Two Trains Running

The girl turns her head away, holds up an arm to ward off a blow; she’s crying, cursing him softly. The other three boys—less flamboyantly accessorized versions of the Carter doll—laugh and do some high-fiving.

“C’mon, Carter,” says Jailbait. “Don’t be an asshole.”

It was as if a switch had been triggered in Carter’s brain, releasing an icy fluid. He grows calm, mutters a final word of warning, and sits back down. The chunky girl lifts her head and glares at Jailbait.

It doesn’t matter what sort of question I ask the crusties, I realize. I could ask about their favorite TV show and tap into the same group dynamic, the same pattern of sullenness evolving into fury, then lapsing into drunken silence. I’m curious about them, but they’re impervious to curiosity. They’re floating on some terminal wavelength that’s beaming the length and breadth of the country, controlling them as they slide from exotic chemical peaks to troughs of low self-esteem. Another tragic cliché being woven into the decaying electric tapestry of the times.

I tell them I have to go; I’m hoping to catch out from the switchyard across the river in Vancouver, Washington, in a couple of hours; the guy I’m riding with says they’re putting together an eastbound.

“That’s a pussy yard,” Carter says, giving me a challenging stare; it’s the first time he’s spoken directly to me for an hour. “Fuckin’ old lady could catch out of Vancouver.”

A babble erupts from the other boys—they’re throwing out the names of various yards, ranking them according to degree of difficulty. Vidalia’s no problem. Likewise Dilworth. The bulls at Klamath Falls have gotten nasty. Salt Lake City’s not too bad, except for all the pedophiles.

“You think you know something, don’t you?” Carter says. “You got it all figured out.”

This confuses me. I can’t decide if Carter’s smarter than he looks, if he has a sense of what I’m thinking, or if this is just another bellicose twitch. I’d prefer to believe the former—it would be nice to be surprised.

“Figured what out?”

Carter comes up into a half-crouch, balanced on one hand; he’s trying to look menacing, doing a decent job of it. “Fuck you,” he says.

I’m almost drunk enough to respond. Carter doesn’t really want to fight, though I’m sure he could get into it; he just wants to win the moment—it’s all he’s got worth risking a fight over. Could be he’s a rotten kid and deserves his crummy life. But I don’t need to make things worse for him. Nor am I eager to have him and his pals dance on my head.

The six of them straggle up the embankment, away from me. Five of them at the crest, silhouetted against the backdrop of the convenience store. It looked as if the neon sign were the sky and the drugged, lost children were the newly aligned constellations of a hellish American midnight zodiac, and that Carter, stationed slightly below the rest, staring bitterly back at me, was the rising sign.

Madcat and I are somewhere in Montana, I think. One of those little prairie towns that at night show like a minor cluster of stars too disorganized to suggest a clever shape. The train has stopped, but I can’t see any signs from where we’re resting, just low, unlit buildings and a scrap yard. I’d ask Madcat, but he’s asleep. We’re sitting on the rear porchlike section of a grain car, bundled up against the early morning chill, and I worry about whether we should get off and hide in the weeds in case they check the cars. Then the train lurches forward, and we’re rolling again. As we gather speed I spot two men jogging along the tracks behind us, trying for another car. In the electric blue of the predawn darkness, they’re barely more than shadows, but I have an impression of raggedness, and I’m pretty sure one has a bushy beard. FTRA, I think. Officer Grandinetti is right, he just hasn’t taken his vision of the gang far enough. The FTRA are everywhere. Mystical, interpenetrating, sinister. I’ve asked one too many questions, and from his fastness deep in the Bitterroots, the criminal mastermind Daniel Boone has focused his monstrous intellect upon me, sent thought like a beam of fire from a crystal to sting the minds of his assassins and direct them to me.