Cruddy - Lynda Barry [59]
He followed the concrete canal until he came onto a road that was hardly more than two ruts through the dirt. It took us to land so bare it looked like it had been burned. Beside the road were train tracks and beside the train tracks was the dry canal bed. He pulled up close to a low berm, called a berm, a stretch of fortified earth built up from the ground a little so that the train can run free and clear on the flat tracks that disappeared into infinity. And I was remembering how the father told me that anyone could derail a train, a five-year-old could do it with a tablespoon. You just had to be patient. It could take you a couple of months but there wasn’t any magic to it. You just dig away at the berm. Dig it out from under the tracks, dig away and dig away and the day will come when you have pulled away the right number of spoonfuls. It was mathematics. And the one thing your average man does not know about train tracks in a derailment is that they will spear right up through the cars like a knife through a box of animal crackers.
The father opened the second jug of Corpse Reviver and passed it to me. I didn’t want any. In my mind I saw my name added to the list that included Doolie Bug and Uncle Lemuel. That started with Marie Cardall. Or maybe the Leonards boy buried in the foundation. Or maybe it was Old Dad. Or maybe it was that certain ancient monkey. The monkey with the most meat wins.
The father and I crossed over the train tracks. I was wondering if he forgot about Little Debbie or if he remembered Little Debbie and what I was going to do about it either way.
It was full afternoon in the middle of nowhere. We were in plain sight if anyone was looking. Dazzle camouflage. Very Navy. We stood on the edge of the canal together. He told me again that he’d make it easy on me, to lift my chin and let my head fall back and look at the sky, I wasn’t going to notice a thing.
I stabbed my arm backwards and Little Debbie bit into his leg. And then two things happened. Two things came thundering straight for us. The first was the water roar-rushing, it came with such a sudden groan and churning furiousness that it froze the father’s action. And then came the scream-whistle of the black train, a train really hauling, if you have ever seen one hauling, if you have seen them speed when the land is open and the light is good and the track is a straightaway. When the conductor and the engineer just look at each other and say, Why the fuck not?
And the whistle screamed and screamed and screamed because the father parked the car and the trailer so freakishly close to the track, very close to the knife-shiny rails, and the conductor and the engineer were saying, the stupid son of a bitch, the stupid little bastard, the stupid son of a bitch, the stupid little bastard, and I saw the father step back and stumble and his face was very white. It was too fast, too much like falling, everything rushing at him like that. He lost his balance and grabbed on to me, I was thinking we could fall either way, water or train, water or train, and I wished train. Train. I’d rather explode.
But I didn’t explode. And when the last car shot away down the track flying, there was a new element in our situation, someone watching us from the driver’s seat of a car parked alongside ours, and the car had a big yellow star on the door with COUNTY SHERIFF painted in a half circle in black. Behind the wheel, there he was.
He spotted us on the way to the Knocking Hammer for his usual afternoon binger, driving slowly through land so open he always had an excellent view of the local goings-on of nothing, because nothing is what there usually was, so you could say we stuck out.
I said, “Cop. Cop.”
The father hissed me quiet.
The sheriff leaned his head out of his rolled-down window and shouted something our way. I felt Little Debbie get wrenched out of my hand and I felt her sharp point in my back. The sheriff shouted something like what asshole parked his car so close to the track?
The father said, “Wave at him.