by Stephen King
“I’m never going to Back Half. Never.”
He put one hand over the side of the S.S. Pokey, splayed his fingers, and watched four tiny wakes speed away behind him into the dark. He had done this before, in his grandfather’s little aluminum fishing skiff with its putt-putting two-stroke engine, many times, but he had never—not even as a four-year-old to whom everything was new and amazing—been so overwhelmed by the sight of those momentary grooves. It came to him, with the force of a revelation, that you had to have been imprisoned to fully understand what freedom was.
“I’ll die before I let them take me back.”
He understood that this was true, and that it might come to that, but he also understood that right now it had not. Luke Ellis raised his cut and dripping hands to the night, feeling free air rush past them, and began to cry.
22
He dozed off sitting on the midships bench, his chin on his chest, his hands dangling between his legs, his bare feet in the little puddle of water at the bottom of the boat, and might have still been sleeping as the Pokey carried him past the next stop on his improbable pilgrimage if not for the sound of another train horn, this one coming not from the riverbank but ahead and above. It was much louder, too—not a lonely honk but an imperative WHAAA that brought Luke around with such a jerk that he almost went sprawling backward into the stern. He raised his hands in an instinctive gesture of protection, realizing it was pathetic even as he did it. The horn quit and was supplanted by metallic squeals and vast hollow rumblings. Luke grabbed the sides of the boat where it narrowed toward the prow, and looked ahead with wild eyes, sure he was about to be run down.
It wasn’t quite dawn, but the sky had begun to brighten, putting a sheen on the river, which was much wider now. A quarter of a mile downstream, a freight train was crossing a trestle, slowing down. As he watched, Luke saw boxcars marked New England Land Express, Massachusetts Red, a couple of car carriers, several tankers, one marked Canadian CleanGas and another Virginia Util-X. He passed beneath the trestle and raised a hand against the soot that came sifting down. A couple of clinkers splashed into the water on either side of his craft.
Luke grabbed the paddle and began to angle the rowboat toward the righthand shore, where he could now see a few sad-looking buildings with boarded-up windows and a crane that looked rusty and long disused. The bank was littered with paper trash, old tires, and discarded cans. Now the train he had passed beneath was over on that side, still slowing down, screeching and banging. Vic Destin, his friend Rolf’s father, said there had never been a mode of transportation as dirty and noisy as transportation by rail. He said it with satisfaction rather than disgust, which surprised neither of the boys. Mr. Destin was into trains bigtime.
Luke had almost reached the end of Maureen’s steps, and now it was actual steps he was looking for. Red ones. Not real red, though, Avery told him. Not anymore. She says they’re more like pink these days. And when Luke spotted them just five minutes after passing beneath the trestle, they were hardly even that. Although there was some pinky-red color left on the risers, the steps themselves were mostly gray. They rose from the water’s edge to the top of the embankment, maybe a hundred and fifty feet up. He paddled for them, and the keel of his little ship came aground on one just below the surface.
Luke debarked slowly, feeling as creaky as an old man. He thought of tying the S.S. Pokey up—enough rust had scaled off the posts to either side of the steps to tell him others had done that, probably fishermen—but the remainder of the rope tethered to the bow looked too short.
He let go of the boat, watched it start to drift away as the mild current grabbed it, then saw his footgear, with the socks tucked into them, still sitting on the stern seat. He dropped to his knees on the submerged step and managed to grab the rowboat just in time. He drew it past him hand over hand until he could grab his sneakers. Then he murmured “Thanks, Pokey,” and let it go.
He climbed a couple of steps and sat down to put on his shoes. They had dried pretty well, but now the rest of him was soaked. It hurt his scraped back to laugh, but he laughed anyway. He climbed the stairs that used to be red, pausing every now and then to rest his legs. Maureen’s scarf—in the morning light he could see that it was purple—came loose from around his waist. He thought of leaving it, then cinched it tight again. He didn’t see how they could follow him this far, but the town was a logical destination, and he didn’t want to leave a marker they might find, if only by chance. Besides, now the scarf felt important. It felt . . . he groped for a word that was at least close. Not lucky; talismanic. Because it was from her, and she was his savior.
