East Baltimore, Bayview Rail Yard, 11:39 pm.
“It’s too fucking hot.”
“Shut up.” I was getting really tired of Bug complaining all the time. Suze had dropped us off here hours ago, and it seemed like all Bug would talk about was the heat. I mean, it was hot, really hot, but Baltimore is always hot in August, and muggy, and sticky. Everything was damp, even the clothes I wore. And Bug was wearing this big, green army jacket, with a hood and big patches on the sleeves, so of course he was too hot. “If you’re so uncomfortable, take off your damned jacket.”
“I don’t want to lose it.” Bug stood up and started pacing around, as though that was supposed to keep him from overheating. The dried grass that covered the field next to the train yard crackled with every step he took. “If I take it off, I’m going to lose it. Some of us aren’t privileged enough to be able to go home to Mommy when we don’t have a jacket.”
“Shut up, Bug. Just put it in your bag, or something, if you’re so worried about losing it.” So I could ask my parents for help if I got into a jam on the road, that didn’t mean Bug had to get on my case. I had given my jacket away to a kid on the street earlier, a little while after Suze dropped us off, because I knew Baltimore summers, and I knew I wasn’t going to need it for a while yet. If I did need one when we got to Portland, I’d just go get one from some charity or go steal one from a store or something. There was no need for him to go on about me being “privileged.”
“My bag’s full, moron. I’m the only one around here who seems to give a shit that we have to bring something to protect ourselves with. Or did you think you’d be able to beat off cops or rapists with a jug of water and a fucking paperback?”
“Oh, just shut up!” I was sitting to one side, watching the trains closely, trying to pick out which one would get us where we wanted to go, and chewing on something brown and thick that Bug had found in a dumpster outside of a Seven Eleven. It tasted like jerky.
“You shut up, you goddamned hippy.” Bug was winding himself up. At this rate, he’d be insulting me all night. “Look at you. All well-kempt and shaved, like you’re going to some fucking Bar Mitzvah or something. You don’t know the first thing about train hopping.”
“Neither do you.” I held my guitar case out to Bug. “You wanna take the jacket off, you can tie it around this thing. And you’ll be damned glad about that paperback when we’ve been sitting in a train car for twelve hours, and you want something to do.”
“Fuck that.” Bug shot me a dangerous look but tied his jacket onto the brightly-painted case anyway. “I can always find something to do, and I don’t need any poetry, or paints, or anything to entertain myself.”
I snorted out a laugh and covered it with the very book Bug was complaining about. It was a novel, not poetry, one that my sister had given me after hearing about my grand plan for an underground library. I was going to make information free to anyone and had started amassing books of all sorts which I’d read, sign my name to, and pass on to whomever I happened to think would enjoy them. I called it the Pirate Library, because in order to get a lot of the reading material, I’d had to steal from Borders or some other monstrous, conglomerate superstore that was busy eating out the soul of literature. Bug might complain about me being too artsy and intellectual, but he always got a little-kid spark in his eye when I’d start working on a painting or a story or a song.
Bug usually reeked of old sweat, dirt, and manure, and today was no exception. When he wasn’t out traveling, Bug worked for free on some communal farm up near the Canadian border in New York. They grow organic vegetables and grain up there, well, as organic as they could be, since the land had been used by some big company not too long ago, and Bug was pretty sure there were still all sorts of evil pesticides in the ground. The farm never had much crop at the end of each season, just enough to feed everyone who lived there, and have some left over for storage. I don’t know if Bug enjoyed working there or not. All he ever did was complain about how if they did things right, they would have enough to give away to places like Food-Not-Bombs. He was always finding reasons to get off the farm and get back on the road, like heading for Oregon with me. He’d told me about the big anarch community up in Portland, where everyone was always working together to organize these big protests out in the Cascadia Forest and shit. No one gets paid for doing that kind of work. They just all chip in together to scavenge for food and clothing, and anything they can’t find in dumpsters or through the Salvation Army is stolen by those that have any skill at shoplifting.
Bug doesn’t shoplift because he’d get caught too easily. Bug is one of those people who just looks like trouble. During the year I’d known him, his shaved head had turned to an Army buzz, and then into this shapeless fur ball. His hair had this strange, non-color to it, a kind of grayish brown. If you asked Bug what color his hair was, he’d tell you it was “hair colored.” The kid was probably thirteen or fourteen when he hit the road; he didn’t really talk about it much, but I guess he’d run away from home early and just sort of found his way to that farm. Bug had more crazy ideas about right and wrong than anyone I’d ever met. He was always threatening people who didn’t agree with him, and, what with the mini-arsenal he carried in a patchwork shoulder bag, we tended to believe he’d do it.
Bug had muscles from years of hard farm work and dark, tanned skin like he’d come from the Indian subcontinent. His eyebrows might as well have not actually been on his face, they blended so well with his skin. Both his shoulders were tattooed. One was the symbol of his farm, kinda like someone had taken the anarchy symbol and gave it a chimney and walls, with sun rays coming out of the circle around it. The other was a black dove carrying what may or may not have been an olive branch in its beak. His face and hands were covered with scars from various farm accidents and run-ins on the road, but the mass of little white scars that ran down the underside of his chin toward his neck was the curious one. If asked, Bug would tell you that it came from some fight he’d gotten into with a coke addict holding a knife to his neck. According to others who’ve traveled with Bug, it came from shaving with a kitchen knife.
“Fuck this.” Bug was all hard-core business now, pacing and ranting and glaring around, looking for something to kick. “When the hell are we going to get going?”
We were waiting for a hotshot to come through and take us to Ohio, where one of Bug’s friends was gonna lift us to Michigan. Mike and Coyote were in Michigan and said they’d take us out west, as long as we made it to Michigan before Mike got out of jail. Drunk’s okay, see, the cops might give you a night for that, and homeless is okay, too, as long as you don’t harass anybody, but Mike was both and didn’t have an ID, so we had some time to make the trip.
“Soon.” I looked back down into the yard, which was huge, with all these tracks stretching out to the horizon and the Baltimore skyline. From where we were sitting we could keep an eye on a good five or six tracks as long as there wasn’t a train on the closest one. Rail yards are barren places, with just weeds growing brown between ties and gravel that looks like TV static in the dim light shining through from the highway above us. Bayview is a major yard, so we were really expecting to see our hotshot, but so far all the trains were just junk, these enormous lines of seventy or eighty boxcars, so long that we couldn’t even make out the engine from where we were sitting. Hotshots are quick ones and don’t stop much, but all we were seeing were junk trains which are slow as hell, but they move.
