Rock Island Line by David Rhodes (most life changing books txt) 📗

malted milk to their square, mean table next to the window. The blue star of lights above the diner reflected onto them from a silent pool of rainwater next to their car in the gravel parking lot. A young couple by the jukebox hollered at each other and played records. The waitress smoked cigarettes down to her fingers at the counter.The cook, her broad forehead covered with sweat, took the stone to the grill.

“I can remember my father telling me about a man his father had told him about,” John said, in the same quiet voice he’d been using all afternoon. July sat, taking it all in, the voice, the words, the reflection, the music, the smoke and the cold, wonderful taste of the malt up through two paper straws which he held in his mouth like fangs.

“. . . named Kingfisher. I guess he was born somewhere in the East, Connecticut or Rhode Island, and it was suspected that his mother had been part, if not all, Indian. The first time someone tried to kill him he was ten years old. His dad was a foreman of a crew of indentured lumberjacks—prisoners, that is they were, men who were brought over to this country to work. America was so wild then that the only thing that lay between them and freedom was a matter of several miles of forest. One morning some of these fellows got a chance to overcome a guard and get rid of their irons. Another guard came out of the underbrush unexpectedly and three of them were shot before they overpowered him. They wanted food more than guns, and they figured to make it to the foreman’s cabin near the settlement, get the stuff and hightail it west. They didn’t plan on Kingfisher’s father being there, and he got more of them before they came in, and the sight of the blood and their desperate hope of escaping filled them with reckless, unreasonable ferocity. One of them saw the small boy running out toward the settlement through the trees. ‘Get him,’ said the leader, and two of the escapees took after him with a double-edged ax, two knives and a muzzle-loaded hand gun.

“Hearing them behind him (and knowing he could be outrun), he left the well-worn path. He went for the settlement by relying on his size and ability to scramble through the brush and briers and fallen trees. He went on wildly, thorns cutting into his face and hands without his noticing. He could hear themcrashing behind him but falling behind farther. He ran on, feeling he’d make it. The ground grew rockier, rising sharply. He went up, and then discovered that he’d trapped himself. Ahead, directly down from him, was a sheer drop of more than thirty feet. There was no way to turn back without running toward the noise of the men. He looked around, wanting more than anything to begin crying, his heart pounding like a warring drum. The crashing came closer. He found a large rock, as big around as a muskmelon, pried it loose from the ground and began climbing up a maple tree, placing the rock up before him on each succeeding branch. He climbed as far as he could before he saw the men, then stopped and tried to hug close to the trunk.

“ ‘Look, he must be around here,’ shouted one of them, between panting. ‘No one could get down there,’ and he motioned to the drop-off.

“Kingfisher watched them walk beneath his tree, going over to the edge.

“ ‘He’s around here,’ said the other. ‘Go back and make sure we didn’t miss him and he isn’t sneaking back down.’

“ ‘No, he’s around here close by. Has to be. We’d hear him—’

“ ‘Go on down and check, you idiot. If he gets—’

“ ‘OK, OK.’ The one with the ax went back down. The other walked along the rim of the ledge, making sure there was no way down and hoping to find him tucked away behind a stump or log. After the time it took to fully regain his breath, going on a hunch, he went back and started, methodically, to check the ground for signs, thinking, If the little fool was running, we’d hear ’im. He wasn’t that far ahead. The idea came to him, just at the moment he saw the matted underbrush around the tree, that he might be up there . . . and he looked up maybe one full second before the muskmelon-sized rock, dropped from twenty feet in the air, smashed his head. Kingfisher scrambled down the tree and peeled the pistol from the man’s hand, steppingon and off his wrist to make death release its hold. Already he could hear the other man coming back.

“He ran to the edge of the ledge and hid behind an obvious rock, and—he couldn’t help it—began to cry.

“The sight of more blood brought the urgency of the situation back to the remaining escapee. The fear of capture and inevitable doom. These things and the ever louder sound of the boy’s hysterical crying unfortunately made him forget about the gun, and he went over. With his eyes watery and his nose running, sitting down, Kingfisher shot him....”

John went on talking in detail, leaving his coffee untouched. But July wasn’t listening closely any more. His attention had been rerouted into the image of Kingfisher behind the rock, crying uncontrollably, holding a gun with a hole in the barrel as big around as an eye. And though he continued drinking the malt up into both sides of his mouth, staring straight forward, his head was completely taken over by the scene. Behind the rock, a character half himself and half a wild, dark-skinned ten-year-old, holding that gun and crying and then letting him have it. His interest wandered back again just as John was saying, “. . . so the mayor was explaining to his marshal that Kingfisher, then eighteen years old, had been seen sleeping in