By the time he got to the top of the steps, the sun was over the horizon, big and red, casting a bright glow on a tangle of railroad tracks. The freight beneath which he’d passed was now stopped in the Dennison River Bend switching yard. As the engine that had hauled it trundled slowly away, a bright yellow switch-engine pulled up to the rear of the train and would soon start it moving again, shoving it into the hump yard, where trains were broken up and reassembled.
The ins and outs of freight transport hadn’t been taught at the Broderick School, where the faculty was interested in more esoteric subjects like advanced math, climatology, and the later English poets; train lessons had been imparted by Vic Destin, balls-to-the-wall train freak and proud possessor of a huge Lionel set-up in his basement man cave. Luke and Rolf had spent a lot of hours there as his willing acolytes. Rolf liked running the model trains; the info about actual trains he could take or leave. Luke liked both. If Vic Destin had been a stamp collector, Luke would have examined his forays into philately with the same interest. It was just how he was built. He supposed that made him a bit on the creepy side (he had certainly caught Alicia Destin looking at him in a way which suggested that from time to time), but right now he blessed Mr. Destin’s excited lectures.
Maureen, on the other hand, knew next to nothing about trains, only that Dennison River Bend had a depot, and she thought the trains that came through it went to all sorts of places. What those places might be, she did not know.
“She thinks if you make it that far, maybe you can hop a freight,” Avery had said.
Well, he had made it this far. Whether or not he could actually hop a freight was another matter. He had seen it done in the movies, and with ease, but most movies were full of shit. It might be better to go to whatever passed for a downtown in this north country burg. Find the police station if there was one, call the State Police if there wasn’t. Only call with what? He had no cell, and pay phones were an endangered species. If he did find one, what was he supposed to drop into the coin slot? One of his Institute tokens? He supposed he could call 911 for free, but was that the right move? Something told him no.
He stood where he was in a day that was brightening entirely too fast for his liking, tugging nervously at the scarf around his waist. There were drawbacks to calling or going to the cops this close to the Institute; he could see them even in his current state of fear and exhaustion. The police would find out in short order that his parents were dead, murdered, and he was the most likely suspect. Another drawback was Dennison River Bend itself. Towns only existed if there was money coming in, money was their lifeblood, and where did Dennison River Bend’s money come from? Not from this trainyard, which would be largely automated. Not from those sad-looking buildings he’d seen. They might once have been factories, but no more. On the other hand, there was some sort of installation out there in one of the unincorporated townships (“government stuff,” the locals would say, nodding wisely to each other in the barber shop or the town square), and the people who worked there had money. Men and women who came to town, and not just to patronize that Outlaw Country place on the nights when some shitkicking band or other was playing. They brought in dollars. And maybe the Institute was contributing to the town’s welfare. They might have funded a community center, or a sports field, or kicked in for road maintenance. Anything that jeopardized those do
llars would be looked at with skepticism and displeasure. For all Luke knew, the town officials might be getting regular payoffs to make sure the Institute didn’t attract attention from the wrong people. Was that paranoid thinking? Maybe. And maybe not.
Luke was dying to blow the whistle on Mrs. Sigsby and her minions, but he thought the best, safest thing he could do right now was get as far away from the Institute as fast as he could.
The switch-engine was pushing the current bunch of freight cars up the hill trainyard people called the hump. There were two rocking chairs on the porch of the yard’s tidy little office building. A man wearing jeans and bright red rubber boots sat in one of them, reading a newspaper and drinking coffee. When the engine driver hit the horn, the guy put his paper aside and trotted down the steps, pausing to wave up at a glassed-in booth on steel stilts. A guy inside waved back. That would be the hump tower operator, and the guy in the red boots would be the pin-puller.
Rolf’s dad used to mourn over the moribund state of American rail transport, and now Luke saw his point. There were tracks heading in every direction, but it looked as though only four or five sets were currently operational. The others were flecked with rust, weeds growing up between the ties. There were stranded boxcars and flatcars on some of these, and Luke used them for cover, moving in on the office. He could see a clipboard hanging from a nail on one of the porch support posts. If that was today’s transport schedule, he wanted to read it.
