Transcontinental

by Brad Cook

  “Oh, this is a new low,” Leroy mumbled, lowering his bag into the rack. “Wait, we aren’t sleeping in these, are we?” He knew the answer before he’d even finished the question. Of course they’d be sleeping in the women’s clothing section of a twenty-four hour megastore, as any teenager and middle-aged man traveling across the country would.

  “Do you have any preference?” Ant asked through a smirk, stepping over to an adjacent rack. “I think I will go with the maternity dresses. They are light and airy, very pleasant.” He rubbed the fabric between a thumb and finger.

  Leroy glanced around, checking for employees, but the excess of fluorescent lights cast no moving shadows. The only people populating the store at that time of night were strange-looking, with eyes too large, too much or not enough hair, or a malformed limb; and fat, fatter than Leroy had ever seen, some of them. He’d felt as guilty not looking at them as he had looking at them. Even thinking of them as ‘them,’ as if they were in a group of their own, made him feel guilty. But none of them were anywhere near the women’s clothing section. Made sense, he thought, then felt guilty again.

  When he looked back, Ant was gone. For a moment Leroy was concerned, until a voice floated out from inside the maternity dresses.

  “If you wake up first, get me up.”

  A smile spread across Leroy’s face at the ridiculousness of the situation, despite the weariness and wariness tugging at him from the inside. After comparing the remaining racks, he decided the bathrobes would conceal him the best as well as being the warmest, a bonus since the AC was on full blast.

  He slipped inside. It was cramped and claustrophobic, like the grainer car and the boxcar before it, and he had to sit indian-style to keep his legs from poking out. He tamped the urge to burst from the rack and told himself to be confident. It was just like one of his old blanket forts.

  Hunched over, imagining his mother yelling about the mess, he slept.

  * * *

  “I haven’t told James yet,” a woman admitted, trying to overpower the uncertainty in her voice. “Not sure how he’ll react.”

  Leroy snapped awake inside his cocoon. He was a little stiff, but he’d slept surprisingly well. His thoughts clearing, he realized the woman speaking was alarmingly close, and hoped she didn’t need a bathrobe.

  “You should make your decision before you talk to him,” another woman said. Her voice was brash, commanding. “Don’t you dare let him steer the conversation. This is your choice.”

  “No, I know,” the first woman cooed, more of a lament than an affirmation. “It’s mine. It’s part of me. Whether he’s in or out, I’m keeping it.”

  “You… really?” the second one asked. “I didn’t know you wanted that.”

  Leroy heard the screech of metal hangers sliding on a metal clothing rack. He couldn’t see which rack, but he had a bad feeling.

  “I didn’t. Not until I found out.”

  Then, Ant’s voice interrupted the women. “Good morning, ladies.”

  A duet of shrill screams, brief but powerful, rang out amidst the brisk shuffling of footsteps. Leroy poked his head out of the bathrobes and saw the women scurrying away as Ant emerged from the rack of dresses.

  “Oh God, I hope that wasn’t Candid Camera!” one woman exclaimed, clutching her purse to her chest. She looked back and glimpsed Leroy protruding from the bathrobes and shrieked “Oh my God there’s another one!” Her heels clacked as she shoved her friend into the next aisle.

  “I suppose that is our cue,” Ant said, and reached into the the rack with their bags and pulled them out. Leroy took his.

  “I swear, every idea you have is worse than the last.”

  “Hey,” Ant rebutted as they headed toward the exit, “if you do not want to be the captain, you can not criticize the captain.”

  “You got a rule for everything, huh. There a rule for whether or not you should run when a woman finds you sleeping in a clothes rack?”

  “Do not draw attention to yourself,” Ant cautioned. “Act casual.”

  They navigated the influx of customers entering the building. Ant stopped next to the store greeter, a different elderly man than previously.

  “Excuse me, do you have the time?”

  The man checked his watch, which was turned so the face was on the underside of his wrist. Leroy’d never seen anyone wear a watch that way. “Ten forty-two in the A.M.,” the man replied, the words dribbling over his bottom lip.

  Ant and Leroy wandered out of the cold fluorescent light and into the warm morning sun, pressing against him like a sheet fresh out of the drier.

