OCR Text |
Show 162 with his own gloom. At the end of a long line of gondolas filled with coal from the mines of West Virginia, they'd found one empty boxcar. As though the railroad had cooperated to make their escape easy, the boxcar door stood open just wide enough for the two of them to crawl inside. Sleep was impossible. The boxcar, designed to haul heavy loads, rode rough because it was empty. When Karl tried to lie down on the steel floor, he was bounced so hard he felt bruised. If he stood, his knees took such a jarring from the train's motion that they throbbed with spasms. Only squatting was barely tolerable, although his calf and thigh muscles grew sore and cramped. His mental agony was worse than his physical discomfort. Through the hours of darkness, Karl was tormented with images of Yulyona, of Charles Bonner's hands on her in places Karl had never imagined touching her -- not in his waking thoughts, at least, but only in the secrecy of dreams he couldn't control while he slept. He moaned out loud, the moans muffled by the clatter of the train. When the freight pulled in at Erie, Pennsylvania in the middle of the following morning, the snowfall had stopped. The railroad yard shone white in the sunlight, its steel rails, bright as silver, curving in parallel lines from the flatness of the open country behind them to the loading docks on the shores of Lake Erie. After Andy and Karl had lowered themselves from the boxcar without bungling into a railroad detective, Andy led Karl along the tracks, looking for a place to buy food. |