‘You’re crazy, man. You want to get killed?’
‘Just like the beaches at Normandy!’ Teddy yelled, and strode out into the
middle of the tracks. He stood on one of the cross-ties, lightly balanced.
I stood stunned for a moment, unable to believe stupidity of such width and
breadth. Then I grabbed him, dragged him fighting and protesting to the embankment,
and pushed him over. I jumped after him and Teddy caught me a good one in the guts
while I was still in the air. The wind whooshed out of me, but I was still able to hit him in the sternum with my knee and knock him flat on his back before he could get
all the way up. I landed, gasping and sprawling, and Teddy grabbed me around the
neck. We went rolling all the way to the bottom of the embankment, hitting and clawing at each other while Chris and Vern stared at us, stupidly surprised.
‘You little son of a bitch!’ Teddy was screaming at me. ‘You fucker! Don’t you
throw your weight around on me! I’ll kill you, you dipshit!’
I was getting my breath back now, and I made it to my feet. I backed away as
Teddy advanced, holding my open hands up to slap away his punches, half laughing
and half scared. Teddy was no one to fool around with when he went into one of his
screaming fits. He’d take on a big kid in that state, and after the big kid broke both of his arms, he’d bite.
‘Teddy, you can dodge anything you want after we see what we’re going to see
but’ whack on the shoulder as one wildly-swinging fist got past me ‘until then no one’s supposed to see us, you’ whack on the side of the face, and then we might have had a
real fight if Chris and Vern ‘stupid wet end!’ hadn’t grabbed us and kept us apart.
Above us, the train roared by in a thunder of diesel exhaust and the great heavy
clacking of boxcar wheels. A few cinders bounced down the embankment and the
argument was over… at least until we could hear ourselves talk again.
It was only a short freight, and when the caboose had trailed by, Teddy said:
‘I’m gonna kill him. At least give him a fat lip.’ He struggled against Chris, but Chris only grabbed him tighter.
‘Calm down, Teddy,’ Chris said quietly, and he kept saying it until Teddy
stopped struggling and just stood there, his glasses hanging askew and his hearing-aid cord dangling limply against his chest on its way down to the battery, which he had
shoved into the pocket of his jeans.
When he was completely still, Chris turned to me and said: ‘What the hell are
you fighting with him about, Gordon?’
‘He wanted to dodge the train. I figured the engineer would see him and report
it They might send a cop out.’
‘Ahhh, he’d be too busy makin’ chocolate in his drawers,’ Teddy said, but he
didn’t seem angry anymore. The storm had passed.
‘Gordie was just trying to do the right thing,’ Vern said. ‘Come on, peace.’
‘Peace, you guys,’ Chris agreed.
‘Yeah, okay,’ I said, and held out my hand, palm up. ‘Peace, Teddy?’
‘I coulda dodged it,’ he said to me. ‘You know that, Gordie?’
‘Yeah,’ I said, although the thought turned me cold inside. ‘I know it.’
‘Okay. Peace, then.’
‘Skin it, man,’ Chris ordered, and let go of Teddy.
Teddy slapped his hand down on mine hard enough to sting and then turned it
over. I slapped his.
‘Fucking pussy Lachance,’ Teddy said.
‘Meeiowww,’ I said.
‘Come on, you guys,’ Vern said. ‘Let’s go, okay?’
‘Go anywhere you want, but don’t go here,’ Chris said solemnly, and Vern
drew back as if to hit him.
11
We got to the dump around one-thirty, and Vern led the way down the embankment with a Paratroops over the side! We went to the bottom in big jumps and leaped over
the brackish trickle of water oozing listlessly out of the culvert which pocked out of the cinders. Beyond this small boggy area was the sandy, trash-littered verge of the