Valknut: The Binding (2 page)

“No, no—there was this old fellow with one
eye and wild pink hair. Well, not pink. It was faded red, almost
white. Anyway, this guy was going to help me find my dad—” She
hesitated. Babbling wouldn’t convince him of her sobriety. “Well,
it’s a long story.”

“We’ve got time. This train doesn’t stop
again ’til Minneapolis.”

“Minneapolis!” She gaped at him. “But my
classes start tomorrow! I’ll never make it back on time.”

She leaned her head out the door. Maybe she
could still jump off. She would only have a few miles to walk
back.

“Whoa, there.” Junkyard snagged a belt loop
and hauled her back. “Don’t even think about jumping. Try it and
you’ll lose more than a little skin. Train’s going near sixty by
now.”

Lennie watched corn blur by. He was right.
After postponing college for years to support her mother, she was
going to screw up her first semester. She groaned. “How the hell am
I going to get back? I left my purse locked in the car. I don’t
even have my cell phone.”

Not that there was anyone she could call for
help. Not anymore. She thought of her mother and swallowed hard
against the sudden ache in her throat.

Junkyard shrugged. “I suppose you’ll get back
the same way you’re getting there.”

“Not quite the same. I’ll never try
to catch a moving train again.” She slumped against the doorframe.
What a mess. And all for nothing—the one-eyed man had vanished as
if he never existed.

Dejected, she stared out the door, watching
the miles pile up behind her. The cornfield had ended, and a
half-mile of fence strobed by. Then a farmstead swung into view.
She smiled at the triangular pig shelters that so delighted her as
a child. “Look, Daddy!” she used to squeal from the back seat of
the old Ford station wagon. “That farmer is so nice, he’s given
each pig his own house!”

Her father would do a lousy imitation of
Porky Pig thanking the kindly farmer, and then bellow his huge
belly laugh. Her mother would smile indulgently at the well-worn
joke, knitting needles clicking at an afghan that never seemed to
get any longer.

That was before he had deserted them. Before
her mother had begun to drink herself to death.

That ache in her throat wasn’t going away.
She blinked back tears and glanced at Junkyard. He had resumed
staring out the door as if she weren’t there. What sort of man
would leave his family to follow such a dirty, uncomfortable
life?

She dug into her back pocket and pulled out a
sealed plastic bag containing a faded photograph of her father,
taken during their last family fishing trip. He stood at a
lakeshore, extending a small walleye toward the camera. His face
looked plumply middle-class and happy. He had taught her to bait
her own hook during that trip. She had felt so proud. And he had
taken her swimming, throwing her high into the air, a fountain of
giggling girl rising in the bright sun to plunge, bubbling, to the
sandy lake bottom.

She couldn’t reconcile that image with the
man she had grown to hate.

Junkyard was studying her when she looked up.
She flushed, wondering what he saw. Probably nothing complimentary.
She pushed back the tangle of caramel brown hair that was always
falling in her face and met his eyes. “I know what you’re
thinking.”

He raised an eyebrow and the corner of his
mouth twitched. “Oh?”

She plunged ahead. “You’re thinking, what’s
this scrawny, defenseless, fool of a woman doing riding the rails?
Does she think she’s some kind of rail kid?”

“Well, something like that. You don’t exactly
look the part.”

She bristled at first, but decided to take it
as a compliment. “Thanks. And I have no intention of taking up the
hobo lifestyle. This was all a big mistake. I was only going to...I
just wanted to...uh.”

There was no sensible explanation for jumping
onto a moving train. She wished she had never brought it up. To her
relief, Junkyard didn’t comment. Instead, he eyed the photograph in
her hand. “That your father?”

She nodded and handed it to him. “His name’s
Jarvis Cook.”

He smoothed the plastic bag to get a better
look. After a moment, he shook his head and handed it back.
“Picture’s pretty old. A man could change a lot in that time.”

“It’s the most recent picture I could find.
It was in my mother’s things, along with a letter he wrote the day
he left.” She looked at the photograph again and wondered what
sorts of lines life had put on her father’s face, whether his
transience had made him thin, whether his laugh was still the same.
“The letter said he was taking the iron road, like his father
before him. My mom never showed it to me. I think she was afraid
I’d follow him. He’s been gone ten years.”

Junkyard whistled. “Long time. How do you
know he’s still out there?”

