The Obstacle Course

by JF Freedman

  “I do believe I’ll get me a little pussy tonight,” I said, lying back like a rajah. I was thinking of Ruby, we could swing by her place. Maybe her friend would be there, too. Burt’s eyes would pop out of his head when I sauntered in there real casual-like.

  “I reckon I will, too,” Burt said. In his dreams, I thought, this time I’d call his bluff. The pro. If any of us was the pro now, it was me.

  Suddenly I started laughing, giggling like one of the girls at school.

  “Did you see old Joe’s face when we pulled out of there?”

  “I’ll bet he damn near shit his pants.”

  We laughed as we lit up cigarettes, hunching over against the wind, watching the world pass us by.

  The afternoon sun moved across the sky as we crossed into the outskirts of Washington. More and more tracks started joining ours, crisscrossing each other, electric wires buzzing overhead. Afar off to the right, in the hazy, smoky distance, we saw the tail end of the long lines of passenger cars docked in Union Station. We stood in the doorway watching as the train started to slow down.

  “Does it look like we’re turning off?” Burt asked uneasily.

  I took a quick glance at where he was looking. “Hell no, what’re you talking about, we’re going right into the station.”

  “Well, how come then the station’s over to the right there and we’re peeling off to the left?”

  “That’s just the main building,” I told him, feeling confident, “the freight yards’re spread out all over.”

  “I guess so,” he answered, not sounding very sure about it.

  We stood and watched as the train slid by the station, passing it on the right, watched as the station slowly passed completely out of view, the train still on the move, heading down towards southeast Washington. Although it wasn’t moving with any real speed the train was moving too fast for us to jump.

  “She must be going on down to the Navy Yard,” I said, cogitating on it.

  Burt looked over at me. I was worried and I couldn’t help but show it, and that scared him even more.

  We sat in the boxcar as the train rolled through the Virginia countryside, not looking at each other, glum and angry and nervous. Burt was more than nervous; scared’s more like it. I was scared, too, but not as much, I’ve hitchhiked more places than him: what goes out must come back, that’s one thing you learn being on the road. It was beautiful; rolling country, green hills and leafy trees, horses running behind white fences, like out of a storybook, very pretty to look at if you’re not concerned with getting the hell out of it. Neither of us had a watch, so we didn’t know how long we’d been riding. A couple of hours, anyway.

  Needless to say, the train hadn’t been going to the Navy Yard. It bypassed Washington completely, going east of Union Station and then dropping right into Virginia, through Arlington, Fairfax; from the way the sun was dropping it looked to me like it was heading southwest. For all I knew it could be going clear to New Orleans, or Mexico for that matter, I know about hitchhiking but I don’t know jack-shit about trains, I’ve always wanted to, though, like I’ve always wanted to get away and be on my own for real. It’s just that this wasn’t the time and place to do it, but beggars can’t be choosers. Anyway, we’d have to stop sooner or later.

  “Now what, genius?” Burt asked again, staring out the open boxcar door. He’s like a stuck needle in a record with that expression. He was freaked out, not even trying to hide it. He may be the pro on the Ravensburg Junior High playground, but out here he was just another scared kid, scared of not knowing where we were going, scared of what would happen to him when he finally got home. I was scared of that, too, but there wasn’t anything I could do about it, so I just watched the scenery.

  “It’s got to stop pretty soon,” I told him, like I knew all there was to know about riding freight trains, “we ain’t that far out of D.C.”

  “You don’t even know where we’re at,” he said, totally disgusted.

  “The hell I don’t.”

  “Where are we?”

  “Somewheres in Virginia.”

  “Shit.” He hocked a big lugy out the door. “That could be anyfuckingwhere.”

  This was true, so I kept my mouth shut. One thing we had to do was stick together, if we got at each other’s throats we’d be doubly fucked.

  As we moved south the sun moved west, almost to the ridge of the mountains. I looked out the door. Up about a mile I could see a small switchyard, some boxcars sitting on a side track. Our train started slowing down.

