Transcontinental

by Brad Cook

  Chad looked at Ant for a sign, but Ant remained solemn and silent, looking at the ground as he unbuckled his seatbelt.

  Leroy grabbed his bag, then opened the door. “I’ma go to the station. Come if you want, Ant. If not, I get it.”

  With that, he left.

  * * *

  Chad looked at Ant and said, “Damn.”

  “My apologies. He is a man on a mission, most literally.” Ant checked the side mirror and saw Leroy hobbling through the parking lot, then reached for the door handle. “And for that reason, I must leave, too.”

  “I know, brother, I know. It’s cool. It’s all just another adventure.”

  Ant tilted his head, then smiled. He had been wrong about Chad. Even after all these years, all those faces and names, he could still misread a person. “Do you have enough gas to return to Denver?”

  Glancing at his dashboard, Chad said, “Uh, yeah. Half tank. I should be good. I can always walk back if I don’t make it,” he laughed.

  Ant’s smile glowed. “The wanderer’s spirit. I wish you the best.”

  He stepped out of the car and opened the back door, grabbed his bag from the back seat, then looked up at Chad. “One last thing,” he said. “What type of peanut butter do you prefer, if I might ask?”

  “Honey-roasted crunchy. Peter pan.”

  Ant left Chad with a warm nod, then sauntered off. He had time. He’d be damned if he would seem desperate, and Leroy wasn’t exactly going to run off with his ankle hurt. Ant cut across a flower bed to lessen the gap, regardless.

  Around the corner, he could see Leroy limping along in his newfound determination, and he couldn’t have been more proud. Sure, the boy had gone against his wishes directly, even aggressively, but that was part of the cause for his pride, not a detractor to it. In the face of injury and Ant’s potential departure, Leroy had stuck with his goal. Ant thought back to the shy, withdrawn child he had met in the boxcar in contrast to the boy he traveled with currently, and already there was a marked difference. He just needed to learn control.

  Even if he had thought himself capable, Ant knew he couldn’t tell Leroy any of that at the moment; the boy was angry, and needed space, time to cool. Ant didn’t mind putting it off. There’d be plenty of time later for him to work on getting the words out. He hung back on the sidewalk.

  Behind him, Chad beeped a goodbye as he pulled out of the lot.

  Leroy turned and noticed Ant, and for a moment they just stared at each other. Then, Leroy spun around and limped away; not out of spite, Ant felt, but out of indifference, which was equally upsetting.

  Ant followed. He could walk just fine, but emotionally he limped. Usually he could brush away the anger of others, even feed off it, but with the boy upset at him, anguish was an anchor.

  The station was bigger than Ant had expected, unfortunately. A high fence surrounding the tracks was visible from a distance, and a trio of police cars loomed in front of the entrance, one parked in a handicapped spot.

  Undeterred, Leroy marched on.

  Ant sped up his stride as he formulated a plan. By the time Leroy reached the station, Ant was right alongside him. “I have an idea.”

  “So do I,” Leroy said.

  Stopping in front of the building, Ant said “Shall we exchange them?”

  “You first.”

  “Mine is very simple. We enter the station as if we have tickets to ride one of the passenger trains, then slip out through an exit to the yard.”

  Leroy looked away. “You win.”

  “I am not attempting to compete with you, Leroy,” Ant insisted. “You have a goal, and I want to help you reach it. Why the resistance?”

  Adjusting his backpack on his shoulders, Leroy entered the lobby.Ant’s eyes swept the off-yellow room—front desk to the right, exits to the far left and back of the room, policeman on the pay phone in the rear right, a dozen patrons waiting in the scattered seats, and a few dozen more on the back platform. Perhaps the plan would require alteration.

  “So we just walk right out, or what?” Leroy asked.

  The door opened behind them. A suited man with a briefcase entered, glanced at each of them with a scowl, then stepped around them.

  “Perhaps we should move,” Ant suggested, sliding away from the door. His mind shuffled through ideas, and he knew what to do. “Go stand by the exit,” he said, pointing to the left. He handed his bag to Leroy. “Take this, too.”

  “Come on, I got enough to deal with.”

