Firestorm

by David Klass

  She pulls away. Studies my face. Sees that I won’t let this go. “Someone from New York security called. Talked to our head conductor. Wanted to know if there was a blind man on the train. And a Seeing Eye dog. The head conductor asked each of us about the passengers in our cars. I covered for you.”

  “Why?”

  She nods. “Like I told you, I’ve been chased. I knew you weren’t really blind, so I was telling the truth. I bet they called all the trains that left Penn Station around that time. I heard the conductor tell them he had checked and there was no blind man on our train. Which is true, right?”

  “Right. Thanks, Jinny. I owe you big-time.”

  She stands up. Turns away from me. Makes a sound in her throat. Whatever it is, it’s really troubling her. “You don’t owe me anything,” she says softly.

  “But I do. You may have saved my life. And you did it without knowing me. Just because you’re a good person.”

  She turns toward the window and pretends to fix her uniform in the reflection. “Yes, well, now I have to get back to work.”

  Strange, I thought she liked me. She saved me. Now she doesn’t even want to look at me.

  Then I understand. No, stupid, she can’t look at you. It’s not anger. Not empathy. It’s guilt! She is a good person, and she feels terrible because she’s betrayed you.

  Jinny reaches for door. “I gotta get back to my job.”

  I grab her. Pull her back into storage compartment.

  She tries to scream.

  I clamp my hand over her mouth. “You told them I’m on the train. And then you felt bad about selling me out. So you came by to try to find out what kind of trouble I’m in.”

  I remove hand. She lies quickly, desperately. “No. I would never—”

  “Or maybe it wasn’t that. Maybe you came by to keep an eye on me. Was that part of the deal? Keep tabs on your catch? Tell me the truth. How much did they offer you?”

  “They didn’t … I didn’t … We never …” Jinny tries several denials and they get jumbled together. Then she tries stamping on my instep, but I’m too fast. She starts an impressive scream, but I cut off her air supply.

  I’m looking into her eyes. She’s scared. Thinks I’ll strangle her. I won’t, but it doesn’t hurt for her to think it.

  “How much? Last chance.”

  She gasps. “Three thousand dollars. More than I make in a month. I figured you probably did something really bad. I’m sorry. I like you. I just needed the money …”

  “Where are they going to board the train and get us?”

  “Philly.”

  “How long till we get there?”

  “Less than thirty minutes.”

  “How do I get off before then?”

  “You can’t.”

  “There must be some way.”

  I’m looking into Jinny’s scared brown eyes. “No. It’s a straight shot to Philly,” she says. “We’re going sixty miles an hour. There’s no way off this speeding train.”

  I let her go. Control my anger. “I’ll find one,” I promise. “And when I go, there goes your reward. Guess you’ll have to find another way to make some extra money. Oh, one other thing, Jinny. If I were you I’d run for it as soon as this train reaches Philly. The people chasing me aren’t very forgiving. When they figure out I’m gone, they’ll come looking for you to find out who tipped me off. They have a technique called the neural flay that’s supposed to be particularly unpleasant. Good luck being on the run again.”

  She’s looking at me. Eyes desperate. “Wait. Let me come with you. I can help. Don’t leave me alone.”

  “Like to talk more,” I tell her. “Have to run.”

  11

  Dining hour on train. Cafe car full. Newspaper readers opening brown bags and unwrapping sandwiches as they scan sports sections. Mothers handing bottles to babies.

  Gisco and I trying to figure a way off this express to hell. Not much time. Philadelphia swimming toward us through the evening gloom. Announcement over the loudspeaker. 30th Street Station in twenty minutes. I have a pretty strong hunch a world of pain is waiting for us in the City of Brotherly Love if we don’t find some way off soon.

  Twenty minutes and ticking. Nineteen now.

  You don’t have to remind me. Dogs may not wear watches, but we’re very sensitive to our own impending doom. There it is!

  We stand in tiny space between last two cars. I shine flashlight. Black iron ladder leads to roof.

  Why are you hesitating?

  Because I don’t like climbing ladders at night into windstorms to reach the roofs of speeding trains.

  No choice, old bean.

  Don’t call me that.

  Eighteen minutes, old bean. Better go for it.

