American Drifter

  Perhaps she had fled to another car.

  But, then, as he neared the seat, she sprang up from her hiding spot.

  She kept her voice low. “What happened?” she demanded, eyeing River in alarm. “Is everything all right? Your face!”

  He told her about the drunk outside the bathroom, omitting the fact that he’d nearly strangled the man.

  She shook her head in disgust. “Some people! They cannot handle the Carnaval season. They cannot handle themselves at all. He should be arrested.”

  “It’s all right—the conductor was furious with him.”

  “Your face,” she repeated. “Come here.”

  She took the towels from him and pressed the sheets to his face, gently covering the bruising flesh, and then laying the sheets along his jawline and holding them there. He looked into her eyes as she cared for him.

  “What? Why are you smiling? You’re hurt,” she chided.

  “I don’t feel a thing.”

  She actually blushed, looking down on him.

  Then she kissed him, gently—and swiftly. They were, after all, on the train.

  But as she held the paper towels to his face and laid her head back on his shoulder, she whispered to him, “Tomorrow … well, I will see that it doesn’t hurt at all.”

  “How will you do that?”

  “Distract you. I will distract you so thoroughly that … well, you will feel nothing.” She leaned closer for a moment, whispering against his ear, “Except for me.”

  He ran his fingers over her hair and eased back into the seat, smiling. His jaw did smart, but the wet towels felt good. And his mind was on the days to come, and that took away from any pain he might feel.

  The seat was hard beneath him; the train jostled ridiculously.

  But as it did so, he felt her beside him, and the train could have spun in circles for all he cared.

  * * *

  For a while, he stayed awake. As the train made one quick stop, he noticed a road sign.

  Natal. 80km.

  They would hold the course that far, explore through the day, and decide exactly where they wanted to be. Maybe they’d start off by heading to Punta Negra and try surfing, as Natal had suggested.

  He twisted and planted a light kiss on the top of her head. She made a little noise and snuggled closer against him.

  He started to fall asleep and struggled against it—he had grown afraid of sleep.

  Sleep brought dreams. And the dreams were never good.

  But his exhaustion, the movement of the train, were too much to resist. Eventually he slept.

  And as he had feared, he began to dream.

  The dreams always came with noise first—that whistling sound, the sound of the bombs coming.

  Then there would be the explosion as they hit the earth. A softer sound would follow—that of the earth falling back like rain upon the area the bombs had hit.

  Then there would be screaming—the cries of those who had been hurt. A commander’s voice would call out, urging the men to take cover, to regroup, to find the wounded.

  That night, he was down on the ground. He’d headed out from the safety of a wall to drag in a fellow soldier who’d been hit with shrapnel. It was hard going over the rough terrain, pulling a big man with his gear. But River got him behind the wall and was inching out again when there was another explosion.

  The wind shifted; black powder and earth and dust were whirling in the air as if they were all part of some man-made storm.

  He saw someone—someone coming through the haze. He could still hear men screaming and shouting, but in the midst of it he heard something else.

  Laughter. Innocent laughter. The kind of sweet and innocent laughter that belonged to a child, from a little girl’s lips.

  And there was the child. He could just make her out through the powder-mist clouding the earth and sky.

  She was with a woman. They didn’t know; they didn’t know they were walking right into a war zone. He tried to reach out—tried to find his voice and call out to them. But he was choking; powder was in his lungs.

  Then he felt as if another bomb went off, as if he was pitched forward.

  He woke as his head butted into the seat across from him.

  The train, he realized, had stopped.

  “We’re somewhere,” he said, “I’m not sure that it’s Natal yet. Rough stop. Are you all right?”

  He was speaking to no one. Natal wasn’t at his side.

  He halfway stood, looking for her. She’s gone to the restroom, he thought, or perhaps to the café car.

  A few people were gathering their things to disembark. A woman walked by as he searched for Natal—when she passed him, he could see outside. Maybe Natal had stepped down to the platform already to check out their circumstances. Maybe …

  Natal wasn’t on the platform.

  But the men in blue were.

  Three of them now. He saw the man in the blue suit who wore the blue hat, the man in the blue suit with the bald head, and now, another one too. This one had a tuft of blond hair and wore a black shirt beneath his jacket.

  They were talking to someone, he saw. He strained his eyes to see more clearly.

  It was the drunk. It was the wretched drunk he’d encountered outside the restroom. And he was pointing to the car where he and River had engaged in their confrontation.

  River swore softly beneath his breath and grabbed his backpack. Natal’s things were gone.

  Had she left him again? he wondered bleakly. Had she actually seen the fight and been afraid of what she must surely see now as his penchant for violence?

  No. He remembered her eyes, her face … the way she had looked at him.

  You will always find me, she had told him.

  And he would; he believed that with his whole heart.

  For the moment, though, he knew he had to get the hell away.

  Maybe Natal had seen them and warned him—but he hadn’t heard her. Maybe she had moved quickly, knowing full well that he could escape easier on his own and that they wouldn’t be after her. That had to be it; he was certain that she cared as much for him as he did for her. And she did have faith in him.