  “I will need to move swiftly,” Ant said. “Now, when you get into the yard, you must first confirm there are no officers or guards, then casually hide behind the nearest train and wait for me. Do not run.”

  “Does it look like I’ma run?”

  “Wait for me to make eye contact, then go.”

  They split up, and Ant inched his way over toward the closest row of seats, on the end of which sat an elderly woman. On second thought, Ant decided to use somebody else. The poor woman didn’t deserve it.

  He sidled over next to dull woman, half-heartedly flipping through a magazine, and took a moment to steel himself before speaking. “Goodness, is that a mouse?” he said, and pointed ostentatiously at the woman’s feet, but she continued to flip through the pages, unfazed.

  “Is it?” she asked, voice devoid of fear or concern, to Ant’s dismay.

  Strike one. Two more and he was out, realistically. He moved down the line, looking for another target, and passed a little boy, legs dangling over the edge of his seat, a stern man with horn-rimmed glasses and a chiseled jaw, and a teenage girl who cowered at the sight of him. Finally, at the end of the row, he came to a lively woman squawking on a bulky cell phone. She was the one.

  “Well hun, if you don’t defend yourself he’s just going to keep pestering you,” she said into the phone. “Let me talk to him.” She waited. “Okay then tell him when I get home he’s going to have to deal with me.” She checked her watch. “About forty-five minutes.”

  Again, Ant steeled himself, preparing to hustle out of there. “Oh my God,” Ant gasped, pointing near the woman’s shoes, “is that a rat?”

  He got the reaction he’d hoped for as she instantly hopped up with a shriek, flinging her phone halfway across the room. She dashed over to the wall, crying “Kill it! Somebody kill it!”

  Ant was nearly through the exit by the time the officer reached her. Outside, he briefly surveyed the barren yard—a few passenger trains awaiting departure around the bend far to his right, a few freighters further down the yard, straight ahead.

  “Hey quit standing around!” Leroy called out, huddled behind the nearest train about fifty feet away, just as he had been asked.

  Ant scuttled over to Leroy and took back his bag. “That worked well.”

  “We’ll celebrate later. Let’s go.”

  They scurried along the train, then rounded the engine unit and crouched. Ant glanced around to make sure they hadn’t been seen, then pulled a compass from a small pocket on his bag. They’d been heading East already. “This way,” he said, and, still crouching, made a break for the next train up the tracks.

  Leroy clomped to a stop beside him, then shifted his weight onto his good leg, inhaling to catch his breath through a grimace. A rogue urge to carry the boy flooded Ant, but he let it pass, then peeked around the grainer. A couple tracks over, men were loading a boxcar with boxes, and not particularly carefully.

  Ant glanced further ahead and saw something that made his heart leap—an autorack. The giant metal enclosure might as well have been a Motel Six. Even more convenient, it brought up the rear of a freighter at the front of the eastbound track. Finally, some luck.

  They had to make it there before they were safe, though. Ant estimated the distance was fifty meters, and the whole way they’d be visible to the workers if any of them simply turned around. Either they ran and risked the workers hearing them, or they crept across, and risked taking too long. The answer was obviously the latter, due to Leroy’
s condition.

  “Ready yet?” Leroy asked, breaking Ant’s train of thought. “Hey, I thought you said crew members don’t mind hobos. Why’re we hiding?”

  “I also said that any time a station services passengers, security is abundant. Workers at bigger stations are ‘encouraged’ to turn hobos in, lest they suffer a fine, or even get let go, on occasion,” Ant whispered.

  “Of course,” Leroy said bitterly. “Just this once, I wish it was easy.”

  “What do you suggest we do?” Ant whispered, feeling guilty from the note of aggravation in his voice, till Leroy grabbed a rock from the ballast pile and tossed it across the yard. It bounced up and clanged off a gondola.

  One of the three workers stopped what he was doing and turned to the noise, then spoke with the others, but Ant couldn’t hear them. The first worker walked toward the rock, but the other two kept working.

  “I suppose that did not hurt our chances,” Ant admitted.

  They had to tuck behind the grainer car abruptly when one of the remaining workers looked around, perhaps having heard their whispers, Ant figured. When he peered around the car, the workers were back at it. No sense wasting any more time waiting for the third to get back.

