“I’d like to get a quote from this little man too.” Gable ruffles Billy’s hair.
I thought Billy was shielded behind me, but here he is, grinning up at this swindler like he’s God’s own mouthpiece. My throat pinches up tight.
“You want to pull your readers’ heartstrings,” I say to Gable.
He nods and shrugs, copping the blame.
“We were just on our way out.” I push the parcel of food into Billy’s chest and keep going, clutching his elbow when he stumbles a little.
“Don’t you want the whole world to know your story?” Gable calls. He hasn’t moved. He thinks we’ll sell our souls for a few lines of print.
“You mean the Wenatchee World?” I turn to look him right in the eye.
This time he colors. I’d taken him for twenty, but he can’t be more than eighteen. That little mustache is just a few well-tended hairs.
He clears his throat. “Pull on the right heartstrings and you might change your circumstances.”
I’d leap at the chance if it were possible. But bad luck is as much a part of chance as good. Just like a freight train, you have to trust before you leap.
I shrug. “I have my own ways of changing my circumstances.”
His gray eyes narrow, and the skin around them crinkles like he’s smiling — or judging. “And what are those?”
The train answers for me — a lingering, forthright blast of the whistle.
I nod my head in the direction of the tracks and grin. “There’s my summons.”
I grab Billy’s hand and walk away.
“Just let me ask you a couple of questions.”
I’ll be John Browned if he’s not following us. “Ask away,” I toss over my shoulder.
“Can you at least hold still?”
“No, sir, mister!” Billy shouts, catching on to my game. “We’ve got a train to catch!”
The westbound freight idles in the yard. The men at the orchard said it was due, and for once, luck is with me. There’s even a boxcar with its door wide open in welcome, waiting right in front of us.
And there’s no one inside.
Billy scrambles in and I follow, turning around to catch Gable staring, open-mouthed. “You want me to hop a train?” he asks.
“If you want this story, you want to hop a train.” I pull a hammered spike out of my pocket and wedge it under the runners of the door.
Gable watches me, his hands on the boxcar floor, his feet still firmly on the ground.
“The spike keeps it from closing,” I tell him. “You never know when it will open again. Besides, a moving door could take a man’s arm off.”
He plucks his hands back like he’s been burned and tucks his chin.
Good.
Though it would have been nice to talk to someone besides Billy for a change.
I tell myself Gable’s just like the boys back home. All swagger and charm, pitying my stupidity and innocence because I’m a girl with nothing in my curly-haired head but fashion and romance. But I know more than this so-called reporter. I’m more worldly-wise. More brave.
He doesn’t walk away. He takes a breath — I see his chest rise — and looks at me.
“If I do this, if I take this train with you, I need you to agree to answer my questions.” He’s so serious. “My job depends on it.”
But not his life. “Even if it’s your father’s paper?”
He presses his lips together. Looks away. “He can’t afford a reporter who doesn’t pull his weight.” His chest rises again and his gaze meets mine. “He says it’s time I make my own way. I don’t get this story, I might as well stick with riding the rails.”
I don’t know if it’s truth or if he’s spinning a tale, but two toots of the train’s whistle tell me we’re about to move, so impulsively I stick out my hand. He stares at it for a thin slice of a second, and I can read on his face the backwardness of it all. Then he takes it, warm and sure, and neatly makes the leap into my domain.
We settle back into the dark corner of the boxcar as the engine starts to roar. I met one old hobo who said he loved the sound of the engine picking up every car, the shudder that runs the length of the train with each one. I’ve always felt like it was the footsteps of an approaching giant, thunderous and threatening.
When the train’s under way, Gable takes out a little notepad and pen. “So what do they call you?”
No one asks that. They ask what kind of work I do. Why such a pretty little thing is out here. Wonder in their minds if I sell myself in pieces.
None of them ask my name.
It’s been so long since I’ve said my own name, I can’t find the sound of it on my tongue.
“What do they call you?” I retort.
“Lloyd.”
I don’t tell him he looks like Clark Gable.
“Curls.”
My hated hobo moniker. It calls to mind soft things. Sickly-sweet things. Like Shirley Temple and velvet ribbons. Who I was then, not who I am now.
“It suits you.”
I glare at him. “Unlike your mustache.”