I Might As Well Because I Have No Choice Page 5

CHAPTER FOUR

  We sat down by the food, and she placed a pitcher of cold ice tea beside us and went back inside.

  "There’s good people wherever you go," Jaquan said. "She didn’t even comment that I was a black man."

  "Could be she didn’t notice," I said.

  If her Pat was a healthy eater, we’d no idea of putting the man to shame, so after a bit, we knocked on the door and she filled our plates again, then brought us a sack to the door. It were a potato sack, and packed to the top.

  "Here’s a bit to take along. And there’s a mile of coffee there if you can find something to make it in."

  "Thank you ma’am. Thank you indeed," I said.

  "Obliged," said Jaquan.

  "It’s been said that hobs mark the gates of houses where they’ll be fed. Is it true then?"

  "Ma’am, I’ve no idea. I shall remember this place as the home of the fairest flower of the land. You’re the picture of loveliness, ma’am."

  "Oh, go on with you. You’ve had your bait. Now take yourselves on."

  We slept the night in another empty boxcar listening to the creaking of the car as it rounded curves, the bumping as the train rolled over the tracks.

  We had seen no more of Karl Kellen and I were sure he had left the town before us and I was pleased at that.

  "Where do we stop next?" Jaquan asked, and then said, "I have ever ridden the train hitchhiking before."

  "Pennsylvania, I guess. If we can pick up a meal there, we can ride out to New Jersey with a little tightening of the belt."

  "That’s a fair piece," Jaquan objected, "and I’m a man that likes to eat."

  The train rumbled along accompanied by whistles and then as it neared some road crossing. The country we were passing through were broken into wheat fields, miles of them. And sometimes there were stretches of pastureland. It was a glaciated region of rolling prairies with occasional low hills and small lakes or sloughs, their fringes lined with cat tails. The only trees were those along the streams, or freshly planted ones near farmhouses or villages.

  When the freight slowed down before coming into the station at Pennsylvania, we dropped off and headed for Main Street. This was my second time in town in a moment and I saw that it had changed some.

  "I came riding in home on the first train over the road. The Big Ridges & Corp had driven some auto parts from Texas to Boulder Colorado, then shipped them to Arkansas and I’d gone along. The boss decided to have a look at Pennsylvania, so he rode that first train east with a couple of hands. He took me along to feed the stock.

  "Nothing much here then, I reckon," Jaquan commented. "Isn’t much now. Mostly tents then," I said. "Now they got hotels and much more."

  It was in my mind to look around for a man I had known as a kid in Fargo in the Timber. Back in those days, that were the roughest place a man could find an it stayed rough until the Gradayne guys cleaned it out. Track Bier had killed three of the guys before they moved in to get him. This friend of mine were one of the Bio Ridges & Corp riders who decided to stay in Chicago, like I did, and we stayed in Illinois. There were a Fargo in the Missouri too. But that was mostly descent folks, but not so exciting to me as Fargo in Illinois.

  This man I knew, he were wise enough to decide we should leave Illinois after Track Bier killed those guys. He had known the Seventh Calvary down in Kansas, and they weren’t likely to stand by then after some of their click had been killed. We had nothing to do with it, but my friend taught me a good lesson then.

  "It’s the innocent bystanders who get hurt," he told me.

  So we went north to the end of the coast toward New Jersey. It was built in a city where the river flowed into the Atlantic Ocean. And there were a few guys stationed there when we first came.

  Now there were no uniforms about and small as the place were, it looked prosperous.

  "If we find this friend of yours, will he put us on some work?" Jaquan asked.

  "That’s my guess. And if he’s around, I know how to find him. I’ll hunt up a drug store. Hobes Izumi could never pass up a drug store. I ever knew a man who had so many ailments. He told me he never knew how sick he was until he were snowed in one winter with a home medical adviser, and read it cover to cover. If it hadn’t been for that book, he might have lived a long life in bad health without knowing it."