  Ant motioned for Leroy to follow, then snuck along the track, stepping on the wood planks to stay quiet. So far, so good, Ant thought, further than halfway there. His eyes were glued to the workers, but both he and Leroy made it to the train without issue.

  Shortly after they’d crossed, the third worker came back. Ant hoped that would mean they would finish faster, but decided to be productive in the meantime. He leapt over the ballast and landed in the grass, then began his search. He needed a rail spike. That would be the easy part.

  “Where you going?” Leroy demanded.

  Ant shushed him, and continued scanning the ground alongside the train. He reached down and pulled on a spike that looked loose, but it held fast. The next one did, too. Shortly after, he found one lying beside the tracks, the work already done for him. Now for the hard part.

  Spare and loose railroad spikes were easy to find, but tie plates, slightly less so. Still, Ant had often noticed bent or broken plates left beside the tracks in ditches and under bridges. He scoured the tall grass and weeds along the fence until he was out of earshot from Leroy. On the way back he searched along the tracks and under the cars, but by the time he reached Leroy, he’d found nothing.

  “Workers are gone,” Leroy said. “What’re you doing? Let’s go.”

  “I am looking for what is called a tie plate—a rectangular sheet of metal with square holes punched into it. I cannot find one, which is strange.”

  “What d’you need that for? There’s tons of cars we can ride.”

  “’For what do you need that?’ and ‘There are tons of cars we can ride.’”

  “I don’t need a grammar lesson right now! You coming, or not?”

  “This will be worth it.” Ant was impatient with the boy’s impatience. He was trying to pass on a valuable skill, and show the kid some luxury.

  “That what you’re looking for?” Leroy asked, gesturing between two sets of tracks to their right, next to the boxcar that the workers packed.

  “It is,” Ant said, pleasantly surprised. He checked for workers before darting over and grabbing it, then slipped the spike out of his pocket and nestled it into one of the holes in the plate. A perfect fit. The two were made for each other.

  He thought of that frosty Denver evening, decades ago. The gratitude he had felt when the old man showed him how to open an autorack was overwhelming. Ant had always thought, or perhaps managed to convince himself, that he might’ve frozen if it wasn’t for Joe.

  It made Ant happy that he, in turn, could impart Ancient Joe’s lessons onto someone else. The old man’s wisdom was eternal in that way.

  For a moment, his thoughts drifted to his son—or the child he’d assumed was his son. It was not exactly unnatural to think one’s wife might be carrying one’s child, but he supposed it was his fault for assuming.

  “Hey,” Leroy said, shaking Ant’s arm. “What’s with you today?”

  “I apologize.” Ant held up the tie plate with the railroad spike stuck through it. “This is what is called a Chuck and Key. Do not ask me why.”

  “Don’t worry, I won’t.”

  Exasperated, Ant continued. “The chuck and key is used to open this type of car, called an autorack. It is very simple—stick the spike into the lock,” he said, demonstrating, “then twist it counter-clockwise.”

  The door emitted a resonant click, then the right half swung open a crack. Ant pulled the doors open further, revealing five high-end cars—BMW, Lexus, Mercedes, Saab, Infiniti—parked inside. He turned to see Leroy’s face alight, which he found surprisingly satisfying.

  “I told you it was worth it.”

  “Yeah, but are they unlocked?” Leroy asked, suddenly skeptical.

  “Not only are they unlocked, each car contains its own key. We can listen to the radio, use the air-conditioning, recline the seats, go crazy.”

  “Well let’s go before someone sees us,” Leroy said, climbing inside. The boy headed straight for the BMW in the middle of the autorack.

  Ant shut the doors, then joined Leroy. “A few rules. First and foremost, do not turn the car fully on. The exhaust fumes will build up quickly. If you thought the tunnel was bad… just do not turn the car on. Second, do not take it out of park, though the car would have to be on to do so.”

  Leroy nodded dismissively. “Yeah, yeah, I get it.”

  They locked gazes for an uncomfortable minute, then Ant backed out of the doorway. “I suppose I will take the Mercedes,” he said.

  Ant shut the door and walked away, taming his disappointment.

