They’d left Strider’s things where they lay on the lumpy rocks next to the tracks, his dusty backpack a headstone of sorts. A sign of a dishonorable death after hopping trains for years.
Nimble didn’t think anyone would have taken those belongings back to Strider’s family. Strider had been buried in a pauper’s grave, and that was all she wrote.
Which was why, as Nimble leaned close and held up the bottles of water, his chin brushing the cold metal side of the boxcar, he jumped back when he felt the train jerk into motion.
“Take the goddamn waters,” he shouted, flushed with heat, snow melting on his skin.
Blue reached down but was unable to take hold of the waters.
Nimble threw all three bottles just as the zipper on his leather jacket snagged against rusted metal. He stepped clear, picked up the two biscuits, and threw them at Blue as the train began to roll.
“Grab the ladder,” Blue said as he caught the items, cool as the snow falling around his pretty face.
Star peered from behind Blue’s shoulder, wide-eyed and solemn. In another minute he was going to pull out his little black notebook to scribble down how this particular train made unexpected starts and stops.
Nimble was stuck. Palms sweaty, too scared to make a grab, the snow making the worn soles of his oversized army boots slide on the ground, he was fucking stuck.
“Throw me my shit,” he called. “I’ll meet up with you. On the beach. At the pier in Santa Monica.”
That had been their plan, a collective dream to make it to the West Coast for winter, there to bask in the warm air, their toes in the sand, eating something Blue called ceviche, though it sounded too much like raw fish for Nimble’s liking.
“My fucking stuff!” Nimble shouted as the train picked up speed.
Snow fell in his eyes, his neck icy cold even as fury climbed up inside him.
Blue and Star disappeared beyond the edge of the top of the boxcar and did not return as the train headed west, taking Nimble’s green duffel with its extra pairs of socks and briefs, his one other T-shirt, a slice of soap rolled carefully in brown paper, his earplugs, his black bandanna, his baggie of spare coins and folded bills, matches and stubs of candles, his Leatherman multi-tool, his playing cards, and the book Star had loaned him to read that he’d never even opened—everything he had.
Snow billowed in a gray-white cape against the eggshell-white sky and around the metal corners of each boxcar, flatcar, and empty coal car that hustled with metallic clangs past the point where Nimble stood, mouth agape, a scream filling his chest.
All that remained to him were the clothes on his back. The snow didn’t look like it was slowing down anytime soon. Which meant that Nimble’s plan of action had to involve heading back into the small town and finding shelter till the storm blew over. Once the weather cleared, he could think about catching the next freight train out of here.
Without his gear, Nimble felt less conspicuous than he might have, in the snow by the railroad tracks on the edge of town.
But hewasconspicuous, that was for sure, because he was standing there like a chucklefuck watching the train pick up speed, snow in his hair, with no idea what he was supposed to do. Or how he was supposed to get to the West Coast on his own—and who he would punch first when he got there, Blue or Star.
The ripple of anxiety up his back battled with the rage that welled up like a hot fog at the thought of his so-called friends not tossing his things to him.
His ears rang with the blasts of the train whistle as it went over the road crossing: two long, one short, one long, echoing through the falling white curls of frost that were beginning to layer the stark, iron-dark rails.
In the wake of the last boxcar, the snowy air settled until there was not a speck of wind.
Nimble had traveled enough to know how to judge the coming weather from the way the wind blew. This stillness, the snow coming down like a white curtain, meant that the storm was taking a big breath, like a fighter letting go to get a better grip, and that the snow was going to get worse.
CHAPTER 3
nimble
They’d come pretty far north, Blue and Star and him, in their attempt to get west before it really got cold.
Star had heard that Bailey Yard, the large railway intersection near Brule, Nebraska, had hired more bulls to roam the yard and keep an eye out. So they needed to take a more northerly line to go around it.
According to Star, passing through the yard in Brule used to be easy, but every now and then, the railroad companies liked to make it difficult for hobos and hoppers and boxcar boys. He’d pulled out his mental map of the world, consulted his little notebook, and decided they needed to head up the line.
Blue, sitting there in his navy surplus wool coat, looking very much like the young man in the blue coat Nimble remembered from the station back home, had listened to Star with rapt attention. He’d swept his blond hair back from his face and shaken his head, like there was no other choice but the one Star proposed.
“A bit west and then up,” Star said, using his finger to point to an imaginary map in the air.
“It’ll be cold,” Blue said.
