Two Trains Running

Her irises were a deep, dark blue, the same hard color that held at the top of a midafternoon winter sky, edged with bits of topaz and gold like the geometric scraps you find inside a kaleidoscope. “I want…” he said, and then, a little fazed by her closeness, lost track of things.

“Well, there you go,” she said. “I almos’ believed that one.”

The freight rolled eastward. Grace’s arms and legs were tomboyish, lean, the architecture of her ribs plain to see, but her breasts were heavy, the skin soft as crepe and so pale that the veins showed through. Blue highways on the map of a snowy country. She braced on his chest with one hand, straddled his hips and fitted her blood-colored bush to him. The tightness of her took his breath. “I know you like that,” she said, straightening above him. “I can tell jus’ how much you like it.” She reached back and pulled the sleeping bag cover up behind her as if it were a vampire’s cape, shrouded herself in it so that only wintry blue eyes and scarlet hair were visible of the terrible white creature she was pretending to be. Then with a fang-bearing hiss, she sank down atop him, enclosing them in a rattling darkness that lasted all the way to Missoula.

That night they showered up and ate at a mission in Missoula, then skipped out on the preaching and spent much of the next day obtaining emergency food stamps, which they sold for fifty cents on the dollar to a mom-and-pop grocery. They bought supplies, mostly wine, and Grace found herself some clean clothes and a used knapsack at the Goodwill. During rush hour she worked the sign, stood at a busy intersection holding a piece of cardboard upon which she’d written Please Help Me Get Home, and took in close to a hundred dollars—that gave them more than two hundred to travel on, even after spending twenty-six on a motel with In-Room Triple XXX Adult Videos.

“Why cain’t we do like we done in Spokane?” she asked the following morning as they labored up a hill west of town, moving through a stand of old-growth pine, heading for a section of track that climbed a steep grade. “Whyn’t we jus’ go in the freight yard and find us a car?”

“Spokane’s a pussy yard,” Madcat said. “Any damn fool can catch out of Spokane. In Missoula the bulls’ll bust your head open, then run you in for trespassing.”

It was good traveling weather, cold and clear, gusting a bit. Patches of sunstruck needles like complicated golden ideograms trembled on the forest floor, and every so often the dark green pine-tops would lift in a flow of wind and sway all to one side with the ponderous slowness of dancing bears. When they reached the tracks Madcat had Grace tie off the cuffs of her jeans with an extra pair of shoelaces so they wouldn’t catch on anything. “We gon’ be looking for a grain car,” he said. “Got a little porch on the front end where two can ride. Now when it comes it won’t be going real fast, but it’s going faster than it looks, so don’t try and jump on it. You gotta respect the steel. You go throwing yourself at it, you liable to wind up underneath the train. What you do is, you grab hold of the hand rails and let your feet drag along in the gravel till you feel under control. Then you can haul yourself up.”

The side of the hill had been cut away, leaving a cliff of pinkish stone looming above the tracks. They sat with their backs against it, gazing out over the forested slope. Madcat sipped from a jug of Iron Horse and Grace fired up a hand-rolled, then exhaled a glowing cloud of smoke that boiled furiously for an instant in the strong sun.

“Where’s this train taking us?” she asked.

“Klamath Falls, Oregon. Got a big switchyard there. Won’t be hard finding something heading for Tucson.”

“I cain’t understand why you won’t at leas’ consider going to California,” she said querulously.

“’Cause I’m going to Tucson. Cops there don’t give a damn ’bout a few tramps drinking their wine and smoking their dope. And that’s how I like things.”

“Yeah, but if you’s to come to California, my uncle might could he’p you with your legal problems.”

“Your uncle got himself a cement pond?” he asked.

She looked at him askance. “What you talkin’ ’bout?”

“I want to know if he’s got a cement pond, ’cause the only hillbilly bitch I know’s got a rich uncle in LA’s named Ellie Mae Clampett.” He had another swallow of wine and felt a sudden ebullient rush, as if that swallow had enabled him to commune with the group consciousness of drunkards, to tap into their reservoir of well-being. “I guess it’s possible a homeless redneck female talks like you, all ungrammatical and shit, could have herself a doting uncle with a big bank account. And I suppose this uncle could have such a fine liberal sensibility, he’d be inclined to extend himself on behalf of the unemployable alcoholic who’s fucking his niece. But I gotta tell you, it seems like a long shot.”

She flipped away her cigarette and stared at him meanly. “You don’t believe me ’bout my uncle? You sayin’ I’m lyin’?”