“All right.” I made my decision, flicking my eyes over the rail yard one last time. “We’re not going to get anything better than that.” I pointed to a train three tracks away waiting for everything to be loaded. “So we’d better get going. You remember what to do?”
Bug nodded. We’d been talking about how to do this trip for months. We were both pretty psyched, as we’d never hopped a train before. Bug reached into his bag and pulled out the rail spike he’d picked up earlier in the evening. “Let’s do it.”
I ran across the field, vaulting the low fence that separated us from the trains like it was second nature, leaving Bug to lumber under the weight of his bag. I spotted the boxcar I wanted to ride about three cars up on the left, closer to the south and the direction we were hoping the train would take. We had worked out our system before we’d even asked Suze to drive us here, but we’d never actually practiced it, so I was surprised at how quickly I was able to jump through the two foot opening in the door of the car, tossing up my guitar first and then turning to grab the rest of the bags. Once they were shoved inside, I stepped back and let Bug pull himself up after me.
Boxcars are beauties, all wood and metal to reflect the colored light coming in the open door, and they flash when you’re moving so it’s like a little cathedral in there with just the two of us sitting in the corner. The whole car smelled like sawdust and something chemical, an acrid scent that burned my nostrils, but with the yellow and orange shafts of street-lamp coming in the open door, even Bug looked charming. I settled myself into one of the corners with all our stuff strewn around me. My art bag was perpetually tied to the handle of my decorated guitar case and held a couple of water jugs, some more of that jerky stuff Bug had snagged from the Seven Eleven, and my paint supplies. Bug had a switchblade, a home-made knife, several cans of beans, and his wicked baton, which retracted like a telescope and could pretty much end a fight with one solid whack. My main bag was by far the heaviest. I had borrowed my father’s old camp stove and carried another water jug along with it. I usually kept the novel in one of the many pockets I’d added on to my seasoned brown jeans. Bug set to work trying to rig the door.
I had done my research. If a boxcar door closes on you, you’re pretty much dead right there, so you’re supposed to stick a rail spike in there to keep it open. The doors are really stiff and tough to move. I doubt even the two of us putting all our weight behind one would have budged it, but the weight of a train when it gets moving can shake it loose, and if it does, and the door closes, whatever is in there is not getting back out until one of the railroad employees uses whatever kind of lever or machine they have to open it. I’ve seen pictures of boxcarred hobos before, guys who’ve ridden across the country in a closed up car and starved to death or dehydrated on the way. They’re usually half rotten by the time anyone finds them. Supposedly, a rail spike is all you need to keep the door open. Bug had the rail spike and most of the physical strength, so I watched as he shoved.
“Fuck,” he said, as the spike slipped, as if well-greased, out of the track.
“Let me try.” I climbed out of my circle of bags and pushed him lightly aside. I used as much leverage as I could get, crouched back on my heels on the dusty floor of the boxcar as I was, to wedge the thing in. It slipped out only moments later. “Crap. Hand me your baton.”
Bug nodded silently, and I knew he was getting nervous. The old sweat smell was getting more pungent, warring with the chemicals in the car. I grasped the cloth-covered handle of the baton and used the hard plastic end to try to hammer the spike into the door.
This time, when it slipped, it dropped out the door and onto the tracks below.
The horn from the engine sounded once, muffled by boxes and the steady thrum of my pulse in my ears. Bug swore using at least three different English dialects. I just kind of gave a little “it always worked before” shrug and smiled.
“Why the hell aren’t you freaked?” Bug stared at me as I gripped the door to steady my hands. The train jerked, and the door and I rattled in unison.
“I’ve got a cell phone.” I held up the little plastic Nokia my mom had insisted on getting me before I hit the road. “We won’t get dead.”
“Oh yeah.” Bug stared at the cell like it carried some horrific disease. I put it back into my pocket.
“Get me something else.”
Bug handed me something rough that crumbled slightly under my fingers. I was about to tell him not to be a moron and get me something metal, when the train shifted and started to build speed, and the shaft of light fell momentarily on the heavily rusted metal bar that Bug had found on the other side of the car. I slammed it into place with my hands and a blow from the baton, scraping the pads of my fingers on the corroded iron, then fell backward with a smile.
The train was moving, and south too, and I thought, ‘This is it! Success!’
Bug was just settling in, and I was reaching for my guitar, when the junk stopped again and moved back into Bayview.
Shit.
And I knew then, as you always know in times of high stress and sweating, that this was it, we’d never get to Michigan and definitely not to the West, and we were fucked, and I was scared, more than I’d ever been, even when I was in D.C. to protest the World Bank, and the cops wrapped that piece of plastic around my wrists and pushed me into the bus with the other protesters.
I have no idea how long we just lay there, both of us trying to get beneath Bug’s jacket, as though it would keep us from being noticed when the railroad bull inevitably looked into our compartment. Finally I slid to the door.
“What do you see?” Bug hissed like a leaking gas main and balled up his fists. I held up a hand to keep him quiet. A bull was walking by the boxcar, shining his flashlight along the sides of the car and smoking a cigarette. I ducked my head back into the car and held my breath.
A moment later, the flash light hit the open door and then slid away. We stayed still for as long as we could, before I leaned out to check again. Coast clear.
We didn’t have to talk about it. We grabbed our bags, yanked that rusty metal out of the way, jumped out and ran like hell. Well, I ran like hell. Bug got his bag caught on the edge of the car.
“Padre!” He was fiddling with the bottom, trying to unhook it from whatever the hell it was caught on. “Shit, Padre! Give me a hand!”
I grabbed his arm and pulled. The sound of ripping fabric made Bug pale, and the grinding thunks of the cans of beans hitting the gravel made me start swiveling my head like an owl. Bug stopped long enough to grab a few cans and slip them into various pockets, and then I had him by the sleeve and was dragging him after me, back toward the low wooden fence and freedom from suspicious rail workers.
Our first attempt at hopping wasn’t going well, so we talked as we ran and decided that Baltimore wouldn’t be any good for us. We hit the sidewalk and decided to wander around a bit until it was early enough to call Suze again and see if she could give us a lift somewhere else.
I’d been in Baltimore before, used to live there, even, when I still had an address. I’d grown up in Maryland, and, if all else failed, I knew I could probably talk my dad into picking us up, but that meant going back home again, and Mom would have to meet Bug and would want to know what we were doing, and we wouldn’t get out to Michigan in time, and Mike and Coyote would leave without us. We sat down on the empty sidewalk several blocks away from the yard, near where I had stayed with Dona and Steve last summer, and waited.
