James was out on the sidewalk near the taxicab stand. The doors and trunks of all the cabs were wide open, as if the cabs had just been taken out of the oven and put on a rack to cool. James was doing tricks for a small audience of black drivers, a series of poses inside a tiny chalk circle he had drawn on the sidewalk. He really could bend his body in unbelievable ways. The cab drivers stood around laughing and covering their eyes and joking about James’s father being a pretzel, but they were good-natured men, and when James finished, in a pose which had his chin and forearms on the sidewalk and his feet high up in the air, they gave him lots of loose change. James accepted the money gracefully, like a professional.
When we were back inside the station, I asked him what he was going to buy with his money. “Clark’s beer,” he said. “My shoeshine man buys it for me. I give him a dollar tip.” James liked telling me about tipping a grown man. When I asked him where we could buy food and water, he looked at me as if I was insane. “You don’t buy that,” he said. “Unless you’re stupid.”
I had to go to the bathroom, and not just to pee, so I went and found the ladies’ room. A bored policeman stood by the door, sniffing the air like a dog. I tried to avoid looking at him. As I got closer, he moved in front of me. He tapped the sign with the tip of his billy club. “Ladies’ room,” he said.
“Right,” I said, backing away. “For ladies. What was I thinking?”
There was no door to the men’s room, just a maze of tiled walls to block the view. I hesitated at the entrance. A little Mexican man in overalls rear-ended me and said, “Watch it!”
The men’s room smelled a lot worse than the ladies’ room, mostly, I figured, because of the open porcelain trough where the men lined up to pee. I had seen urinals before, but they were the individual kind, separated by little metal dividers to block the view of the person peeing next to you. The trough here totally lacked privacy. It was funny to see the men stare stiffly at the wall in front of them as they peed, as if some bathroom general was walking up and down the line inspecting them. I suppose they stared that way to create a sense of privacy, even if it was pretend privacy.
The toilet stalls were decrepit—corroded and stained and a disgusting mess, with strange holes gouged through the dividing walls. I finally found one with a dry seat and an empty bowl. I had never felt so naked as I did pulling down my pants in that men’s room. I expected someone to kick in the stall door any second.
James was waiting for me outside the bathroom with some bulging paper bags. “Food,” he said, opening one of the bags for my inspection. Inside were an apricot pastry with lipstick-y bite marks; lots of little packets of sugar; most of a fast food egg sandwich; and some candy bars still in the wrapper, meaning they were stolen. Another bag had drinks. I pulled one out, a glass bottle of half finished grapefruit juice. A cigarette butt floated in the juice. I swirled it accusingly at James.
“The rest are okay,” he said. I told him I thought that eating other people’s garbage was utterly revolting, but it was just something to say. I was still starving and I knew I would eat it.
Another bag had Clark’s six-pack of beer in it. The bottles clinked as we walked. James said that Clark liked his beer in bottles because the cool glass felt good against his gums.
As we were sneaking back through the railroad yard, I asked James if he knew how Clark had lost all his teeth. James shrugged. “Ate a nigger’s lunch in Phoenix,” he said. “Got his teeth knocked out. Boom!”
“Did you see it?” I asked.
“Not in person,” James said, “but I wish I did.”
When we got back to the boxcar, the door was jammed. Both of us tried, but we couldn’t slide it open. Then James handed me an old crowbar he found on the ground. He was very patient with me, as if he was loaning me his house keys because I’d forgotten mine. We finally slid the door open, but only a foot or so. The boxcar was dark. It took my eyes a few seconds to adjust.
“Finn!” Silvia cried.
Clark was in Silvia’s corner, wrapped around her like a python.
I didn’t say anything. I went over to Clark and whacked him with the crowbar, once on the elbow and then again on the side of the knee because he still wouldn’t let go. “Mr. Clarkson!” I said. “Get back in your corner!” And he did, just like a scolded dog. I stood over him for a while, the crowbar raised up over my head. I enjoyed his cowering. I liked how he was pleading for me not to hit him. I liked him calling me “Man.” I was angry and strong.
