Philipp Meyer - American Rust

He drifted off and it was near midnight when he woke, he was very cold, he'd left his coat unzipped. It was dark. The only light came from the coke works, small dim safety lights outlining every building and smokestack, as far as the eye could see. In the dark it looks like connect the dots. Several miles long. How many feet of pipe — millions, easily. Hundreds of buildings. Coke ovens, cranes, conveyors, who knew what all those buildings did, steam rose from every pipe and building. Heat and steam and blackness of coal. Underworld.

Walking down a dark street he passed a man wrapped in a blanket sitting against a fence. The man looked at him, then looked away. Isaac passed but then stopped and reached into his pants pocket and tried to fumble a bill out of the envelope in his pocket. It was hard to get just one out. Just give him the entire wad, he thought. If you give it to him you can just go home. He stood there thinking. No. Have to keep going.

He walked back and handed the man a twenty, and looking up at him, the man hesitated before accepting it. He was a young man, Isaac saw. A dirty face, maybe a junkie. “Appreciate you,” he said to Isaac.

“No problem,” Isaac told him. He continued down the road. Time to catch the train, the great escape. Collecting himself he made his way toward the coke works, the wind shifted and the smell was intense. city of prayer the sign called it, more nice old buildings boarded up, dark streets, detritus of an older way. What was the joke? A boy and girl are making out in his car, and finally she can't take it anymore. Kiss me, she whispers. Kiss me right where it stinks. So he drives her to Clairton.

Ahead of him along the hillside he could hear a murmuring he knew must be a gathering of people, there was light coming from behind an old building, a school, maybe. There weren't any houses around it. Probably not locals. Maybe someone to tell you a train schedule.

Two enormous fires in trash cans behind the school, nearly two dozen people sitting or standing in groups against the walls, around different fires, a few shelters made of salvaged plywood or corrugated tin. Sitting against one wall, a dreadlocked teenager was beating on two white sheetrock buckets, a stick in each hand, the rhythms syncopated, he was not an amateur, a school band dropout. A drum major gone native.

Isaac stood behind some overgrown bushes, watching. The people were a mix, half local wino types and half younger people, kids in their teens and twenties. It was chilly but a large- breasted girl took her shirt off and danced around the courtyard in her bra and a few whoops went up. Eventually she went and sat down again. A few people were doing something over a candle and he realized they were shooting up.

Just go in there, he thought. You're no different than any of them. But he couldn't bring himself to. A fight broke out suddenly, a big man and small man swinging wildly but neither connecting and finally a few people went and separated them. The big one with the shaved head was younger and he went and stood with his group. The older smaller man went and stood by himself. A few more people came around the end of the building and Isaac saw it was the boy and the girl he'd seen earlier under the bridge. The boy was carrying a case of beer in each hand; the girl carried a grocery bag.

Isaac had just gotten up the nerve to join the group when the skinhead and the older man were fighting again, but this time the skinhead tripped and the older man hit him in the head with a stick and the skinhead fell over and was hit several more times as he rolled around on the ground. The small man who'd done the hitting picked up his backpack and walked immediately out of the area of the loading dock and people watched him, he nearly walked straight into Isaac.

“I can't see you,” the man said, crashing through the dark brush, “but I ain't who you want to be worrying about.” He was about Isaac's size and Isaac relaxed slightly.

“This ain't a good spot,” he continued. “There's a couple of bad seeds in there, dopeheads, and when they take a look at the big bald bastard I was hitting they're gonna be out for serious.”

The man was wearing a backpack with a sleeping bag strapped to the bottom of it and he headed downhill toward the train tracks. Isaac hesitated, then decided to follow him.

After a hundred yards or so the man slowed to let Isaac catch up.

“We might as well either fight it out or not.”

“I'm not fighting,” said Isaac.

“Okay then, so walk together and stop making me nervous.”

He started down the dark street again and Isaac kept up with him.

“Some real troublemakers in there,” said the man. “Sometimes it goes like that.” He had a good deal of blood on the side of his face. He saw Isaac looking. “Christ,” he said. “Got me good, didn't he?”

“Looks like it.”

“It'll heal, they always do. You know it around here at all?”

“I'm from here.”

“You headed out?”

“Somewhere south.”

“That's bass- ackwards. Summer be here before you know it — time to head north.”

“I'll be alright.”

“A rebel, huh?”

Isaac shrugged.

“After my own heart,” the man said.

They walked toward the coke plant. When the man stopped to piss in the middle of the tracks, Isaac adjusted his knife and the sheath. You're just being paranoid now, he thought.

“What's your actual destination?”

“California.”

“How you getting there?”

“No idea,” said Isaac, and then he realized why the question had been asked, was immediately sorry he'd answered it.

“Ah shit, I'll point you the way. Head that way myself for a while.”

Isaac didn't say anything.

“Be good for you. Always good to have a mentor around. I don't mind doing it.”

“I'm doing fine on my own.”

“Well just give me the word and I'll take off then,” he said. “If you're one of those loner types that can be a pain in the ass.”

Isaac shook his head and grinned. “I got no problems.”

They were coming up the north end of the coke plant. Isaac still couldn't get over the size of it, it was bigger even than the mill in Buell had been, but the man seemed not to notice and they stood in the brush at the riverbend, looking at the trainyard. There were at least a dozen different tracks. There were several long trains loaded with coke.

“You wanna go find a rail and ask which is which.”

“What do I say to them?” said Isaac.

“Same as anyone else.”

Isaac shrugged.

“You don't even know what to ask, do you?”

Screw this guy, he thought. He met his eyes in the dark.

“Alright, I'll do it for us. Sit tight.”

The man started to walk off, then stopped.

“My name's Winston, by the way. But most people call me the Baron.”

Isaac told him his name, then wondered if he should have made one up. No, he thought, this is what you've wanted. You can give this guy the slip if you need to. At the moment you need his help.

Shortly after that the Baron was back. “It's the big one there with the four units. The one on the end is just going upriver a little ways, but the big one is going to a place near Detroit. All kinds of shit comes and goes from there — it'll be easy for you to find something.”

“When's it due to get rolling.”

“Any minute is what he said. Usually that means a couple hours.”

Just then the triangle of lights came on at the front of the train and there was the sound of diesel engines turning over and then running at high idle.

The man grinned. “Christ, you're bringing luck to me. I'd been wanting to bash that boy in the head for three days. And now we got our taxi coming. You just watch what I do.”