Bill Pronzini - Bindlestiff

I tried to get up too fast, lost my footing and toppled forward like an old tree, scraping skin off my right palm. By the time I made it to my feet again, he was thirty yards away and crashing through the underbrush that grew in close to the fence. I lumbered after him, panting and wheezing, with a chest pain starting that put a peripheral fear of a heart attack into my head.

Tree shadows swallowed him, but I could still hear him thrashing around in the underbrush. Just before I reached the woods I became aware of a rumbling, rattling noise and the ground seemed to vibrate a little. Then the air horn bellowed again, and through the trees I could see the Cyclopean glare of a locomotive’s headlight as the southbound freight clattered into view on the right-of-way. The sweep of light also let me see Raymond: he was running straight toward the tracks and the oncoming freight.

The train was not going very fast, throttled way down and crawling along the tangent, and when he scrambled up the incline I knew what he was going to do. The locomotive and its light swept on past; a short string of flats followed it. I came out of the trees just as the first of a line of boxcars drew abreast of him. He tried to catch hold of the iron ladder on the side of one, missed it, almost fell, and then straightened in time to lunge at the next in line. He caught hold of the ladder on that one, but by that time I was a couple of strides behind him, running sideways on the packed earth of the incline.

It was a foolish thing to do, but I grabbed onto the ladder, too, with my good right hand. Even as slow as the freight was traveling, its momentum almost jerked my arm out of its socket, almost tore my fingers loose from the rung; if that had happened I might have fallen under the wheels. But I managed to hang on, to get one foot anchored on the bottom rung an instant after Raymond hoisted himself up and through the open door of the car. And I swung in right on his heels, barreled into him as soon as he let go of the ladder and his feet hit the swaying floorboards.

The boxcar was empty; the odor of dust and apples assaulted my nostrils as we smacked together, tumbled to the floor. The collision broke us apart, and for two or three seconds I couldn’t find him in the darkness. Then I heard him scrabbling around on my left, and lunged in that direction, and my good hand scraped across his shirtfront. The material ripped, but I got hold of him anyway and hauled him in against me. We rolled over a couple of times, his breath exploding sourly into my face, his fingers clawing at my cheek. I came up on top and swung down at him, a blind, wild swing, then flailed at him again.

That second blow took him somewhere on the head; he grunted in pain. I hit him a second time, more solidly than the first. He stiffened under me and I knew he was hurt and I thought I had him. But one of his hands clutched at my groin, found enough purchase to make me cry out and try to twist aside. I pawed at his hand to keep him from rupturing me, and he swatted me in the ribs with his other arm, and the next thing I knew I was over on my back and he was pinning me with the bulk of his upper body, fumbling at my neck with both hands. I kicked at him, didn’t connect; missed with an awkward punch. And by then it was too late: he had his fingers wrapped around my neck in a stranglehold.

He slammed my head against the floorboards, did it again, did it a third time…

Pain. Disorientation. A sudden feeling of distance and time-stoppage, as if part of my mind had been jarred out of whack. I couldn’t move; I couldn’t seem to breathe either. A thought came out of the swirling black inside my head: He paralyzed me! I screamed in rage and terror, but the scream was inside my head too, and it had no voice.

Raymond let go of my neck; I felt his weight lift off me, heard him panting, dimly saw him get to his feet and brace himself against the sway of the car. He was giant then, looming, swaying-a massive silhouette outlined against blobs and flickers of light, against a blur of confused shapes sliding past the open door. He kept staring down at me, and I thought through sweeps of pain: Move! He’ll kill you if you don’t move. But except for helpless little twitches, I could not make my body respond.

He turned away abruptly, lurched over to the door and leaned out. The blobs and flickers of light, the blur of shapes, were slowing down. He glanced back at me again, hesitated-and disappeared. Now you see him, now you don’t. Gone. Poof, like magic stuff.

Jumped off, I thought. For God’s sake, move!

But all I could do was lie there, jouncing and swaying and twitching. Slowing down like the train. Going away like Raymond. Going, going…

Gone.

There was light shining in my eyes. I reached up and swiped at it, the way you’d try to brush away an insect. But the light would not go away; it just kept shining, hot and bright, burning into my skull like some kind of powerful laser beam.

Somebody said, “Come on, ’bo, wake up. You can’t sleep here. This ain’t a frigging hotel.”

I turned my head to one side, to avoid the light, and realized I was lying still: no more jouncing and swaying. I opened my eyes. Dusty floorboards came into focus in a wide splash of light. Boxcar. Raymond. Christ, Raymond!

I rolled over and tried to lift up; my left arm was numb and wouldn’t support me and I sprawled face down. When I tried it again I used my right hand, and this time I made it up onto my knees. The back of my head throbbed as if somebody was beating on it with a stick. A wave of nausea washed through me; bile pumped into the back of my throat, clogged for an instant, then rose again. I knelt there with my head hanging down, vomiting.

“Drunk,” a different voice said disgustedly. “You’d think these tramps would learn-”

“Wait, Frank,” the first voice said. “He’s not drunk-he’s hurt. Look at the back of his head.”

Part of the light moved at the same time I finished emptying my stomach. “You’re right. Shit, it looks stove in.”

“No, it’s not that bad.”

“Bloody as hell. Hey, ’bo, what happened? You been in a fight?”

I pawed at my mouth, got one foot down under me, and managed to heave myself upright. The boxcar’s side wall, the one with the door in it, was only a couple of steps away, and that was a good thing; I would not have stayed on my feet if it had been any farther away. As it was, I hit the wall sideways and slid along it to the edge of the door, knees buckling, before I caught myself and hung on.

One of the voices said, “Hey, take it easy,” and a hand grabbed hold of my shoulder to steady me. But it was the left shoulder, the bad one, and I made a noise in my throat and shook the hand off. I could see the two men now, even though both of them were still shining big electric torches at me. A different kind of light, artificial-looking and faintly greenish, spilled into the car from outside.

I looked away from them and out through the door. The freight yards. The artificial-looking light was coming from the strings of sodium vapor arcs that crisscrossed the work areas. It made the rails gleam, and for a couple of seconds I imagined they were moving, writhing along the ground like big silver snakes. The smells of oil and hot metal came to me from somewhere; I thought I was going to vomit again.

“We better get him some first-aid, Frank,” one of the men said. Yard bulls, that was what they were. Railroad security cops. “He needs a doctor.”

“Yeah.”

No, I thought, get the police, I got to talk to the police. I tried to say the words, but they seemed to lodge in my throat like fragments of bone. Something wrong with my voice. Something wrong with my head, too. It ached like fury; the pain was so sharp I couldn’t think straight.