Missing in Action (15 page)

Jay charged him, thrust his hands into Ken's chest, sent him flying backward. Ken struck the table as he went down, shoving it back. The plate and the glass of milk flew. As Jay turned, he heard the sound of shattering glass, thought he saw the yellow scraps of egg fly. But he didn't care. He was falling off a cliff. He slammed his hand into the screen door, felt the old screen tear, and then felt the door pop open, and by then he was already running through, heading toward the barn and then on by. He didn't know where he was going from there, only that he couldn't go back to Delta.

“You'll be dead too,” he yelled at the field in front of him. “You'll tell everyone what a hotshot you are, then get yourself killed. But I don't care.”

He kept running. “I don't care,” he shouted again. “I don't care.”

HE RAN UNTIL HIS LUNGS
wouldn't let him run anymore, and then he walked hard. He headed south from the farm, away from Delta, down a dirt road. He knew that he had to figure something out. He had to get away from Ken, and he was not going back to face the boys in town. He also wasn't going to watch his mother sit in the living room with Hal Duncan every night.

The road kept going until it gradually dwindled down to nothing more than tracks in the desert overgrown with rabbitbrush and mustard weed. It was stupid to keep heading deeper into the desert, but he couldn't think what else to do. He could head off to the east and try to get to a highway, maybe hitchhike his way somewhere. But he didn't know where. No matter what he'd said earlier, he couldn't really go to his Navajo grandmother. He didn't want to live in a hogan.

Jay stopped and looked out across the desert. Everything was flat and empty. It was gray more than green, and he didn't understand anything about it. Maybe Indians knew these places. Maybe they knew how to live out here, but he didn't. He needed to think of something else.

Maybe he really could make it to the major leagues. Maybe he could work harder than anyone and get really good. Gordy would probably never work that hard, but he thought he could. He needed to get to a place where he could practice every day, play on a good team, spend all his time getting better. If he could do something like that, someday no one in Delta would talk about him dancing with a Jap. They would say, “I knew that guy back when he lived here. He's a big-league ballplayer now.”

He stopped. He looked out toward the mountains. Then he looked back toward Delta. Maybe he would have to go back to town—hide out there somehow while he figured things out. But he saw something moving, something black. He realized it was a train pulling out of town, the engine making black smoke. It would pass him by, to the west, but not by more than a quarter of a mile, and it didn't look like it was picking up much speed. He didn't know where it was going, but it was heading south, away from here.

He had seen hoboes in town. Grandma had fed them. He'd heard them say that they “rode the rails.”
They jumped onto empty boxcars. Suddenly he was running. Lots of things were coming together in his mind. Maybe he could ride trains and get to California. There were jobs in California. He could say he was older than he was, get a job, then practice baseball every day after work. He wouldn't have to go back to town. But the train was going faster now, and he kept running harder and harder.

He didn't zig and zag much; he mostly crashed through the rabbitbrush, or jumped over it when he could, and he angled toward the train, cutting somewhat south to get to the middle of it before it left him behind. His lungs were aching again. He stumbled and went down but was up without losing much time or speed, running again and then getting close before he realized he didn't know how to get on. He saw ladders on the sides of the boxcars. He could jump onto them, but then what?

And then he saw an open door and jumped. He tried to jump onto the floor of the car but only got his shoulders through. He fought to get hold of something. He grabbed the side of the door, with his elbow against the inside. He clung hard but was dangling, couldn't pull himself up, and he knew he was in big trouble. He couldn't hang on forever, and he couldn't get any leverage to pull himself up.

Then suddenly something seized his arm and pulled, and he was swept inside the boxcar. Everything was dark
for a moment, and he wasn't sure what had happened, but he rolled over and looked up at a hulking form, a man, standing over him. “You trying to git yerself killt?” the man said. His voice was like an echo from inside a barrel.

Jay didn't answer. He just stared up at the man, whose face he could see now. It was dark, covered with whiskers, with hair too long falling around his ears, and black eyebrows like thistles.

“He's just a kid,” someone else said. Jay looked into the dark end of the car and saw two men sitting side by side, leaning back against rolls of blankets. His eyes were getting used to the dim light, and he could see that they were dirty, one in overalls, the other in tattered jeans, but they didn't look mean—or angry.

“You better hop back offa here,” the big guy standing over him said. “Before we pick up too much speed.”

He couldn't think what to say. But maybe he
should
jump off.

“You just playin' around?” one of the men sitting down asked, yelled really. The sound of the tracks inside the car was thumping louder all the time. “ 'Cause if you are, it was a stupid thing to do. You just about ended up under the wheels of this car.”

He finally thought what to say. “Does this train go to California?” he called out over the noise.

All three men laughed.

“What do you want in California?” the big guy, the one standing, asked.

“I hear there's work.”

They laughed again.

“Don't know if they have child labor down there,” the sitting man said, raising his voice but laughing at the same time.

“I'm older than I look,” Jay said.

“What are you, an Indian kid?”

“No.”

For a time there was nothing but the noise and the vibration of the floor against his back. What if everyone said he was a kid, and no one would give him a job? Maybe he should jump off now and walk back to Delta. But this still seemed better.

“This train goes on down to Milford, and it might be going on to California. But I got a feeling you're running away from your momma and she's crying already. This ain't no way for a kid to be bummin' around. You from Delta?” said the sitting man.

“No.”

“I'll bet you are.”

“I'm not. I came down from Salt Lake. I've been riding the rails for a while, working where I can. I'm not a kid. Not like you think. I'm a ballplayer. I want to catch on with a team in California.”

But this brought the biggest laugh yet. The big man moved back to the side of the car and sat down not
far from the others. “You gotta git better at lyin' if you want to run away. That's for sure.”

