“Hmmm. I heard tell that was illegal.”
“It is in Peckerwood County, anyway,” I added. “I just want to get to Atlanta so I can forget about this place.”
“I always wanted to go to Atlanta,” Sis said. “Doan know why. Cain’t see nothin’, that fer sho.”
“Did you go to school?” I asked.
“For a while. Den Mama threw that lye into my face and I never went back. She said I was ugly and the other chilluns would laugh at me. And I couldn’t see no board or books no way. I heard one of Mama’s beaus say she dint send me ’cause she was afraid she get charged wit buse.”
“Abuse,” I corrected her.
“Abuse.”
“You don’t have to be able to see a book to read it,” I said. “You could go to school. You still could.”
“Dat’s crazy talk.”
Those words hung in the air awhile. Patrice snorted, gagged a bit, then settled back into his snoring.
“Is yer friend a good-lookin’ feller?”
“First, he’s not my friend. I don’t know. Somebody might think he looks okay. He’s looks a little like that old move star, Tony Curtis.”
“I ain’t never seen no movie,” she said.
“You haven’t missed much.”
“You got family in Atlanta?” she asked.
I shook my head and then realized the uselessness of that. “No. Sort of. No, I don’t. I used to live there.”
We sat quietly for a while, listening to Bobo and Patrice snoring in the darkness. I could see a bit of the moon through the far window.
“You think we’ll make it to Atlanta?” I asked.
“I don’t see how,” she said. For once she didn’t sound stupid or out of it. “Not on foot anyway.”
“Well, on foot is all we got,” I said, feeling rather colloquial.
“But if’n you was to jump the freight.”
I tilted my head. “What?”
“The freight train. It goes to Atlanta. And it be going real slow up the ridge. Kinda steep. I jumped on it when I was little. We rode it fer fun. We always jumped off befo’ it topped the hill.”
“Where is the train?”
“The train ain’t always there. It come by once a day going one way and at night goin’ tother.”
“Where are the tracks?”
“Across the branch, through the holler, over the hill, and round the bend. At least that where it used to be. I ain’t been there since Mama burnt out my eyes.”
“Which train goes to Atlanta? Day or night?” I felt terribly sorry for Sis, but she was making my head hurt.
“Day, I think.”
“And how far away are the tracks?”
“It’s a fir piece,” she said.
“How fir?”
“Fir nuff.”
“Is it two miles or twenty?” I asked.
“Yep.”
“Well, which?”
“Depends on what way you go,” she said. “Any fool know that. Bobo could show you the way, I think.”
I looked over at the sleeping child. “I’m pretty sure he could. Do you think he would?”
She didn’t answer. She leaned back, her face in shadow now, and she might have gone to sleep. I looked at Patrice’s sleeping face, then over at the boy. These were sad people, and for the world I wanted to think of them as decent. Perhaps they were decent enough, but the place that made them was so offensive to me that all who lived there became there. I wondered how a little education might benefit them, but I came to the same conclusion. Well, sort of a conclusion, as I hadn’t reasoned toward it at all. I believed they were all ego, but hardly conscious. As insipid as that model of mind seemed to me, it proved useful in my surface understanding of them. And I could see that any sort of hypnosis was unlikely to work as there was no sub- or unconscious to tap into.
“You two luv birds through yapping?” Patrice said.
“I thought you were asleep.”
“I was tryin’.”
“How is your back?”
I didn’t know why I was asking. I certainly didn’t care. Now that we were no longer chained together, there was no reason for us to remain together, except that Bobo probably would not take me to the train tracks, but he would lead the way for Patrice. I needed Bobo and therefore I needed Patrice, that was my conclusion, with a therefore and everything.
“I’m in treemundus pain. So, what was you and Sis talkin’ ’bout?”
“I thought you were awake,” I said.
“You was keepin’ me awake. There’s a difference. And I heard y’all, but I tweren’t listenin’.”
“Another interesting distinction.”
“So, what she say?”
“She said there’s a freight train to Atlanta that runs near here.”
“Where?”
“That’s the problem. We need Bobo to show us how to get there.”
“And I ain’t goin’ do it, less’n y’all take us to Atlanta wit y’all,” said Sis, sitting up and bringing her face back into the moonlight through the window.
“Ain’t happenin’, Sis,” Patrice said.
“Then y’all on yo own.” She crossed her arms on her chest and stuck out her chin in defiance.
“Well, naw, Sis, there ain’t no reason to be all like dat,” Patrice said. He reached over and put his hand on her knee. “I bet a purty gal like you got so many beaus round chere that you really don’t want to leave.”
“Ain’t no beaus and you can stop yer sweet talkin’. We’s going to Atlanta wit y’all or nobody goes.”
“I don’t want to argue,” I said, “and I don’t much care who hops the train with me. I just want to get on and get out of this hellhole. Bobo, what time does the eastbound train go by?”
“About dusk. If we leave at dawn we’ll jus’ make it.”
I leaned back and closed my eyes again. “We’ll need our rest,” I said. “I’ll need mine anyway.”
I slept a dreamless sleep this time, but I awoke to the nightmare of Patrice and Sis having sex in the cot. Across the room Bobo was eating cold beans out of the pot on the stove. I covered my ears to block out the grunting and moaning. Luckily the noise was short lived, and soon they were both snoring. I tried to repress my humanitarian thoughts of helping the poor blind girl find a school so she could learn to read.
At first light I was standing out in the yard, happy for the sun to be coming up, happy to be out of the beans-, sweat-, and sex-stinking confines of the cabin. Then Patrice walked out with Sis dressed in a fresh tattered calico dress. Their faces appeared even more vacant than before.
“Ain’t it a beautiful mornin’, Potay?” he said.
“I cain’t even see and I know it beautiful,” Sis said.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
“We’s in luv,” Patrice said.
I shook my head. “And?” But I knew what was coming and then it came.
“Sis and Bobo is comin’ wit me to Atlanta,” Patrice said.
Bobo stepped out of the house and stood by them. He pulled at his sister’s sleeve.
“That’s great. Congratulations.” And it kept coming.
“Since you know folks there, we was thinking maybe you’d let us stay wit you fer a little while, til I get on my feet, ya know?”
“Are you crazy?” As I asked the question, to which I of course knew the answer, I remembered that I needed the boy to lead me to the tracks.
The hounds howled in the distance. The sound was chilling.
“If them is Jubal Jeter’s dawgs, they gone be on y’all real fast,” Bobo said. “Dem dawgs is mean, too.”
“I’ll do what I can to help,” I said.
“See, Bobo,” Sis said. “I told you, Potay be a good nigger.”
I looked at the three of them, standing there against the backdrop of that cabin like an Andy Warhol parody of American Gothic, residents of a cul-de-sac at the end of Tobacco Road.