Jack on the Tracks

by Jack Gantos

  “Well, they were probably going to warn us of a lightning storm,” Mom said. “I hope nothing else got zapped.” She left the room to check.

  I didn’t think the Sheriff’s Department would warn us about lightning storms. It had to be something else. Something menacing, like a runaway train full of deadly nerve gas, or a foreign invasion, but now we wouldn’t know. I hopped up and looked out the window to see if UFO’s were landing, or if a tidal wave was about to squish us like a giant hand. But I didn’t spot anything abnormal, so I patrolled from window to window to see if the outside of the house was on fire from the lightning strike. I hoped it wasn’t. I had big, all-day Halloween plans. Tack and I were going water skiing. His older brother, Jock, who Tack called Jock Itch, had bought a used car and said he would take us with him. I had never water-skied before and wanted to try it, but since it was storming out I knew Mom wouldn’t let me go. I peered through the back window, up at the sky. The clouds were still heavy and gray as stones, but they were breaking up. The sun was peeking through the cracks and the rain had stopped. Just then there was a knock at the door.

  “That’s for me,” I yelled. I sprinted down the hall, across the living room, and whipped the door open. It was orange-haired Miss Fry and she thrust Miss Kitty II right up into my face. I knew this was going to be another car problem. Miss Kitty II loved cars. She had jumped into car windows, dropped into truck beds and convertibles from trees, and even chased them down the street like a dog.

  “Is this your cat?” Miss Fry barked. She knew it was.

  I casually reached for the tag around Miss Kitty II’s neck, and examined it. “Yeah,” I said.

  “Well, I wish you would keep her from sleeping in my car. I got in just now and she crept up on my neck and batted my earrings and nearly scared me half to death. I thought a car-jacker was in the back seat. I almost had a coronary.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said, staring at her miniature handcuff earrings. “But she really likes cars.”

  “Then maybe you should buy her one,” Miss Fry suggested. She must have thought she said something very clever because her hips started to gyrate as if she were spinning an invisible Hula Hoop.

  “Buying her a car is a good idea,” I replied, snapping out of my trance and sticking to my manners. I really wanted to say, Maybe I could buy that rusted piece of junk you keep up on cinder blocks in your front yard! But I knew if Mom overheard me being rude I’d get instantly grounded and I wouldn’t be able to go waterskiing.

  “Don’t let it happen again!” Miss Fry ordered. “Or else!”

  I didn’t want to know what she meant by “Or else.” Miss Fry was a security guard at the high school. Once the mailman delivered her mail to our house by mistake and in with her letters there was something titled SECUR-I-GARB: The Catalog Serving Security Professionals. Inside were pictures of SWAT team outfits, knives, handcuffs, bulletproof vests, and lots more cool stuff. I wanted to keep it but Mom made me put it back on her front porch.

  “It won’t happen again,” I replied as sweetly as possible to Miss Fry. I didn’t want her to arrest me.

  After she stormed off, Betsy yelled out from the kitchen, “Who was that?”

  “Miss Fry,” I yelled back. “She forgot to take her medication.” The drugstore errand boy was always delivering little white bags to her door.

  “That’s not a nice thing to say,” Betsy said.

  “She threatened to do in Miss Kitty II,” I explained.

  “She’s just a big talker,” Betsy replied, and sneezed. “Don’t listen to her.”

  “Hey,” I asked, as I walked into the kitchen, “what are we having for dinner tonight?” Mom and Dad were going out to an Elks Club Halloween party and had given Betsy money for take-out food.

  Betsy held up a coupon for a pizza. “I got it out of the newspaper,” she said. “Halloween special. You can get two huge pizzas for the price of one, plus two free extra toppings each, plus they deliver.”

  “I want Hawaiian style,” I said. “Pineapple and macadamia nuts with tuna.”

  Betsy raised her eyebrow. “That’ll smell like puke—you’ll have to eat that outside.”

  “I want hot-dog pizza,” Pete said, “with sauerkraut.”

  “Believe it or not,” Betsy said, “he’s worse than you are.”

  Just then someone pounded on the door. “I’ll get it,” I yelled and pushed Pete to the floor. It was Tack.

  “Get a move on,” Tack said, panting. “My brother is ready to roll.”

