She glanced at the cash register. “Most I got in there is five, six hundred.”
“Give me everything you’ve got in there. Now.”
She sighed. “You’re shakin’, boy. You know that?” There was real pity in her eyes and voice. “I got a boy about your age. I sure hope he never do nothin’ like you’re doin’.”
The car was in the parking lot, then, the beam of its headlights playing across the wall behind the clerk.
She’d been talking too much. Lulls never lasted long. She’d been talking too much and he hadn’t stopped her. And now there was a car pulling in the lot.
“You better get your ass out of here,” she said. “And hurry.”
He couldn’t believe it. She didn’t seem intimidated at all by the gun. Or his black getup.
He said, “I just got out of prison, lady.”
She grinned. “I did time myself. Now you git, you hear me?”
Thunk of a heavy car door slamming. Then a second door shutting. Two people at least. Coming inside. Quickly.
“And lemme do you a favor and take that before you hurt somebody.”
His mind was divided, part of it on the door and the two figures now outlined inside the fog. The other part watching as the woman reached out — slo-mo, just like in the movies — and started to take the .45 from him.
“Hey!” he said, wanting to cry out in frustration and bafflement.
The door opening. Two balding, middle-aged men coming in. And the clerk grasping the gun and twisting it to get it away from him.
And him so startled and angry and—
He fired twice.
He would never know if he’d actually meant to fire. Or if it had just been a terrible accident. He could never be sure.
He’d never seen anybody shot before. TV had conditioned him to expect an imposing and dramatic moment. But all she did, really, was put big hard-working black hands over the blood patches in the front of her silly Happy Camper orange uniform jacket.
There was this terrible silence — it couldn’t have lasted more than a second or two — and inside it he could hear her start to sob. She was dying. He had no doubt about that and neither did she.
And then there was no room for silence in the store as the men crashed into aisles trying to find a safe place from his weapon. And him firing to keep them at bay. And then her screaming as she started to fall over backwards into the silver ice cream machine.
And then he was running, too. He didn’t know where. Just running and running and running and the fog made it a bitch running you can believe that running into a tree once and stumbling over a sidewalk crack another time and then tripping over a tiny tricycle another time palms all cut to shit from the sidewalk and all the time cursing and sobbing and seeing her die there over and over and over seeing her die had he really shot her on purpose? Her dying over and over and over.
And him running through this Midwestern night and sirens now and fog heavier now a half-world really not the real world at all half-world and faint half-lighted windows and half-voices in the houses and apartments lost in the gloom muted cries of infants and lusting lovers and angry lovers and droning TVs and him nothing more than slapping footsteps and whining searing breath in the windpipe in the night. Alone...
He made no conscious effort to reach this place. And when he saw it he had to smile. Maybe he wasn’t as luckless as he’d thought.
Not easy to see the railroad yard in the fog. But he could make out the general shape of it. Smell the oil and heat and damp steel of it. See the vast brick roundhouse and the two-story barracks-like building where business was conducted during the day. The crosshatching of silver track. And the box cars, walls of them lined up into infinity into the fog and the night, unseen engines down the line, rumbling and shuddering and thrumming in this half-world like great beasts of a prehistoric time, unseen but all-powerful as they stole a line of boxcars here and a line of boxcars there, and began moving them into the Midwestern night borne for places as forlorn as Utah and as magnificent as California, and hoboes of every description (if prison talk was to be believed) riding fine and happy inside the dark empty wombs of them.
Riding fine and happy.
He’d be doing that himself in a few minutes.
Three hours ago, Chicago Mike had enjoyed a gourmet meal at the local Salvation Army. Chicken and peas and mashed potatoes. This was a good town, far as free food went. He’d been planning on staying a few nights but the place was full up and they had to put the extras in this little building away from the main action where all of Chicago Mike’s friends were so he just decided to head back to the yard from whence he came and find a westbound train. He had to ask one of the yard clerks for help. Chicago Mike, a scruffy sixty-six years of age, could remember the days when rail workers had been the enemy. No more. They hated management so much for always trying to bust their unions that they were happy to help ’bos with information. A railroad dick tonight even walked Chicago Mike to a newish car and helped him up on it. Long long ago — back in the days when he still had teeth and had an erection at least once a day — Chicago Mike had busted his knee up hopping a freight and he’d moved real slow and ginger ever since.
He was ensconced now for the night. Tucked into a corner of the big car. He’d taken an apple and a Snickers from the Salvation Army. He figured these’d make a good breakfast. He had his .38 stuffed under his right thigh. Sometimes, you’d fall asleep and find yourself with unwanted company, a ’bo with bad manners or murderous intent. There were gangs on the rails these days, and they’d kill you just for pleasure. He threw his blanket over his legs and hunched down inside his heavily layered clothes. If it got real cold, he’d get inside his sleeping bag. Two things a ’bo needed to learn real good and they were patience and how to deal with loneliness. Long time ago somebody had taught him how to summon and while most ’bos didn’t believe in it, nobody knew better than Chicago Mike just how real summoning was...
He wasn’t sure just when the kid hopped on board, Chicago Mike. He’d been in a kind of half-sleep, a sweet soft summer dream of he and his wife Kitty on the pier in Chicago 1958, just after he’d put in his Navy years. Could there ever have been a woman as pretty and gentle and loving as Kitty? Fourteen years they’d been together until that night, dancing in his arms on a dance boat, she’d slumped forward and died. Aneurysm, the docs said later. And so, after burying her, Michael Thomas Callahan, respectable purveyor of appliances to the public in Oak Park, Illinois, became Chicago Mike, rider of the rails. For years, Chicago Mike believed that only in distance and the violent metal thrashing of speeding boxcars could he find solace... And then he’d learned about summoning...
The kid huddled in the far corner of the big, empty car with the wooden floor and the metal walls defaced in spots with some singularly uncreative graffiti. Trouble, Chicago Mike knew instantly. He’d been too long atraveling not to recognize it. Trouble. He wondered what the kid had done. Robbery, at least. You didn’t hop a freight for anything less. Maybe even murder.
Chicago Mike took out his long black flashlight and beamed it on the kid. “You all right, son?”
“Just leave me alone, old man.”
“Most of the people on the rails, they try to be friendly and help each other.”
“Good for them.”
Chicago Mike clipped off his flashlight. In a few minutes, the train started to move. And then they were in the prairie night and really rolling. Chicago Mike worried vaguely about the kid jumping him — scared people were dangerous people, and this kid was definitely scared. But he wasn’t worried enough to stay awake. Chicago Mike dozed off.