“Hell, I know that,” Daggart said. “I was kidding. Didn’t you know I was kidding?”
“Good,” Jane said. “You’re up to joking. That’s an improvement.”
“All I’m saying,” Daggart said, “is I’ve caught it here before. I just don’t know I can do it today. I don’t know I want to go to Tyler.”
“You’re just being contrary,” Jane said.
“A little, I reckon,” he said. “Maybe it’s because I feel like death warmed over with a match, and the heat’s fading.”
“We’ll stay with you,” I said. “At least until we can get you settled somewhere.”
“Ain’t no place to settle me,” he said.
“We’ll do what we can,” I said.
He sat down with his back against a little pine and looked down the tracks. A few seconds later, he said, “Guess going with you folks is a mite better than just sitting here in these trees and dying.”
“You got to think more positive,” Jane said. “You got to see what’s down the road a bit.”
“I done seen what’s down there. There’s just more road.”
In the cover of the trees, we squatted and waited, the old man still sitting with his back against the pine.
Up a ways ahead of us, I saw there was at least a half-dozen hoboes in the trees and brush, waiting on that train. They looked back at us in a manner that made me a little nervous. We wouldn’t be the only ones riding, and there might be some trouble if we weren’t careful.
“Try and get the same boxcar, if you can,” Floyd said. “That way you can watch out for one another if there’s someone else in the car that might take a mind to bother you. But let me tell you, they got a gun, a knife, it’s best to give them what they want or jump.”
“That won’t be much,” Jane said. “Our bag of goods and a few dollars is all we got.”
“It ain’t worth dying over,” Floyd said.
“You didn’t give them sandwiches away the other night,” Tony said.
“No,” Floyd said. “But I was meaner than them, and I had a gun. I ain’t proud of that gun. It ain’t brought me much good, except that time the other night. A gun just seems to make things go bad. You start to depend on it and give it too much respect. I wish I hadn’t never seen one.”
“Is that the train?” Daggart said.
We looked down the track. A train was moving out of the station.
“That’s the one heading southeast,” Floyd said. “The one you want.”
“Could the line have changed since you rode it last?” Jane said.
“Sure it could have,” Floyd said. “But you don’t want to think about that, do you? But you miss it, there’s tomorrow, about this same time. It leaves out when the Fort Worth train comes in. I know that much from having been here and known people who’ve ridden it.”
“I guess it’s in for a penny, in for a pound,” Jane said. “Bend down.”
Floyd studied her for a moment; then he bent closer to her face and she kissed him on the cheek.
“Thanks for being so kind,” she said.
“Pass it along,” Floyd said. “I ain’t passed near enough of it along before, so you do it for me. Say you will.”
“We’ll do that,” I said.
Floyd shook my and Tony’s hands. He bent down and shook Daggart’s hand. The old man was still resting against that pine tree. Floyd touched his shoulder.
“Goodbye and good luck,” Floyd said, and with that he moved across the track well in front of the oncoming train, turned, and waved at us, and then the train’s engine passed in front of him, followed by the train, and then we couldn’t see him anymore.
30
As the train began to move closer, we watched for an open boxcar. A number of closed ones passed. Finally we saw an open one, but those hoboes charged down from the trees and dove right into it.
I could see there was a line of open boxcars behind that one. I turned and got hold of Daggart’s arm to help him up, but he was deadweight.
I bent down and looked at him. “He’s gone, Jane,” I said.
In just those few moments, he’d given it up. What was left of Daggart had flown out of him and gone the way of last year. His eyes were still open, and so was his mouth. A fly had already landed on his bottom lip. I waved it away.
“Least he didn’t suffer none,” Jane said. “And he was with folks he liked.”
“He didn’t even know us,” I said.
“I figure he knew us enough. His last memories are of people being nice to him.”
“There ain’t no sense to nothing,” Tony said. “I don’t want to ride no train.”
“Yes you do,” Jane said, grabbing him and pushing him in the direction of the tracks.
“We ought to do something,” I said. “We ought not just leave him.”
“We can’t wait,” Jane said. “He’s gone and there isn’t a thing we can do. And that train’s going to be gone too. I don’t want to hide somewhere and wait until tomorrow. He’s dead and that’s it. We done what we could.”
I closed Daggart’s eyes with my fingers. It wasn’t a perfect job, but his lids mostly covered them over.
“Come on,” Jane said, and grabbed my arm. “You got to come on now.”
Then she let go of me, and she and Tony were darting down the hill toward the train.
I looked one more time at Daggart. “Sorry,” I said. “Burying folks don’t seem to be our stong suit.”
I ran down the hill after them then. I could see they had already reached a boxcar and were struggling on board. The train was starting to move fast. I ran as hard as I could.
“Come on, Jack!” Jane shouted. “Now ain’t the time to get lazy.”
I ran so hard I thought my heart would burst. I finally got up alongside the open boxcar and got hold of it, but my hand slipped and I nearly stumbled onto the rails and beneath the train.
For a moment there, I thought about quitting. I thought about letting the train go and just going back up into the trees and leaning up against a pine next to poor old Daggart. But then I thought about my daddy, how he had quit when things got bad, and decided I wasn’t going to be a quitter in any kind of way. I ran even harder. The sweat flew off me as I ran. Or at least I thought it was sweat at first. Then I realized that some of it was, but not all. Some of it was tears.
A moment later and the train would have picked up too much speed for me to make it, but I got a ladder down from the open boxcar and pulled myself up on that and rested a minute. Jane stuck her head out of the car and grinned at me.
I grinned back.
After a few minutes, I climbed up on the hitch, found the ladder that led to the top of the boxcar, and went up there. Then I swung down from the top and stuck my legs inside. Tony and Jane grabbed me and helped pull me in.
We sat up against the side of the car. There wasn’t anyone in it but us.
Jane said, “How about that? We met Pretty Boy Floyd and he befriended us.”
“Who’s Pretty Boy Floyd?” Tony said.
“He’s famous,” Jane said.
“A criminal,” I said. “That’s who he is.”
“He was all right,” Jane said.
“He robs banks and steals stuff from people,” I said, and I knew I was telling the truth, and I stand by it to this day, but I knew too some of it was my jealousy talking. Still, I couldn’t help myself. I hadn’t liked the way Jane had kissed him on the cheek.
“He didn’t steal nothing from us,” Tony said.
“No,” Jane said, “he didn’t.”
“He’s still a criminal,” I said.
