The car swayed, click-clack, click-clack. I opened my eyes, saw yellow
sunlight in a bar across the litter on the floor. The power truss
creaked, pulling at my arm. My broken leg was throbbing its indignation
at the treatment it had received--walking brace and all--and the burned
arm was yelling aloud for more of that nice dope that had been keeping
it from realizing how bad it was. All things considered, I felt like a
badly embalmed mummy--except that I was hungry. I had been a fool not
to fill my pockets when I left the escape capsule in the shallows off
Key Largo, but things had been happening too fast.
I had barely made it to the fishing boat, whose owner I had coerced
into rendezvousing with me before shells started dropping around us. If
the gunners on the cruiser ten miles away had had any luck, they would
have finished me--and the hapless fisherman--right then. We rode out a
couple of near misses, before I put the cruiser's gunnery crew off the
air.
At a fishing camp on the beach, I found a car--with driver. He dropped
me at the railyard, and drove off under the impression he was in town
for groceries. He'd never believe he'd seen me.
Now I'd had my sleep. I had to start getting ready for the next act of
the farce.
I pressed the release on the power truss, gingerly unclamped it, then
rigged a sling from a strip of shirt tail. I tied the arm to my side as
inconspicuously as possible. I didn't disturb the bandages.
I needed new clothes--or at least different ones--and something to
cover my shaved skull. I couldn't stay hidden forever. The yard cop had
recognized me at a glance.
I lay back, waiting for the train to slow for a town. I wasn't unduly
worried--at the moment. The watchman probably hadn't convinced anyone
he'd actually seen me. Maybe he hadn't been too sure himself.
The click-clack slowed and the train shuddered to a stop. I crept to
the door, peered through the crack. There were sunny fields, a few low
buildings in the distance, the corner of a platform. I closed my eyes
and let my awareness stretch out.
"--_lousy job. What's the use? Little witch in the lunch room ... up in
the hills, squirrel hunting, bottle of whiskey...._"
I settled into control gently, trying not to alarm the man. I saw
through his eyes the dusty box car, the rust on the tracks, the
listless weeds growing among cinders, and the weathered boards of
the platform. I turned him, and saw the dingy glass of the telegraph
window, a sagging screen door with a chipped enameled cola sign.
I walked the man to the door, and through it. Behind a linoleum-topped
counter, a coarse-skinned teen-age girl with heavy breasts and wet
patches under her arms looked up without interest as the door banged.
My host went on to the counter, gestured toward the waxed-paper-wrapped
sandwiches under a glass cover. "I'll take 'em all. And candy bars, and
cigarettes. And give me a big glass of water."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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