Billy shifts again. Tugs my sleeve. “I’m hungry.”
If we eat, we’d have to share. If not, I could spin a story, tug on Lloyd’s heartstrings. Billy’s used to hunger, but I bet Lloyd isn’t. He could take that back to his readers.
But Billy dives into his bindle, pulling out meat and bread with a flourish, like he’s a tuxedoed waiter in a Busby Berkeley movie instead of a scruffy kid in too-short pants. He tears off a hunk of meat and stuffs it in his mouth.
Inside, I cringe, but I keep my voice steady when I turn to Lloyd. “Join us. Hobos share when they can.”
“You didn’t back there.” He jerks his head at the open door. At the men we left behind. To him, we’re nothing but a couple of grifters, little better than thieves.
“Sorry, Rosie,” Billy mumbles. “Forgot to share.”
I close my eyes. Billy revealed our treasure and my real name in one fell swoop.
“It’s all right,” I tell him, and then mutter in Lloyd’s direction, “We haven’t eaten since yesterday.”
Billy swallows. “No, I ate, remember? There was a potato left in the fire at the jungle before this one. You gave it to me this morning.”
Now Lloyd’ll think I’m soft. Why can’t he just tell the truth in his blasted paper?
I divide the food into threes, but Lloyd puts a hand on my arm. It’s warm, his touch gentle. “I’ve eaten.”
I don’t look at his gray-blue eyes when I force a piece of bread at him. “You don’t know when you will again.”
Darkness envelops us as we climb higher into the night. Billy answers all of Lloyd’s questions, elaborating on the old stories. I only correct him when he fibs outright. Lloyd must know some kind of reporter shorthand so he can scrawl in the dark. He just lets Billy talk.
No one just lets Billy talk.
I turn my smile to the open door. The cold October wind gets colder, biting through the thick knit of my sweater — the one Mama made for Dad last Christmas. The din of the wheels on the tracks has the rhythm of a rope-skipping rhyme.
It builds the same kind of anticipation in me — that I’ll make it to the end. That maybe something magical will happen if I do. Perhaps it’s Lloyd’s suggestion that talking to him could change my circumstances, but I’m starting to hope we’ll find a place where I can stop moving.
“My aunt runs a boardinghouse in Ballard,” Lloyd says. It takes me a second to realize he’s talking to me.
“That near Seattle?” I ask. I try to sound casual. Like maybe I’ll get a job. Like maybe I can afford a boardinghouse.
“It’s in Seattle.” Lloyd chuckles and I want to smack him. Like a girl from Nebraska would know that. “It’s a neighborhood. She rents out mostly to fishermen. Scandinavians. She says it’s . . . it’s a hard life.”
“Sounds like the jungle.”
“She’s getting overworked,” he says. “Arthritis. She asked my father last time they spoke if he knew of someone who might help her run the place. Keep it clean, do the shopping and the cooking. It’s not much, only room and board.”
The thoughts stagger into my mind and I grasp at them. His aunt. Boardinghouse. Looking to hire help. It breathes life into that little spark of hope.
I lean toward him. “What are you saying?”
With a hollow whoosh, we’re sucked into a profound darkness. The noise of the train is magnified, ringing back at us from all directions, like living inside the engine itself.
Billy wraps himself around me.
“It’s a tunnel!” I shout, trying to disentangle him. He’s been through tunnels before. They terrify him. I lean farther over, hoping Lloyd can hear me too. “We’ll be out soon!”
But we’re not. The train slows, still going up the mountain, but we’re inside it. The air thickens with smoke and soot.
I reach into my back pocket for my bandanna. “Cover your face!” I shout to Lloyd. He scrambles beside us. I’m sure he has a handkerchief. He’s just the type. I wonder if it’s monogrammed. “Breathe through your bandanna!” I call into Billy’s ear.
He lets go of me long enough to search for it, his movements getting more and more frantic. It’s like a tunnel in a nightmare, deceitful and never-ending.
“I don’t know where it is!” Billy screams. He’s panicking, his little lungs like bellows beneath my hand.
I pat him down, searching his pockets, feeling through his bindle, fingers stumbling.
“Here!” I shove my bandanna over his nose as I crawl around him, finding dirt and sawdust, the paper-thin skins of onions that must have filled the boxcar before, the slick leather of Lloyd’s shoe.
Lloyd’s hand wraps around my wrist and drags me toward him. I pull back, but I’m off balance and I fall into his lap, a tangle of limbs and humiliation. I sit up quick and haul off to punch him when he covers my mouth with his handkerchief.
It smells like sandalwood. Like home.