“Come on, man,” he said, kicking his legs at me and pawing the air in front of his chest. “She wanted it. Bean-eaters always want it.”
And then, for saying that, the crowbar came down hard on his face.
Chapter Nineteen
None of us could believe what I had just done.
A curved black mark appeared on Clark’s cheek, as if the tip of the crowbar had been dipped in ink. It took a few seconds for the blood to start gushing. Then it came down off his chin, spattering the dusty boxcar floor in dark drops. Clark shrieked. He was too scared to be angry yet. He kept fingering his split cheek, pressing his knuckles against the lower edge of the cut. Occasionally he would wipe away some of the blood with his fingertips, as if the wound were an eye, and the blood, some kind of embarrassing teardrop. He kept asking, “Can I get some help over here?” but no one moved to help him.
I asked Silvia if she was all right. She nodded, but there was something new and formal about her. She was looking at me with disbelief and a little fear, as if I was a new person, a stranger, which was exactly how I felt. She wouldn’t come near me. It made me sad, but at the same time, I felt good about protecting her. I thought: She’s had a big shock; she’ll be fine in a minute. I was being so patronizing!
James was admiring Clark’s wound, shaking his head and saying, “Damn!” I didn’t know what to do about Clark. I think I said something lame like, “Serves you right.”
Clark was still cussing at me, but underneath I saw that he was afraid, and I was glad of it. I wanted him to fear me because now I was much more afraid of him, on account of how badly I had hurt his face. His dripping wound disgusted me, but I was also strangely proud of it. I didn’t bother to offer him one of my nice clean Ace bandages.
It had seemed so natural to hit him. I had never been on the other side of that before. It made me understand a little better about my past, what it’s like to raise a hand against someone and really hurt them, but at the same time think you’re doing the right thing.
But then the anger started letting go. A long freight train rumbled by, shaking us. I wished it would keep coming until it shook us to pieces. But it passed, and afterwards the only sound in the boxcar was Clark snuffling and saying, “Freakin’ unbelievable!” every time he touched his face. Whatever extra strength I had felt before was now gone. The only anger left was aimed at myself, for losing it before, and now for getting weak. All I had done was make things a thousand times more dangerous for Silvia and me.
There was an aluminum taste in my mouth. I smelled the boxcar as if for the first time that day: it stank of manure and sweat. I had an impulse to drop the crowbar and throw myself at Clark’s feet, to beg him to please hit me back, much harder if he wanted to. But that was impossible. I had started playing at being a boy. Now I had to keep it up, no matter what.
James was everywhere I turned. When Clark told him to fetch some napkins for his cut, James looked to me for permission first. Clark noticed him doing it.
“You’ll regret that,” Clark said, as much to me as to James.
“You’re saying you want some more of this?” I said, shaking the crowbar at him. James said “Damn!” again and went out to see what he could find.
Silvia looked down, shaking her head. She quietly asked if she could leave.
I told her “No.”
We spent the rest of the day in a bizarre standoff. Clark sulked in his corner, eyeing me murderously, mopping his cut with the fresh newspaper James had brough
t back instead of napkins. James buzzed around Clark’s wound like a hungry fly. Silvia avoided eye contact with everyone, including me. The crowbar and I kept on top of things. I didn’t plan to let Clark out of my sight until the train was rolling and I could make him jump out.
We waited and waited. I sent James out every two minutes to see if our engine car was coming. Each time I asked him to go, he arched his wispy eyebrows. When he came back, the answer was always, “Uh-uh.”
We distracted ourselves by eating. Without any discussion, James had moved the bags of food from Clark’s corner to mine. I gave most of the good stuff to Silvia, then me, then James. Clark got whatever was left. He threw tantrums, but ate the nasty leftovers anyway.
We heard the station clock strike noon. The sound was so out of place, so civilized, that I had to laugh. The air in the boxcar was warming up. Clark moaned in his corner for a while and then napped. James and Silvia nodded off. I was sleepy, too, but I didn’t dare close my eyes.
