He was standing near one of the wide-open doors, his feet spread wide so he could maintain his balance in the swaying boxcar. Outside, only a few feet from him, green scenery glided past.
“You kids’ll get used to it,” Kirby said.
“Used to what?” Jordan asked. He saw that Kirby was now standing closer to Jasmine.
“Bein’ on the road. It’s hard till you know the ropes, then you catch on.”
“To what?” Jordan asked.
“To where you can grab some sleep, find a meal. An’ stay outta harm’s way. Y’unerstan’?”
“Sure.”
“An’ you gotta know who your friends are.”
Kirby moved suddenly, causing Jordan to jerk his body and step protectively toward Jasmine.
But Kirby was merely moving to one of the wide-open boxcar doors.
He pushed sideways on the heavy steel door to close it, but it didn’t move.
“Sometimes they don’t close so easy,” he said. “This one slides rough. Gimme a hand, Jordan.”
Jordan made his way over, and the two of them leaned hard into the door. It didn’t budge.
“Sum’bitch is like it’s welded,” Kirby said.
Suddenly the door slid easily halfway closed and then jammed. Jordan had fallen to his knees. As he stood up, he saw that Kirby was watching Jasmine. He couldn’t keep his eyes from her.
“Only open it partways,” he said to Jordan. “Leave it about two feet from bein’ closed, then we’ll do that to the other door. That way we’ll have some cross ventilation and light in here, and we’ll still be outta sight unless somebody pokes his head in and looks around close.”
Jordan recalled how invisible Kirby had been in the shadows when he and Jasmine first got into the boxcar. Kirby had been nice enough so far, but Jordan knew enough not to eat the whole apple.
His right knee was plenty sore where he’d bumped it on the floor. He crawled over to where Jasmine sat near an open door, then sat down beside her with his back against the boxcar’s plywood side. Along with Jasmine, he stared out at the trees and fields. At the distance. He’d never been this far from home.
Kirby was sitting across from them, near where the other door was open but only a few feet.
“How far you two goin’?” Kirby asked. Here and there straw and white packing tablets lay on the boxcar’s plank floor. He had a strand of straw stuck in the corner of his mouth like a toothpick. It rotated in a wide arc as he moved his tongue around.
“All the way east,” Jordan said.
Kirby stared across the boxcar at Jasmine.
“This train’s gonna stop at Jeff City,” he said. “Then it’ll go on to St. Louis, where it’ll switch out.”
“Switch out?”
“Uncouple and sit empty till it gets hooked to another engine. We just need to avoid the railroad dicks.”
“We’ll figure out how to make our way,” Jordan said.
Jasmine smiled at him, reaching over and squeezing his wrist.
Kirby sneezed, spat out his straw, and struggled to his feet in the swaying boxcar. He reached into a back pocket as if to draw out a handkerchief.
Instead he was gripping something in a small gray cloth bag the size of a sock.
“What’s that?” Jasmine asked.
Kirby smiled, then said, “Candy.”
Only it wasn’t candy; it was gravel. And it formed a hard lump in the toe of the sock that made it an efficient sap.
43
Kirby swung the sap hard at Jordan’s head but hit his shoulder instead, said, “Sum’bitch!” and swung again. This time he missed entirely and almost fell as the boxcar jerked.
Then the girl, who appeared to be so frail, was on him like a tiger and much stronger than she looked.
“Ow! Friggin’ country bitches,” he yelled as her sharp fingernails dug hard into the sides of his neck.
He pushed her away and she fell back. Got halfway up then stumbled and fell again.
The pulsing and swaying boxcar was Kirby’s friend now. He could dispense with these two easily.
He turned toward the boy, but he was no longer there. That puzzled Kirby. He thought he’d hit Jordan hard enough to break a collarbone. The kid should be incapacitated.
So what’d he do? Jump outta the boxcar? Was the feisty little bastard lying in the darkness? Was he off the train and running and hiding in the night?
Jordan charged out of the blackness at the other end of the boxcar and hit Kirby at the knees; Kirby went down hard, and Jordan crawled up his back and twined an arm around Kirby’s right arm and was twisting it, causing Kirby to yelp. He tried to push himself up with his left arm so he could stand, but Jordan punched the arm out from beneath him and Kirby went face-first against the hard floor.
Kirby yelped again. Damned farm kids spend their lives at hard labor, gettin’ strong before they get smart. Twice as strong as they look. Kirby spat blood and figured he’d be lucky if his nose wasn’t broken.
This is wrong! I don’t deserve this! I need to be left alone!
But he knew he was too late. He couldn’t surrender to himself. And nobody else was listening.
Here came the girl again. What the hell was she doin’ now? Wrestling with both of them. Almost like she was attacking Jordan.
But that notion was dispelled when her teeth sank into Kirby’s bare heel, and he was angry with himself now for using the sock as a sap and then missing his target. Friggin’ Jordan kid should be the one down with his head split open.
What was the bitch doin’ with Jordan now? Tryin’ to take his pants down? What the hell? Was fighting for her life getting her hot?
Despite his bruises and bite marks, Kirby was feeling more confident. Jordan might be on top, but he was weakening. Jasmine kept clawing at him like she was trying to work down his Levi’s.
What she would do then, only God knew.
Then he realized what Jasmine was attempting to do.
Sum’bitch!
Jasmine felt another fingernail bend back and tear as she clawed at the rough denim of Jordan’s jeans. She grabbed the edge of a side pocket, gripped and pulled, and the fingernail felt as if it had torn completely loose.
She felt the wetness of blood.
It made her fight all the harder.
Jordan was squirming around now, understanding and trying to help her. He couldn’t help much. One of Kirby’s arms was pinned beneath him, the other bent back and pinned by Jordan, but he was a powerful man and still plenty dangerous.
“You kids stop this right now!” he yelled. As if they’d attacked him and started the hostilities.
Jasmine got three fingers into Jordan’s side pocket and felt the smooth handle of the folding knife he always carried. She was elated. If she could just work the knife all the way out of the pocket, she could use one hand to open it with her teeth, then this struggle would end and that would be the end of Kirby.
How she hated him at that moment. He’d attempted to steal their future for whatever he could loot from their cold dead bodies.
Their future!
Her blood served as a lubricant. She worked, worked with her mangled fingers and felt the handle of the knife clear the edge of the pocket.
It was halfway out.
“You kids stop this now!”
“We ain’t kids,” Jordan said.
“And we ain’t gonna stop,” Jasmine added.
“I’m warnin’ you!” Kirby yelled. “You’re gonna be in a lotta trouble!”
“For doin’ to you what you were gonna do to us?” Jasmine said. And the knife was free.
Jasmine gripped the knife as best she could in her uninjured hand. Like most folding knives it had a groove along the back of the blade where you could hook your fingernails into it and pull the blade open.
“A lotta trouble!” Kirby chose for his last words.
Jasmine didn’t have the fingernails for this task. She gripped the knife carefully by its handle, holding her torn nails so they were under the least possible pressure.