The Waking (30 page)

Sorry, Rose. I hope you found the backpack in the lost and found.

I duck and squirm out of the backpack until it’s in front of me on the ladder. I unzip the back pocket and remove the notepads and as many of the pens as I can, jamming them into my pants pockets then shoving as many sandwiches into my pants as I can.

I put the last brownie in my mouth. As the train slows even more, I notice beside me other trains, parked and waiting to be unloaded or loaded.

And I see uniforms. They aren’t cops, but they have to be security. I don’t think they’ve noticed me yet, but they will if I jump off and start running. I ease down to the bottom of the ladder as we pass within one set of tracks of another train. I’ll just jump and hide, that’s all I have to do. Just jump—

I leap and turn, and for a split-second, I’m wondering where the ground is as the backpack goes on its merry way without me. When I fall and tumble into a heap, the ground finds me all right, my elbows and knees scraped, but I’m alive and in one piece, and I’m in—

I hear a voice yelling, “Hey!”

You’re in trouble.

I’m in trouble.

I look behind me to see a man running toward me, a long black flashlight or a nightstick in his hand. “Hey, you, stay right there!”

I jump up and scramble to my right, crawling under a train car to the other side, praying that another train isn’t bearing down on me. When I find yet another car, I crawl under it until I find another car … and another … and another … until I can’t hear the security guard’s footsteps or his yelling anymore.

Just when I think I’ll be crawling under cars all day, I see an empty track and stick my head out. Nothing coming, man or machine, in either direction. I slide out, stand, and brush off lots of dust. Only then do I realize that half of the brownie, all covered with dust and dirt, is still in my mouth. I toss it away and look for somewhere to pee.

“
Better get on,” I hear a voice say.

I look in all directions and see no one.

“
Boy, you better get on ‘fore they catch you.”

Is that you?

Ain’t me.

Who is it then?

How should I know?

All I see are brown rail cars, their doors padlocked. “Where are you?”

“
Turn around.”

I look closely at a car from top to bottom but see no one. “This one?”

“
Down here.”

I squat and still see nothing.

“
Lower.”

I crawl under the car and look up. There, straddling a rod that runs the length of the car is an ancient black man wearing a straw hat, and he is lashed to the bottom of the car with several bungee cords.

He drops four bungee cords, each with hooks on both ends. “Straddle the draw rod and strap yourself in tight. Face this way if you can so we can have us a conversation.”

“
You’re kidding.”

“
Best be quick. Since the Canadians took over the Illinois Central, they’ve been pretty punctual.” When I don’t move, he adds, “Look, I been doin’ this for a long time, and I haven’t always had the bungee cords, just my two hands. The cords make it a little more comfortable.” He folds his hands to his chest and smiles. “I give you about sixty seconds.”

I climb up on the draw rod and immediately lose my balance, falling back to the track. “Shoot.”

“
Shh,” he says. “Now try again. Forty-five seconds.”

I climb up again, this time attaching one of the bungee cord hooks to a bolt on one side then stretching it to a matching bolt on the other side.

“
Thirty-five.”

Using the cord for leverage I find some more bolts level with my chest and hook them as best as I can.

“
Twenty-five.”

There aren’t any more bolts, so I hook the last two bungee cords to the first two bungee cords. It’s like I’m spinning a bouncy web. I rest my elbows on the cords above my head. “Will this hold me?”

“
Five, four, three, two, one …”

Then nothing.

And more nothing. What gives?

He laughs. “Boy, this train ain’t leavin’. We jes’ hidin’ here till another train rolls in.”

“
Oh.”

“
Jes’ wanted to see how long you’d take.” He reaches out a hand, and I struggle to shake it. “Most folks call me Mississippi Red cuz of my skin. You can call me Red.” He lets go, and I wobble a little. “You’ll get used to it. And it’s lucky you stumbled my way. You can’t rig yourself up on the rod like this with them newer cars.”

“
You can’t?”

“
Nah. Ain’t no rods. It’s gettin’ so it’s next to impossible to catch a ride, but I know a thing or two. We won’t be here long. Our train’s gonna show up to my left in about twenty minutes, and we’re gonna get on it. You got a name, boy?”

“
Emmanuel.” I strain my neck to get a better glimpse of Mississippi Red and his reddish skin, his wide smile with a gold tooth, a diamond earring, and a blue bandana under a straw hat. And despite how unbalanced I feel on this rod digging into my collarbone, I’m hanging under a rail car just fine. But it is so weird to be talking to a man a couple feet away while staring at the dirt between two railroad ties.

Insane, now shut up and let me talk to the man.

“
Where are we, um, Red?” I ask.

“
Memphis.”

I told you to shut up.

“
No kidding,” I say.

“
No kiddin’” Red says with a laugh. “Where you think you was?”

“
Anywhere but Memphis.” Beale Street seems light years away from this place.

“
Hmm. You got reasons not to be in Memphis?”

I nod, and I nearly flip over. “Yes.”

“
Me, too.” He spits in the dirt. “You ain’t from Hazlehurst, are you?”

“
No.”

“
You look the spittin’ image of Robert Johnson.”

“
Who?”

“
Robert Johnson, the legendary blues man. Can’t turn on the radio these days without hearin’ some echo of his music. Some say he made a deal with the devil so he could play the guitar so good.”

I’m under a train car in Memphis, Tennessee, talking about a blues man who sold his soul to the devil with a man strapped to the bottom of a train with bungee cords. I can’t help but laugh. “I can’t believe I’m here.”

