John Boland: Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 54, No. 3, March 2009

I’d heard there was work on the farms out in California, and we figured we’d head out there together. But California was two thousand miles away, and one fellow told us early on that the railroads were the fastest way to get there. The most luxurious, too, another promptly said. This was met by a lot of loud laughter from anybody close enough to hear it. What we found out was that a hard floor in the corner of an empty boxcar was a lot more plush than walking, and so we spent our days scouting for a handout and any train that looked to be heading west.

“It wasn’t fair,” Orvil said between deep breaths. He kept saying it over and over.

“You sure you don’t have any broken ribs?”

“Don’t think so,” he said while exploring a pain in his side. “You?”

“No.”

Neither of us spoke for a long time. In the far distance a train whistle sounded. It could have been the same train we’d just been evicted from. To me it sounded like it was crowing about its victory over us.

I was hurting, but I wasn’t as banged up as Orvil. We could hear the sound of a stream close by, but I couldn’t even fetch him a cup of water. I’d had a blanket rolled up around a tin cup and plate and some other small things, but I’d quickly lost interest in them when we scrambled for the ladders. Orvil had a small sack of things he’d left up there too. We both figured we’d never see any of our stuff again. For the moment, we just lay there and tried to get whatever rest our aches and pains would permit. But even with all that, Arthur’s tumble off that car was pretty much what was on our minds.

“You hear what I heard... back there?” I said.

“Sure did.”

“I guess he’s dead.”

“Must be.”

I lay a long time looking up at the stars before I could say it.

“It was my fault.”

“You wasn’t the one, pushed him off the car.”

“Being up there wasn’t the best idea I ever had. You said it... you were right.”

“Fiddlesticks! That bull’s the one pushed Arthur off.”

He was, but there was no getting around it, it was my idea to start with.

“You hear me, Stanley?” Orvil said. “Ain’t your fault.”

I didn’t answer. I was thinking, what a fine bunch of help we’d been to Arthur. I didn’t know who to be more angry at — me or that crazy bull.

When it got to be light enough to see, I got up and started to walk back along the tracks. Orvil raised up on one elbow. I could see he was still hurting.

“Stay there,” I said. “I’ll be back in a bit.”

“Where you goin’?”

“I’ll see if I can find Arthur.”

“We figured he’d be dead.”

“I expect so.”

“Likely ain’t going to be pretty.”

I didn’t answer, just kept walking.

“I’m goin’ t’ kill that bugger!” Orvil called after me.

“Yeah,” I said, but probably not loud enough for him to hear. My mind was busy thinking about what I expected to find.

I found him, must have been at least a mile back along the line. He’d landed with his legs across one of the tracks and that had done the kind of damage a person would expect. The rest of him was banged up some, but his face, except for an ugly gash above one ear, looked as peaceful as if he were sleeping. I tried to convince myself he’d gone before the wheels got to him. A minute later, I felt so sick I wanted to run out of there as fast as I could.

In the end, I stayed and moved him — all of him — a few feet away from the tracks and considered what I should do. It didn’t seem proper to me that Arthur should simply be left out there. Burying him was out of the question. I had no digging tools and the ground was too hard to dig in it by hand. It would be better, anyway, if someone came out from some town and collected him and made a proper burial. Maybe they could find out where he was from and notify his folks. But then I thought that was probably not going to happen. Arthur never told us his last name, or where he was from, so how could total strangers do it? I hated it, that he had died out here alone.

I went through his pockets to see if there were any letters or anything that would help. There wasn’t, and there was nothing in a small bag of things he had tied to the belt of his coat.

My eyes held on his coat. It was a green plaid thing, several sizes too big for him, but it was of heavy material. The coat was a little tattered to begin with but it hadn’t suffered much in the fall. I thought of Orvil, who didn’t have a coat, and who was getting along as best he could by always wearing two shirts.

I almost made apologies out loud as I took Arthur’s coat off. He had a blanket, and he usually carried it rolled up and roped across his shoulders. It was still nearby and I gathered it up. I pulled a piece of bark off a dead tree a few feet away and found a rock with a sharp edge and used it to scratch a message on the back side of it. What I wrote was, “His name was Arthur,” and when I finished I put the piece of bark in his shirt pocket, covered him with his blanket, and weighted the edges with rocks. Maybe it wouldn’t keep the animals off him, but I hoped it would at least keep the birds away until the proper people could come for him.

I picked up his coat and his little bag and paused a few steps away.

“I’m sorry, Arthur,” I said, even though I was sure he wasn’t going to hear me. A moment later, I started walking back to where I’d left Orvil. I was beginning to think that even if being up on that roof was my fault, that railroad bull had no call to throw Arthur off a moving train.

There wasn’t a step I made I didn’t mutter, “That crazy bugger shouldn’t have done that!”

I don’t remember exactly when it was that we decided we were going to kill that railroad bull. But it was at least a couple of hours after we started walking along the tracks. It wasn’t any kind of blood oath we made. We simply stopped walking, turned and shook hands, and started off again. It had started out as Orvil’s idea, but after seeing what condition Arthur had been left in, I hadn’t been hard to convince. It didn’t matter that neither of us had any idea how we were going to do it. What we lacked in ideas we surely made up for by our enthusiasm for the prospect.

We hadn’t passed through any towns after climbing aboard the train, so we took our chances by following the direction the train had been going. Fortunately, the next town wasn’t that far, but it took us most of the day, moving at Orvil’s hobbling speed, to get there. We found the local marshal’s office and went in to report a body alongside the tracks about six miles back. The marshal wanted to know what I knew about its being there. I told him how a big railroad bull had simply picked our friend up and practically thrown him off the top of the car.

“Arthur was his name. All I knew him by,” I concluded.

He looked at me for a few seconds and broke out in a chuckle.

“Appears you boys has been introduced to Beater Stark.” He let out a string of laughter. “Pretty famous along this part a’ the line for keepin’ the riffraff off the cars.”

“Well... he killed Arthur,” Orvil said, “an’ he didn’t need to.”

“Or maybe he did,” the marshal said. “Anyway, I’d say another trespassin’ tramp has learnt his lesson good!” He must have thought it was a pretty good joke because he was chuckling a good long time before he pulled a big revolver out from one of his desk drawers. “Back there boys,” he said as he gestured with the muzzle of the revolver toward a doorway at the rear of the room.

“You arrestin’ us? What for?” Orvil said as we backed away. I’d never had a gun barrel pointed at me before, but I’d always been taught to respect what could come out of the end of it.