If he had to put her down, it would be self-defense, wouldn’t it? Taking care of himself for the future?
“Whatever’s on your mind,” she said without looking at him, “get it off. I can feel you thinkin’, Pearly. Don’t you know that by now?”
“I’m thinkin’ we need to watch where we step,” he answered, a little shaken by her comment.
“Yeah,” she answered, “we do need to watch that, don’t we?”
He erased from his mind a quick image of the bullet plowing through her skull and coming out in a dizzy line, like in the Dick Tracy comic strip. Then he stopped thinking about anything but putting his mitts on those two brats and dragging them back, maybe roughing them up some to put the fear in them. That seemed to him to be the right thing to do.
****
Curtis listened.
He couldn’t tell if the snakes were still moving or not, but none of them were rattling. He had pulled his knees up close to his chest and pressed his arms against his sides. When and if the first touch of snake happened, he imagined himself going as cold and still as a stone…but he knew himself, and he knew he was going to shiver when that slithering thing touched him, and then he might panic when the rattling started, and he might get up and try for the door and if he did reach the door he would fall out of here bitten by poisonous fangs on his legs and feet and he would die before anybody else even knew he was here.
He figured this boxcar had been sitting on these weeded-up rails for a long time. How long would it be before anyone found his body?
His head and face together were one hot ache. He was having to breathe through his wrecked mouth because his nose was even more wrecked.
Nilla…Little Jack…Mr. Ludenmere…he had failed them all.
The haze came and went. If he closed his eyes he might fall into a stupor that would be his finish. A strange question came to his fevered brain: what would the knights of his favorite book do, in this situation? What would Sir Lancelot do, and Sir Gawain? Sir Galahad…Sir Percival… Sir Gareth…Sir Lavayne…Sir Tristram and all the others…what would they do?
One thing he knew for sure: they would not accept defeat.
Sure, but it was a fantasy…a make-believe world they lived in…maybe there had been something called chivalry at one time, but the tales of those knights were not of the real world.
Yet…if they ever did exist…they would not be crouched here waiting to be snake-bit, when two innocents were counting on them for help. No. They would gather their wits and fight their way out. Or…maybe…think their way out.
But he could hardly focus his mind on anything. For sure he couldn’t focus enough to reach Nilla. She couldn’t help him, anyway, when she was the one who needed help the most. So…what to do? And he realized he’d better get to doing whatever it was, before the first rattlesnake found him.
Curtis had another question. What else was in this boxcar with him? Was it completely empty? He hadn’t been able to see when they’d thrown him in here. The three toughs wouldn’t have cared…but was there anything in here that could be used?
There was only one way to find out, and he had to be mighty careful. When he tried to stand, his head pounded and his stomach turned over; he had to stay where he was to battle against throwing up. The sickness passed, and he slowly got to his feet. His knees were still weak. He decided to move—carefully, very carefully—to his left and go all the way to the corner.
The second step he took was met with a rattling to his right and dangerously close. Then another snake joined in the ominous warning. Curtis backed up to his original position. The rattlings stopped. He felt enveloped in the heat of his own sweat. Surely the snakes could smell that; would they crawl toward him, or away?
Curtis had no choice but to keep exploring. He moved toward the corner on his right, feeling his way along the wall. Step after step, he expected to hear the rattlings start but none of the reptiles had gotten over there yet.
His shin bumped into something that would’ve scared the yell out of him if he’d been able. He reached down to find out what. His fingers made out a short stack of what felt like grainsacks, maybe three or four piled up. He groped beyond the sacks into the darkness. His right hand found a sloped wooden surface. But not the boxcar’s wall…the gropings of both hands told him he’d discovered a large barrel that he estimated stood about two-and-a-half feet tall. There were two others alongside it. He tried to tip one and it moved; it was empty. A second one was also empty, but the third resisted him and whatever was in it—nails, maybe—was a heavy load.
Heavy enough, Curtis realized, to crush whatever it rolled over.
He attempted to lift one of the grainsacks to throw it toward the middle of the boxcar but its weight defeated him and he decided to save his strength for the heavy barrel. He was going to have to tip it over, roll it around in front of himself and then roll it toward the door, with him walking behind it. His feet and legs were still going to be at risk from the left and right, but he hoped the barrel’s weight would crush any snake in the path he took. In this darkness he couldn’t tell exactly where the door was, so that was another risk. There had to be a few snakes over near that door…had to be, and he didn’t like it but to get out of here there was only one way.
He recalled hearing or reading something that rattlesnakes could still sink their fangs even if their heads were cut off. He was aware that the barrel might roll over a body, crush the midsection or the tail and leave the head snapping at whatever it could find.
It was either find the way out or stay here, curl up and die.
He went to work trying to tip the barrel. The muscles cracked in his shoulders. If he had ever moved any heavy baggage in his life, he was going to have to get this thing over. Sweat burned both eyes, the one half-swollen up and the other nearly slitted. He had a moment of despair in which he feared the monster might be cemented to the floor. He got a shoulder against it and put a foot against the wall and pushed for every fiber of muscle and willpower Ironhead Joe had given him in the blood.
