Andrew Vachss - Two Trains Running

Music drifted out onto the night air, so softly that even Holden’s forest-trained ears could barely pick it up. Unlike the lumbering gait he automatically fell into whenever he had leave the safety of his forest, Holden moved with an almost sinuous grace as he closed the gap. The bruised-and-blue sounds of Bobby Bland’s “I’ll Take Care of You” floated over to him, but Holden didn’t recognize the song. He’s going to run down his battery, playing the radio with the engine turned off like that, he thought.

The moon refracted against the Chevy’s windshield, blocking Holden’s view of the interior as effectively as a curtain. It’s a warm night. Maybe they have the side windows down. I know that Chevy’s a hardtop, so even if they’re in the back seat…

Holden was so close that he tested each footstep before committing to it. From long experience, he knew that hiding behind a tree wasn’t as effective as standing in the open, blending with the night. His green-and-brown camouflage jacket and matching hat-gifts from his friend, Sherman-coupled with his ability to stand perfectly, soundlessly still, were all he had ever needed.

Holden didn’t like radios. They masked the sounds he coveted. The secret sounds he replayed in his mind, back in his room. They were his, those sounds. He owned them.

Holden often wanted to tell Sherman about the sounds. He thought his friend would understand. But… but he couldn’t be sure. Besides, Sherman was a policeman. A detective, even. Maybe there was a law Holden didn’t know about…

The side windows were down, just as Holden had wished. Sometimes, Holden believed he could wish things true. Like tonight. He had wanted the windows to be down, and… there they were. But when he tried it on… other things he wanted, it didn’t work. There was something about this Holden yearned to understand. But there was no one he could ask-he knew what would happen if he did.

“I hate this.”

A woman’s voice came through the side window. Something about it was deeply familiar to Holden, but he knew better than to reach for the memory. Every time that happened, he ended up trying to grasp smoke. If you spook up a rabbit, and you don’t chase it, just stay in the same spot, very still and quiet, sometimes, sometimes, the rabbit comes back.

“You think I like it?” A man’s voice. A young man. Holden was sure he hadn’t heard it before. “What am I going to do?”

“That’s just it, Harley. It should be ‘What are we going to do?’ ”

“You know that’s what I meant.” The man’s voice was somewhere between angry and… something else. Holden searched his mind for the right word. Sulky. That was it. Sulky like a little kid.

“It’s only a couple of months, Harley. A couple of months, and then I’m gone from here. I’m going to start second semester.”

“You’ll be back.”

“You’re so sure?”

“Kitty, why do you have to always be twisting everything I say? I only meant, college, it’s not like you stay there forever. You’ll be back, for summers and stuff, that’s all I was saying.”

“You could come with me.”

“Come with you? To… what’s the name of that school, again?”

“Western Reserve University,” the woman’s voice said, proudly. “And it wouldn’t be to the school. We, the girls, we have to live in dorms. But it’s in Cleveland, Harley. A big city. You could find work easy, I know. My father says the mills are still pumping like mad up there. There’s plenty of-”

“A steel mill? That’s what you think I’m going to do with my life, Kitty?”

“I didn’t mean-”

“Let me ask you something,” he interrupted. “Why are you going to that fancy college?”

“To get an education. It’s the only way I could ever hope to… to make something of myself.”

“Nobody just gets an education. You learn things so you can use them, don’t you? I mean, nobody takes Drivers’ Ed in school so they can learn all that crap about safety; they do it because they want to get a license. There’s a teachers’ college right over in-”

“I’m not going to be a teacher.”

“What, then?”

“I… I don’t know. But I know it’s going to be something. Maybe a doctor. Or a lawyer.”

“You?”

“Why not, Harley?” she said, her voice sharpening down to an ice-pick point. “Because I’m a girl? Or because I’m a-?”

A colored girl! flashed onto the screen of Holden’s mind. She talks just like a colored girl. He shifted his stance, a leafy branch reacting to a faint breeze, and leaned in closer, straining to listen.

“I… I didn’t mean what you think, Kitty. I just, I just know how people are.”

“People change.”

“No, they don’t,” he said, stolidly.

“I don’t mean individual people, Harley. I mean society. The whole world is changing. Not as fast as I would like. Not as fast as it should. But things are changing. If you looked anyplace but Locke City, you’d see it for yourself.”

“Things are changing here, too, baby. That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you. You want me to go someplace like Cleveland, where we could be together right out in the open, don’t you?”

“Of course I do. You think I enjoy sneaking around like I’m some kind of-”

“Cleveland, it’s different from here, sure. But not for the reason you think.”

“And what reason do you think I think?”

“Come on, Kitty. I drove up there with you once, remember? Sure, you can see couples, couples like us, walking around that little lake they have in the middle of the college. But a college, that’s not real life. Sooner or later, you have to leave, go out in the world.”

“There’s plenty of places where we could-”

“Oh yeah. Like Greenwich Village, I suppose.”

“What do you know about Greenwich Village, Harley?”

“My friend Sammy, he was there. During the war. I mean, he was on leave, in New York. Most of the guys wanted to go to Times Square, but a couple of them heard there was more action in Greenwich Village. So he went down there. Sammy said it’s all beatniks and stuff. Everything all mixed together.”

“Greenwich Village isn’t a town, Harley. It’s just a little part of a big city. New York. And my father says there’s places there where a Negro can’t even walk without some gang jumping on him. My father’s from down south. And he says, up here, it’s no better. It’s only that people talk different, not that they are different.”

“If you’re strong enough, it doesn’t matter what people say. Or even how they think.”

“Are you saying you’re ready to-?”

“Not yet, I’m not, Kitty. You think I’ve been stalling you. Not wanting to… I mean, like going to Cleveland. That’s not because I don’t want to work. I work. I work hard. But working in a mill, that means, every day you get up in the morning, you never know if you’re going to have a job to go to. It’s not anything you own.”

“Like your own business?”

“Exactly like that. And that, that’s where I’m going.”

“In Locke City? What could you possibly-?”

“Someday I’m going to be where Mr. Beaumont is, Kitty.”

“A gangster!”

“A businessman.”

“Some business,” she said scornfully. “Gambling dens and whorehouses and-”

“Those are just rumors. Mr. Beaumont, he’s in real estate. If you knew how much of the county he owns, you’d be shocked.”

“And that’s what you want? For yourself, I mean?”

“For us. I want it for us. You think if we lived in a big house like Mr. Beaumont’s, you think if I had all kinds of people working for me, people would say anything about you and me?”

“Of course they would! This is still-”