“I don’t. But I...”

Lennie hesitated, uncomfortable discussing
her life with anyone, especially strangers. Junkyard didn’t push.
He seemed content to wait, unlike that school counselor she had
been forced to see when her anger got away from her in middle
school. She had despised the counselor’s by-the-clock sincerity and
never told him anything. But somehow she found herself wanting to
talk to Junkyard.

“For all I know, he died under a piece of
cardboard ten years ago. But there’s a chance he’s alive, so I have
to try to find him. It sounds corny, but we were so happy together.
I know he loved me. At least, I thought he did. And it seemed like
he loved Mom. But then he left and everything fell apart. Why would
he do that? How could he leave us like that? My mother...”

The words still came with difficulty. She
pressed her lips together, fighting the tightness building in her
chest. Junkyard looked away until she began to speak again. Her
voice sounded bitter in her ears. “My mother died a few weeks ago.
She’s been dying by degrees for years. I think she started to die
the day he left, like...like he took some piece of her with him.
Pulled the plug and all the life started draining away. How could
he do that to her?”

How could he do that to 
me
? But
she couldn’t say that out loud.

She turned on Junkyard. “And you! Do you ever
consider what you’re doing to the people you left behind? How much
they worry? All the pain and loneliness? How can you live with
yourself?”

He jerked as if struck and his face went
blank. Lennie sucked in her breath. Good going, big mouth—tear into
the guy you’ll be trapped with for hours. Tensing, she waited to
see what he would do.

He answered in a low voice. “There is no one
else.”

“Oh.” She stared at him stupidly. “Oh. I’m so
sorry. I’m such an idiot. I shouldn’t have assumed—”

Anything else she might have said was lost
when the boxcar lurched, throwing her against the roll of packing
paper. The floor shook wildly. Bits of grain and gravel bounced and
skittered across the floor. She clung to the paper roll, which
didn’t feel like a paper roll, but she was too jounced to worry
about it. She closed her eyes tight, certain the train was about to
derail. Junkyard shook her arm and she cracked an eye open, reading
his lips to understand him over the din. Rough track, he said. It
felt more like a major earthquake.

She tried to relax, but her bones bounced in
her skin, awakening every strain and bruise. Junkyard swayed
easily, like a sailor rolling with the waves. She envied him. The
Twinkie was starting to rest uneasy in her stomach.

When the track eventually smoothed enough so
she could raise her voice above the noise, she shouted, “Does that
happen often?”

“Yes,” he said, “only sometimes worse.”

Lennie looked for—hoped for—a grin, but his
expression didn’t change.

“Oh, man,” she groaned, still clinging to the
packing paper. “I’ve gotta get off this train. Are you sure it
doesn’t stop before Minneapolis?”

Now Junkyard did grin, but in sympathy.
“Afraid not. It’s a hotshot with right-of-way clear through.
Unfortunately, this old boxcar’s a rattler, but it was the only one
that wasn’t locked.”

Lennie swallowed hard. “If I get my hands on
that one-eyed hobo, I’ll...”

She wasn’t sure what she’d do. Kick him in
the shins, maybe. She sure wouldn’t be taking his advice.

“Funny about that,” Junkyard said. “I’ve been
traveling the rails for nearly a year now, and I know a lot of the
full-time ’bos that ride this Midwest route. Don’t remember any
with pink hair. Did you catch his name?”

“It’s strange. He told me, but somehow I
can’t remember it. I think it was something like Rattlin’ Red,
or—”

The roll of paper bucked underneath her,
nearly knocking her on her face. She thought they’d hit another
patch of bad track until she heard a muffled shout. “Hot dog! I
knew it! I knew it was him!”

She scrambled back from the roll as it came
to life. It inched and flopped and began to unroll in place. Yards
of paper bunched up against her until a hobo finally appeared.
Unlike the one-eyed man with his road-wise manner, or Junkyard, who
seemed like a regular working guy, this hobo looked the
romanticized stereotype. He wore a shapeless felt hat and an old,
dark suit patched with squares cut from brightly colored bandanas.
With two-day’s growth on his chin, dirt smudges on his face, and
overlarge shoes, he only needed a red ball on his nose to pass as a
circus clown.

