plug off the chewingtobacco Dewey brought along, my mind
watching from some faraway place as he set them up single file on
the left rail.
'The train wheels should set 'em off the second they hit,' he smiled
smugly, eagerly forming his plan. 'All we have to do is stand here
by the rails until they do. How's that for a challenge, huh? Oh, and
the first one to jump is pussy of the year.'
I didn't say anything. but I thought a lot about it. About how stupid
it was, how dangerous it was, and how weird a persons brain had
to be to think things like that up. I thought about how I should bug
out right then, just yell 'Screw you, Brant!' and take off for home.
But that would have made me green. And if it was one thing we all
had to show each other back then, it was that we were no cowards.
So there we were, Brant, John, Dewey, me, and Kirby, although
Kirby wouldn't set foot near the tracks, bullets or no bullets, with a
train coming (he began to conveniently get sick on the tobacco and
had to lie down). We lined up next to the rails, determination in
our eyes as the bullets gleamed in front of us. John was the first
one to hear the train, and as we stepped closer to Brant's orders, I
could hear him softly muttering a short prayer over and over to
himself. Dewey stood on the far right side of me, the last person in
our Fearless Freddy Fan Club
Then the first heavy rumbling of the cars came, John reeled as it
got louder, and I thought surely he was going to collapse over the
tracks, but he didn't, and we all stood still as the train came on. The
churning squeak of the wheels hit our ears, and I stared blankly at
the bullets in front of us, thinking how small they seemed under
the wheels of the 4:40. But the more I looked, the larger they
began to appear, until it seemed they were almost the size of
cannonballs. I shut my eyes and prayed with John.
In the distance. the whistle rang out a terrifyingly loud Hooooo-
HOO Hoooo, and I was sure it was on top of us, sure that I would
feel the cracks of lead pounding in my ears any second, feel the hot
metal in my legs. Then the steady thud-thud-thud of its wheels
grinding closer bit into my ears, and I screamed. turned, and fell
down the slope to where the black gravel ended and the high
meadowy grass began. I ran and didn't stop or look back until I
was what felt like at least a mile away, and then collapsed in the
stickery high grass, my hands and knees filling with sharp pain.
Behind me, five or six bullets roared into the air consecutively, and
I wondered vaguely how Mike Conners could stand such a loud
sound every time he squeezed the trigger. My ears filled up with a
steady EEEEEEEEEEE, and I lay back in the grass, my hair full of
stickers, my pride full of shame.
Then Kirby was in front of me, telling me I was all right. I sat up in
the grass, and down the hm about ten or fifteen feet from me,
Brant, Dewey, and John sat puffing loudly, laughing, out of breath.
The air filled with smoke and I collapsed again into the high sea of