The drowsier I got in that afternoon heat, the deeper I fell into confusion. While the others slept, I stared at the rings and droplets of Clark’s blood in the dust. I tried to connect the bloody dots in my imagination. I kept looking for a pattern—a shape, a face, a beast from the Zodiac—something mystical that might help explain what I had done. But the harder I looked for a grand plan, the simpler it seemed: I smashed Clark’s face because I wanted to and because I could.
My thoughts were spinning around like one of those thumb-driven Easter toys, the metal flower buds that spin faster and faster until the petals open, revealing a secret scene. Something was unfolding in my mind. I began to search the day for clues, looking between the cracks for the secret scene inside what had happened. Faces changed, the true faces coming through. Silvia and Clark and James melted away, leaving Mom and Dad and me in the sweltering boxcar. As I remembered the way the crowbar felt, raised in anger, my father replaced Clark at my feet. I pictured myself standing over him, listening to him whimper and say he was sorry, and yet still hitting him, without mercy, for his own good. Teach him a lesson.
Then I imagined it a different way, where my Mom had the crowbar and I was at her feet, pleading. Dad was watching helplessly, like Silvia, terrified, but also happy that Mom was saving him from me.
All the faces kept spinning and changing, until there was no telling who was hitting, who was being hit, and who was being saved. I was all of them mixed together, the hand causing the pain, the face receiving it, and the horrified girl looking on. My father’s voice was the soundtrack, the way he used to tease me, pretending to be blind, asking again and again, “Is that my Chlo?” I didn’t want to hear him. I did not want to hear that voice. It must have been a hundred degrees in that boxcar.
Sometime in the afternoon, James asked me if he should give Clark his beer. The question jarred me out of my half sleep, making me realize how foolish it had been to let myself go, even a little. Luckily, Clark was still snoring. I said yes to the beer. Drinking might dull Clark’s mind, the way it used to slow my Mom down. I needed every advantage.
James opened the first beer and put it in Clark’s hand. Clark drank it without seeming to wake up. He jammed the neck of the bottle deep in his mouth, as if he wanted to bite it off. When he was done, he pulled it out like a pacifier and gasped. He sat up, but his eyes were still closed. James gave him another bottle. Clark drained it, too.
That opened his eyes. The only pause between bottles two and three was the time it took for Clark to peel off the sweaty labels, all the while staring at me as if he wished he was peeling off my skin. Then he wadded up the labels and threw them, one at a time, at James.
After three bottles, I said, “Enough.” You wouldn’t have believed the hatred Clark beamed at me when I said that.
I had hoped that the beer would slow Clark down, make him easier to deal with, but it had the opposite effect. Now he seemed super awake, his eyelids never closing, his reptilian eyes constantly tracking me.
Trains were coming and going, but ours was just sitting there, baking in the sun. By evening, I was going out of my mind. “Why aren’t we going?” I said.
Silvia agreed. “Really, Finn,” she said. “It’s too tense.”
Clark had been lying on his side, turned away from us. When he heard that, though, he sat up, folding his legs under himself like some kind of swami. After a final delicate dab at his cut, he put down his bloody newspaper as if it were a smoldering peace pipe. He turned to Silvia. “I apologize,” he said. “For before. I hope we can still be friends.”
I wanted to shout: liar! but Silvia was tired of all the silence. She looked exhausted. “We’re going to California,” she said. Clark nodded, then tried to hide the fact that nodding made him wince.
“Absolutely,” he said. “That’s excellent.”
“Actually,” I said, crossing eyes with Silvia, “it’s not definite.”
“But you are going west,” Clark said.
“Maybe. Maybe not,” I said.
For some reason, Silvia kept talking. “How long will that take?”
“What? To go west?” Clark said. “West is kind of vague.”
“He’s playing games with you,” I said.
“Vague,” Clark said, ignoring me, “because west’s a direction, not a place. How long do you plan to rest here?” He was asking Silvia again, but I was sick of his questions.