  I pointed out the door to Burt, who looked.

  “We’ll be off this mother in two seconds flat,” I told him, feeling pretty smug after all that nervousness. I knew I’d fucked up, kind of anyway, but we could get off now, hitch a ride home, and it would still be better than having got caught back there at the junkyard.

  The switchyard was coming up fast now. We stood in the doorway in anticipation. Another minute and it would be going slow enough for us to jump off.

  As the train approached the yard (coming to a stop now, in five seconds I was going to yell at Burt to jump), a bum suddenly appeared out of the weeds at the side of the tracks and jumped into our car, moving with an agility that came from years of jumping trains, like the way I move over the obstacles at the Academy. He skittered into our car and gave us a wild look.

  “Don’t stand in that doorway like that,” he yelled urgently, his voice hoarse and shot, “you’re a goddamn three-alarm fire with cowbells!”

  As we looked at him in puzzlement, frozen for a moment at his unexpected entrance, he grabbed us roughly and hauled us into a dark corner of the boxcar. I turned away from him in disgust as I got hit with a blast of his foul whiskey breath, right in my face. The guy stunk like a pigsty, he probably hadn’t taken a bath or brushed his teeth in a month.

  I twisted my arm out of his grasp. “Let go, goddamnit, we’re getting off here!”

  “Are you shitting me?” He pointed outside.

  A few cars away, we saw a railroad detective pacing down the line.

  “You see that sum’bitch out there?” the bum told us in a deep southern accent, his vocal cords almost shot from all the booze he must’ve drunk over the years. “They’s three of them in this here yard, they’d as soon break your goddamn head as scratch their ass they catch you riding one of their cars. You jump off in this here yard, son, you’re committing suicide.”

  Burt exchanged a fearful glance with me.

  “Duck down now and don’t breathe,” the bum commanded, pulling us further into the car.

  We hid behind some crates as the detective peered into the car for a minute before moving on, not seeing us. Almost immediately, the train jerked and started moving again.

  Burt turned to me, his eyes as big as dinner plates.

  “How the hell are we supposed to get off now?” he cried. He was really shook, beyond normal scared.

  “You’ll have to wait till she pulls out of the yard before you can jump,” the bum told us, leaning back against the wall of the car and sliding down to a comfortable sitting position. He was home, like he was sitting in his living room. In less than thirty seconds, he was fast asleep.

  We crabbed to the edge of the car and stood in the doorway. The train was clearing the yard, moving fast, too fast for us to jump out. I turned to look at Burt. He turned away.

  We watched the yard vanish in the distance.

  It was getting late in the day, the sun sitting on top of the mountains in the west, which I figured to be the Blue Ridge Mountains. I’ve been here before, with Joe and his folks, to Luray Caverns, it was beautiful up there, we went in the fall when all the leaves were turning, like in a postcard. We’d gone down into the caverns, seen thousands of stalactites and stalagmites, plus the added attraction of about a ton of bat shit on the walls and floors. No bats, though, they only come out at night is what the guide told us.

  “You ever been to Luray Caverns?” I asked Burt.

  “Wh
at kind of stupid question is that?” He was so mad at me he liked to have killed me.

  “Just asking. I have, with Joe.”

  “Big fucking deal.” We were sitting on the other side of the boxcar from the bum, who seemed to be sleeping.

  “If you’d ever been there you’d know it was a big deal. Miles and miles of caves, really cool ones, you could spend days in there exploring them.” I was trying to cheer him up, get his mind off our problem.

  “The answer is no.”

  “Just wondered,” I said.

  “Just shut the fuck up, Roy, okay?”

  “Excuse me for living,” I said. He was scared shitless, that’s why he was acting so dumb. Like it was all my fault. Nobody made him jump on the train, he could’ve stayed back there with Joe and taken his medicine. I knew that if he had stayed back there instead of jumping on with me he’d have thought differently, but it wasn’t the time to remind him of that.