  So I grasp iron ladder. Start to pull myself up.

  Climb rung by rung. Cold autumn wind whips me. Forty lashes. Swat. Swat. My face, my clothes, tearing at my fingers that hold the ladder. I hang on for dear life.

  Don’t stop.

  Easy for you to say. How come I’m the one that has to do all the hard work? If dogs are really so great, you’d think we’d find ourselves in a situation where you could—

  Keep climbing. Seventeen minutes.

  I keep climbing. Reach roof and somehow pull myself up. Never been on top of a train before. Kind of neat. You can feel it speeding along beneath you. Like galloping atop a gigantic super-fast horse. Dark countryside flying past. We must be in outlying suburbs. Two-story houses, spaced apart. Lights on. Kids doing homework. Here and there spooky lakes of blackness. Fields? Parks? Clusters of tall trees stand together by the tracks, as if engaged in private conversations. Their branches blot out the moon.

  Hurry up.

  I take off my belt. Lower it to Gisco. Let’s go, jabber jaws.

  He clamps his teeth around knot. I try to haul him up. Like pulling a two-hundred-pound potato sack up the side of a cliff.

  Paws are pathetic. Why can’t dogs learn to climb?

  Dogs have many abilities that humans don’t have. Do I ask you why you can’t smell worth a damn? Do I ask you—

  Okay, okay, I get the message. But all the same it wouldn’t hurt you to miss a few meals …

  I just missed lunch and dinner. If I miss one more meal I might take a chomp out of your drumstick of a leg.

  I haul dog up and onto roof. Good news is we are now standing atop train, side by side. Bad news is there is no easy way off. No convenient hay bales by side of tracks to cushion our fall. Nor does the train slow down around curves to permit easy egress. Look that up, my friend, but not now. Now we have to get off this speeding caboose.

  In the distance, the clouds are unnaturally bright. Is that Philadelphia?

  Unfortunately, I think you’re finally right about something. Fourteen minutes. It’s now or never.

  Never. We’ll die if we jump from here at this speed.

  They’ll kill us if we don’t.

  We can make a break for it at the station.

  You don’t know who you’re up against.

  That’s because you won’t tell me.

  Kid, I’ll tell you one thing.

  Go on.

  Tunnel.

  What? Where?

  Dog flattens himself out on haunches. THERE!

  I dive onto stomach just as we disappear into maw of dark tunnel. Not much clearance. Feels like tunnel is giving me a crew cut. I’m hugging grimy roof of train for dear life. Pressing nose into the cold steel. Rumble of train is magnified by narrow enclosure. Feels like I’m being eaten and digested by dark and angry stomach.

  I’m not exactly enjoying this.

  Me neither. Dogs are highly sensitive to noise.

  Then we are through and out the other side, and back in the open space and relative quiet of the moonlit evening.

  Wow, was that awful.

  Out of the frying pan into the fire, as you humans say.

  Meaning?

  There’s Philadelphia.

  We can s
ee it in the distance. City skyline in moonlight. Tall buildings marching closer.

  I see a wedding band of gold curving through the blackness. Moonlight on water. A river. Right in our path. Only chance.

  Dogs can swim, right?

  Understatement. One of nature’s great swimmers. Not known for our diving. Do you think the water will be cold?

  That, fuzz face, is the least of our worries.

  Train reaches old trestle bridge, which is not as solid as it looks. Standing on train’s roof, we can feel bridge shake rhythmically. Dark glint of river probably only thirty feet below, but from here it looks like an abyss. Now we’re starting across bridge. Now we’re in the middle.

  I take three steps and leap off. Momentum of train slings me far out. YAAAAAAAAAA! Flapping my arms. Trying to fly. Failing miserably. Falling into blackness.

  Gisco right with me. Not enjoying this either. Yelpings of canine fear. YA-BA-WAAH, YA-BA-WAAH! Not a pretty sound.

  Fur ball, if we don’t make it, you’ve been the best thing about the past two days, which isn’t saying much …

  Thanks, old bean. Feeling’s mutual.