I started playing and singing pretty much immediately and improvised a song about the train yard and the boxcar. Even if we’re anarchists and don’t like property or the government and stuff, we’re still Generation Retro like everyone else, so we ride the rails like the 30s and sing songs like the 60s. I sang about getting stuck in Delaware because it had a better ring than Baltimore and made up heroic figures, like friendly train conductors, to help us along the way. I don’t know, I guess I thought it would be good karma or something, as though singing about the best in people would bring it out when we needed it most. Bug found me an old, half filled spiral notebook in a nearby dumpster, and I put the guitar down to get in some poetry. I was thinking about a book by Thoreau I’d picked up last time I was in Borders and of the blank field next to the rail yard, and though that notebook got lost or given away or stolen somewhere along the way, I remember horses running in leaves and trees taking over roads. Sometimes when I’ve been on the road for a while, I start to dream about stuff like that and how much simpler life would be once we’d finally won, and everyone could live as they pleased.
A couple hours later, we put in our call to Suze, and she agreed to come and give us a lift into Cumberland. Suze was a little older than Bug and I, by a good two years; she was going into her last semester at U.M.B.C., finishing off her late-declared major in political science. I had met her the summer before when I was staying with Dona and Steve, helping them out at their tiny art gallery in the middle of downtown. She had cherry kool-aid highlights in her blonde hair then and watery blue eyes which had since become a little bit steely. Her hair was stripped now and tied back into a neat ponytail instead of hanging in vibrant lines around her neck. I guess she thought she needed to look more professional now that she was nearly done with her degree.
I was close to falling in love with Suze.
Cumberland, MD 6:39 am.
Bug still had some money left, so we got some Chinese buffet with Suze before heading over to the train yard to see what we could get. I don’t really remember why we picked Chinese of all things, but when you’re traveling, you’ll eat just about anything you can get. Bug was busy shoveling huge forkfuls of rice and tofu into his mouth the whole time and, other than asking whether I’d managed to keep a hand on his baton, which I had, kept miraculously silent the whole time. I don’t know what was going on in his mind, but I suspected I’d find out later.
After breakfast, Bug went out scouting for some rations to replace the beans we’d lost in Bayview, leaving me with Suze. I knew I probably didn’t have any chance of getting Suze to hit the road with us, but I just couldn’t leave without giving it one more shot.
“I can’t, Padre.” Suze stared down at her battered Doc Martens, relics from her high school days as a goth. “I’ve got to finish school. You know that.”
“Come on.” I watched her slip a loose strand of hair behind her ear. “What do you have left to learn that you couldn’t find out on the road?”
She laughed. “A lot. You guys, you have your own politics, your own system that you’re working out, and it’s great and everything, but there’s still so much complexity to the rest of the world that I need to understand.”
“So take classes. They don’t have to be at U.M.B.C., you can take some out in Portland. You wouldn’t even have to worry about paying for it.” I smiled, lifting my eyebrows in what my sister used to call my sly look. I had used that look on my mother numerous times, and she always caved. I think she was just sick of listening to me argue with her. “I’ve got it all worked out. You sit in on the classes, tell the professor you’re a late transfer, auditing the class, and the registrar doesn’t have you on the books yet. And you could stay with us. Bug knows a guy who’s looking to share a big two bedroom apartment. You could be in the scene while you’re reading about it!”
Suze smiled, and I thought for a second I had her. “Right, Padre. I’d go out, learn all about politics without paying a dime, and without getting my degree.”
“It’s just paper.”
“Do you really think you can make that much of a difference on this underground kick, sneaking around the country and passing out fliers full of pictures and poetry?”
I frowned. “Every bit helps.”
“Yeah, but just think of the difference I can make from the inside. If I get this degree, I can actually start getting into the government and talking to the people who could actually make the changes. I can’t give that up.”
She finally looked up at me then, and her eyes had that watery look I remembered from the art classes. She slipped her hand over mine for a moment, and I just looked back at her. We stayed like that, the future college graduate and the art school dropout, until Bug returned with an old green plastic shopping bag, the kind they sold by the checkout line, so you could have an alternative to wasting paper and plastic. He’d filled the thing up with hot sauce, energy bars, and a couple loaves of day-old bread. Suze stood as he crossed the street. I grabbed her hand.
“Hold on.” I turned toward Bug without letting go. “Can you watch our stuff for a bit?”
“What the hell are you talking about?” Bug frowned and set down the green bag. “I thought we were going.”
“Just one more hour.” I looked back at Suze. I couldn’t let go of those watery eyes. “I wanna show you something.”
“What?”
“Do you have any books in your car?” The sly look made my eyebrows creep back up.
Borders Books, Cumberland, MD 7:09 am.
“Okay, now just arrange all the books on the table.” I dropped my art bag next to one of the blue arm chairs Borders always had. “We’ll go around and pull a couple more books off the shelves, then hang out for a bit, looking through them all.”
Suze’s cheeks were turning pink, whether from embarrassment, excitement, or laughter, I couldn’t tell. She sat down and started pulling her books out of her leather messenger bag. They were all political science text books, except for one biography of Malcolm X. I added my novel to the pile, then went into the stacks.
I didn’t have anything in mind I wanted to get, I never do. I looked for books with interesting titles, anything that caught my eye I’d pull down and add to the growing pile I had nestled into the crook of my left arm. I stuck to the literature section, mostly, but grabbed a few cookbooks as well. I was going to have a permanent address again when I got to Portland and would have to cook for myself for the first time. If I could get Suze out there with me, I wanted to be able to make her a few meals. Once I had loaded myself down with about fifteen books, I casually made my way back to where Suze was sitting.
“Please tell me we’re not getting that many books.” Suze gaped at the collection I set down, then glanced back at our bags. “How are you going to get them all on the train?”
I looked at her for a moment, going over what to tell her in my head. When you’re doing something illegal, you just don’t talk about it out loud. She was doing pretty well so far. Everything she said could have been part of a normal conversation between shoppers.
“Nah, I just want to look at some of them. Maybe I’ll pick them up later.” I picked up one of the cookbooks, vegan, because I knew Suze didn’t like meat, and began flipping through. “Oo. Vegan garlic bread. Did you know you can replace butter with olive oil in just about every recipe?”
Suze stared at me, then sniffled. I knew it meant she was trying not to start laughing. I’d heard her make that sound in art class when Steve made an example out of some of his own really early work. She leaned way over, like she was going to kiss me. “So, um, what do I do now?”
