Foggy Mountain Breakdown and Other Stories (43 page)

Everybody looked away except Davy.

“I’ll need to borrow a bike.”

“I just fixed mine,” said Davy quietly. He wasn’t
pleading or whining about it, just stating a fact that ought to be taken into consideration.

“That’s real good,” said Junior. “I’m glad you got it working again. I wouldn’t want to borrow no
sorry
bike.” He gripped the newly repaired bike with one hand, and shoved Davy out of the way with the other. “You can watch, kid,” he said.

Davy shrugged. It wouldn’t do any good to argue with Junior Mullins. Things went his way or not at all. Everybody knew that. Complaining about the unfairness of his action would only get Davy labeled a crybaby.

Johnny Suttle looked at the railroad track, and then at his own battered bicycle. “Here, Junior. Why don’t you take mine?”

“That beat-up old thing? Naw. I want a nice blue one. I’m kinda used to Davy’s anyhow.”

Davy knelt down in the shade of the laurels next to Junior’s bike. “Okay,” he said.

Junior stepped forward, ready with another taunt, but a faint sound in the distance made him stop. They listened for the low whine, echoing down the valley, a long way off.

Train whistle.

“Okay,” said Junior, turning away as if Davy were no longer there. “Mount up, boys. I lead off. You wait till the coal car has gone past us, and then you count to five, and you start riding. Got that? When you get up alongside the boxcar, grab the ladder with both hands, and pull yourself up off the saddle. Then kick the bike away with both feet. Got it?”

They nodded. Another blast of the train whistle made them shudder.

“Won’t be long now,” said Junior.

It seemed like an eternity to Davy before the rails shook and the air thickened with the clatter of metal wheels against track, and finally the black steam locomotive thundered into view. They hunkered down under the
laurels, close enough to see the engineer’s face, and to feel the gush of wind as the train swept past.

“Now!” screamed Junior above the roar. He took a running start out of the hiding place, and leaped onto Davy’s bike in midstride, pedaling furiously in an effort to stay even with the train. The other boys climbed onto their own mounts and sped off after him, whooping like the marauding Indians who attacked trains in the Buck Jones westerns down in the movie house.

Davy watched them go.

Junior kept the lead, leaning almost flat across the handlebar in a burst of speed that kept pace with the rumbling freight train. Fifty yards across the straightaway, he was nearly even with the ladder on the third boxcar.

What happened next seemed to take place in slow motion. The homemade bike seemed to pull up short, and wobble back and forth for one endless, frozen moment. Then, before Junior could scream or anyone else could blink, the bike crumpled and pitched to the left. It, and Junior, vanished beneath the wheels of the train. To Davy, despite the thunderous clatter of the boxcars, it all seemed to happen in perfect silence.

The oldest Haskell girl lingered in the doorway. She fingered the collection can with the words
JUNIOR MULLINS
printed in black capitals around the side. The funeral was tomorrow. Closed casket, they said. “You were there when it happened, weren’t you?” she said.

Davy nodded.

She leaned in so close to him that he could see her pores and smell the mint on her breath. “What was it like?” she whispered.

“He just fell.”

“I hear you couldn’t even tell who he was—after.”

“No.” The bike was unrecognizable, too. Just a tangle of metal caught underneath the boxcar and dragged another fifty yards down the track. Dad had told him how the
workmen cut the bits of it away from the underside of the train. Out of consideration for the Mullins family, they hosed it down before they threw it in the scrap heap.

“You won’t be getting it back,” his father said. “Seems a shame, you losing your friend and your bike, too. It was a good bike. I know you worked a long time on it.”

Davy nodded. He had worked a long time. He had built it twice, almost from scratch, and he had been proud of it. On the night before the pony express game, the last thing he had done was to file through one link of the bicycle chain, so that when any stress was put on it, the chain would break, throwing the bike off balance.

“It’s all right, Dad,” said Davy. “It’s all right.”