Bob nodded and went over and hoisted the dead floater onto his shoulder. I watched him trudge off toward the bog hollow, and in my mind I could hear the train whistle as she'd sounded from inside the tunnel. I thought again, as I had so many times, that it was the way my boy Rufus and Billy Bob's ma must have sounded that night in 1947, when the two floaters from the hobo jungle broke into their home and raped her and shot Rufus to death. She lived just long enough to tell us about the floaters, but they was never caught. So it was up to me, and then up to me and Billy Bob when he come of age.
Well, it ain't like it once was, and that saddens me. But they's still a few that ride the rails, still a few take it into their heads to jump off down there when the St. Louis freight slows coming through the Chigger Mountain tunnel.
Oh my yes, they'll always be a few for me and Billy Bob and the sweet fever inside us both.
That old standby, the ghost story, is one of the most difficult types to write effectively. The number of variations is finite and the best of them have been used—in some cases, used to, urn, death. The only ones I've perpetrated with even the smallest claim to originality are "Peekaboo" (f you choose to consider same a ghost story; there is at least one other interpretation) and "Deathlove." You may be interested to know that another, less effective version of this story exists—a straight crime yarn without the supernatural twist, called "ForLove." Some writers just can't help being shameless self-plagiarists. Me and Ray Chandler, among others.
Deathlove
I sit hunched forward in the taxi as it rushes through the dark, empty streets. It will not be long now, Judith, my love; a few hours, then a few short weeks until you and I are one. Forever.
And the truck comes out of nowhere
And we come into the quiet residential area six blocks from Lake Industrial Park. I tell the driver to stop at the next corner. A moment later I stand alone in the darkness. The night wind is cold; I turn up the collar on my overcoat as I watch the taxi's taillights fade and disappear. Then I walk rapidly toward the park, my hand touching the gun in my coat pocket.
The industrial development is deserted when I arrive; there is no sign of the night security patrols which make periodic checks of the area. I pause to look at my watch. Just past nine. Then I make my way to the squat stone building that houses McAnally's firm, Ajax Plumbing Supply. A light burns in the office, behind blind-covered windows—the only light in the park. As always on Friday evenings, McAnally is working late and alone.
I move to the rear of the building, to the shadowed parking area. McAnally's car is the only one there. I know it well; I have seen it every day for the past four years, in the driveway of his house across the street from my own, and I have written the insurance policy on it.
I allow myself a small smile as I walk to the base of the high fence that rings the supply yard, blend into the blackness there. All is progressing as I've planned. I'm confident that there will be no problems of any kind.
This isn't right, the truck
As I wait I concentrate on the visual image of Judith that lingers in my mind. Long auburn hair, gentle green eyes, the smooth sensuous lines of her body. Judith smiling, Judith laughing, Judith in all her moods from pensive to gay to kittenish. Every night I dream of her. Every night I long to hold her, touch her, possess her. There is no love greater than mine for Judith; it has become the one and only purpose of my existence.