I leaned into her and placed a soft kiss on her lips. As we pulled away, I whispered to her. “Flip through the books and use your finger to take out the white magnetic strip.” I demonstrated on my cookbook and pushed the strip under my chair with my toe. I never took my eyes off her the entire time my fingers were moving. I smiled at the determined look on her face as she picked up one of the novels I’d grabbed and began looking over its table of contents. Her movements were awkward and too casual to be unobtrusive, so I took the book from her hands as though I wanted to look at it. I demonstrated again, this time slipping my finger between the last page and the back cover as I started reading. Two pages later, I let my finger trace the edges of the strip, then push a little harder. It fell out into my palm, and I held it there as I read a little further. Finally, I put the book back down on top of my cookbook and let my hand fall to my side.
“Well, that’s all I can get, Honey.” I smiled back at her. She was holding another novel and staring at me, her eyes as large as I had ever seen them. “Why don’t you pick one out, and then we’ll go?”
She nodded and looked down at the book in her lap. It was a Tom Robbins novel, Another Roadside Attraction. She tucked her hair behind her ear and focused on the book. I watched her finger tuck into the back cover and started packing up our books. I put the cookbook and the first novel into my art bag along with two of her poly-sci texts and zipped it closed. When I looked up, she was loading the rest of her books into her bag. She looked up at me and I nodded.
We picked up our bags and walked to the front doors of the store. I glanced around at the books around us, but Suze kept her eyes focused entirely on the glass barrier between us and her car in the parking lot. I put my arm over my shoulder.
As soon as we walked past the anti-theft devices in the doorway, the alarms went off.
Suze froze and dropped her arms to her sides. I grabbed her bag and used it to pull her out the door at a full run.
We didn’t stop or speak until we were in her car, pulling out of the parking lot. I heard her let out a noisy breath and squeezed her hand on the gear shift.
“They aren’t allowed to chase after shoplifters. It’s store policy.” I smiled at her.
She glanced over at me, her face pink, the street lamps reflecting off the surface of her eyes. Then she burst out laughing.
“Padre, you are such a dick. You knew I wouldn’t be able to pull it off.” She shifted the car into second to pull a right turn, then smacked me lightly on the left temple.
I couldn’t help but laugh with her. “The strip fell into your bag when you knocked it off the book.” She hit me again. “Oh, come on! You look cute when you’re about to get caught.”
Suze glared at me, then focused all her attention on the road ahead of her as we went to pick up Bug.
Cumberland Rail Yard, 8:19 am.
I lingered in the passenger seat long after Bug had gotten out. Suze didn’t look like she was in any hurry to go anywhere either.
“You’re a moron, do you know that?” She let her hair down from the ponytail, then started gathering it back up. “You and Bug. You’re both idiots. You think you can change the whole world with just a guitar and some ripped-off books.”
“Yeah.” I reached down to grab the bag between my feet. Bug leaned my guitar case against the hood of the car and stared at his wrist as though a watch would appear on it any second. “But I’m an entertaining moron.” I reached for the door handle. Suze grabbed my arm.
“I’m a moron, too.” She kissed me, hard, until Bug started banging on the hood to get our attention. “Where are you stopping in Ohio?”
“Willard. Bug says he can get us a ride to Michigan from there.”
“Promise me if I go with you now, you won’t try and stop me if I decide to go home.”
I shook my head. As much as I wanted Suze with us on this trip, she was right earlier. She had her own way of making a difference. “You’ve got school. . .”
“Shut the fuck up, Padre. Let me finish. I have an uncle in Willard. You’ve got a cell phone. I’ll call my roommate from the train, she and her boyfriend can pick up the car.” She reached into the back seat and grabbed her purse and her book bag. “I have to try it, don’t I?”
“You don’t have to.”
“Yes, I do. I think I do, at least.” She laughed again. “I did something this morning I’ve never done before. And it feels . . . good. What kind of radical politician would I be if I didn’t take the opportunity to do something radical?”
“The usual kind?” I opened the door but didn’t get out. “You’re sure you want to go?”
She took a deep breath, then nodded. I leaped out of the car and wrapped my arms around Bug.
“She’s coming with us, man! She’s coming.”
Bug was purple beneath his tan. “Great. Can we please get a move on?”
I didn’t know Cumberland like I know Baltimore, and Bug hadn’t ever been there either, but we had an old map of the rail yard that Mike and Coyote had made, and we sat on the top of a hill for a while and waited for the crew change. Suze was bouncing, but I was tired, and Bug was grumpy because his bag was gone, and I think we were both hoping our train would hurry up and get there. I wasn’t sure when Mike was supposed to get out of jail, and Coyote didn’t have a phone, so even with my cell we wouldn’t be able to call them and tell them we were on our way. The only thing to do was to lean against Suze’s shoulder and wait.
I had almost fallen asleep when we saw someone coming up the street behind us. He wasn’t a cop, because he didn’t have one of those bull horns they always aim at you before they get your names and find out what you’re doing. Bug was shivering and hissing, but I figured whoever this was, if he got on Bug’s bad side, that was his own damned fault.
“Hey!” The guy was about ten feet away from us.
“Hey.” Bug peered at the guy. I peered, too, trying to make out who we were dealing with. He was big, Bug-big, and wearing a faded flannel that looked like it had been used for a dog blanket. I had seen his type before in the Maryland boonies near where I grew up; an old high school jock, I figured, who wasn’t good enough to get into a college. He had a bottle-shaped paper bag in his left hand and with his right was fiddling around with something tucked into the back of his Levis under the flannel.
The guy came right up to us and sat down like he was settling in for a while, so we let him. It’s tough judging people on appearance when you yourself look like what your mother was talking about when she warned you against strangers.
“What are you folks doing out here?” He seemed a bit edgy and not a lot lucid. He was about six feet when he was standing and didn’t have any hair even though he was no older than any of the rest of us. ‘Just out of high school,’ I thought. Probably had joined the work force right away. That’s a tough age to gage when you’re just meeting somebody, because they’re just as likely to want to fuck you up for what you’re doing as sympathize and offer a hand, but he wasn’t threatening us or anything yet, just kinda sitting there with a nasty beer face and the bag, fiddling with that thing under his shirt.
“Watching the train crew,” I told him, which was true, but didn’t necessarily tell the guy we were looking to hop on.
“In’tresting.” The guy stopped fooling with whatever-it-was and stared down into the rail yard like he was looking at a dirty magazine. He sat that way for a couple of minutes and then reached back under his flannel. He slung the bag in Bug’s direction. “You wan’ some?”