The barrel tilted over, crashed down with a tremendous wallop that Curtis thought might have nearly smashed it through the boards, and the twelve snakes in the boxcar started rattling a deadly symphony. There was one that sounded too close to his left leg. He drew his leg abruptly back, imagining that he might’ve just missed getting struck. He got behind the barrel and turned it—again with a mighty effort that his mama would have never believed was in him—toward the door, or his best guess of where it ought to be. He didn’t think there would be a grip on the inside of the door, but it ought to slide open without a lot of effort…he hoped, because he didn’t want to spend but a couple of seconds trying to do it.
A problem: even though the barrel was thick around the girth, he was going to have to bend low to roll it forward with both hands. He couldn’t move that thing with one foot, which he would rather have done. But…there was no other way to do it. When he bent over, his head swam and he had to straighten up again because he thought he might pass out. The rattlings had stopped; he had the sensation that the snakes were waiting for him to make his move.
He leaned over once more, took a breath into his mouth through the holes where his teeth had been, and then he put his palms against the barrel and started pushing.
Instantly there came two rattlings from his right. They were beyond the path of the barrel, so he had to ignore them and keep rolling it toward the door. In front of him, a snake started its sharp and wicked buzzing sound. There was a crunching noise as Curtis pushed the barrel onward.
The underside of the barrel rolled up damp, and suddenly his bare feet were sliding in what he could only guess was snake guts; something twisted against his right foot, which must’ve been part of the body in its death throes.
Another one began rattling off on the left and the barrel crunched over that snake too. Curtis stepped on wildly thrashing coils that slapped against his heel. The boxcar suddenly seemed alive with the noise of the
snakes. A third was crushed beneath the barrel, and then a fourth was caught under it. Curtis’s hands were wet with rattlesnake blood. Another snake squirmed away under his left foot. He felt a scream drawing his injured throat as tight as the lynching noose he had escaped this night. There was no going back; he was only a few feet away from the door now, but there had to be more snakes around it. Their rattlings had grown to a crescendo of fury. He didn’t know if he’d caught anything else under the barrel because no longer could he hear the sound of the bodies being crushed.
The blood-slick barrel hit wood. He reached out…but where was the door? His fingers searched desperately for some kind of protrusion to grip hold of. Coils flailed against his left foot but whether it was a snake writhing in agony or trying for a strike he didn’t know.
The index finger of his left hand found a vertical metal lip. He curled his other fingers under it, got his right hand under it too, pushed hard—harder still—and the sliders shrieked as the door came open. Then he stepped up on the barrel and jumped through the opening into the night.
****
They had tried to leave the lake behind, by heading south, but Nilla had seen by the two lights that the kidnappers were trying to cut them off, and worse…the lake was following them too.
Nilla’s lantern showed that the woods had fallen away, and ahead of them looked to be a plain of grass interrupted here and there by high-standing clumps of rushes. Her light gleamed off water.
“Might as well give it up!” the woman called from maybe a hundred yards away. “Go easier on you if you do!”
“Don’t listen to that,” Nilla said, but she stood at the edge of what appeared to be a grassy swamp of unknown depth and she did not move.
“I’m not listenin’.” Little Jack sounded nearly worn-out.
Nilla was holding herself together only with the thought that they would have reached a road or found another cabin with someone in it by now. There were no other lights anywhere and even the stars seemed dim through the last fragments of the clouds.
“Nowhere to go!” the woman called. “Get you somethin’ to eat, you’ll feel better!”
“Aren’t they nice,” Nilla said bitterly. “We’ve got to go into that, Jack. Are you ready?”
“Ready,” he said.
She started off, with Little Jack behind her and about two feet to the right. She had taken six steps into the muck when she sank to her hips in water. The water splashed into her face and she held her arms up to keep the lantern from being doused. With a yelp, Little Jack sank down to the middle of his chest. “Keep going, keep going,” she told him, as they waded onward through what appeared to be a grassy plain but deceived the eye. The bottom was sticky mud that caught at their feet. Suddenly Little Jack gave another cry and fell into the water; it swallowed him up, and Nilla could do nothing to help him with her hands bound and guarding the light. He came up spitting and trying to get his feet under himself but without the use of his hands and arms for balance it was a hard task; Nilla realized her brother could drown right there, as she watched helplessly.
With an effort he got himself righted and steady and said urgently, “I stepped on somethin’ that jumped! I hurt my leg, Nilla…my ankle’s hurtin’!”
“It was probably a turtle,” she said, trying to make the best of it. “That’s all it was.”
“I don’t know…maybe…my ankle’s hurt…got twisted.”
She looked back again at the lights. The man and woman would have to come through his swampy area too, but they were taller and their legs were longer.
“Maybe we ought to give up,” Little Jack said, with pain in his voice. “I mean…I don’t think I can go on much longer…and…I mean…maybe it’s better with those two than with what else is out here.”
“No,” she told him. “It’s not better with those two.”
“They’re gonna catch us anyway. We can’t get away from ’em!”
