Somebody Owes Me Money

33

We stood in snow up to our knees in the ditch beside the tracks, Abbie leaning most of her weight on me. The train was taking forever to get here, just moseying along as though it was out for a little jog around the neighborhood, not going anywhere in particular.

At least the hoods had also stopped, and were also standing around in the ditch, watching the train. Four of them, all on our side of the track.

My feet were freezing. Abbie was protected by those boots of hers, but I was soaked and freezing from the knees down, and shivering from the knees up. And stupid from the neck up, since I had very obviously made a bad mistake coming in here instead of continuing straight on to that bar, where maybe I could have phoned the local police, or at least found a cab handy. Now Abbie could barely walk, we were moving deeper and deeper into the kind of darkness in which those four back there would have no problems about taking care of us for good and all, and to make matters worse, as the train ambled by them they began jumping up onto it, standing between cars or on the narrow platforms outside the closed passenger car doors.

“Abbie!” I shouted. “They’re cheating!”

It was obvious what they meant to do. They’d ride the train up to where we stood, and then jump on us. Four against one and a half, which is about what we added up to, and the outcome was not in doubt.

“Oh, Chet. Chet, what are we going to do?”

None of them had gotten on the first car, or in the space between cars number one and number two. I said, “Honey, we’ve got to get on that train, too. It’s our only chance.”

“I can’t walk!”

“You’ve got to! Come on, now.”

I half-dragged her up the gravel slope, and saw the engineer of the train looking at us in open-mouthed bewilderment. His big diesel engine trundled by, and he looked down at the top of our heads, and I’m sure he kept looking back at us after he’d gone on by. I’m sure of it, but I didn’t look to check. I saw a chrome railing coming toward us, and in a car farther on I saw the first of the hoods, with his gun out.

I had one arm around Abbie’s waist, holding tight. She had both arms around my neck. I was about as nimble as a man in ankle chains wearing a straitjacket, but if I didn’t connect right with that chrome handle it was all over.

Here it came. Here it was.

I stuck my free hand out, grabbed that bar, and held on.

The train took me away.

Funny how fast it was going all of a sudden. And my feet were dragging in the gravel, while simultaneously my arm was being pulled out of its socket. I pulled, and pulled, and pulled, and Abbie babbled a million things in my ear, and I finally got my right foot up onto that narrow ledge of platform, and then it was possible to get the rest of me up onto the train, and there I stood, with Abbie hanging on me as I held to the train by one hand and one foot.

Something went zzzt.

That louse hanging on the next car was shooting at us!

“Abbie!” I shouted. “They’re shooting at us! Get in between the cars!”

“How?”

“I don’t know! Just do it!”

So she did it, I don’t know how. It involved putting her elbows in my nose, one at a time, and spending several hours standing on my foot — the one foot I had attached to the train — but eventually she was standing on something or other between the cars, gasping and panting but alive.

So was I, for the moment. There’d been several more zzzts and a ping or two, but the train was rocking back and forth so much it would have been a miracle if he’d hit me. I was a moving target and he was a moving shooter, and since we were on different cars our movements were not exactly synchronized.

Still, I wasn’t all that happy to be out there in the open with somebody shooting bullets at me, no matter how much the odds were in my favor. Some gambles I’d rather not take. So I swung around the edge of the car and joined Abbie amidships.

It was very strange in here. We had three walls and no floor. A sort of accordion-pleated thing connected the end doorways in the two cars, so we couldn’t get inside, but fortunately the ends of the cars were full of handles and wheels and ladder rungs to hold on to, and there was a narrow lip along the bottom edge of each car to stand on, so it was possible to survive, but very scary to look down between your legs and see railroad ties going by at twenty or thirty miles an hour under your heels. I spent little time looking down.

In fact, I spent more time looking up. A metal ladder ran up the back of the car, and I wondered if we’d be safer on top than here. I called to Abbie, “Wait here! I’m going up!”

She nodded. She looked bushed, and no wonder.

I clambered up the ladder, my arms and legs feeling very heavy, and at the top I discovered that the top of a railroad car sways a lot more than the bottom does. It was impossible for me to stand, impossible to walk. So I inched along on my belly, and no matter how cold and windy it was, no matter how icy and wet my feet were, no matter how I ached all over, no matter how many people were after me with guns, I must say it did feel good to lie down.

Still, I was there for more than that. I crawled along the top of the car for a little ways, and it did seem safe up here, so I edged back and called down to Abbie to come on up. She did, slowly, with me helping her at the top, and when she was sprawled out on the roof, I yelled in her ear, “I’m going exploring! Don’t move!”

“Don’t worry.” She shut her eyes and let her head rest on her folded arms.

I stuck my mouth close to her ear. “Don’t fall asleep and roll off!”

She nodded, but I wasn’t entirely convinced. I patted her shoulder doubtfully, and then took off.

It didn’t take long to get to the other end of the car, and when I did, there was the pot-shooter, resting now between the cars. Waiting for the train to pull in at a station, no doubt. Then he and the others could just run along the platform to where we were, shoot us, and disappear.

