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

and demand his nickel back. He accepted the loss—deciding at the same time never to let it happen again. As he lifted the sandwich sideways, grease dripped onto the plate from between the halves of the bun. He bit into it, tasted the gristle and began to put it down. No, he thought, that’s little-kid’s stuff. This here is the real thing. He opened up the sandwich and put salt on it, the way he’d seen his father do many times, and ate it, drinking the water in one lift to his mouth. Then he went back a car and sat down. Later the same conductor came up to his seat and told him to “stop moving around.”

“OK,” said July, realizing, as he should have before, that his age was his disguise—he was taken for belonging to one of the little clusters of family in the car behind him. The thought made him smile, and he mused pleasantly, looking out the window after the conductor had gone, dark shapes like flying witches flashing past outside: If that joker’d given me any more static, I’d’ve blown off his head. He felt quite dangerous. A blue fug of smoke enveloped the car. A boy about his age walked past toward the diner and looked at him without stopping. July saw him inthe window reflection. Better watch out, little kid, he thought almost kindly, or you’ll have the trouble of your life. He felt in his pocket and the gun was warm to the touch. Then he went to sleep.

At the next stop everybody got off, so he did too, judging it expedient. There was also the chance that the train was going no farther. In the station he bought two candy bars from a vendor, twenty cents, and thought for the first time about where he might be going. He went over to the opposite wall and looked at the schedule in order to find out where he was. Cleveland. Then he found a map with railroad lines drawn on it and looked at Cleveland in relationship to Iowa City (Sharon Center wasn’t marked) and smiled. It made him feel important to be out in the world for the first time. He followed the railroad lines out of Cleveland and decided where he was going to. Philadelphia. Yes, he decided, thinking very clearly and without emotion—completely detached from any reason—Philadelphia. Then he checked the schedule again and planned out to his own satisfaction when the train he wanted would be leaving. He tossed the last candy wrapper into the trash and went into the bathroom. As he was standing with his back to the room, someone came out of what he’d taken to be an empty stall, stood several feet behind him and said, “Hey, buddy, you want to blow me? Fifty cents.”

The voice was hostile and his urine immediately stopped flowing. He tucked himself back inside his pants, managed to say, “What?” and turned around.

“A blow job, punk,” said the young man, his pink shirt opened halfway down his stomach, his black hair slicked back against his head, curling at the neck, “Where you been, born yesterday? Suck my dick for fifty cents. Come on, hurry up.”

July couldn’t talk, and the youth was advancing. In horror, July could see what was expected of him.

“No,” he said. “I don’t want to.”

“Come on, punk—” Then the door opened and his assailant went quickly over to a urinal beside him, where he appeared to be relieving himself. Two older men, coming in, caught enoughof the abnormally hurried movement, and intuiting from July’s expression, they immediately separated. One of them went outside to guard the door. The other took off his jacket.

“You lousy fairy,” he said, talking to the back of the pink shirt. “You gonna wish you never tried anything like this on a young boy. I’m gonna beat you within an inch of your life.” Violence seemed to ooze out of every word. The young man in the pink shirt looked over his shoulder and terror filled his face. His eyes were wild and for a second he looked at July with such pleading, hopeless fear that July completely forgot his own previous dread of him. Compared to the man waiting for him to turn around, he might as well have been an invalid, so terribly bad were his chances. The man kicked him in the small of the back and he screamed, his head striking the chrome pipes. Half falling, he turned to run, but was hit back up against the urinal. His legs began to fold and he screamed again. The man held him up with his left hand and beat his face. Blood ran down into his opened shirt. Then he was kicked and he doubled over with an agonizing groan, falling to the tiled floor. Then the man stomped him, a look of impersonal disgust on his face such as July had seen on the face of Bob Sloan as he beat a garden snake in the schoolyard with a stick. Finally, he was unconscious, though July thought dead. Then he saw the breathing.

The man turned to July. “Are you all right?” the man asked, in a gentle, fatherly voice. July nodded. “Come on, let’s get out of here,” and he picked up his jacket, led July carefully around so he wouldn’t step in the blood, with his arm on his shoulder. Out in the terminal the men asked him if he wouldn’t like to have an ice cream. July shook his head. They shook hands and the men left when they saw someone walk toward the restroom.

July went outside to wait for his train and sat down. Two hours passed without his noticing. A shroud of violence covered everything. He was stranded in the gap between what he imagined he was and what he was. He felt a sickening fear threaten to take him over—the stranger in him rise up very far. But beforethe train to Philadelphia arrived,