Nilla shook her head. She didn’t want to hear that, but she was afraid that it was true. In her despair she closed her eyes against the reality of the moment. As she waded onward she focused her mind upon Curtis and called out to him. :Curtis? Are you there?:
She didn’t expect an answer. She suspected that something bad had happened to him and to her father. Maybe even they were both—
:Nilla.:
It came so weakly she could almost think it was herself, speaking to her own mind because she wished an answer so badly.
:Curtis?: she tried again.
:Here,: came the reply, still very weak, but now Nilla was sure it wasn’t the echo of her own wishful thinking. :Where…you?:
She nearly screamed out what would’ve been heard by him as a confused tangle and surely not able to be understood, so she made herself take a few deep breaths and speak slowly. :After us,: she said, and corrected herself. :They’re after us. The two of them. Donnie’sdeadandMisterHartleygothurtwe’re—: She stopped herself again, to begin anew. :The two of them are after us. We’re in a swamp at the lake. Where are you?:
:Near,: Curtis sent back. :Been havin’…trouble. Kinda…:
:I can hardly hear you. Curtis, where’s our daddy?:
There was no reply. Nilla opened her eyes to see the way ahead, which was the same swamp. Something that sounded heavy splashed over on the left. She couldn’t allow her connection with Curtis to be broken, not just yet. :Our daddy,: she sent. :Is he dead?:
He didn’t answer at once, but then came :Shot. Not dead…goin’ for help…got in…mess.:
That jolted her, but she hung on. :Where are you?:
:On…ground. Boxcar.: Something came over that was unintelligible, as if the sending had sped up in her head and gone by too fast to catch.
:Did they shoot you too?: she asked.
:…find you. Somehow. Have to…up.:
:I can’t understand what you’re saying.:
:Get up,: he said. :Have to get up.:
:They want us to stop,: she said. :They’re right behind us.:
:No. Don’t…get you. Don’t let ’em. Hear?:
:I hear,: she replied, lifted up by his presence; though the sending was so terribly weak, the resolve behind it was still strong.
:Gonna find…somehow. Find you. Don’t let…:
:We’ll keep going, Curtis,: she said to his fading connection. :We will.:
He didn’t come back after that. Nilla thought he sounded badly hurt…and that about her father being shot…she couldn’t let her mind go to something as bad as that, or tell her brother either. All they could do was to continue to stay ahead of the two lights that were steadily gaining on them.
They came out of the water onto a weedy hummock that went on for maybe twenty feet.
Nilla saw how Little Jack was limping on his twisted ankle but there was nothing to be done for him. Then they went down again into a mass of rushes and once more the water took her in up to her waist and Little Jack up to his chest.
“No use in this, kids!” That was Mister Parr, her daddy’s so-called friend, shouting at them.
His voice became softer, like he was a teacher mildly scolding them for not doing their homework. “Come on, now! If you think we’re mad about Donnie…we’re not. He asked for it, didn’t he? Shouldn’t have been in that room. You think we’re mad at you, Nilla?”
She didn’t want to waste her breath with a reply, which is what she figured he wanted her to do.
“Little Jack!” the man called. “Hey, you must be awful tired and hungry by now, huh?”
Nilla heard her brother make a small sound of pain as he waded forward, but he didn’t answer either.
“Awful tired,” the man said, almost crooning it. “And awful, awful hungry.”
“Don’t listen to that,” said Nilla.
“I got water in both ears,” he told her.
She could have hugged him, if she’d been able.
They went on, side-by-side now through the water while the lantern showed nothing ahead but more of t
he grassy swamp and dozens of flying insects zipping back and forth through the light. Nilla was tired and hungry too, as she knew Little Jack must be, but she was determined to keep going all night if she had to…though it seemed her brother was starting to really hurt because he’d slowed down and she could not forge ahead and leave him, no matter what.
Find you, Curtis had said.
She didn’t think so. He was hurt, maybe shot. She felt herself wanting to cry for her father and for Curtis and the tears were close but she had no time for that; she was her brother’s protector now, a thing she would never have dreamed possible three days ago. And, as she’d learned, a whole lot could change in three days, and in three days a little girl used to dolls and tea parties and soft pillows to sleep on could get plenty damn tough—as her daddy might have said—if she had to.
She had to…and she reasoned that she was going to have to get a whole lot damn tougher before it was all said and done, and Lord help her father and Curtis, but she and Little Jack were on their own.
Twenty-Four.
Curtis thought he must’ve swallowed his teeth when they were knocked out. His throat hurt like they’d given him a bite on the way down. He couldn’t breathe through his nose, his right eye was nearly closed and the left swollen up too, his ribs ached, the joints of his shoulders were on fire, his knees were scraped and bloody where he’d landed on the gravel in that railyard, he was unable to speak…and what else?
Oh, yes…he was walking—staggering, mostly—along the side of Sawmill Road stark naked.
He was heading toward the town of Kenner, which shouldn’t be too far. He’d already passed a closed-up gas station, and there stood a cemetery just past it on the left. He felt ready for the grave. He kept looking back and forth along the road, ready to head for the bushes if anyone came along but the police…and even if the police came by, what was a naked Negro in a small town going to say to a white policeman after two o’clock in the morning? Even if the naked Negro could speak, which this one could not. He’d tried, and it had come out as the croak of a half-dead toadfrog.
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