  Stretching his upper body as he glided through the parking lot once again, Ant said “I feel great. We slept for quite a while.”

  Leroy did a couple high-knees as he walked. “I’m alright. Sorta stiff.”

  “I am sure the long walk ahead of us will work that right out.”

  Leroy groaned. “I’m so sick of walking.”

  “Well, we could have been on a train this very moment, had we stayed—”

  “You said not to criticize the captain,” Leroy groused.

  * * *

  “Kinda wish we didn’t sleep so long,” Leroy panted, dabbing with his sleeve the criss-crossed trails of sweat on his cheeks.

  “The cool of the morning would have been lovely,” Ant agreed.

  After a familiar couple of miles, they came to a stop again at the White City Fair, which was bustling with activity, but not from happy fairgoers. Last night’s anxiety was substituted with awe as Leroy peered through the same fence at a crew of workers deconstructing the ferris wheel.

  “Think that’s ‘cause of us?” Leroy asked.

  “It was shut down already,” Ant replied, uninterested in the process taking place before him. “If anything, we simply roused them to action.”

  The workers turned the massive wheel just enough each time to reach the next car, then used a power drill to free it and carry it to a line of industrial trucks waiting to haul away as many as five at a time. The efficiency of the operation impressed Leroy; it reminded him of a NASCAR pit crew. Not his favorite sport, but when there was nothing else on TV he could always turn it on and watch cars drive fast, something he’d doubted he would ever be able to do.

  One of the workers, a chubby man with stiff strings of gelled black hair jutting from the rim of his hard hat, white amongst the other mens’ orange, seemed to Leroy to be in charge of things. When the drill died, he shouted “Somebody grab another battery from the trailer,” then said “Keep it up, boys, we don’t got all day, here,” as the crew slowed down. He grunted as he helped lift one last car onto the truck, then pulled the sliding door down and locked it. “Good to go!” He gave the driver a thumbs up before the truck thundered away.

  “I enjoy walking as much as the next Lebanese man, which is more than you know,” Ant said, “but I must insist we find the next jungle.”

  “Yeah.” Leroy watched as the fresh battery was loaded into the drill, and it droned anew. Maybe the next jungle would be better, he hoped. The first hadn’t been too bad; Ted had been kind of off-putting, but he didn’t carve letters into people. And Cracker John was a fine man. “Alright.” He watched the workers remove another car before pulling back.

  As he stepped away from the fence, he heard a man shout “Not yet! Wait!” over the ear-splitting grind of metal whittling away at thousands of revolutions per minute, then a massive crash shook the ground on which he stood.

  Leroy tried to turn back and look but his body felt so heavy, heavy under the knowledge that something was wrong. In slow motion he spun, until on the edge of his vision he saw the man with the white hard hat struggling and squealing like a rat in a trap, his leg caught under the weight of the fallen car.

  For a moment the workers gawked at the incident, idle, helpless as their boss thrashed and screamed. Beside them, the drill fell from a stunned worker’s hands, his eyes aghast and mouth hanging open in horror. “I’m sorry!” he plea
ded, “I’m sorry!”

  Then, Ant sprinted toward the man, and grasped the car. “Help me lift,” he urged amongst the shrieking, and a few men rushed to aid him.

  In a macabre trance, Leroy watched Ant and the other men labor to lift the car off the man, wondering how it could possibly weigh so much. It rose an inch or two, which drew a sharp gasp from the man in the white hard hat, then another inch, then another. As they raised it, Ant grunted “Back three feet, then drop! And watch your legs!”

  The air was muddied with the cries of men. They pulled the car away, and Leroy got a glimpse of the man’s leg: it was crushed—not bent at a break in the bone, but flattened from knee to foot, the skin ruptured in multiple places and oozing blood. The leg dangled like a wet noodle from below the knee when he tried to lift it. “Oh, Christ,” the victim wailed, staring down at the torn-up mess. “Christ, it’s useless!” He clutched the shorts of a worker standing beside him. “Don’t let them take it! Please!”