“Until this goddamn train gets going,” I said.
Clark’s eyes widened, his nostrils flared, and then he doubled over, laughing silently. “Oh! Oh! That’s rich!” he gasped.
“Shut up,” I said.
“‘Until this train gets going,’” Clark said, turning to James. “Going!” he wheezed.
James started to laugh, too, as if it was finally time to acknowledge the private joke between them. When I saw that, my heart sank.
“So?” I said.
“These cars are here for service,” Clark said.
“They ain’t going nowhere,” James added.
I thought Clark would throw up, he was laughing so hard.
“What does he mean, Nowhere?” Silvia said. I wanted to shush her, but I didn’t want Clark to show me up anymore, so instead I said, “It means we’re on the wrong train.”
“Bing bing bing bing bing!” Clark said.
“Say we were going to California,” I said. “How long would that take?” Clark picked up his soiled newspaper and began folding it neatly in half, then in quarters, as if he wanted to save the business section for later. He liked making me wait for his answer. The fact that I wanted his opinion was restoring his confidence.
“You might be able to catch a coal train to Chicago,” he said. “From there you could maybe ride out with the piggies on a nice hog train. Good weather? Say, two weeks.”
“Two weeks!” Silvia said.
“Maybe less, if you had a decent guide,” Clark said. I hated the sugary way he was talking to Silvia. I felt like saying the word “rape,” just to remind everybody what I had saved her from.
“Well, that’s out of the question,” I said, but Silvia disagreed.
“It’s not for you to decide, Chica,” she said. She immediately added, “Finn.”
“‘Chica?’” Clark said. He stared at me for a long time, especially at my chest. “Isn’t that a girl’s name?”
“Mind your own damn business,” I said. But he came nearer, squatting down and sniffing the air, as if he had just caught a whiff of the sheep under the wolf’s clothing.
“Chica,” he said. “Aw. That’s sweet.”
Just then I felt the crowbar slip away.
“I got it,” James said, moving behind Clark. “Right here.”
“Nice move,” Clark said, taking the crowbar from James and smiling at me.
“Yeah, thanks a lot, James,” I said.
James shrugged. “Man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do,” he said. He clapped his hands together, the way he did at the end of a routine.
It made a little cloud of chalk.
Clark had some fun with the crowbar for a while, pretending it was a sword, pointing it at my heart, lunging and saying “En garde!” like some kind of Musketeer. I was scared, but I was glad he was paying more attention to me than Silvia. I tried always to be in between them. It wasn’t too hard. He seemed fascinated with me, now that I was a girl.
“We’re going to have us a party tonight!” Clark said. He was sweating, and not just from the heat inside of the boxcar. The cut had made him feverish. His eyes went in and out of focus, and he forgot to wipe his wound, which was pouring out a clear yellow stream.
Dancing around with the crowbar, dripping with sweat, Clark looked like an Indian whooping it up in front of a bonfire. Silvia and I seemed to be his flames. He tried to take my arm to get me to dance with him, or at least spin around like a moron, which was what his dancing amounted to. Each time I pulled away from him, he thrust out his lower lip and said, “Cwark is vewy, vewy disappointed.” But then he grabbed my arm and held the flat end of the crowbar—the sharp end—to my throat, hissing, “Dance with me.”
I danced with him, close, right up next to the wound. When he saw me looking at it, he thrust his cheek at me, saying, “You like?” The gash smelled like fishy newspaper. He wiped his cheek with his fingertips and touched my forehead with them, blooding me, as if we were celebrating my first kill.
I was pretty dizzy after all that spinning around. Clark’s hands were all over me, pinching and squeezing. My main thought was: not in front of James, even though he had betrayed me. I couldn’t really see James. I couldn’t see much of anything. The boxcar was almost dark. The bonfire was only in my imagination. Clark leaned in. His face stank. “You’re gonna be my special lady,” he whispered. I felt his breath in my ear. Then his toothless gums were pinching my earlobe.
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