  “In a lightning storm?”

  “Yeah, and we have to carry golf clubs too,” he said, grinning like a rotten-toothed pumpkin.

  I knew Mom wouldn’t let me go if I asked her, so I just hollered, “See you in a little bit,” and ran out the door.

  The thought of getting into a fast boat and skiing over jumps and doing flips and all sorts of stunts was pretty exciting. When I got into Jock’s beat-up Impala convertible I asked, “What lake are we going to?”

  Jock laughed. “You’ll see,” he said, and mashed down on the gas pedal. Just as the car lurched forward Miss Kitty II leapt through the window and onto my lap.

  “Ouch!” I yelped as Miss Kitty II’s claws dug into my thigh.

  “Cool cat,” Jock said, and whistled. Miss Kitty II climbed up onto his shoulder and stuck her head out the window as the car shot down the road.

  I smiled. Miss Kitty II was a cool cat, and I could tell Jock liked me better already.

  “About this skiing,” Tack said. “We don’t exactly have a boat.”

  “Then how do we ski?” I asked, confused.

  “I’ll show you,” Jock said. “It’s a little dangerous, but you’ll get the hang of it just moments before you kill yourself.”

  Suddenly I lost my smile.

  “Don’t worry,” he said. “It’s Halloween. If you die this morning you can come back as a ghost in time to scare the pee out of someone tonight.”

  That didn’t make me feel any better.

  First, we pulled up onto an old dirt road that ran right next to a long straight canal. Jock opened the trunk and pulled out a plywood sled and about twenty yards of yellow nylon rope. He tied one end of the rope to the rear bumper of the car and attached the other to the sled. The sled was about two feet across and four feet long and had a rope handle in front so you could hang on. Jock showed me two rudder boards on the bottom of the sled and said we could steer it by shifting our weight to keep from sliding too far right or left and up onto the bank.

  This was not my idea of skiing. I was thinking of all the sunny postcards with acrobatic bathing beauties stacked up in a pyramid, one on top of another as they effortlessly skied across Biscayne Bay. I took one look at the homemade sled full of splinters and said, “One of you guys go first. I’ll watch and get the hang of it.”

  “I’ll go,” Tack said. He picked up the sled and heaved it into the canal. A black cloud of water bugs and mosquitoes took flight.

  “Watch out for moccasins,” Jock warned him.

  I wished I had brought my snakebite kit.

  Tack carefully worked his way down the bank and waded out into the water until he pulled himself up belly first onto the sled and grabbed the rope handle with both hands. “Okay!” he hollered. “Let ‘er rip!”

  I got into the seat next to Jock. Miss Kitty II had climbed onto the roof and dug her claws into the fabric of the convertible top like a streamlined furry ornament. Jock slowly drove forward until the rope was taut and then he hit the gas. The Impala took off with a roar and I turned around to watch Tack. He was kneeling and hanging on with both hands and zigzagging back and forth with a ragged rooster tail of water spraying out behind him. His hair was blown back and he had a flattened-out look on his face that seemed more like pain than pleasure. We went about a quarter of a mile until we got close to a rusty railroad bridge and Jock slowed down.

  “Once I kept going,” Jock said, “and when the rope hit the top of the bridge it pulled th
e sled straight out of the water. Lucky for him Tack had already fallen off. The sled got caught in a trestle, and darn if the rope didn’t pull the bumper clean off the back of my Dad’s car.”

  I could just imagine my skull hitting one of the metal girders head-on at fifty miles per hour. At least I would be so dead that Dad couldn’t kill me again for being hopelessly stupid.

  Jock turned the car around and nodded at me. “You’re on deck,” he said. Then he laughed like a lunatic, and gunned the engine so that a cloud of gray smoke rose above us.

  I pulled off my T-shirt. I was so pale my skin looked like the bloated bellies on the dead mullet that were floating upside down in the swampy water. My legs stuck out of the bottom of my baggy swim trunks like two pencils. I kept my sneakers on to protect my feet.

  “Good luck,” Tack said when he climbed up the bank. “It’s a thrill ride is all I can say.”

  I stared down at the underbrush. I was certain there was a water moccasin just waiting to bite me.

