All the Earth, Thrown to the Sky

29

I got an arm around one side of Daggart, and Floyd got the other side. Me and him jumped with the old man, hit the ground, and tumbled some. It was grassy there and kind of wooded, so we had a soft landing and were partly hid behind the trees. The old man took the fall well enough. We helped him up and he seemed okay. Worst I got was a mouthful of dirt and grass. After all the sand I’d seen, that bit of grass was pretty nice. Back in Oklahoma, green was as rare as a solid meal.

Behind us, Jane and Tony jumped and landed safely. When it was all said and done, we managed to get off without breaking a leg or twisting an ankle.

“Now,” Floyd said. “You see the tracks on the other side of the trees? I’ve caught that line before. It goes to Tyler. It don’t stop once it gets rolling, so that’s the one you want. It’ll take you all the way in. There’s enough of a slant on the other side of them trees, you get to moving downhill pretty quick, you can make the boxcar easy. It’s kind of like a porch that leads down to it. It’s high up and slanted about right, though you got to get off to a good run.”

“I can’t run,” Daggart said. “Maybe I can just roll down and onto it.”

“You’d roll down and under it,” Jane said.

“Hell, I know that,” Daggart said. “I was kidding. Didn’t you know I was kidding?”

“Good,” Jane said. “You’re up to joking. That’s an improvement.”

“All I’m saying,” Daggart said, “is I’ve caught it here before. I just don’t know I can do it today. I don’t know I want to go to Tyler.”

“You’re just being contrary,” Jane said.

“A little, I reckon,” he said. “Maybe it’s because I feel like death warmed over with a match, and the heat’s fading.”

“We’ll stay with you,” I said. “At least until we can get you settled somewhere.”

“Ain’t no place to settle me,” he said.

“We’ll do what we can,” I said.

He sat down with his back against a little pine and looked down the tracks. A few seconds later, he said, “Guess going with you folks is a mite better than just sitting here in these trees and dying.”

“You got to think more positive,” Jane said. “You got to see what’s down the road a bit.”

“I done seen what’s down there. There’s just more road.”

In the cover of the trees, we squatted and waited, the old man still sitting with his back against the pine.

Up a ways ahead of us, I saw there was at least a half-dozen hoboes in the trees and brush, waiting on that train. They looked back at us in a manner that made me a little nervous. We wouldn’t be the only ones riding, and there might be some trouble if we weren’t careful.

“Try and get the same boxcar, if you can,” Floyd said. “That way you can watch out for one another if there’s someone else in the car that might take a mind to bother you. But let me tell you, they got a gun, a knife, it’s best to give them what they want or jump.”

“That won’t be much,” Jane said. “Our bag of goods and a few dollars is all we got.”

“It ain’t worth dying over,” Floyd said.

“You didn’t give them sandwiches away the other night,” Tony said.

“No,” Floyd said. “But I was meaner than them, and I had a gun. I ain’t proud of that gun. It ain’t brought me much good, except that time the other night. A gun just seems to make things go bad. You start to depend on it and give it too much respect. I wish I hadn’t never seen one.”

“Is that the train?” Daggart said.

We looked down the track. A train was moving out of the station.

“That’s the one heading southeast,” Floyd said. “The one you want.”

“Could the line have changed since you rode it last?” Jane said.

“Sure it could have,” Floyd said. “But you don’t want to think about that, do you? But you miss it, there’s tomorrow, about this same time. It leaves out when the Fort Worth train comes in. I know that much from having been here and known people who’ve ridden it.”

“I guess it’s in for a penny, in for a pound,” Jane said. “Bend down.”

Floyd studied her for a moment; then he bent closer to her face and she kissed him on the cheek.

“Thanks for being so kind,” she said.

“Pass it along,” Floyd said. “I ain’t passed near enough of it along before, so you do it for me. Say you will.”

“We’ll do that,” I said.

Floyd shook my and Tony’s hands. He bent down and shook Daggart’s hand. The old man was still resting against that pine tree. Floyd touched his shoulder.

“Goodbye and good luck,” Floyd said, and with that he moved across the track well in front of the oncoming train, turned, and waved at us, and then the train’s engine passed in front of him, followed by the train, and then we couldn’t see him anymore.