It didn’t exactly take a Ph.D. to figure out what he was offering us, but we weren’t interested. It’s one thing to get yourself trashed a bit when you’re chilling out somewhere you’re likely to stay for a while, like I used to back in Towson when I was still thinking I’d be going back to school in the fall, but getting shit-faced when you’re looking to hop a train is just plain stupid, so we turned him down.
“Suitchasel,” he muttered, or something like it, and returned to tossing back whatever was in that bag. Bug was getting twitchy, and Suze didn’t look comfortable either, and I was worried that this guy might try something with her, so we exchanged glances and gathered up some of our stuff. The crew was just about done swapping around, and it was starting to get late.
“You boys better watcher selves.” The guy shifted again, and his fiddling hand stopped fiddling and instead pulled a gun out and pointed it down toward the rail yard. “These’s people who work here aren’t such great people if you know what I’m talking about.”
We didn’t know at all, but we really didn’t want to continue the conversation anyway, with that gun out and all, and Bug was reaching for his pocket, where he’d put the baton after I handed it back to him. Suze, sitting closest to the guy, was edging closer to me the way the girls in my highschool used to edge closer to the guys they liked. We kept quiet and waited to see where this was going.
“They hire all kinds down there. Don’t matter who you fucking are so long as you’re not priv’leged like me or you boys. They’d even give your girlfriend a job.” He stood and gestured angrily and swung his bag and gun around, and we started to flip out, and Suze edged toward me, and I edged toward Bug, and Bug edged like mad and strangled that baton. If he pulled it out now, it’d take more than just me and Suze to pull him off the guy, and that baton was a bitch to retract. Besides, it was Suze’s first time on the road. If I wanted her to stick with us, Bug and I would have to play it really low key. “They’re only lookin’ to fill some fucking quotas or some shit. You don’t want to ‘sosciate with them. No, they don’t even know a good, strong white man when they see one. You don’t want to . . .”
We didn’t want to stay there, so we kinda wandered off while he was ranting about affirmative action and stuff, and once we were out of his sight line and his ranting had faded out a bit, Bug turned to me with this big grin.
“At least he wasn’t a liberal.”
Suze frowned at him. “What the hell is wrong with being a liberal?”
Bug opened his mouth, which usually meant something foul was going to come out, so I cut him off. “We’re anarchists. We’re not so big on liberals. Liberals wave signs around and yell at you because you’re actually trying to get some really deep changes happening, and all they want is the war to go away so their economy doesn’t get any more screwed up and they can afford to put gas in their useless off-roaders and drive their kids to soccer camp.” I remembered that Suze considered herself a liberal, but decided to just push on. “Sometimes you can get liberals to listen and change their minds. That guy,” I gestured behind us, “was screwed up, though, liberal or no. There’s not really much you can say to a guy like that if you don’t have a big crowd to back you up.”
Suze looked like she wanted to argue, but Bug pointed down into the yard and smacked me on my shoulder. Our train, a big old hotshot, was heading our way. We booked it like mad men down the hill, trying to move all quiet, but slipping on loose rock and soil and getting ourselves, somehow, even dirtier. I made Bug carry my bag, because he was stronger than I was and I wanted to help Suze out with hers, and we were about halfway down the hill when we realized it wasn’t stopping.
“Fuck!” Bug had lost all concept of quiet. He pulled up short on the hill, and I skidded into his back and clamped a hand over his mouth.
“Shut up!”
We stood there, half way down the hill, holding still as the sun finished off the mist, and the temperature started to rise. We probably would have stayed there until noon, if another hotshot hadn’t come rumbling through at a decent pace, slowing enough that we knew it was stopping this time, and then we were off and running again, because being quiet wasn’t going to get us anything, not with the brakes squealing like a wounded animal. We would have been completely visible to any train worker who happened to glance in our direction, anyway. We found a 48 right quick, a cargo container with open ends, and we lurched after it. My legs complained from the stop and start action I’d given them all night.
Running after a moving train is not easy, even when it’s slowing down to almost idle. Suze was the best runner, while I trailed behind. A lifetime of computer design and painting doesn’t adapt you well to running like that, and though hitching had trained me to walk all day without getting tired, I hadn’t done much running since I tried out for the cross-country team back in high school. Suze flung her bag up, nearly losing it, first by missing the platform on the end of the car, and then by losing her grip when she tried to grab a hold and climb up. She put on an extra bit of speed from somewhere and, after a moment when I was sure she was going to fall under the wheels, managed to drag herself on top. Bug went next, his big farm muscles making the climb easier for him. The two of them had to grab my wrists and pull me along behind them.
I lost my footing momentarily and scraped a gaping hole in the left knee of my pants and lost a large amount of skin to the gravel under the tracks, but a bloodied knee was a small price to pay for the exhilaration that shot through me when Bug grinned his yellowed teeth at me and I put my full weight onto the platform. We were on our way.
For real, this time.
That big, yellow 48 was exactly what we needed, with a nice little well just big enough for the three of us to sit down in and relax or hide from the other trains that went by, but when we stood up, we could see everything. We were on that thing the whole day, watching the pastures and rivers go by in the parts of western Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Ohio that no one sees without riding the rails like a hobo or a conductor. In the early morning light, the trees that lined the tracks were like black clouds highlighted in a green that would leave you seeing spots if you looked long enough. Sometimes we’d pass enormous corn fields, browning in the late summer heat, forgotten cobs leaving the smell of corn silk in our noses until we passed a skunk somewhere in all that nature. On this train I really started to believe Thoreau and in his idea of living purely off the land. I could see the land, huge masses of it that took hours for the hotshot to pass, that sported nothing but the occasional cabin or rusted out Oldsmobile or marijuana patch. In spite of the exploitative capitalist economy, there were still untouched and, I hoped, untouchable pieces of land left. I’d see my horse in the leaves someday.
We screeched through tiny little hickvilles, a few houses, a church, and a strip mall, and waved at the pedestrians as we went by and laughed at how confused they were seeing us three crusty kids standing next to the huge freight boxes like it was the Great Depression all over again. Bug nearly shat himself in Pittsburgh, though, because we had to squeeze ourselves down in that dank little well and the train didn’t seem to want to move for something like hours, and he was convinced and so was I that we were about to get caught, but I let Suze sleep through most of it, and we were pulling out of the city again by the time she woke up.
