“Nitty!” Little Tib called.
“I’m here, li’l boy. I won’t go ’way.”
“Well, we have to go,” Mickie said. “They’ll miss us pretty soon if we don’t get back to patrolling this train. You fellows remember you promised you’d get off at Howard. And try not to let anyone see you.”
Mr. Parker said, “You may rely on our cooperation.”
Little Tib could hear the sound of the women’s boots on the boxcar floor, and the little grunt Alice gave as she took hold of the ladder outside the door and swung herself out. Then there was a popping noise, as though someone had opened a bottle of soda, and a bang and clatter when something struck the back of the car.
His lungs and nose and mouth all burned. He felt a rush of saliva too great to contain. It spilled out of his lips and down his shirt; he wanted to run, and he thought of the old place, where the creek cut (cold as ice) under banks of milkweed and goldenrod. Nitty was yelling, “Throw it out! Throw it out!” And somebody, Little Tib thought it was Mr. Parker, ran full tilt into the side of the car. Little Tib was on the hill above the creek again, looking down across the blue-bonnets toward the surging, glass-dark water, and a kite-flying west wind was blowing.
He sat down again on the floor of the boxcar. Mr. Parker must not have been hurt too badly, because Little Tib could hear him moving around, as well as Nitty.
“You kick it out, Mr. Parker?” Nitty said. “That was good.”
“Must have been the boy. Nitty—”
“Yes, Mr. Parker.”
“We’re on a train. . . . The railroad police threw a gas bomb to get us off. Is that correct?”
“That’s true sure enough, Mr. Parker.”
“I had the strangest dream. I was standing in the center corridor of the Grovehurst school, with my back leaning against the lockers. I could feel them.”
“Yeah.”
“I was speaking to two new teachers—”
“I know.” Little Tib could feel Nitty’s fingers on his face, and Nitty’s voice whispered, “You all right?”
“—giving them the usual orientation talk. I heard something make a loud noise, like a rocket. I looked up then, and saw that one of the children had thrown a stink bomb—it was flying over my head, laying a trail of smoke. I went after it like I used to go after a ball when I was an outfielder in college, and I ran right into the wall.”
“You sure did. Your face looks pretty bad, Mr. Parker.”
“Hurts too. Look, there it is.”
“Sure enough. Nobody kick it out after all.”
“No. Here, feel it; it’s still warm. I suppose a chemical burns to generate the gas.”
“You want to feel, George? Here, you can hold it.”
Little Tib felt the warm metal cylinder pressed into his hands. There was a seam down the side, like a Coca- Cola can, and a funny-shaped thing on top.
Nitty said, “I wonder what happened to all the gas.”
“It blew out,” Mr. Parker told him.
“It shouldn’t of done that. They threw it good—got it right back in the back of the car. It shouldn’t blow out that fast, and those things go on making gas for a long time.”
“It must have been defective,” Mr. Parker said.
“Must have been.” There was no expression in Nitty’s voice.
Little Tib asked, “Did those ladies throw it?”
“Sure did. Came down here and talked to us real nice first, then to get up on top of the car and do something like that.”
“Nitty, I’m thirsty.”
“Sure you are. Feel of him, Mr. Parker. He’s hot.”
Mr. Parker’s hand was softer and smaller than Nitty’s. “Perhaps it was the gas.”
“He was hot before.”
“There’s no nurse’s office on this train, I’m afraid.”
“There’s a doctor in Howard. I thought to get him to Howard. . . .”
“We haven’t anything in our accounts now.”
Little Tib was tired. He lay down on the floor of the car, and heard the empty gas canister roll away, too tired to care.
“. . . a sick child . . . ,” Nitty said.
The boxcar rocked under Little Tib, and the wheels made a rhythmic roar like the rushing of blood in the heart of a giantess.
He was walking down a narrow dirt path. All the trees, on both sides of the path, had red leaves, and red grass grew around their roots. They had faces too, in their trunks, and talked to one another as he passed. Apples and cherries hung from their boughs.