Well, maybe, and on the other hand, maybe not. I pushed back from the edge and slowly sat up. I didn’t want to take my shoe off, wet and cold though it was, but I didn’t have much choice. So I took it off, and my foot promptly went numb. I wasn’t sure that was a good sign, but it was better than the stinging ache I’d been feeling up till now.

I lay on my belly again and crawled back to the end of the car. He was still there, feet straddling the open space as he faced outward. At the moment his head was bent a bit because he was trying to light a cigarette.

Perfect. I put one hand on the top rung of the ladder here to support me, took careful aim, and swung the heel of the shoe around in a great big circle that started in outer space and ended on the back of his head.

Lovely. He popped out like a grape seed out of a grape, and landed in a snowbank. The last I saw of him was his feet kicking in the air, black against the gray of the snow.

One down. Three to go.

Sure.

I put my shoe back on and looked across at the next car, trying to figure out how to get over there, and a head popped into view two cars away. And after the head, an arm. And on the end of the arm, a gun. It flashed, the gun did, and I faintly heard the sound of the shot. It missed me, but I wasn’t encouraged. I quick hunched around and started crawling back the other way.

Something went p-tiying beside my right elbow. I looked, and saw a new scratch in the roof there.

He was getting too close. I hurriedly crawled back to the pile of laundry I knew was Abbie and shook her shoulder. “We’ve got to go down again!”

“Wha? Wha?” She lifted a shaky head and showed me bleary eyes.

“One of them came up! Back there! He’s shooting!”

“Oh, Chet, I’m so tired.”

“Come on, honey. Come on.”

I herded her onto the ladder, with her about to fall twice, but the more she moved the more she woke up, and when she finally put her weight on the bad ankle on the ladder she woke up completely. She also let out a healthy yowl.

“That’s right,” I said. “Now get down and let me down.”

“Oh, wow, that hurt.”

“I’m sure it did. Go down, go down.”

She went down, and I followed her. As my head was going down past the level of the roof I saw that guy back there on his feet. I stayed where I was, just high enough to see him. Now what?

He braced himself. He thought it over. He shook his head and got down on his knees. He shook his fist at himself and got up again. He braced himself. He ran forward. He leaped from the front of his car to the back of the next car. He made it, and the car he’d landed on jounced. He teetered way to the left, his arms pinwheeling. The car jounced again, and he teetered way to the right, his arms pinwheeling. The car wiggled, and he teetered every which way, arms and one leg pinwheeling. He got down on one knee, down on hands and knees. He’d made it. And the car waggled, and he rolled over onto his side and fell off the train.

“Well, I’ll be darned,” I said. I looked down at Abbie, asleep in midair between the cars. “We’re going back up!” I shouted.

“Oh, nooo!”

“Oh, yes! Come on!”

She grumbled, she complained, she said unkind things, but she came on, and when she got to the top, I said, “Now we go back down again.”

She roused enough to stare at me. “Are you out of your mind? I hope they kill you, you crazy—”

“Listen to me. We’re going down the other side. The last two are on this side of the train, so we’ll go down the other side and jump off and they won’t be able to see us go.”

“Sure,” she said.

“Just do it,” I told her.

She did it. There was no ladder on this side, but there was a window ledge, there were handles and wheels, there were all sorts of things to climb on. As easy as falling off a building.

So we finally got back down again, both of us, and I spent some time instructing Abbie how to jump. I told her to stay loose, keep her arms and legs loose, don’t stiffen up, roll when she hit, try to land in a snowbank, and all sorts of good advice like that. She nodded continually in a dull sort of way, meaning she wasn’t hearing a thing I was saying. All I could do was hope some of it was seeping through into her subconscious and would show a result when we made our leap.

Finally I gave up on her and looked out from between the cars. We were on an overpass now, a deserted street below us. Beyond, the land fell away in a steep slope down from the tracks, with the rears of supermarkets and gas stations at the bottom.

“Up ahead,” I said. “It’s a snow-covered slope, it should be good for us. If there aren’t a lot of old tin cans under the snow. When I give the word, you jump. And remember to jump at an angle, jump as much as possible in the same direction the train is going. And stay loose when you hit. And roll. You got that?”

She nodded. She was sound asleep.

Here came the slope. “Jump!” I shouted, and pushed her off the train. Then I leaped after her.

I must admit it was exhilarating out there for a second or two. In midair, sailing along high above the world, the cold wind whistling around my orange-capped head, a very Jules Verne feeling to it. And then the feeling became more physical as my feet touched the snowy slope and I discovered I was running at thirty miles an hour.

I can’t run at thirty miles an hour, nobody can. I did the only thing I could do instead, I fell over on my face, did several loop-the-loops, and rolled madly down the hill, bringing up against somebody’s trash barrel at the bottom. Brrooommm, it went, and I raised myself up a little, and Abbie crashed into me. And I crashed into the barrel again.

“Oh, come on, honey,” I said. “Watch where you’re careening.”

“Growf,” he said, and wrapped his hand around my neck.

It wasn’t Abbie.