  “Hurry up,” Jock said. “We haven’t got all day. We have to get home and bloody up our houses and make our costumes for tonight.”

  I got up my courage and marched down the bank and into the dark water. I pulled myself up onto the sled and squatted as I took a good grip on the rope handle. Jock gave me the thumbs-up sign and slowly hit the gas, and when the line was taut he gunned it. I thought my arms were going to be yanked clean out of their sockets as the sled jolted forward. The steering was a mystery to me and before I could master it I was heading for the bank. Luckily the bank wasn’t very steep, and somehow I went up over the bushes and was soon riding the sled down the slick, muddy road twenty yards directly behind the Impala. Jock was slowing the car down gradually, probably so I wouldn’t end up eating his tail-lights. I was screaming and hanging on for my life when the Impala hit a little dip and Miss Kitty II flew up off the roof and rolled back over the top of the wet car, off the trunk, and landed in the middle of the road.

  Oh my God, I thought. In a second I’m going to run her over with the sled and kill her.

  But Miss Kitty was quick. I came at her as fast as a rocket and she jumped up and hit me in the face. I lost my grip and flew off the back of the sled and rolled into some bushes. When I looked up, Miss Kitty II was riding the sled right down the middle of the road.

  I lurched forward and ran after them. Jock seemed to speed up for a while to give her a thrill. Finally he stopped. When I caught up to them Miss Kitty II jumped up into my arms and I gave her a big hug.

  “Good cat,” I said, and rubbed her head and ears.

  “Very fine feline,” Jock said knowingly. “She’s something special.”

  “I’ll trade you two regular cats for her,” Tack said.

  “Make it three,” Jock added, shaking his head. “That cat is talented.”

  “No way,” I replied. “Miss Kitty the Second and I are a team. I’m going to train her for the cat Olympics.”

  When I returned home I said to Betsy, “She’s a genius cat. She’s as smart as any trained dog, ever. She makes Lassie look like a yapping wig.”

  “Believe it or not,” Betsy said. “Your cat may be from China. I read in the paper that the Chinese have figured out how to breed cats and dogs together and they have come up with a superhigh-I.Q. cat.”

  “I can believe it,” I said, petting my hero.

  “You better take care of that cat,” Betsy advised me. “Once the government knows you have a Chinese hybrid they are going to take it and do what all to it in one of their secret pet laboratories.”

  “What labs?” I asked.

  “You need to read the paper more,” she said, and rolled her eyes at me. “The world is a lot bigger than this neighborhood.”

  I didn’t have time to debate the size of the world—I was going over to Tack’s house to help them decorate. I put Miss Kitty II on her dog-walking leash just in case the government came after her.

  Tack and Jock were ready to decorate both their houses. Jock had me and Miss Kitty II lie down on the sidewalk as he drew dead body profiles around us with masking tape and then made bloodstains with cherry cough syrup. Tack was arranging the Slip ‘N Slide down the front steps of one house. He had a box of ketchup packets he had collected from Burger King and scattered them on the front patio of the other house.

  Suddenly the cops pulled up and one of them slowly got out. I thought maybe he was a government agent coming to take Miss Kitty II to a lab, so I hopped up and grabbed her leash.

  “Howdy, boys,” he said, then examined the sidewalk. “Nice art work. Very realistic. But it may be wasted. You do know that Halloween is canceled?”

  “No way!” Tack hollered. “Who says?”

  “Two murderers escaped from Rayford Prison, upstate, and jumped a train,” he replied. “We had some agents board the train to flush ‘em out and we think they may have jumped off around here. So, no trick-or-treating until those guys are captured. We don’t want anyone to get spooked and shoot one of you kids.”

  “Wow,” Tack said. “Cool.”

  That’s probably what the newscaster was going to announce just before he got zapped by lightning, I thought.

  “Is there a reward for ‘em?” Jock asked.

  “Yeah,” the cop replied. “Automatic thousand dollars on any escaped prisoner. Well,” the cop continued. “I know it stinks that Halloween is off, but help us out and don’t roam the streets. We don’t want to think that you are the convicts.”

  “I got a hunting rifle and if I see those guys, pow-pow-pow, I’m two grand richer,” Jock said.

  Yeah, I thought. Then you can buy a boat and some water skis.

