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Joviality suffused Feathertop Ernie Cargill's voice as he reached behind him,
pulling out a battered carpetbag, with leather handles. "Whyn't ya say so,
fellow travelers! Why we got dinner right here. C'mon, buddy, help me set up
the kitchen and we'll have food in a minute or two."
Cappy looked wary, but he moved off the floorboards and followed the dirty
ex-musician to the center of the refuse-littered boxcar.
Ernie crouched and opened the carpetbag. He took out a small packet filled
with bits of charcoal, a deep pot of thin metal, some sheets of newspaper, a
book of matches and a wrinkled and many-
times folded piece of tinfoil with holes in it. He put the charcoal in the
pot, lit the paper with the matches, and carefully stretched the tinfoil
across the top of the pot.
"A charcoal pit, man," he said, indicating the slightly smoking makeshift
brazier. "Fan it," he told Cappy, handing him a still-folded sheet of
newspaper.
"Yeah, but what're we gonna eat? Charcoal?"
"Fellah," Ernie said, waggling a dirty finger at the younger man, "you try my
mutherin' patience."
He reached into the carpetbag once more and brought up a cellophane-wrapped
package of weiners.
"Hot dogs, man. Not the greatest, but they stick to your belly insides."
He ripped down the cellophane carefully, and laid three dogs on the tinfoil.
Almost immediately they began to sizzle. He looked up and grinned with a
toothiness that belied his thoughts.
Fattening them up for the kill. He blew through puckered lips and his baby
hair flew up, only to fall back over his eyes again.
"A Krogers's self-serve," he explained. "I self-served."
Kitty grinned and a small, musical laugh fell from her cupid's bow lips. The
boy scowled again; it was getting to be a habit.
When they had licked the last of the weiner's taste from their fingers, they
settled back, and
Cappy offered Ernie a cigarette. Nice kid, Ernie thought. Too bad.
"How come you're riding the rods, kids like you?" Ernie asked. "There's damned
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little of that done these days, even by old stiffs like me. Most kids today
never even been on a train."
Cappy looked at his wide hands, and did not reply. But surprisingly, Kitty's
face came up and she said, "My father. He didn't want us to get married. So we
ran away."
"Why din't he want you to get hitched?"
This time even she did not answer. She looked down at her hands, too. After a
few seconds, she said, "Dad didn't like Cappy. It was my fault."
Cappy's head came around sharply. "Your fault, hell! It was all my fault. If
I'd been careful it never woulda--" He stopped abruptly.
Ernie's eyebrows went up. "What's the matter?"
The girl still did not raise her eyes, but she added simply, "I'm pregnant."
Cappy raged at himself. "Oh he was stupid, her old man! You never heard
nothin' like it: Kitty's gonna go have an abortion, and Kitty's gonna go away
to a convent, and Kitty's this and Kitty's that ... like he was nuts or
somethin', y'know?"
Ernie nodded. This was a slightly different matter. He remembered Midge, and
the child. But that had been a time before all this, a time he didn't think
about. A time before the white lightning and the bumming had turned him inside
out. But these kids weren't like him.
Oh, crap! he thought. Pull out of it, old son. These are just another couple
of characters to roll. What they got, you get. Now forget all this other.
"Wanna drink?" Ernie pulling the pint of Sweet Lucy from his jacket pocket.
"Yeah. Now that you offer." The answer came from the open door of the boxcar.
From the man who had
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.txt leaped in from the high bank outside, as the train had slowed on the
grade.
Ernie stared at the man. He was big. Real big, with shoulders out to here, and
hair all over him like a grizzly. Road gang, Ernie thought, staring at the
great, pulpy muscles of the man's arms and neck.
"You gonna give me a drink, fellah?" the big man asked again, taking a step
into the boxcar.
Ernie hesitated a moment. This character could break him in half. "Sure," he
said, and lifted the pint to his own lips. He guzzled down three-quarters of
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