to two-twenty. I could hear a plane passing in the sky somewhere near and had time to
wish I was on it, just sitting in a window seat with a Coke in my hand and gazing idly down at the shining line of a river whose name I did not know. I could see every little splinter and gouge in the tarred crosstie I was squatting on. And out of the corner of my eye I could see the rail itself with my hand still clutched around it, glittering
insanely. The vibration from that rail sank so deeply into my hand that when I took it away it still vibrated, the nerve-endings kicking each other over again and again,
tingling the way a hand or a foot tingles when it has been asleep and is starting to
wake up. I could taste my saliva, suddenly all electric and sour and thickened to curds along my gums. And worst, somehow most horrible of all, I couldn’t hear the train yet, could not know if it was rushing at me from ahead or behind, or how close it was. It
was invisible. It was unannounced, except for that shaking rail in my hand. There was only that to advertise its imminent arrival. An image of Ray Brower, dreadfully
mangled and thrown into a ditch somewhere like a ripped-open laundry bag, reeled
before my eyes. We would join him, or at least Vern and I would, or at least I would.
We had invited ourselves to our own funerals. The last thought broke the paralysis
and I shot to my feet. I probably would have looked like a jack-in-the-box to anyone
watching, but to myself I felt like a boy in underwater slow motion, shooting up not
through five feet of air but rather up through five hundred feet of water, moving
slowly, moving with a dreadful languidness as the water parted grudgingly.
But at last I did break the surface. I screamed: ‘TRAIN!’
The last of the paralysis fell from me and I began to run.
Vern’s head jerked back over his shoulder. The surprise that distorted his face
was almost comically exaggerated, written as large as the letters in a Dick and Jane
primer. He saw me break into my clumsy, shambling run, dancing from one horribly
high crosstie to the next, and knew I wasn’t joking. He began to run himself.
Far ahead, I could see Chris stepping off the ties and onto the solid safe
embankment and I hated him with a sudden bright green hate as juicy and as bitter as
the sap in an April leaf. He was safe. That fucker was safe. I watched him drop to his knees and grab a rail.. My left foot almost slipped into the yaw beneath me. I flailed with my arms, my eyes as hot as ball bearings in some runaway piece of machinery,
got my balance, and ran on. Now I was right behind Vern. We were past the halfway
point and for the first time I heard the train. It was coming from behind us, coming
from the Castle Rock side of the river. It was a low rumbling noise that began to rise slightly and sort itself into the diesel thrum of the engine and the higher, more sinister sound of big grooved wheels turning heavily on the rails. ‘Awwwwwwww, shit!’ Vern
screamed. ‘Run, you pussy!’ I yelled, and thumped him on the back. ‘I can’t! I’ll fall!’
‘Runfaster!’
‘A wwwwwwwwwww-SHIT!’
But he ran faster, a shambling scarecrow with a bare, sunburnt back, the collar
of his shirt swinging and dangling below his butt. I could see the sweat standing out
on his peeling shoulderblades, standing out in perfect little beads. I could see the fine down on the nape of his neck. His muscles clenched and loosened, clenched and
loosened, clenched and loosened. His spine stood out in a series of knobs, each knob
casting its own crescent-shaped shadow–I could see that these knobs grew closer
together as they approached his neck. He was still holding his bedroll and I was still holding mine. Vern’s feet thudded on the crossties. He almost missed one, lunged
forward with his arms out, and I whacked him on the back again to keep him going.