He squatted behind an abandoned boxcar close to the rear of the tower, watching from beneath as the pin-puller went to the hump track. The newly arrived freight was at the top of the hump now, and all of the operator’s attention would be fixed there. If Luke was spotted, he’d probably be dismissed as just a kid who was, like Mr. Destin, a balls-to-the-wall train freak. Of course most kids didn’t come out at five-thirty in the morning to look at trains no matter how balls to the wall they were. Especially kids who were soaked in river water and sporting a badly mutilated ear.
No choice. He had to see what was on that clipboard.
Mr. Red Boots stepped forward as the first car in line rolled slowly past him, and pulled the pin coupling it to the next. The box—STATE OF MAINE PRODUCTS emblazoned on the side in red, white, and blue—went rolling down the hill, pulled by gravity, its speed controlled by radar-operated retarders. The hump tower operator yanked a lever, and STATE OF MAINE PRODUCTS diverted onto Track 4.
Luke walked around the boxcar and ambled toward the station office, hands in his pockets. He didn’t breathe freely until he was below the tower and out of the operator’s sightline. Besides, Luke thought, if he’s doing his job right, he’s got eyes on the current job and nowhere else.
The next car, a tanker, was sent to Track 3. Two car carriers also went to Track 3. They bumped and clashed and rolled. Vic Destin’s Lionel trains were pretty quiet, but this place was a looneybin of sound. Luke guessed that houses closer than a mile would get an earful three or four times each day. Maybe they get used to it, he thought. That was hard to believe until he thought of the kids going about their lives every day in the Institute—eating big meals, drinking nips, smoking the occasional cigarette, goofing on the playground, and running around at night, yelling their fool heads off. Luke guessed you could get used to anything. It was a horrible idea.
He reached the porch of the office, still well out of view of the tower operator, and the pin-puller’s back was to him. Luke didn’t think he’d turn around. “Lose focus in a job like that, and you’re apt to lose a hand,” Mr. Destin had told the boys once.
The computer sheet on top of the clipboard didn’t contain much; the columns for Tracks 2 and 5 bore only two words: NOTHING SCHEDULED. Track 1 had a freight to New Brunswick, Canada, scheduled in at 5 PM—no help there. Track 4 was due out for Burlington and Montreal at 2:30 PM. Better, but still not good enough; if he wasn’t gone by 2:30, he’d almost certainly be in big trouble. Track 3, where the pin-puller was now sending the New England Land Express box Luke had observed crossing the trestle, looked good. The cut-off for Train 4297—the time after which the station manager would not (theoretically at least) accept more freight—was 9 AM, and at 10 AM, ’97 was scheduled out of Dennison River Bend for Portland/ME, Portsmouth/NH, and Sturbridge/MA. That last town had to be at least three hundred miles away, maybe a lot more.
Luke retreated to the abandoned boxcar and watched as the cars continued to roll down the hump onto various tracks, some of them for the trains that would be heading out that day, others that would simply be left on various sidings until they were needed.
The pin-puller finished his job and climbed the switch-engine’s step to talk to the driver. The ops guy came out and joined them. There was laughter. It carried clearly to Luke on the still morning air, and he liked the sound. He had heard plenty of adult laughter in the C-Level break room, but it had always sounded sinister to him, like the laughter of orcs in a Tolkien story. This was coming from men who had never locked up a bunch of kids, or dunked them in an immersion tank. The laughter of men who did not carry the special Tasers known as zap-sticks.
The switch driver handed out a bag. The pin-puller took it and stepped down. As the engine started slowly down the hump, the pin-puller and the station operator each took a doughnut from the bag. Big ones dusted with sugar and probably stuffed with jelly. Luke’s stomach rumbled.
The two men sat in the porch rocking chairs and munched their doughnuts. Luke, meanwhile, turned his attention to the cars waiting on Track 3. There were twelve in all, half of them boxcars. Probably not enough to make up a train going to Massachusetts, but others might be sent over from the transfer yard, where there were fifty or more just waiting around.
