Two Trains Running

With a cautious step, I rounded the bend. I should, I suppose, have backed away, but things would doubtless have gone the same had I done so. Stupid was standing between me and two fritters floating head-high in the passage, trembling as if responding to some impalpable current. I spoke his name. His tail wagged, but his ears were laid flat, and before I could speak again, he leaped twisting in the air and snagged one of the fritters by its edge, dragged it down and began worrying it, holding it between his paws and tearing. The thing emitted a faint squeal, like air leaking from a balloon, and as Stupid continued to kill it, the second fritter slid downward, edge first, like a falling Frisbee, and plastered itself to the side of his head. Stupid yelped, rolled onto his side, trying to pry the thing loose, and succeeded in dislodging it; but it settled on him once again, on his flank. He struggled to his feet, snapping at it, his body bent almost double. Annie had told me that dogs were less sensitive to the fritters than people—they could withstand quite a bit of poison, whereas a touch would kill a man. But apparently Stupid had absorbed close to his limit. When the fritter lifted from him, he staggered to the side, his lips drawn up in a silent snarl, wobbled, then toppled off the limb and down through the leaves without a sound. I had no time to grieve, for I found myself confronting the fritter that had killed him. It was not, as I’d thought, a uniform color, but mottled with whitish patches, and it had the aspect not of an entire creature, but instead seemed a piece of one, a slimy organ that might have been removed from the body of some diseased monstrosity. Its edges rippled, the way the edges of a crepe will ripple from the heat of the griddle beneath, and I took the trembling it displayed for agitation. Full of dread, I eased a pace backward, and then, recognizing I was done for any way it shook out, not wanting it to touch me, I jumped through the leafy wall on my left and fell.

If I had jumped to my right, the direction in which Stupid had vanished, I would have fallen to my death. But instinct or luck directed me the opposite way, and I fell only about ten feet, crashing through the leafy ceiling of the room belonging to an elderly hobo with hair and beard gone almost totally white, whom I knew as SLC, which stood for Salt Lake City, his home—I hadn’t spoken to him since my arrival and had not bothered to learn his real name. I landed half on his mattress, my head bonking on the floor, but though I took a pretty good whack, I didn’t lose consciousness. SLC was sitting on some pillows in the corner of the room, calm as you please, eating a bowl of soup. When I managed to shake off the dizziness and sat up, he said, “Thanks for dropping in,” and chuckled.

I noticed he was wearing a threadbare gray suit, a dingy white shirt, and a wide silk foulard tie of a style that I’d only seen in old black-and-white movies. He saw me registering this, apparently, because he said, “Thought I’d put on my buryin’ suit…just in case. Them fritters gonna get me, I’ll be prepared.” He peered at me and blinked rapidly. “Reckon they almost got you. Was there a bunch of ’em?”

“Just one.” My head started throbbing. I thought about Stupid and all the bad good times we’d shared, and felt sadness wadding up in my chest. I glanced at the hole I’d put in SLC’s ceiling, expecting to see the fritter that had killed Stupid and maybe some of his pals. Nothing but leaves and shadow.

“Might as well get comfortable,” SLC said. “Gonna be a long day.” In his shabby finery, with stiffened hanks of white hair hanging to his shoulders, his food-stained beard, and his bony wrists and ankles, he looked like an elf gone to seed.

“I ain’t stayin’ here,” I told him, and made to stand; but the effort got me dizzy again.

“Wouldn’t be surprised you had yourself a concussion,” SLC said. He slurped up another spoonful of soup. “I took a knock on the head once left me confused for a week.”

“I’ll be all right in a minute,” I said.

I had a look around SLC’s room. Taped to one wall, almost entirely covering it, were dozens of dog-eared and faded Polaroids, most photographs of natural scenery. Probably places he’d traveled. There were a few books and magazines scattered on the floor beside his mattress. Some clothes neatly piled. Two old pipe tobacco tins that likely contained sewing materials and such. Tins of Sterno and a stack of canned tomato soup. The whole place smelled like ripe hobo.

Taking stock of SLC’s meager possessions steadied me, and I gave standing another try, but I was still too dizzy. I was scared and pissed off—I wanted to get back to Annie—and I said, “I don’t know why the fuck you just sittin’ round waitin’ to die, man.”

“That’s all I’d be doin’ things was normal,” said SLC. “Sit or stand, don’t make much difference.”

“What I can’t figure is, how come people don’t move outa the way of these things.”