We sat on that train all day, talking shit and philosophy, watching everything fly past us, and knowing we could get off at any stop and be somewhere we’d never heard of. I pretended to be all blasé about the experience for a while to impress Suze, but I’d never seen anything like this scenery racing past us without even so much as a railing to keep us from risking our arms to pull down occasional leaves that stuck out over the track.
“All right, Bug, you start.”
Bug leaned back against the edge of the well. Suze stood at the edge, keeping an eye out for other trains that might report us, and I was the only one sitting, on my guitar case, so I could see just over the edge of the car.
“Fuck. Left home, found a farm, didn’t like paying for shit, so I started looking for a new way of getting it.” Bug tapped his baton against his leg to the rhythm of the train chugging underneath us. Every now and then he’d accidently whack the side of the well. “What the hell else is there to say?”
“Where’d you get that?” I pointed to the black dove tattoo.
Bug thumped his baton extra hard and pretended he hadn’t winced when it hit his thigh. “I stayed with some kids in New York City for a while a couple of summers ago. That was before I started in with the anarch crowd, so all we really did was get drunk and high all the time.” He looked down at his shoulder as though he could look directly at the design. “I think one of them did it. I dunno, maybe I even asked him to. We were on a big symbolism kick, trying to find new ways to twist up what the establishment thought. I think that’s supposed to be a pot plant.”
“Is that where you started going by Bug?” Suze glanced back in our direction for a second. I wondered if she was deciding whether or not to keep going.
“Nah, that came later. When I first got to the farm, they made me muck out the stables all the time, and they said whenever I finished my eyes would be sticking out, like a bug’s.” Bug shrugged. “Those horses fucking stank.”
“And here I always thought it was because you took it up the ass.” I smirked at Bug, and he waved his baton at me. Suze giggled.
“How about you, Padre? How did you, the great girl chaser of the open road, end up with such a seminary name?”
“You got it,” Bug answered for me. “It’s all those girls. He’s like their sugar daddy, but without any money.” He gave back the smirk.
“Not everyone is as screwed up as you are, Bug.” I leaned back. “I’ll have you know I’m not a girl chaser.”
Bug snorted, and Suze raised an eyebrow.
“I am not! Every girl I’ve ever had chased me first.” Suze blushed, and I hurriedly continued. “My great-uncle was a priest. Father Matthew. Back in college, whenever I’d get philosophical, they’d tell me I was preaching. So I told them about Father Matt, and after a while it turned into Padre.” The sun was starting to set, making the wheatfield we were passing look like it was on fire. Suze was silhouetted against it like a saint, with her blonde hair escaping in wisps that blew in the wind and caught the light like a halo. “What about you, Suze? Do you want us to give you a traveler’s name?”
She smiled, and I could hear the first few notes of a song echoing in my head. She had the most inspiring smile I’d ever seen.
“Nah,” she said. “I like being Suze. It’s from my middle name, anyway, so it won’t be too easy to track me down.”
“What’s your first name?” I wanted to include it in my song.
“It’s a secret. I only tell people I’m intimate with.”
“Well then, I’m sure Padre will get it out of you soon enough.” Bug grinned, showing off several silver fillings.
Willard, OH, 9:39 pm.
I fell asleep sometime after that and slept through a lot of Ohio and didn’t wake up till the train stopped again, and Bug was shaking me, and Suze was grabbing our stuff.
“Padre.” Suze was staring out over the edge of the well with a look of something like awe on her face. “Padre, get up. I think we’re here.”
Bug screwed his face up. We were in a rail yard all right, just like every other rail yard we’d been in so far, and it was starting to get dark again, so we knew we were just about where we wanted to be, but we didn’t know shit about the town, except that it was called Willard, and it was in Ohio.
“Come on. Let’s go!” Suze was already repacking my bag, trying to make sure the water jugs were tucked in nice and tight.
“I don’t know, man.” Bug was pointedly ignoring my other bag and not looking like he was going anywhere for a while. “What if this isn’t it? How the hell are we gonna get out of here and get to Michigan in time to meet up with Mike and Coyote?”
Suze frowned. “I told you, my uncle lives here. It looks familiar.” She looked back out at the town. “Sort of.”
I started pushing the battered old green Coleman stove back into my bag. I could see, just over the horizon, a freeway heading toward gray, block shaped towers. If I was getting my calculations right, and I’d always been good at math, that was Chicago.
“Let’s go, Bug.” I handed my bag to him, then remembered why he wasn’t carrying one of his own and put it over my shoulder. “If we’re stuck, we’ll just have to hitch. They arrest train hoppers in Chicago.”
Argument settled. We jumped off the train, Suze first, though I worried about there not being anyone to catch her, and then Bug dove off the side and rolled, but my scraped knee wasn’t quite up to the task of taking a jump off a moving train, and I ended up kind of flopping down the bank. I landed in a big sprawl a few feet away, and the water jug tumbled out of my bag, bursting with the force of the fall into a mass of white plastic and water. That meant we were down to only two gallons of water between the three of us. We should have had six, but I’d forgotten two of them when I was leaving Dona and Steve’s place back in Baltimore, and we’d drunk one of them on the train. But we were done with the hopping part, hopefully, and it was a lot easier to stop for water when you were hitching and your driver knew you were there.
We ran out of the train yard a bit faster than we had run for the train that morning, now that we were all rested up and junk, and on a street corner a few blocks away we ran into some cops.
“And where are you three kids going at that speed?” The lead cop, a tall black man like a basketball player, had us stopped in our tracks the moment he opened his mouth. You never, ever run from cops, especially if you’ve got something to hide.
Suze opened and shut her mouth a few times, without getting out more then a strained squeak. Bug smirked at her.
“We’re just enjoying the evening, officer.” Bug lied like a fucking president in front of cops. It was inspiring to watch. “We figured we’d get a camp out going, maybe sing some songs, roast some marshmallows.”
The second cop was getting really bouncy, like he’d never gotten the chance to harass some innocent teenagers before. He was shorter than his partner, but broader, in a flat, rectangular kind of way. He looked like he had a big coat hanger stuck in his uniform. “Marshmallows, huh? I bet you’re going to get a couple brewskies while you’re at it, too.”
“No, sir.” Suze pulled out her driver’s licence and handed it over without being asked. “They’re under age.”
The second cop muttered something that sounded a lot like “Dirty Hippies.”
“You’re from out of town,” the first officer said, peering at the out of state licence. “We get trains through here all the time and a heck of a lot of hobo-wannabies, all looking just like you three. You wanna tell me how you got here?”