As soon as he was free of the paper, he began
jumping and jigging around the boxcar, yodeling like a bad cowboy
singer. Suddenly the car swayed and he stumbled, teetering in the
doorway. Lennie lunged to pull him in, but he swung around and
staggered back into the car before she could touch him.

“He’s crazy!” she yelled. “We’ve got to stop
him before he kills himself!”

Junkyard watched the older hobo, a wide grin
stretching his face. At first, Lennie thought he hadn’t heard her
over the yodeling, which out-decibeled even the train noise, but he
shook his head. “Naw, that’s just Jungle Jim.” He watched the comic
figure rebound off the far wall and laughed. “Hey, Jim! Why don’t
you sit before you throw yourself off the train.”

Jungle Jim didn’t seem to hear. “I’s right!”
he shouted, doing a touchdown dance. “I’s right, wasn’t I? It was
Ramblin’ Red! Old One-Eye, himself. No doubt about it!!”

Junkyard reached up and tugged on Jungle
Jim’s arm. “Can’t say I know who you’re talking about, Jim,” he
said, winking at Lennie. “But why don’t you grab a piece of floor
and tell us about it.”

Jungle Jim stopped dancing and stared at
Junkyard as though he hadn’t noticed him until that moment. “Well,
whaddaya know! Hi there, Dougie. Here we are, on the same
train—imagine that! There I was, all rolled up in that paper,
sweatin’ and about to suffercate, all for nothin’. It was no one
but you and that girl.” He paused, panting a little, and nodded at
Lennie. “Hello, Missy. It was just you two all along! I could of
been airin’ out by the door, watching the scenery go by, doggone
it!”

He shook his head, his face drooping in
exaggerated sadness. Then he brightened and plunked down on the
floor next to Lennie. The odor of stale sweat wafted over her,
making her wish Jungle Jim had kept dancing, preferably on the
other side of the car. She edged closer to the door.

“Don’t worry,” Junkyard said,
misunderstanding her reaction, “Jungle Jim’s as safe as a puppy. A
big, flea-bitten puppy with a bit of mange. Eh, Jim?”

Jungle Jim took off his hat and ran fingers
through a thinning patch of woolly, brown hair. “That’s right,
Missy, don’t you worry about me. It’s ol’ One-Eye you should be
worryin’ about.”

“Ramblin’ Red didn’t seem dangerous to me,”
Lennie said, though that wasn’t exactly true. More that he didn’t
seem to have harmful intent. “Is he some kind of criminal?”

Jungle Jim tipped back his head and laughed,
kicking his legs like a little kid with the giggles. Lennie
couldn’t help but smile.

“No, no,” he gasped. “Not a criminal.
Ramblin’ Red is outside the law. Some say he’s outside humankind,
but I don’t know nothin’ about that.” He pulled a filthy
handkerchief from his pocket and dabbed his eyes.

“But I do know one thing,” he added, suddenly
serious, his eyes clear and locked on hers. “He wouldn’t of brought
you to us for no reason. I’m not too sure I want that kind of
attention from ol’ One-Eye.”

The comic hobo looked ridiculous and was
obviously a little simple, but something about the way he spoke
those words sent a chill through Lennie. “Why? Who is he? What’s he
done?”

“Well, now, those are mighty big questions,
Missy. Bigger’n you know. See, Ramblin’ Red’s been around for at
least a hunnerd years. He always seems to show up when somethin’
big is goin’ on. They say he was there at the St. Francis Church
Fire of ’42. They say he was there before that, at the Wellington
Avalanche of 1910. Why, they say he showed up as long ago as the
Pullman Riots, an’ that was all the way back in 1894.”

Jungle Jim stopped talking and grew still. He
cocked his head and stared into the corner of the boxcar as though
he heard something far away. Lennie couldn’t say how it happened or
why, but he changed somehow, though he hadn’t shifted a muscle. His
dopey smile became serene, almost beautiful. Lines of wisdom parted
the middle-aged looseness of his face. His eyes closed and, in a
sing-song voice, he began to recite.

      
An’
the black bird o’ sorrow

      
lay
his blue eye upon you

               
an’
you fall

               
an’
you fall

               
an’
no one catches you

                           
at
all...

He pulled his knees to his chin, hugged his
legs, and began to rock forward and backward, humming to himself.
Lennie didn’t know what to think. She looked at Junkyard, who
shrugged.