  The men in the suits were coming toward the train. River walked quickly, heading to the car behind the one he was in.

  People barely noticed him. Some were dozing. Some were reading papers and a few were playing electronic games on their phones or squinting and staring out the windows to see where they were.

  Looking out to the platform when he reached the next car, River saw that one of the men had already boarded.

  River kept hurrying through.

  In the next car he came across the sleepers. First—the cheap sleepers. He thought about finding an empty bunk and sliding into it.

  No.

  They would think to look there. Only idiots would refrain from checking the obvious and he was certain that these men, whoever they were, weren’t idiots. They were here—somehow, they had followed him here. How, he didn’t know. He’d used cash for the train tickets. He hadn’t seen them when he’d been at the station. He knew he hadn’t been followed.

  They were determined and thorough, he thought. They’d questioned cashiers at stations around the city. They had described him.

  That was the only explanation.

  The train lurched back into motion. The men were all aboard.

  He hurried to the rear of the sleeper car and entered the next; it was filled with compartments—real compartments, with doors that closed.

  River opened one; a woman saw him and screamed.

  He closed the door quickly.

  Even if one were open, River thought, the men would surely check each compartment, just as they’d check every bunk in the coach class.

  River kept moving. He had to pull hard to open the next door; it led into a container car. Boxes were piled high here; he had to maneuver to make his way through them. Seeing a clearer area at the end, he hurtled over one box to reach
it and then ran the remaining length of the car.

  He came to another car. There were more boxes.

  And crates.

  Crates filled with chickens.

  He didn’t mean to—he accidentally knocked over a crate.

  The chickens squawked in agitation; the sound of their distress was loud.

  River kept running, hoping he’d created a few obstacles for the men in blue suits.

  He had—but turning back he saw that, although they had been forced to slow down, they were still coming.

  And as he moved on, he heard one of the doors sliding open when he had barely made his way through the next door.

  They were right behind him; they were almost upon him.

  He began to run again, leaping over a box in his way, pressing past a sleeping conductor in the last of the cars.

  Then, he was at the end of the train.

  Night was turning to day—the first of the morning’s sun was just starting to appear on the horizon.

  River could see the track—and the forests that seemed to surround it now on either side. The train had left the last stop far behind and was chugging on toward the next. But …

  This was country. To each side of the track was an embankment—not roads, not cars, not hard pavement.

  It was ground … soft ground, rich with grass.

  The train had picked up speed; it was moving fast.

  River looked back. He could see the men.

  The men in blue suits.

  The first—the one with the hat—was in the lead.

  But the others were close behind him.

  Natal was in his life now. Life meant everything. Life meant … Natal.

  And he had to find her again—as he always would.

  As long as he wasn’t caught by the men in the blue suits.

  There was no choice.

  River stepped over the last car’s guardrail and held on for a moment, trying to judge the impact of his leap.

  Then he catapulted himself from the train, aiming for the grassy embankment to the side of the rails.

  He hit the earth hard, the wind knocked out of him. He didn’t know if he had broken anything or not; for one second, his entire body hurt. The next second, he could feel nothing.

  He didn’t move a muscle at first; he didn’t have to. Gravity took care of that for him. He was rolling … rolling and rolling until a tree stopped him, and the pain began in earnest.

  CHAPTER 18

  River didn’t know how long he lay in the ravine off the railroad tracks. It might have been minutes; it might have been hours.

  He thought he might have blacked out—he remembered searing pain that seemed to shoot through his entire body.

  But then he opened his eyes and when he did, the sky was blue, the sun was shining overhead, and he could hear birds chirping.

  Something about the sound of the birds seemed absurd.

  For a moment he lay perfectly still; he didn’t forget for a minute that he had jumped from the train because the men in blue were just about to reach him.

  And he remembered that Natal had been gone.

  You will find me again, she had told him once. You will always find me.

  Everything then seemed to be a dull ache—everything in his body, and his mind.

  She hadn’t left him—not really left him. He refused to believe it for a minute, no matter what doubts he might put in his head. She was gone because she knew that she was in no danger and that he could run much faster on his own.

  He could blink, he could roll his head. He stretched one arm out in front of him and then the other. He was sure he had massive bruises on his shoulders but it didn’t seem that he had broken any bones.

  He was more afraid of trying to get up—but he knew that he had to do so.

  He rolled first, slowly. He groaned with the effort—everything hurt. But his body obeyed his commands. He grasped a low-hanging branch to help himself to his feet, afraid that he would find that a leg was broken or that he’d torn a major muscle.

  He could stand. He breathed a sigh of relief. There was a hard-hitting pain in his left shoulder, but he figured he’d hit his left side first coming off the train—he was lucky his collarbone wasn’t broken in a zillion places and that bones weren’t sticking out of his body.

  He hurt, he was bruised—he was filthy. But he was in one piece and he was able to walk.