  Leroy felt faint as he covered his ears, trying to block out the unforgettable sound of a man in agonizing pain, more real than any TV show, but he’d already been contaminated. He dropped to his knees and shut his eyes, jaw aching as he gritted his teeth until he couldn’t anymore, then vomited so hard he thought his eyes would pop out. It tasted like acrid peanut butter. He puked again.

  “Go call nine-one-one,” a man yelled, and another ran to the trailer.

  The next thing Leroy knew, Ant was standing next to him, pulling him up. “We must leave, now.” Ant gripped him by the arm and nearly dragged him away from the fence and toward the road, his stomach still churning.

  * * *

  Half a mile or so past the fair, the railroad took a sharp turn south, pulling away from the street, and Ant and Leroy followed. By the time the ambulance neared the fair, Leroy had to squint to see it.

  Ant crouched, then dropped to a sitting position without using his hands, which Leroy noticed were covered in blood. “In my bag, the water.”

  Leroy grabbed the gallon from the bottom of the bag and began pouring.

  “How’d you get blood on you?”

  “Slower, slow down,” Ant said, scrubbing his hands. “I took off the man’s shoe. Or, I tried to. At a certain point I could not tell shoe from foot.”

  Queasiness rising inside him again, Leroy looked away.

  Ant finished washing and wiped his hands on his pants. “You might want to…” He pointed at a bloody handprint on Leroy’s arm from when he’d grabbed him earlier. “Here, hand me the water.”

  Leroy scoured his arm as Ant trickled a steady stream of water onto it, trying to wash away the memories of the accident.

  “Would you like to wash out your mouth?” Ant asked.

  Heat rushing to his cheeks, Leroy nodded. As he swished the water in his mouth, which did nothing to get rid of the dirty, acidic feeling vomit left behind, he considered his and Ant’s reactions to the accident: the first thing Ant had done was jump up to help, and all Leroy could muster was the contents of his stomach.

  “I am sorry you had to see that, but you must banish that look from your face,” Ant said. “Nobody ever got anywhere feeling sorry for himself.”

  Leroy looked off, an absence in his gaze.

  “Get some food in you.”

  “No more peanut butter,” he groaned. “Gimme the trail mix.” He poured some into his mouth and the dusty flavor of peanuts assaulted his tastebuds. Nausea rolled through him. He hoped he wouldn’t have to suffer the image of the mangled leg every time he ate a peanut product.

  As they walked, he separated the peanuts from handfuls of trail mix, tossing them away, and ate the resulting candy, raisins, and dried fruit.

  “Quit wasting those,” Ant said, sticking out his hand. “I will take them.”

  They marched along the ballast, Leroy tossing peanuts to Ant.

  At times the railroad tracks veered toward the city, threatening to expose them, but always pulled away at the last moment. The minuscule buildings of smaller towns brought Reno to mind in comparison. He craved the inspirational surroundings of a big city, yet the fast pace was too much for him. He liked silence, relaxation.

  Out of the silence, a train’s horn blared from far behind them.

  Glee burbling up inside him, Leroy whipped around. “It’s coming toward us, so that’s eastbound, right?” he asked Ant, eyes lit up.

  “Indeed. We can either keep walking, or try to get aboard.”

  “I vote train. My legs ache. So what do we do? Stand on the tracks?”

  “Absolutely not. Disregarding how hazardous that is, an inconvenienced engineer is an unhappy engineer, and an unhappy engineer is hardly inclined to take on a stowaway, let alone two.”

  Still a minute out, Leroy watched the train propel down the tracks, smoke billowing from the unit like a rampaging cartoon character.

  “Over here.” Ant scuttled behind a row of dense bushes.

  Leroy crouched beside him. The train seemed to slow as he watched. He hoped it was; he was sick of walking around, not making progress. He’d lost count of how many days he’d been gone.

  “Right. Now, as soon as the engine car passes, we run. Stay off the ballast,” Ant emphasized. “Locate an open car, pace alongside it, and then transition. You must be surefooted if you are to make the jump. And keep your feet behind you, it is imperative. Focus on your hands.”

  Leroy gulped, trying to steel himself. His mood had done a complete one-eighty, and the train was no longer a sign of hope.

  “That is all assuming the train is traveling at a reasonable speed,” Ant said, peering at the train from under a palm that blocked the sun. “If you cannot make it, we can always continue walking. Better to have an ache than a stump.”