“We just got dropped off a couple of blocks up.” I handed over my licence and watched the shorter cop look it over, then up at me, then back at the licence, then back at me, like he was trying to decide if I was really the guy in the picture. I had long, half bleached hair instead of a beard then, but it was still pretty obviously me. “We’re just stopping in for the night. Some friends of ours are going to pick us up in the morning.”
Bug and Suze started nodding and looking at each other, but the cops didn’t look quite satisfied. If you ask Bug, he’ll tell you they never are until they get to knock you into the concrete a couple of times. So Suze picked up the explanation.
“My uncle has a house over on Myrtle Avenue. He wanted me to come visit, and my friends here wanted to do some traveling, so he came and picked us up. We wanted to check out the town, so he dropped us off.”
The big cop started nodding. “You’re Mike Mendelson’s niece? His wife works down at the elementary school with my brother. I can see the family resemblance.” He gave us back our licences after noting down our real names.
Suze’s expression got a bit of an ‘Oh, fuck me’ tinge to it, but the cops didn’t seem to notice.
“You kids got any kind of protection on you? I’d hate to find you dead on the streets tomorrow morning.”
Suze pulled a can of mace from her bag, and Bug and I held up our pepper spray, the standard in self-defense for the crusty traveler. The big cop smiled at Suze.
“All right then, you be careful now. And tell your uncle that Rick Hileman said ‘hi’.”
“Will do, officer!” I had never heard Suze sound so cheerful. We all smiled, waved, and turned back around to head down a new street. Once they were far enough behind us, Suze started cursing. She knew more languages than Bug did. “Scheiße! I didn’t even think about what Uncle Mike is going to say when he finds out how we got here.”
I wanted to tell her she could avoid it by sticking with us, but she had her jaw clamped shut now, and anything I said might have antagonized her.
From there we headed into downtown Willard, which really wasn’t much of a town since the place was really small and seemed to be quite the hickville. It had its carbon copy strip malls, a couple of run-down looking parks full of rusty playground equipment, and a warehouse district. We found a place to sit, and out came my guitar, and it seemed like as soon as I started strumming, all sorts of people wandered by to chat with us. We set up the Coleman on the street and cooked up some beans and hot sauce for dinner and passed around some of the bread Bug had found that morning.
Willard, OH, 2:39 am.
It seemed like the whole of Willard joined us that night, hanging out, singing songs, and listening to us talk about the government and how we felt a big change was going to have to come soon.
“How the hell are you supposed to get stuff if you don’t have any money?” One of the teenagers asked us. They were all in full out teenie-punk mode, the girls wearing Avril ties and gym socks for arm bands, the boys going for either Weezer geek, or “hard core” with suspenders hanging over their hips and safety pins holding their shirts together. You could tell by the neatly sewn hems the safety pins were stuck through that everything these kids wore was from the local mall. This one was wearing a camouflage t-shirt with the words, “Oh crap! It’s snowing!” silk-screened on it in white.
“People give it to you.” I held out the painting I had done after the beans were gone, all along the outside of one of the empty cans. “I give you a painting I created or a book I’ve got or a pair of pants I don’t need, and in return, you give something you don’t need to someone else.”
“Precisely.” Bug spoke around a mouthful of rapidly cooling beans. “Mind you, it’s taken a while to catch on, but that’s why we’re here. If we start here in Willard with you guys, and you guys pass it on to the people you meet, and they pass it on to the people they meet, and we keep passing it on to more and more people on the road, pretty soon it’ll get big and fucking important, and things will start to change.”
“You’re full of shit,” a guy in a yellow tank top that looked like it came from one of Bug’s farm workers answered, and he and his buddies walked off right then and there. But everyone who stayed leaned in, and I thought of Suze’s politics classes.
“There are two ways to change the government without violent force.” I was revving up. In all the excitement of planning our trip and getting on the trains, I had missed just talking with people about what we were doing. “You can infiltrate it by voting in politicians who support your causes and by sending letters to your local congressman, but once those politicians are there, who’s to say they won’t change their principles? Who’s to say your congressman will even get your letter and not just leave it to some intern to read? Infiltrating is problematic, because you have to start on their terms. You’ve got to get a radical into the government before you can affect any radical changes.”
Suze looked at me, a fork full of beans halfway to her mouth. She set her bowl down and leaned forward.
I wasn’t sure if that was a good sign or not, so I continued. “The other way is to simply change your lifestyle to the one you think is best, like Bug and I have. I’ve spent an entire summer now living on only the most minimal amount of money. When I meet new people, like you guys, I tell them about what I’m doing. I try and get them involved, too. When enough people are involved, we can start forming groups and protests. That’s what’s going on out in Portland right now. A whole big group of us are getting together. We’re going to mount a huge protest, against bombs, against war, against terror, and against deforestation. There are people living in old growth trees in Oregon to keep the loggers from cutting them down. There are people blocking streets to let the government know we don’t want the war. That’s why we’re going west. There’s a revolution going on, right now, all over the country. And we’re a part of it.”
Bug leaned over toward Suze in the contemplative quiet that filled the group. “Shit, Padre is such a fucking preacher.” Suze took advantage of Bug’s slouch and elbowed him in the ribs.
We were just cleaning up our dinner when the two boy scouts joined the group. They were probably in their mid twenties, but I could see the eagle scout badge branded in the starch of their collars and the roll of their bandanas. They were carrying grocery bags, and one had a carton of cigarettes in his hands.
“Hey.” The one with the cigarettes was American-dream blonde, tanned and well built. He held out the cigarettes like a peace offering. “Heard there were some guys down here telling everyone to be nice to each other and give stuff away. We figured, what the hell?”
Our beans and hot sauce hadn’t been nearly enough to go around the group we were gathering, so when the boy scouts set their bags down in front of us, Bug got to work handing it out. Those who smoked got their smokes, those who ate meat got their jerky and friend chicken, and all the veggies and vegans had plenty of carrot sticks and protein bars to go around. “Thanks, guys!” Bug gave an odd sort of thumbs up sign with a cigarette in one hand and a carrot stick in the other. I dug my guitar out again. Before I could even strum a note, a train conductor arrived.
“I thought I’d find something like this out here.” He was twirling his hat around his index finger, his baby-blue uniform wrinkled over a frame almost as skinny as mine. He wore a sort of sympathetic smirk on his face. “I’ve had kids like you come through on my trains before. It’s idiotic the way you risk your lives just to get a free ride.”
I felt my shoulder blades draw together. The trip had been going so well, and I was sure this guy was going to somehow bring us down. I opened my mouth, but the camouflage girl got there before I did.
“These guys are cool,” she said. “There’s no need to . . .”