  Then, he panicked. His backpack wasn’t on his back.

  He looked around hurriedly and couldn’t find it. He had to have the pack—his gun was in it, a seond knife, and all his cash. It would be far too ironic to have saved the money by stabbing a man who had attacked him for it and then to have lost it to the men coming after him for justice or revenge.

  A slow, agonizing walk back up the little stretch from the ravine to the tracks proved rewarding; he found his pack. He clutched it and sat down for a minute and closed his eyes—just to be thankful. Then he opened them again.

  All he could see was the railroad tracks—and trees and brush forever. The going would be painful, he knew, but he had to get somewhere. His mouth was parched; he was covered with scratches and bruises, and he didn’t even want to take off his shirt and jacket or pants to find out just how badly. His clothing, he realized, was ripped to shreds.

  He needed to find a lake or a river. He needed water.

  He probably needed medical attention too, but that was too risky. If he could just get to a pharmacy, he’d be okay.

  And then, he could find his way back to Natal.

  It was easy enough to judge his position once he had his map out. If he headed southeast, he’d come to something like a town or a village because he’d be heading toward the water, a harbor, and probably in there somewhere, a beach. With any luck, there would be a river, a lake, or some kind of fresh water along the way. Or, he could follow the train tracks.

  But that seemed too obvious. If someone came looking for him, they’d assume he’d follow the tracks. And they’d assume he’d be heading north again—the direction the train had been going.

  He wouldn’t be going north. He’d be heading back to Rio—and the one place he was certain he’d find Natal, the Christ the Redeemer statue. He didn’t know which one of them would make it back to Rio first—he just knew that they would both go there.

  Leaning against a tree, he studied the terrain again. There seemed to be something of a foot trail that appeared to lead south almost parallel with the tracks and yet obscured by the trees. He started that way.

  He only made it about twenty minutes before he had to rest. He hadn’t broken any bones but he had messed up an ankle.

  River found a tree trunk to rest against. Listening to the birds chirping and the leaves rustling in the breeze. And there was something else.

  Water. The trickle of water.

  He had to be somewhere close to a stream.

  He listened intently then made it back to his feet, crying out softly when he first put weight on his left foot. The ankle seemed to scream in protest.

  He found a heavy branch to use as he hobbled in the direction the sound of the water came from.

  He reached the stream and looked up to the sky, thanking God for small favors. It rushed over rocks that appeared to be smooth as glass—fresh water. The grassy bank by it was slippery; he fell as he tried to ease himself down to shimmy toward the water. Before he knew it, he’d slid all the way down.

  But he hadn’t hurt himself again.

  Once there, he removed his boots and socks.

  His left ankle was painfully swollen. Badly twisted, he judged.

  He needed to stay off it.

  There was no way to do so.

  He tested the water and it was good and sweet and seemed incredibly pure. The stream was beautiful, rolling over the rocks, surrounded by trees … pristine.

  Natal would love it here, he thought.

  “And we will come back here—together,” he said out loud.

  Then he la
ughed softly. His voice sounded so odd—so out of time and place.

  His thirst quenched, he rolled up his torn and dirtied pants and cooled his feet and ankles in the stream. He sat back, allowing time for the water to make him feel that he’d done a little something to improve his lot. Then he realized that his face was probably filthy and grass-stained, and he twisted around to wash it the best he could; the water felt wonderful.

  At last, he got to his feet. He figured he’d follow the stream—at the least he’d have fresh water all day.

  He found another sturdy—if crooked—branch that he could use as a cane; it helped. It helped a great deal.

  He made his way along for another half hour.

  He prayed that the men in blue suits would not come then. He wouldn’t be capable of running.

  As the sun rose overhead, he began to tire. He’d found water—the true necessity—but with his ankle twisted, every movement was arduous.

  He thought again that if the men in blue came back, he was in serious trouble. But there was no sign of them.

  There was no sign of anyone at all.

  Toward the afternoon, he felt as if the world before him was beginning to grow wavy. He was hungry—it had been some time since he had really eaten—and his head was throbbing. By now, more than his ankle hurt—everything in his body seemed to be burning.

  He sat down by the stream again, drinking, wetting his face. His legs dangling into the water from a little rock ledge, he leaned back, closing his eyes.

  He thought he dreamed again at first—not about wars and bombs and dying men, but laughter.

  The laughter of a child.

  He opened his eyes. The sun was beginning to set. Looking up, at first he saw just rays of colorful light, and he had to blink against them.

  For a moment, in the glare, he saw a woman. The light dazzled around her.

  Angel, he thought. I’m dead at last.

  She was there in the light, and the child was at her side, and they beamed down at him with mischief in their eyes.

  A cloud moved in the sky or the sun shifted. The glare was gone. The sound of the laughter was real.

  He struggled up to an elbow. His head still hurt—the world was still blurred. But down the stream, there were children playing. They were real. A boy of about seven was hopping over worn stones in the stream. The little girl seemed to be about five—she was laughing and following her brother.