  The purr of the far-off train intensified as it chugged closer, almost vibrating the air around them. Watching it, Leroy realized it wasn’t going that fast, or so he convinced himself. He filled his chest with fresh air.

  As it pulled up, Leroy was mesmerized. It never ceased to amaze him how gigantic trains were. He thought back to the dorky security guard at the Barstow station who’d called him a railfan. Maybe it was truer than he’d realized.

  Beside him, Ant bolted out from behind the bushes, dragging Leroy out of his fixation. The speed of the middle-aged man bearing that heavy backpack astounded Leroy; Ant looked like an Olympic track runner.

  “Come on!” Ant yelled, looking back, and Leroy snapped out of it again. He dashed out, hands grasping the straps of his backpack near his shoulders, trying to stop it from swaying back and forth as he ran.

  Train cars crept past Ant as he slowed, decreasing the gap. The rear of the train cruised toward them. Twenty feet back, Leroy was still struggling.

  “The last car!” Ant shouted, pointing over his shoulder. “The grainer!” He measured the distance between himself and the oncoming ladder, breathing hard, and adjusted his pace, then pounced, holding his feet behind him as he grasped the ladder. His thighs bashed the metal rungs, but he ignored the pain, gained his footing, and climbed atop the platform.

  Lying on his stomach, cheek to the warm steel, a smile broke out on Ant’s face. That was the fastest train he’d ever hopped. Forty-two and still in great shape. He sat up, then turned to check on Leroy. He was reaching out for the ladder, only inches away, but falling behind.

  “Khara!” Ant cursed, the smile no longer present on his face.

  Leroy pumped his legs as hard as they’d go, but he couldn’t seem to catch up. He was so close, but not close enough to risk a jump. Glancing ahead, he saw Ant seated on the front platform, peering back, worry lines creasing his tanned face, and ran harder.

  Ant yelled something, but Leroy couldn’t hear it over the train’s rumble. Even if he could, the determination dominating his thoughts would’ve blocked it out. He pushed harder, reaching the extent of his energy. His calves and thighs ached, threatening to cramp up, and what little breath he had was stuck in his throat. He forced air into
his lungs, then made one last desperate push for the ladder, thrusting his hand out as far as he could. The tip of his finger grazed a rung. He was almost there. Just a bit further…

  And then he stumbled.

  Leaning forward, Leroy hurtled along the rocky ballast as the train sped away, but he didn’t fall. After staggering to a shaky stop in the dirt beside the tracks, he dropped to his knees, watching Ant drift away on the grainer, then flopped onto his back, trying to slow his aggressive heartbeat. The thin summer air did nothing to help.

  He covered his eyes with the inside of his elbow and wondered what to do next as the train’s tumult faded, leaving only his raspy breathing, and the silence he liked so much. He wasn’t enjoying it at the moment.

  Leroy wished he could lay there forever and shut out the world, not have to deal with the trouble he’d gotten himself into. The magnitude of his stupidity astounded him. Running away was dumb enough, in retrospect. Running away across the country? And all of it for a woman he’d only known as a child, a decade ago?

  Then, the abrasive sound of rocks grinding and crunching caught his ear. He pulled his arm away from his eyes and saw Ant moseying down the ballast, his dark slacks dusted with a fine coat of sand.

  “Are you hurt?” Ant called out as he approached.

  Leroy remained silent.

  “Are you hurt?” he repeated, closing in.

  “Just leave me. I’m done,” Leroy muttered.

  “You are planning to stake out that spot, build a little hut perhaps?” Ant asked with a grin that sparked the kindling inside Leroy.

  “How ‘bout you go find Rehema, if you’re so interested,” Leroy said, sprawled in the dirt. “Then she can fly me over to Tampa. I like that idea.”

  “I am simply interested in helping you get where you are going,” Ant rebutted, extending a hand to help Leroy up, which he declined. “It is gratifying to see how much you appreciate that fact.”

  “Actually I never asked you to come, you forced your way in!” Leroy snapped, and got to his feet on his own. “This was mine.”

  “Without my guidance, you would likely still be in California.”