“
Believe it. Won’t be long now. Where you from?”

“
Pittsburgh.”

“
Yeah? You from ‘Cinders’?”

“
Huh?”

“
That’s jes’ a nickname we give to Pittsburgh is all. Used to have a friend nicknamed Cinders, and he was from Pittsburgh.”

And it’s a pretty good nickname at that. “Who’s we?”

“
We hobos. You know what a hobo is, don’t you?”

“
Kind of a drifter, isn’t it?” Like me.

“
Not exactly. A hobo is a knight of the road, so they say. It ain’t as romantic as all that, though. They say a hobo works and wanders, a tramp
dreams
and wanders, and a bum
drinks
and wanders … but not far enough.” He laughs at his joke. “I ain’t no tramp, though I still got a few dreams, and I ain’t no bum cuz I don’t drink. I’m a hobo. Know where the word ‘hobo’ came from?”

Now I’m getting a lesson in hobo-ology while my bladder threatens to burst. “No.”

“
From the first two letters in ‘homeward bound.’”

I like that.

“
So, Emmanuel, which are you, a hobo, a tramp, or a bum?”

“
A hobo, I guess.”

“
Yeah, you been workin’?”

“
Till recently, I was working on the
American Queen
.”

“
You don’t say? Used to work some coal barges up on Lake Erie once upon a time. What they got you doin’ on that old steamboat?”

“
Kitchen work mostly, some laundry.”

“
Pay good?”

“
Enough.”

“
Hmm. And then this thing come up that kept you outta Memphis?”

“
Yeah.”

“
Was it violent?”

Mississippi Red obviously doesn’t waste time getting at the truth. How much do I tell this guy. “Yeah, I, uh, got in a fight.”

“
Beat him pretty good?”

“
Yeah.”

“
White guy?”

This is creepy. “Yeah. How’d you know?”

“
Saw your hands. White boys’ faces is bony and sharp and can cut a man’s hands to shreds if he ain’t careful. Yeah, I figured you was some kinda fighter, and that comes in real handy on the road. There’s moochers and panhandlers and buzzards out here who’d cut your throat for a quarter. Once they see them hands, they’ll keep their distance and—”

We see two sets of uniformed legs go by not three feet from us, long black nightsticks swinging back and forth. I hold my breath until they’re out of sight.

“
I once killed a man,” Red whispers.

Great. The law is walking up and down the tracks looking for me, and I got an old man playing “true confessions” with me. What do you say to that?

You say, “See ya later.” That’s what you say.

I’m a little tied up right now.

“
You did?” is all I can manage.

I hope the man he killed wasn’t tied up under a railroad car with bungee cords at the time.

So do I.

“
A long time ago, back from before you were born. I had to leave my hometown and go up north for a spell till things cooled down. Ended up gone for about seven years, and when I come back, the whole town had changed. No one even recognized me. Or me them, for that matter. I been poundin’ the rails ever since.”

“
How many years have you been gone?” I ask.

“
Goin’ on fifty.”

Whoa. “But that would make you …”

“
I’m sixty-seven.”

“
You don’t look it.”

Red laughs. “How you know, boy? You can’t rightly see me, now can you?”

Red has a young voice, but I don’t want to tell him that. It’s not something one man says to another man, especially if they’re hog-tied under a train. “Uh, this other train, Red, the one we’re getting on, where’s it going?”

“
South and west to Tupelo, Mississippi, birthplace of Elvis Presley.”

You just can’t get away from Elvis down here. “And how are we going to get on?”

“
You’ll see.” He spits in the dirt again. “Used to be you could find you a baggage car to ride, but that’s a thing of the past cuz of Amtrak. No, nowadays we ride between cars or on top of the cars.”

“
You ever, um, tie yourself to a ladder?”

Red laughs. “That how you got here?”

“
Yeah.”

“
Bareback to the wind and weather?”

I laugh. “Yeah.”

“
Haven’t tried that one. You get any sleep?”

“
No sir.”

“‘
Spect you wouldn’t.” He laughs. “Here she comes.”

“
I don’t hear—”

“
Shh,” he interrupts. “She’s a quiet one, one of them newer engines.”

A few moments later, a locomotive moves past us going south, and it isn’t any louder than a lawn mower. I start to unhook the bungee cords, but Red stays put.

“
Um, tell me when,” I say.

“
Shh,” he says. “I’m countin’.”

I strain to see his lips counting as the cars roll by,
click clack, click clack, click clack
.

“
Get ready,” he says, and I have those cords unhooked in a flash. “Twenty-four, twenty-five, twenty-six … now drop.”

I fall off the rod and roll to my right as Red does the same. He peeks out first, still counting silently, pulling a small key ring from his pocket.

“
Up,” he says, and I stand, his count continuing.

I follow him two steps forward as two more cars pass by.

“
Get ready to run alongside till I get the door open … thirty-eight.”

Get the door open? With that little key?

Before I can blink, Red jumps up onto a ledge no more than two inches wide on the side of a car and shoots a key into the padlock, popping it and sliding it up in one easy motion while I trot alongside. He slides the door behind him until there’s a two-foot opening. “Get in,” he says, and I dive through the opening. A few seconds later, he’s inside the darkened car, sliding the door shut and leaning his back against the door. “Thirty-eight
was
special,” he says.

That was too easy. “Um, how did you know that
that
key fit the lock on this car?” Which I’ve just noticed is half empty with only a few crates stacked in the opposite corner. There’s plenty of room for us in here.