Alice laughed. “What’s a nice girl like you doing in a place like this? I’ve heard that one before.”
“Watch yourself, Alice,” Mickey said. “He’s trying to make out.”
Alice said, “What’d you three want to be ’boes for?”
“We didn’t. ’Cept maybe for this little boy here. He run away from home because the part of his eyes that they take pictures of is gone and his momma and daddy couldn’t get benefits. At least, that’s what I think. Is that right, George?”
Mr. Parker said, “I’ll introduce you to your classes in a moment.”
“Him and me used to be in the school,” Nitty continued. “Had good jobs there, or so we believed. Then one day that big computer downtown says, ‘Don’t need you no more,’ and out we goes.”
“You don’t have to talk funny for us,” Mickie said.
“Well, that’s a relief. I always do it a little, though, for Mr. Parker. It makes him feel better.”
“What was your job?”
“Buildings maintenance. I took care of the heating plant, and serviced the teaching and cleaning machines, and did the electrical repair work generally.”
“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.
The path twisted around little hills, all covered with the red trees. Cardinals hopped in the branches, and one fluttered to his shoulder. Little Tib was very happy; he told the cardinal, “I don’t want to go away—ever. I want to stay here, forever. Walking down this path.”
“You will, my son,” the cardinal said. It made the sign of the cross with one wing.
They went around a bend, and there was a tiny little house ahead, no bigger than the box a refrigerator comes in. It was painted with red and white stripes, and had a pointed roof. Little Tib did not like the look of it, but he took a step nearer.
A full-sized man came out of the little house. He was made all of copper, so he was coppery-red all over, like a new pipe for the bathroom. His body was round, and his head was round too, and they were joined by a real piece of bathroom pipe. He had a big mustache stamped right into the copper, and he was polishing himself with a rag. “Who are you?” he said.
Little Tib told him.
“I don’t know you,” the copper man said. “Come closer so I can recognize you.”
Little Tib came closer. Something was hammering, bam, bam, bam, in the hills behind the red and white house. He tried to see what it was, but there was a mist over them, as though it were early morning. “What is that noise?” he asked the copper man.
“That is the giant,” the copper man said. “Can’t . . . you . . . see . . . her?”
Little Tib said that he could not.
“Then . . . wind . . . my . . . talking key. . . . I’ll . . . tell . . . you . . .”
The copper man turned around, and Little Tib saw that there were three keyholes in his back. The middle one had a neat copper label beside it printed with the words TALKING ACTION.
“. . . about . . . her.”
There was a key with a beautiful handle hanging on a hook beside the hole. He took it and began to wind the copper man.
“That’s better,” the copper man said. “My words—thanks to your fine winding—will blow away the mists, and you’ll be able to see her. I can stop her, but if I don’t you’llbekilledthatsenough.”
As the copper man had said, the mists were lifting. Some, however, did not seem to blow away—they were not mists at all, but a mountain. The mountain moved, and was not a mountain at all, but a big woman wreathed in mist, twice as high as the hills around her. She was holding a broom, and while Little Tib watched, a rat as big as a railroad train ran out of a cave in one of the hills. Bam, the woman struck at it with her broom, but it ran into another cave. In a moment it ran out again. Bam! The woman was Little Tib’s mother, but he sensed that she would not know him—that she was cut off from him in some way by the mists, and the need to strike at the rat.