with huge shoulders bulging beneath a dirty coat, and huge hands and thick wrists extending far beyond the ends of his sleeves—but it was the older of the two who put Janson even more on guard. He was somewhere in his mid-fifties, with a body already going to fat, and a broad nose that looked as if it had been broken and poorly mended several times. He sat apart from the other man, drawing his looks on occasion without saying a word. His head was bare, the greasy black hair thin and sparse over the top of his large skull, but growing in thick mats down along the backs of both his broad hands—and somehow he made Janson even more wary than did the other, staring at him, squinting even through the darkness inside the car, never taking his eyes away even as the hours passed and the miles rolled by the train.
Janson returned his stare, knowing somehow that the two men were together, just as he knew they were not friends, for men such as these had no friends—rather they simply traveled together, as any predatory animal might travel in a pack. And, as Janson watched them, he felt as if all his instincts were on guard.
He turned his eyes out the open doorway of the car, some part of him still watching and alert for any movement one of the two might make, just as it had been from the first moment he had swung himself on board the train those hours ago—he wondered again where the train might be taking him. The land they were passing through seemed at times almost as red as the Alabama hills he had been born to, but it was flatter land, rolling only on occasion into the hills and curves his eyes were more accustomed to. There were pine woods, broken for broad expanses by winter-barren cotton fields; small towns, and what once seemed to him to be the edges of a big city, though he could only guess at that, for he had never been in a big city in all his life. From the height of the sun in the west, and the direction the train had been traveling, he knew they must now be somewhere in Georgia—Georgia, that seemed as good a place as any to start earning the money he would need to buy his land back.
He continued to stare out the open doorway, feeling the old leather portmanteau against his thigh, his shoes not far away. His stomach was growling and empty, but the smell of manure, urine, and sweat within the car, and the constant swaying motion of the train, had already combined to replace his hunger with nausea. The white-wrapped bundle of food his gran’ma had given him those hours ago before he had left Eason County had long ago grown cold, and it sat, still unopened, atop the portmanteau at his side, his hand resting on top of it. He knew he would have to eat soon, but not here, not in this stinking, swaying car. Once the train stopped, he would get off, find someplace warm, someplace the air was fresh and the ground steady, and then he would eat—besides, he had to urinate badly, and he could not bring himself to stand and relieve his strained bladder against the wall as he had seen one of the other men do.
He leaned his head back and closed his eyes for a moment, exhausted, numbed from the cold, sick from the smell. He had never felt so alone, been so alone, in all his life—but perhaps alone was better. No one to worry about. Nobody else to think of. Alone.
He was tired. There had been little sleep the night before, the decision to leave Eason County sitting heavily on his mind, taking the badly-needed rest from him—for a moment, he thought of home, of the white house on the red acres; the fields so rich, green with plants in the summer, white with cotton in the fall; the tall green pines, the rolling red land. He thought of his pa’s booming laugh, his mother singing softly as she worked at the old foot-treadle sewing machine in the parlor, his gran’ma coming by to make sure he ate two messes of polk sallet each year to purify his blood, and the time she had drawn the fire from his arm when he had burned it so badly on the old wood stove several years back. For a moment, he could almost see it all, almost touch it all—home, his parents, the white house as it had been in years past, just as if nothing had happened. Just as if—
There was a sudden movement across from him, quick, furtive, and Janson realized with a start that he had been almost asleep. His eyes sprang open, and his muscles tensed, ready—
The younger of the two men was half raised onto one knee, the dark eyes above the tangled beard set on Janson’s face. For a moment, the man stayed as he was, staring at Janson, then he slowly lowered himself back to a seated position, his eyes never once leaving Janson’s face—they were hard eyes, eyes that put Janson even more on guard. He would not fall asleep again.
It was not long before the train began to slow, coming into a small settlement, then finally coming to a halt with a shudder and a high-pitched screech of metal just outside an old depot. Janson cautiously looked out, hearing the two men shift even farther back into the darkness within the car. He knew it was not safe to stay so close to the open doorway, there being too great a chance the railroad police might spot him with the train stopped here at the station, and even Janson had heard of what often happened to the transients found riding the rails, how they were often beaten, sometimes to within an inch of their lives, before they were thrown off the train—but something inside Janson told him even that could be far preferable to what could happen to a man even deeper within the darkness of that car. At least the railroad police were the law. There was no law alive within that rail car.
The old depot building was run down, the once-white paint on its walls now peeling and gray from the smoke of the many trains that had come through. There were several sets of tracks, going in several different directions, but few buildings, and even fewer people—probably a freight stop, Janson told himself, staying hidden as best he could at the edge of the doorway. This was not the sort of place he had thought to leave his free ride, but both the smell, and the companionship, forced the decision on him—there were other empty cars on this train, other trains going other places if he chose. He could get out into the fresh air, stretch his cramped muscles, maybe find someplace warm where he could eat—but he had to get out of here.
He gathered up his things, the portmanteau and his shoes in one hand, the bundle of food in the other, and glanced back at the two men. They did not move or speak, but only continued to stare at him from the darkness as he got to his feet, the muscles in his back complaining at the position he had been sitting in against the inside wall of the car for such a length of time. He looked out again, checking cautiously for any sign of the railroad police as well as for any people from the train or station house who might know he should not be here; then he jumped down into the loose dirt alongside the tracks and knelt there for a moment, waiting to make sure he was unobserved before hurrying on toward the woods that stood at a distance behind the depot—he did not know why he looked back, but he did, turning back as he reached the edge of the woods to see the two men jump down from the boxcar only seconds later, wait there for an instant, then hurry off in another direction. Janson stared after them for a moment. And for some reason he shuddered.
He made his way into the woods, stopping for a moment to make sure he had not been followed. He stood still, his eyes moving through the trees, his breathing quiet as he listened to the silence. Then, satisfied, he turned and made his way even deeper into the pines.
The temperature had fallen, the damp, chill ground uncomfortable now even to his toughened and calloused feet—but the air was clean and fresh, and the ground steady, and he decided to stay here rather than to risk going back toward the depot where he might find a warmer place to rest and to eat his food. He took the time to relieve his strained bladder, then happened on a rusting tin water bucket left discarded and forgotten beneath a tree, filled now with rainwater, and topped by a thin layer of ice and dead leaves. He knelt and brushed the leaves aside, then broke up the ice and washed his face and hands in the frigid water, washing away the stench from the rail car, and hissing through clenched teeth as the icy water hit his skin.
He settled down beneath a tree and unknotted the bundle of food his grandmother had given him those long hours ago, his appetite returning now at the sight of the biscuits and cold fried chicken wrapped in the white cloth. It had been sometime late the day before when he had last eaten, a supper of dry corn bread, cold turnip greens, butter beans, and fatback as tough as shoe leather, and he thought now that he had never been so hungry before in all his life as he greedily bit into a fried chicken leg and picked up one of the