  * * *

  Leroy was practicing pushing the gas pedal when he felt the car lurch forward. Panic set in, and he gripped the steering wheel tightly, until he realized it was the train car that was moving, not the BMW.

  He collected himself. His eyes settled on Ant, two cars ahead of him, head laid back, arm draped over the passenger seat. Leroy was glad he’d picked the back car. The BMW. Take that, Mr. Tom.

  The seat was too far up, but he didn’t know how to scoot it back. He reached his hand down the left side of the seat, where a little knob jutted from the plastic. Leroy tried pushing it in, but it wouldn’t budge. Why did car controls have to be so complicated? Fumbling with the knob, he accidentally nudged it forward, and the chair scooted accordingly, bunching him up against the steering wheel. He felt like Chad had looked on their brief road trip.

  Leroy scooted the chair back to his liking, but Chad was on his mind. He didn’t want to admit it, but he had a nagging feeling that Ant was right, that they should’ve driven with Chad. Time was an issue, he couldn’t deny it. Spending all the money they had before Tampa, though… the thought made his anxiety build back up that much faster.

  Didn’t matter, though. He was sure Ant was angry with him, and he didn’t intend on hopping into the Mercedes, plopping down on the passenger seat, and apologizing. He decided to try when they got off.

  After a few minutes, the train seemed to have reached full speed somewhere between dissatisfying and excruciating, as Leroy had gotten used to traveling seventy-plus miles per hour in Chad’s car. He could almost hear the techno thump, still. Another tinge of regret swelled up in him.

  He pressed the power button on the radio, but nothing happened. How could he listen to the radio or use the air-conditioning without turning the car on? Leroy glanced at the key stuck in the ignition, and tried turning it. Nothing happened. He turned it a little further, and the radio lit up. How about that? Instead of simply wondering how to do something, he attempted to do it, and figured it out. He vowed to make that a habit. No more helplessness.

  The clock read four twenty-three. Leroy wondered if that was the correct time. If so, the day had flown by. If not, he was exhausted, regardless.

  He grabbed the l
ever to tilt the chair back, a control he was actually familiar with, and leaned as far back as it would go, which wasn’t far enough for his liking, but he made due. The time and the angle of his seat didn’t matter—Leroy was going to get some sleep.

  * * *

  Antoine Bevilacqua’s eyes shot open at the air-powered crowing of the train horn, then with a scowl, he squeezed them shut again. He laid bunched up on his side in the back of the compact Mercedes, face stuffed into the crevice where the seat met the backrest, wondering why the vehicle had ostensibly been designed for pygmies rather than full-sized people.

  The train started its steady deceleration. Ant knew he had to get up, but sleep had been rare, and he wasn’t in the mood for the day. Everything annoyed him: the chill of the leather seats even in the summer’s warmth, the modernized dashboard and radio, the new car smell; it all took him back to a time in his life he now tried to avoid. Learn from, but avoid. Ant wanted to be left alone.

  When he lifted his face from the seat, he saw Leroy peering at him through a window. Their eyes met, then the boy hurried off. Ant sat up, knees tucked in tight against the front seat, and rubbed his head. The last thing he wanted was to deal with another teenage tantrum.

  The azure dawn leaked in through the porous walls of the train car, alternately casting dim bars of light and shadow. Something seemed off, amiss, but Ant couldn’t discern what, or why. His hair suddenly felt long under his fingers. Maybe he just needed a trim.

  The squeal of the brakes faded as the train came to a stop, giving way to a heavy rattling. Ant turned to see Leroy fidgeting with the autorack door, trying to open it with little success. Wonderful, advertise our presence, he thought. He found the door handle and exited the car, then headed toward Leroy to show him how to do it correctly.

  Should he, though? Ant knew he could be controlling, even before it’d been leveled against him in countless arguments with Heather, even before Mrs. Jenkins had called him out in the professors’ lounge, even before his students’ anonymous teacher evaluation slips told him so at the end of each semester. He’d always known. On one hand, he didn’t see the problem—if he was involved with something, he wanted to ensure it was done properly. On the other hand, that’s probably how Leroy felt, as well. They simply differed on how to accomplish it.