Six Bad Things_ A Novel - Charlie Huston [74]
It’s hard to tell how far away the train is, but it must be pretty close for me to feel its vibrations. And it doesn’t look like it’s going all that fast. I climb out of the culvert, hustle as best I can to the tracks, and crouch there. Yeah, this should work. The light gets brighter. The train gets bigger and louder, taking its time, chugging closer. Bigger. Louder. Closer. Bigger. Bigger. Uh. A multiton, yellow and black monster of steel slams past at sixty, buffeting me in its diesel cloud, shaking the earth like a quake and leaving me clutching the rocks on the rail bed, in awe at my utter stupidity. I get to my feet, still shaking, and watch the train disappear in the night. Well, that was an interesting way to almost kill myself.
A mile later I come to a place called Erie, find the same train sitting on the siding, creep up to a car loaded with Nissans, and climb on. Sometimes, even I get lucky.
THE TRAIN pulls out five minutes later and I spend the next half hour huddled between the nose of one Pathfinder and the rear of another, and try to expose the least possible amount of my flesh to the wind of our passage. When I feel the landscape open up around me in the darkness, and the deafening thunder of the train rolls out across the desert, I stick my head out. Up ahead I can see the apocalyptic glow of Las Vegas, the spear of light from the top of the Luxor shooting into the underside of the cloud cover.
Soon, we are passing through the kind of gritty neighborhoods you expect to find bordering a rail line. I see street signs like Blue Diamond Road, West Warm Springs Road, West Sunset Road. None of them are on the very short list of Vegas place names I have in my head, most of which have been culled from Viva Las Vegas and the one trip I took out here when I was in college. Then it’s there, The Strip, a couple blocks off to the right. I can’t see much, but, even ten years after my only visit, I know that’s the place.
We pull into the Vegas rail yard. The train is slowing now, but not much. Doesn’t matter, I have to get off before I find myself in a locked yard patrolled by Union Pacific security.
The train can’t be moving faster than twenty as it pulls in to the yard and I fling myself from the edge of the railcar. I hit, bounce, flop to the ground, and roll over and over in the rocks, praying that the loaded guns in my pocket don’t go off. They don’t.
I sprawl on my back, watching the strange oyster glow of the sky swim around, wishing desperately that I could stay here until someone comes along from UP maintenance to scoop me up with a shovel and toss me into the bed of a truck with the rest of the rail-kill. But I have things to do. I creak to my feet, and limp away from the tracks and around the corner of the wall that surrounds the yard. The signs at the corner tell me I’m at East Charleston and Commerce Street. I close my eyes and collect my thoughts one by one and stack them up where I can look at them.
I need to get the money to keep Mom and Dad safe. I gave the money to Tim. Tim has gone missing. But I do know Tim’s address. Hey! I know Tim’s address! It hasn’t been beaned out of my brain. I can go to Tim’s and . . . do something! Great! OK. I need a map. I walk into the middle of the empty intersection and look up and down the streets, and see, several blocks away on Commerce, the bright sign of an ampm.
I LOOK like shit. I do not need to see myself to know this, but I take a look in the wing mirror of a parked car just to be sure. I have a cut over my right eye, sticky with clotted blood, my hair is matted with sand and soot, my clothes are torn and filthy, and my hands are scraped and black with the greasy dirt of the train. Wait a minute, what am I worried about? An ampm? In this neighborhood? I am far from the worst case they’ve ever seen in there. Hell, they’ve probably had worse tonight alone.
I walk into a land of fluorescent light and Muzak Christmas carols. The pimply