Meanwhile, a sixteen-wheeler pulled into the trainyard and bumped across several sets of tracks to the boxcar labeled STATE OF MAINE PRODUCTS. It was followed by a panel truck. Several men got out of the panel and began loading barrels from the traincar into the semi. Luke could hear them talking in Spanish, and was able to pick out a few words. One of the barrels tipped over and potatoes poured out. There was a lot of good-natured laughter, and a brief potato fight. Luke watched with longing.
The station operator and the pin-puller watched the potato fight from the porch rockers, then went inside. The semi left, now loaded with fresh spuds bound for McDonald’s or Burger King. It was followed by the panel truck. The yard was momentarily deserted, but it wouldn’t stay that way for long; there could be more loading and unloading, and the switch-engine driver might be busy adding more cars to the freight scheduled to leave at 10 AM.
Luke decided to take his chance. He started out from behind the deserted boxcar, then darted back when he saw the switch-engine driver walking up the hump, holding a phone to his ear. He stopped for a moment, and Luke was afraid he might have been seen, but the guy was apparently just finishing his call. He put his phone in the bib pocket of his overalls and passed the box Luke was hiding behind without so much as a glance. He mounted the porch steps and went into the office.
Luke didn’t wait, and this time he didn’t amble. He sprinted down the hump, ignoring the pain in his back and tired legs, hopping over tracks and retarder braking pads, dodging around speed sensor posts. The cars waiting for the Portland-Portsmouth-Sturbridge run included a red box with SOUTHWAY EXPRESS on the side, the words barely readable beneath all the graffiti that had been added over its years of service. It was grimy, nondescript, and strictly utilitarian, but it had one undeniable attraction: the sliding side door wasn’t entirely shut. Enough of a gap, maybe, for a skinny, desperate boy to slip through.
Luke caught a rust-streaked grab-handle and pulled himself up. The gap was wide enough. Wider, in fact, than the one he’d dug beneath the chainlink fence at the Institute. That seemed a very long time ago, almost in another life. The side of the door scraped his already painful back and buttocks, starting new trickles of blood, but then he was inside. The car was about three-quarters full, and although it looked like a mutt on
the outside, it smelled pretty great on the inside: wood, paint, furniture- and engine-oil.
The contents were a mishmash that made Luke think of his Aunt Lacey’s attic, although the stuff she had stored was old, and all of this was new. To the left there were lawnmowers, weed-whackers, leaf-blowers, chainsaws, and cartons containing automotive parts and outboard motors. To the right was furniture, some in boxes but most mummified in yards of protective plastic. There was a pyramid of standing lamps on their sides, bubble-wrapped and taped together in threes. There were chairs, tables, loveseats, even sofas. Luke went to a sofa close to the partially opened door and read the invoice taped to the bubble wrap. It (and presumably the rest of the furniture) was to be delivered to Bender and Bowen Fine Furniture, in Sturbridge, Massachusetts.
Luke smiled. Train ’97 might lose some cars in the Portland and Portsmouth yards, but this one was going all the way to the end of the line. His luck had not run out yet.
“Somebody up there likes me,” he whispered. Then he remembered his mother and father were dead, and thought, But not that much.
He pushed some of the Bender and Bowen cartons a little way out from the far sidewall of the boxcar and was delighted to see a pile of furniture pads behind them. They smelled musty but not moldy. He crawled into the gap and pulled the boxes back as much as he could.
He was finally in a relatively safe place, he had a pile of soft pads to lie on, and he was exhausted—not just from his night run, but from the days of broken rest and escalating fear that had led up to his escape. But he did not dare sleep yet. Once he actually did doze off, but then he heard the sound of the approaching switch-engine, and the Southway Express boxcar jerked into motion. Luke got up and peered out through the partially open door. He saw the trainyard passing. Then the car jolted to a stop, almost knocking him off his feet. There was a metallic crunch that he assumed was his box being attached to another car.