  Then we splash down. Not the cleanest river in the world. But could be the coldest. Initial impact socks me like a punch to the jaw. Nearly knocks me senseless. Before I know it, I’m sinking far beneath the stars that fade to distant spearpoints. Make that icepick points. Frigid temperature jabs me back to full consciousness. It’s only late October. Why does this feel like polar sea?

  I kick for surface. Come up sputtering.

  So you made it. Thought I might have to dive down and find you on the sludgy bottom.

  Thanks for the kind thought, but I didn’t notice you swimming around in circles looking for me. Where are you, by the way?

  Up here on the bank. That river’s a little cold.

  Hurried strokes till my feet touch. Crawl out onto mud and pebbles. Retch and choke and cough. Suck in a cold few breaths. Check myself. Arms and legs functional. All teeth appear to be adhering to gums. I made it!

  I stand. Shiver. We’re going to have to find some food and shelter soon without calling attention to ourselves.

  I agree. Good news. Lights up ahead. Voices. Some kind of outdoor get-together. Maybe it’s a cookout.

  Great.

  Bad news. I think someone’s pointing a gun at us.

  12

  Think big. A stomach the size of a refrigerator. A great shaggy head with an untrimmed beard. Holding a shotgun, light as a toothpick. Foghorn voice commanding, “Freeze.”

  Which is indeed what we’re doing. I try to stand still but shake in my wet clothes in the numbing wind.

  Shotgun aimed at my nose. “Just where do you think you’re sneaking around to? I oughta blow your brains out.”

  Good news, Gisco. I don’t think he’s one of them.

  Right, but he’s still holding a gun on us.

  On me, actually. What do you suggest?

  Calm him down. The capacity of unstable humans for unprovoked violence is well documented.

  “Hey, there,” I say in my friendliest voice. “We weren’t sneaking around.”

  “Then how the hell’d you get here?”

  “By accident. We jumped off a train into that river.”

  Big man scowls. “Don’t lie to me, boy.”

  “The train tracks cross that bridge. Feel my clothes. They’re wet from the river. I just swam out.”

  Stubby fingers grab my shirt. Suspicious eyes cross the trestle bridge and then dive down to the inky river. Then back to me. “Why’d you jump?”

  “We decided we didn’t want to go to Philadelphia,” I tell him and shiver. “By the way, I’m freezing.”

  “Not my problem,” he says with impressive lack of sympathy. “Walk up the bank. And don’t try anything, or I’ll blow your fool head off. Same goes for your butt-ugly dog.”

  We climb the bank toward the lights.

  I don’t want to seem standoffish, old bean, but I think I would prefer not to meet this gentleman’s companions.

  No choice. If we run, he’ll shoot us in the back.

  We stumble through overgrown swampy field. Cattails. Hip-high grass. Brambles. Here and there a stunted tree.

  Men’s voices up ahead. Engaged in something serious. It involves money. We’ve blundered across a business deal. The giant was a lookout. He yells, “Yo, Hayes.”

  “Wait till we’re done,” comes flying back at us.

  Money changes hands. Contraband tucked away. Guns? Drugs? I don’t try to see. Three motorcycles roar off.

  “Okay,” the one called Hayes shouts.

  Shotgun prods my spine. “Move it.”

  We hike up to clearing. A dozen motorcycles circled like a Stonehenge of Harley-Davidsons. Chrome in moonlight. Beefy men looking me over. Leather and long hair and tattoos. Motorcycle gang. They don’t look particularly fond of shivering teenagers and know-it-all shaggy dogs.

  “Who the hell are you?” a voice of authority demands.

  I spin around. Hayes. Top Handlebar or whatever you call the leader of a motorcycle gang. Hawklike features. Brown skin. Chiseled muscles. Nasty smart. You can tell by looking into his flint-hard eyes. Which is what I’m doing as I stand there shivering. “Where’d you find Dorothy and Toto?” he asks.

  “Down by the river,” the big man supplies. “Say they were headed to Philly and jumped off a train. I didn’t see ’em jump, though. They could’ve been snooping around.”

  “They don’t look like cops,” Hayes points out. “Punk ass should be home doing his homework, and no police dog is that fat.” Some of his buddies laugh.

  You’re no day at the beach either, pigeon face.

