‘Gordeeee I can’t AWWWWWWWWWWW-SHE-EEEEYIT-‘
‘RUN FASTER, DICKFACE!’ I bellowed and was I enjoying this? Yeah–in
some peculiar, self-destructive way that I have experienced since only when
completely and utterly drunk, I was. I was driving Vern Tessio like a drover getting a particularly fine cow to market. And maybe he was enjoying his own fear in that same
way, bawling like that self-same cow, hollering and sweating, his ribcage rising and
falling like the bellows of a blacksmith on a speed-trip, clumsily keeping his footing, lurching ahead.
The train was very loud now, its engine deepening to a steady rumble. Its
whistle sounded as it crossed the junction point where we had paused to chuck cinders
at the rail-flag. I had finally gotten my hellhound, like it or not. I kept waiting for the trestle to start shaking under my feet. When that happened, it would be right behind us.
‘GO FASTER, VERN! FAAASTER!’
‘Oh Gawd Gordie oh Gawd Gordie oh Gawd AWWWWWWW-
SHEEEEEEEYIT!’ The freight’s electric horn suddenly spanked the air into a hundred
pieces with one long loud blast, making everything you ever saw in a movie or a
comic book or one of your own daydreams fly apart, letting you know what both the
heroes and the cowards really heard when death flew at them:
WHHHHHHHONNNNNNK! WHHHHHHHHHONNNNNNNNK!
And then Chris was below us and to the right, and Teddy was behind him, his
glasses flashing back arcs of sunlight, and they were both mouthing a single word and
the word was jump! but the train had sucked all the blood out of the word, leaving
only its shape in their mouths. The trestle began to shake as the train charged across it.
We jumped. Vern landed full-length in the dust and the cinders and I landed right
beside him, almost on top of him. I never did see that train, nor do I know if its
engineer saw us–when I mentioned the possibility that he hadn’t seen us to Chris a
couple of years later, he said, ‘They don’t blow the electric horn like that just for
chucks, Gordie.’ But he could have; he could have been blowing it just for the hell of it. I suppose. Right then, such fine points didn’t much matter. I clapped my hands over my ears and dug my face into the hot dirt as the freight went by, metal squalling
against metal, the air buffeting us. I had no urge to look at it. It was a long freight but I never looked at all. Before it had passed completely, I felt a warm hand on my neck
and knew it was Chris’s.
When it was gone–when I was sure it was gone -I raised my head like a
soldier coming out of his foxhole at the end of a day-long artillery barrage. Vern was still plastered into the dirt, shivering. Chris was sitting cross-legged between us, one hand on Vern’s sweaty neck, the other still on mine.
When Vern finally sat up, shaking all over and licking his lips compulsively,
Chris said, ‘What you guys think if we drink those Cokes? Could anybody use one
besides me?’ We all thought we could use one.
15
About a quarter of a mile along on the Harlow side, the GS&WM tracks plunged
directly into the woods. The heavily wooded land sloped down to a marshy area. It
was full of mosquitoes almost as big as fighter-planes, but it was cool… blessedly cool.
We sat down in the shade to drink our Cokes. Vern and I threw our shirts over
our shoulders to keep the bugs off, but Chris and Teddy just sat naked to the waist,
looking as cool and collected as two Eskimos in an icehouse. We hadn’t been there
five minutes when Vern had to go off into the bushes and take a squat, which led to a
good deal of joking and elbowing when he got back.
‘Train scare you much, Vern?’
‘No,’ Vern said. ‘I was gonna squat when we got across, anyway. I hadda take
a squat, you know?’
‘Verrrrrrrn!’ Chris and Teddy chorused.
‘Come on, you guys, I did. Sincerely.’
‘Then you won’t mind if we examine the seat of your Jockeys for Hershey-