“You kids are nuts.” The conductor sat down a couple of feet from me. “But I’m off duty. Just don’t get killed on my train.” Someone passed him a loaf of bread. “You guys wanna hear a joke?”
The camouflage girl smiled, and I said sure. There was no reason why Bug and I should hog all the attention. The conductor leaned back in his seat, bummed a cigarette, and started telling his story:
“It seems that there was this railroad bull, they’re cops for the railroad, and they carry around guns, drive big white trucks, and are always trying to catch the hobos and put them in jail. So this railroad bull was out for a smoke and shot a pigeon out of the air. It fell into an old hobo camp, and he pocketed the gun and went over to claim his prize.
“Well the hobos of the camp had obviously heard the gun go off, right, and so they found the pigeon where it had landed and could see the bull coming up to get it, and as hobos, they felt, I suppose, like they needed the pigeon more than this bull would, so when he arrived to pick the bird up, the lead hobo stepped out to block him.
“Now the bull said that the bird was his because he was the one to shoot it down, and the hobos decided the bird was theirs because it had landed in their camp, and finally the lead hobo looked at the bull and told him that they would have to settle this matter in the traditional hobo manner.
“The bull was game, I suppose, or at least he wanted his game, so he agreed and asked what this mysterious traditional hobo method of settling difficulties was. The lead hobo smiled and said that she would hit him as hard as she could, and then he would do the same to her, and who ever hit hardest won. The bull smiled and agreed, and the hobo backed up a bit, wound herself up, and kicked the bull square in the balls.
“The bull hit the ground pretty thoroughly, of course, but recovered, stood, backed up a bit, and wound himself up, and the hobo looked him directly in the eye and said: ‘Screw it. Keep your damn bird.’”
We all had a pretty good laugh at that one, and I picked up the guitar again, which was really popular with a good sized group like the one we had going, and I started into a song I had written back in Towson, when I first decided to take on traveling full time. The symbols that covered my guitar case were all from my different songs, and this one covered most of the lid. I didn’t sing it much. My melodies were never very complex, and I’ve been told my voice is rather nasal, but I always sang my soul out the way the musicians on MTV are always trying to look like they’re doing, and somehow that makes people listen and enjoy what they’re hearing.
“I spent a lot of time this summer
trying to put things into place,
and I got lied to so many damn times
but I kept a straight face,
because I cannot stand to harm you
when the arguments are heard.
One side versus another,
instead of people sharing words.
I’ve felt so tired lately,
just thinking about these days,
but between those wars and scandals,
there’s a new and needed place.
We’ve got so much to understand
about this spinning ball of life.
Just look up at the stars
and enjoy this sweaty night,
and let us sing.”
— “Things that make us whole” by Ryan Harvey
At times it might have been over the top, even for a fellow traveler. There wasn’t much poetry in that song, just a little kid, pointing out the flaws in the system in the clearest language he knows how to use. The secret is in the song; for some reason, people are better at listening to hard topics in songs than just in stories. So whether or not that mob of people in Willard, from the teenie-punks to the boy scouts, to the drinking businessmen whose suits were stained by cheap wine and expensive beer and seem to come in all sorts of different colors, each sold separately, collect all eight; whether or not they agreed with what I was singing, they listened. When it came down to it, all we really hoped for was someone to listen.
After I was done with the song, I slipped the guitar back into its case. Bug was talking to Camo Girl, and the two of them were starting to sit really close together, and I looked over at Suze. She was playing with the strap of her bag, her eyebrows drawn together. I touched her hand, and when she looked up, I used my head to ask if she wanted to go for a walk. She nodded, and I made sure Bug knew we were going, and we started off down the street.
“Are you okay?” Usually, when I ask girls that question, I already know the answer is no, and I’m going to have to listen to a long monologue listing all the different ways I had fucked up. But as far as I knew, the trip had gone really well, so I had no idea what to expect from her.
“Yeah.” Suze nodded and avoided looking me in the eye. “I was just thinking about what you said back there.”
“Which part?”
“The part about there being two ways to change the world.” She shoved her hands into her pockets. “I’ve had a lot of fun, Padre.”
“I’m glad. You said you wanted to try something new.”
“I did. And you know, maybe when I finish school, I’ll hit the road again. Now I know I can.”
“You never intended to keep going, did you.” I had kind of known when she said she wanted to come with me that it wouldn’t last.
“Padre,”
“It’s okay, Suze.” I stopped, facing her. “I meant it when I said there were two ways of doing it. And I have some respect for your way.”
She sniffed, once, hard, the way she does when she’s trying not to laugh.
“Okay, so not a lot of respect for it. You’ve got a criminal past now, you know. You’ll never get elected to office.”
“Bush smoked crack. He’s president.” She let herself laugh for real this time. “Besides, I never really wanted to run for office, just understand how the system worked. I’m going to call my uncle, tell him I got a ride into town. He’ll probably be able to buy me a bus ticket home.”
“Suze, don’t leave.”
“You promised, Padre.”
I nodded. The part of me that won arguments with my mother told me to point out I’d never actually made that promise. The part of me that had heard music watching Suze on the train told me to shut the fuck up.
Suze smiled at me and kissed me one more time. “You’re cute, you’re willing to stand up for what you think is right, and you’re a good person. Maybe when I graduate in December, I’ll go to Portland. I can help you guys get organized.”
“I’d like that.” I hugged her again. “Do you need to use my phone?”
She pulled a phone card out of her pocket and gestured to the booths at the gas station across the street. “Take care of yourself. And next time, steal yourself some deodorant. And toothpaste.” She squeezed my hand and walked away, calling over her shoulder. “I’ll see you later, Neil!”
I mock-growled. Suze was the only person I’d ever traveled with who knew my real name. “Hey, not fair! What’s your first name?”
“She told you.” Bug walked up behind me and handed me my bags. “She only tells it to people she’s intimate with.” The Camo Girl giggled. Bug grinned and put his arm around her. “Looks like this time, I get the girl.” He started off toward the rail yard. “We’ve got to go meet our ride. You coming?”
I took one more look at Suze, who was now talking on the payphone. She looked up and waved. I waved back. “Yeah.” I ran to catch up with Bug and Camo Girl. “So, who’s your friend?”
“Padre, meet Snowy, our newest recruit to the cause.”
Snowy grinned at me, bouncing. She must have been sixteen years old.
“Hi, Snowy. Welcome to the fold.” I glanced at Bug, judging how quickly I could duck out of the way of his fist. “Wanna know where Bug got his nick-name?”
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