  “Shit,” Burt said, looking out the doorway again, “we’ll never get off this fucking train.”

  He was close to breaking down, I could hear it in his voice. That’s all I needed, being on a freight train in the middle of nowhere, in the same boxcar with a drunken bum, and my best friend starts crying like a baby.

  The bum woke up, glanced over at us, pulled a half-pint from his back pocket, and took a healthy swig. Then he held the bottle up to us, offering it.

  I shook my head and turned away. The thought of sharing anything that bum had put his mouth on was enough to almost make me puke my insides out. Burt was turning yellow from the thought.

  “Suit yourselfs,” he croaked, grinning at us. His teeth, the ones he had left, were coated with years of tobacco-juice stains. He took one last hit and tossed his empty bottle out the car.

  “Listen, boy,” he told Burt, “this here’s the best education money can buy, so you might as well enjoy it while you can; ’cause right now, you ain’t goin’ nowheres.”

  Burt and I slumped against the side of the car, as the truth of what he’d said sunk in. Outside, as the night closed in on us, the train continued traveling south into uncharted territory.

  TWELVE

  THE TRAIN CREAKED TO a halt, the wheels throwing metal-on-metal sparks as they ground against the tracks. Even before it had stopped completely the bum was wide awake and on his feet. Standing in the doorway, he took one look around outside, threw a hurried “see you in hell, boys,” over his shoulder, and jumped to the ground, hitting and rolling heavily. He was probably so drunk from that cheap booze he’d been drinking he hadn’t felt a thing.

  It was night. The moon was down and the stars lay buried under a thick layer of fog. We didn’t know where we were, or what time it was. We’d been lying on our backs, strung-out in the boxcar, for hours.

  I walked to the open door and looked out. The train was resting in a small freight depot, on a siding. Up ahead, near the front of the train, there was a water tower standing tall against the darkness, the kind you see in every southern town. I could read the name “Staunton” painted in black paint on the white tank.

  We were about one hundred and fifty miles from Washington as the crow flies, which I knew for a fact, because Staunton is the town where Staunton Military Academy, Admiral Farrington’s archrival, is located. The catalogues from Farrington had stories and pictures about football and basketball games between the two, because theirs was as intense a rivalry as between Annapolis and West Point, since Farrington is a Navy prep school and Staunton does the same thing for the Army. I’d dreamt of being here, but not under these circumstances.

  My mouth tasted like shit. Neither of us had had anything to drink or eat, since we were prisoners on this fucking train, and I was thirsty as hell. My tongue felt like a caterpillar, I was so thirsty. Sometimes the most important thing in your life is something real trivial; right now the most important thing in my life was to have a glass of water.

  Burt joined me at the door. He was still pale as a ghost, hardly able to stay on his feet without holding onto the side of the boxcar.

  “Let’s go,” he said, super-anxious. He was as thirsty as me, maybe more, he looked about one heartbeat away from losing it completely, breaking down and bawling like an infant; probably thinking he’d never get home again, see his family, all that shit. I knew I would, and wasn’t looking forward to it.

  Burt stood in the doorway, ready to jump.

  Even though I was thirsty as a motherfucker and wanted off this train, I wasn’t leaving. I sat down in a corner, leaning back against the wall.

  “What’s the matter?” Burt looked back at me, anxiously.

  “I ain’t going.”

  “Why not?” I could hear the crying in his voice, it was right under the surface.

  “You go ahead if you want to. I’m staying in here.”

  “What for?” He sounded like he was in second grade.

  “I ain’t jumping off this train in the middle of the night, for all we know there might be one of those railroad detectives around the corner, waiting to nab our ass.”

  “That’s a bunch of bull,” he cried, “that prick was full of shit. Anyway, he jumped out and nothing happened. Jesus Christ, Roy,” he whimpered, his voice rising about two octaves, “we can’t stay here, what the fuck’s wrong with you?”