  Hayes stares down at Gisco. “I don’t like the way he’s looking at me.”

  “He’s just hungry,” I say quickly. “Missed dinner.”

  “Yeah, well, I ain’t dog food, so tell him to look someplace else before I skin him for a rug.”

  “Down, boy,” I say. Unless you want to end up a motorcycle blanket, chill out.

  Gisco has his back arched, attack mode. He slowly lets it relax, and looks down, as if to count blades of grass.

  “We don’t want any trouble—” I start to explain.

  An impatient voice from the fringe of the circle cuts me off. “We can’t take chances. Let’s get rid of them.”

  “Getting rid of them is taking a chance, too, Cassidy,” Hayes points out.

  Cassidy steps forward. Shaved head. Flat cauliflower of a nose. Whoever broke it did a thorough job. Flick. A knife pops open in his right hand. “Nobody jumps off a train in the middle of the night. Who knows what they heard or saw. They came out of the river. Let’s put ’em back in.”

  Hayes listens to this advice and watches for my reaction. Will I beg or try to run away?

  I can tell that these gang members admire strength and detest weakness. Also sense that while they’re suspicious of me they’re not particularly fond of Cassidy. The only way out of this is to take him on and make it personal. Not us against them. Him against me. Mano a mano.

  “If you’re gonna call me a liar,” I say to Cassidy, “why don’t you back it up like a man?”

  Whistles around the circle. “He’s calling you out!”

  “You heard him, Cassidy,” Hayes says. “Lose the blade or give him one.”

  Cassidy wasn’t expecting this. He looks me over. Reluctantly hands his knife to a friend. “This is gonna be fun,” he grunts, and shuffles toward me.

  13

  Do you know what you’re doing, old bean?

  Don’t try to help me. They’ll shoot you.

  Careful. Here he comes!

  Cassidy feints with his right, and when I duck he kicks me in the balls. Not exactly Marquis of Queensberry rules.

  The bad news is I wasn’t expecting his kick and it connects in the family jewels. I groan and sink to my knees. He follows with an even harder kick, aimed at my temple.

  This would finish
me, but the good news—if you can call it that—is that you can get kicked in the balls and fight through the pain if you’ve been there before. Unfortunately, I have. Defensive linemen trying to bring me down on football fields. Stray elbows on wrestling mats.

  The flash of pain is intense but starts to subside almost instantly. I pull back and avoid the kick to the head.

  Baldy wasn’t expecting to miss. Throws him off balance. I grab his ankle and twist and he crashes down into the mud.

  Then we’re grappling, rolling around and around in the clearing. Suits me just fine. I’ve got two varsity letters in wrestling. Could have been county champ if my dad hadn’t suggested I let the other guy win. I get in a control position and pin Cassidy on his back.

  He rears up and bites off a piece of my ear. Mike Tyson move. They don’t do that on high school wrestling mats. I hear him growl and then feel his teeth slicing into my right earlobe. He spits something out and there’s a piece of what used to be me on the ground.

  “Hurts” doesn’t do it justice. “Burning agony” is closer. I go kinda nuts. Surge of strength. From my knees I lift Cassidy off the ground and slam him back down into a tree stump. Impact knocks the air from his body, but he keeps punching at me. So I pick him up again. Second body slam breaks a couple of his ribs. He tries to gouge out my eyes, but I bury my face in his chest as I pick him up again. Third slam makes his body relax and his eyes glassy.

  He’s not dead, maybe not even unconscious, but he won’t be talking about throwing someone in the river for a while.

  I get back to my feet. Heart thumping. Blood flowing down the right side of my face.

  You okay?

  Don’t I look it?

  You look like you just slid through a garbage disposal.

  A couple of the gang members carry Cassidy away. Hayes doesn’t even give him a look. He’s focused on me. “Not bad, punk ass. What’s your name?”

  “Jack.”

  “Eighteen?”

  “In a few months.”

  “Big for your age. Tough, too. How come you’re not home with your mommy and daddy?”

  “I don’t have a home.” I also don’t have a mommy and daddy anymore, but I keep this to myself.

  My answer touches something in Hayes. Momentary connection. Something tells me he didn’t exactly have a stable home himself when he was eighteen.