  The cop gave Jock a stern look. “No gun play,” he said. “You just leave these guys to us. If you see anyone suspicious-looking, give us a call.”

  As soon as the police left we all ran around back to the tracks to see if we could find the prisoners.

  “What do we do if the prisoners see us first?” I asked, feeling a bit nervous.

  “Hide,” Jock said.

  I looked around. There was nothing but the tracks and gravel and sand. “Where?” I asked.

  Jock smiled slyly. “I’ll show you,” he said. He walked over to a gap between two railroad ties. There was a hollowed-out space, like a shallow grave, big enough for one person to curl up in. “I dug it out myself,” he said. “It’s awesome. You just lie down in it and when the train comes it passes over your face and it is the most scared you will ever be in your life, but it’s perfectly safe because you are lower than the tracks. Either of you guys want to do it?”

  “Not me,” I said. “That’s insane.”

  “Come on,” Jock said. “It’s Halloween. If you don’t get a good scare today you have to wait another whole year.”

  I didn’t care if I had to wait a lifetime. I was not going to have a million-ton train just missing my head by inches. Our house had already been hit by lightning and I didn’t want a train peeling my face off. Plus, I remembered what happened to Miss Kitty I. Her grave was not far away.

  “I’ll do it,” Tack said. “This Halloween’s a bust anyway and I could use a thrill.” He curled up in the grave with his hands neatly folded over his chest and waited. Soon a train rumbled up the straightaway. Jock and I skipped down the gravel bank and watched as it roared over Tack.

  After twenty-seven freight cars and a caboose passed we yelled out his name. But he didn’t answer, and didn’t get up. I feared the worst. We charged up the bank to where he was lying with his hands over his face. Blood was everywhere. We pulled his hands away and I expected to see a cracked-open skull and a bucket of fresh brain mush. Suddenly he popped up.

  “Gotcha!” he howled, and threw a few empty ketchup packets at us.

  I screamed bloody murder, then staggered away as if a dagger was in my belly. I was so scared I couldn’t breathe. I held on to Miss Kitty II, sat down and put my head between my legs, and brayed like a donkey.

  “I know you t
hink you’re scared now,” Tack said, wiping the ketchup off his face with his shirttail. “But you got to get into that hole. I had my eyes open looking up at the bottom of the cars and then I peeked down the tracks, and there was this big old rusty chain hanging down hitting the ground and swinging back and forth and I thought if that thing hits me I’m d-e-a-d. But it just missed me. I could feel the breeze as it whizzed by like I was almost hit with a bullet. That close to death.” He held his thumb and finger about a hair’s width apart and stared between them. “Yep,” he said reflectively, “I was this close to being a ghost.”

  “That’s nothing,” Jock said. “One time I was lying underneath a long, slow train, and I was tired of it, so I rolled out between the wheels. Man, if one of those things had caught me I’d be sliced in half like a fish.”

  I held Miss Kitty II even tighter. “Are you guys going to finish decorating?” I asked.

  “Not me,” Jock said. “What’s the point? Nobody’s going to be around to see it.”

  “I figure the only trick-or-treaters out tonight are the two convicts,” Tack said. “I’m not going out there to become another murder victim.”

  “You got any good candy?” I asked.

  “Naw,” Tack replied. “The new mom is so cheap she’s only handing out stale popcorn balls, and the old mom just gives away rotting fruit she gets cheap at the grocery store.”

  I stuck out my tongue. “Ugh,” I said. “Come on, Miss Kitty II.” We headed home.

  Pete was dressed up as a plague-ridden flea. He had a floppy rubber mask covered with pussy boils. As soon as he saw Miss Kitty II he began to chase her around. “I’m a flea,” he said in a Count Dracula accent. “I vant to suck your blood.” Miss Kitty II jumped up on top of the refrigerator and hissed down at him.

  “Hey, Dad,” I said as he came in from the costume rental company. “Did you hear about the escaped convicts!”

  “Shush,” he said with a finger over his lips. He glanced over his shoulder. “Don’t let your mom know. Betsy knows, and you can tell Pete after we leave. The last thing some convicts are going to do is hide out in a house full of kids. You’ll be perfectly safe. Just keep the doors locked and the lights on.”