  He was losing it, losing it completely, and it was pissing me off. Being around somebody that scared is like looking in a gas tank with a lighted match to see if there’s any fuel inside.

  “You’re crazy, Roy,” he continued. “You’ve gone plumb loco.” He was beaten down completely—his voice sounded like air coming out of an old balloon.

  I felt shitty. Burt was my best friend and we were at each other’s throats, like we wanted to kill each other. Being on the run like a couple of gypsies can do that to you. But I didn’t have a choice—my destiny was ahead of me, down this railroad line.

  “I ain’t moving until I can see that the coast’s clear,” I told him in the toughest voice I could muster, trying to stay cool and collected, which wasn’t at all the way I felt.

  “Well, shit,” he moaned. He stood in the doorway, looking out; then he turned back, looking at me like I might change my mind.

  “You want to go, go ahead,” I told him. I wasn’t changing it.

  Burt wasn’t going anywhere without me, I knew that for sure, and I wasn’t leaving this boxcar, not now. As soon as I’d seen that sign on the water tower that read “Staunton” I knew exactly why I was on this train, and where it was taking me. It wasn’t an accident, the result of some normal teenage fucking up back there at the junkyard. This was a twist of fate that I had to follow.

  It took a while for the train to get moving again. We rode it through the night into the following day without one stop, the two of us not talking to each other the whole time, just sitting in the hot, smelly boxcar. Occasionally one or the other of us would drift off into a troubled sleep and then jerk awake, hot and sweaty with fear. Burt was feeling sorry for himself, wishing he’d never jumped this stupid train, maybe even wishing he’d never met me. I had a feeling that when all this was over it would be the end of the Three Musketeers. Every man for himself, and fuck all the rest.

  Finally, around dusk, the train started slowing down. We were coming to a town. I looked out the door to see if there was a water tower. There was: “Randolph” was written on the side in bold letters.

  “Goddamn, I’m starving,” Burt said, coming up next to me.

  I hardly heard him, because my heart was beating a mile a minute. Randolph was the town where Farrington Academy was located.

  The train was making for the yard, the middle of it, not a siding. There were quite a few trains parked in it, it must’ve been a crossroads of some kind.

  “My old lady must be worried sick,” Burt said.

  “She’ll get over it,” I told him. I knew that was cold, but I couldn’t help it. I had more important things on my mind than his mother’s feelings.

  �
��Jesus,” he said, looking at me, like I looked different somehow, like he didn’t know me.

  The train ground to a stop, the cars banging against each other. I looked outside. No one seemed to be around.

  “See anyone?” Burt asked, trying to be sarcastic, like he could give a shit less; but I knew he was shaking in his boots.

  “Don’t matter,” I told him, “I’m out of here.” I dropped to the ground and started running for the edge of the yard.

  “Hey, wait up!” he called, more scared that I was going to leave him than he was of any railroad detective who might be lurking in the weeds. He jumped out, hitting the ground hard, and chased after me.

  Randolph was one of those picture-postcard southern towns, sleepy and old-fashioned, like it hadn’t seen any progress at all for at least fifty years and would be just as happy if it never did.

  We passed by a Mobil station a couple blocks down from the train yard and washed up as best we could, first drinking a gallon of water apiece and gargling the puke taste out of our mouths, then checking ourselves out in the grimy mirror over the sink—two road-dirty kids who looked like runaways from reform school.

  “We’d better lay low,” Burt said, trying to comb his hair with his fingers, which just made it look worse, his cowlick stood up like a rooster’s tail, “cop sees us, our ass’ll be in the clink.” He had his shirt off and was giving himself a sponge bath with some wadded-up paper towels.

  “Can’t throw you in jail for being dirty,” I said. I knew they would, though, they’ll do that to kids; they don’t like the way you look they’ll kick your ass good, just because they feel like it. I’d stripped all the way down to my drawers and was washing myself off from head to toe. It didn’t make me look much better, but at least I felt cleaner.