Jay sat up, then slid back against the side of the car, on the opposite side from the big man.

“How long does it take to get to Milford?”

“I don't know,” the big man said. “I ain't never been this way before. I just asked a guy and that's what he said. It's going to Milford. That's still in Utah, I think.”

Jay knew it was, but he didn't say so. He decided not to say anything. But he knew Milford wasn't very far, and maybe at that point he'd have to get some help from these guys, to know how to switch trains or whatever he had to do. He needed to get them on his side so they would help him. He thought about Gordy, the way he'd do it. Even Ken.

“I've had a lot of trouble,” Jay said, and then realized he hadn't said it loud enough. He raised his voice, said it again, and then added, “My old man beats up on me, and my mother doesn't care. She just lets him do it. I gotta get somewhere else where I can make my own way.”

But the words had cost him. They had more truth in them than he liked, and they were words he had never said before. Mom never had stopped his dad, and sometimes he'd hated her for that. He wiped the sweat from his face, pushed his hair back, and knew for the first time that he'd lost his hat, maybe back there when he'd fallen.

The second man who'd spoken to him was thin-faced, with a narrow nose and skinny arms sticking out from an old shirt rolled up above his elbows. “That ain't much different from a lot of guys on these trains. I left home at sixteen.” He pushed his own hair back from falling in his eyes. “But you ain't no sixteen.”

“I soon will be. I'm fifteen now.”

“Or maybe thirteen.”

“No. I'm just small for my age.”

“You really from Salt Lake, or where?”

“I've lived lots of different places. But I've played a lot of ball. I might not hook up with a team right away, but teams are looking for players now, with so many away in the war. If I can work a while and keep practicing, I can maybe make a semipro team. I wanna play in the majors someday.”

“The best thing you could do is go to high school, get yourself some education.”

“Maybe I can do that. You know, in California.”

“Soon as you try, they'll want an address, your dad's signature, and all that kind of stuff. I know all about that.”

But Jay didn't really think he'd stay in school, no matter what his mother always said to him. He could go to a store, or maybe a factory, and tell the manager that he needed to work to help his mother while his dad was in the service, and then claim he went to school, too. Something like that. If he got some work
at a grocery store, he could maybe get enough to eat. In California it was warm all the time. He could figure out a place to live and some way to practice baseball. He'd need to get himself another glove. The old one his dad had bought him was just a cheap one anyway. To be a really good player, he needed a better one.

The trouble was, he was making up a story and he knew it. He didn't know if any of this could really work out the way he was thinking it. But the train was real, and it was getting farther away from Delta every minute. His stomach felt sick when he told himself he was alone now and maybe always would be.

He thought of his mom, holding him when he was little, back in Salt Lake. “You have to mind your dad,” she would say. “You know how mad he gets.” He had hated her for that, still hated her sometimes. But she had been everything to him then. At least she'd cried when she'd seen his bruises, and he'd cried when he'd seen hers. She would cry today, once she knew he was gone. He thought again of jumping back off the train and heading home. But he knew what everyone would be saying about him.

And Ken was leaving. Nothing ever worked out right.

“I'll tell you what,” the man with the thin face said. “If I had it to do over, I'd stay home. I left my family, and I ain't never been back, and I'm not even sure where they are now. I'd rather see my mother and
my little brother than anything else in this world. If I can build up a few dollars working on the coast, then I'm going back to Indiana and figure out some way to find 'em.”

“If you get a few dollars, you're going to get drunk, like every other time,” the big man said. The third man, who hadn't said a word yet, laughed again. He was wearing bib overalls, farmer boots, and an old hat. It was just a floppy piece of felt with a hole worn all the way through at the front, where it had been gripped so many times.

“Go on. Jump off now, here where there's some sand,” the big man said. “You can still walk back to Delta before the heat's too bad.”

“What do I want with Delta?”

“That's where you're from. And I'll tell you how I know. This is the first train you ever jumped. You don't know how to do it. So don't tell me you've been riding around on trains. You don't have no gear, either, not like a guy who's been out on the road for a while. I'll tell you what else. You got in a fight with your old man, but he ain't half so bad as you think he is right now. You've been eatin' good, and that's more than you might be able to say pretty soon.” When Jay didn't say anything, the man added, “And one more thing. You ain't going to convince no one that you're fifteen.”

“Well, that's what I am, whether you think so or not.”

They laughed again, all three of them, but this time he laughed with them. He needed to be friends with them.

“What's your name?” he asked, looking across the car.

The big man said, “Mac is what people call me.”

“Where you from?”

“Nowhere now.”

“He was in the war, out in the Pacific,” the thin man said. “He got shot through both legs, so they mustered him out of the Marines. He went home and found his wife living with—”

“Hey! You don't need to tell the kid all that.” He looked across at Jay. “I ain't like these two. I may take a drink now and then, but I ain't no wino. Jack here, he's feebleminded now, his brain all burnt up from drinking anything he can find with alcohol in it. I found him in Grand Junction, half-dead, and I've helped him a little since then. But it's what happens most of the time to the guys out here on these trains.”

Mac looked over at the guy he'd called Jack. Jack was grinning, but Jay wasn't sure the guy even knew what anyone was talking about. “So jump now. Go back home.”

“I can't. I can't go back. Will you help me get to California?”

“No.”

“I will,” the other fellow said, the one with the narrow face.

“What's your name?”

“Wayne.”

“Okay, Wayne,” said Jay. “We'll partner up for a while.”

But that was one more reason to laugh, and maybe the reason to stop talking. The other men leaned back, let their eyes shut. He could see their bodies jiggle, their loose clothes shake. He realized they probably slept on the trains as much as they could.