Luke had been sitting forward. At that single word, he put his head back against the boxcar wall and closed his eyes.
Ten minutes or so later, Train 9956 gave a hard jerk that ran through the cars—there were now an even one hundred—like a shudder. The trainyard began to roll past, slowly at first, then picking up speed. The shadow of a signal tower ran across the floor of the boxcar, and then another shadow appeared. A man-shadow. A grease-spotted paper bag flew into the car and landed on the floor.
He didn’t see Mattie, only heard him: “Good luck, outlaw.” Then the shadow was gone.
Luke crawled out of his hiding place so fast he cracked the good-ear side of his head on the housing of a riding lawnmower. He didn’t even notice. Heaven was in that bag. He could smell it.
Heaven turned out to be a cheese-and-sausage biscuit, a Hostess Fruit Pie, and a bottle of Carolina Sweetheart Spring Water. Luke had to use all his willpower to keep from drinking the whole sixteen-ounce bottle of water at a single go. He left a quarter of it, set it down, then snatched it up again and screwed on the cap. He thought if the train took a sudden yaw and it spilled, he would go insane. He gobbled the sausage biscuit in five snatching bites and chased it with another big swallow of water. He licked the grease from his palm, then took the water and the Hostess pie and crept back into his nest. For the first time since riding down the river in the S.S. Pokey and looking up at the stars, he felt that his life might be worth living. And although he did not exactly believe in God, having found the evidence against just slightly stronger than the evidence for, he prayed anyway, but not for himself. He prayed for the highly hypothetical higher power to bless the man who had called him outlaw and thrown that brown bag into the boxcar.
24
With his belly full, he felt like dozing again, but forced himself to stay awake.
Train’s gonna stop in Georgia, then at Tampa, and finish up its run in Miami, Mattie had said. If people are looking for you, they’ll be looking in all those places. But the next place it stops is just a shit-splat on the map.
There might be people watching for him even in a little town, but Luke had no intention of going on to Tampa and Miami. Getting lost in a large population had its attractions, but there were too many cops in big cities, and by now all of them probably had a photo of the boy suspected of killing his parents. Besides, logic told him he could only run so long. That Mattie hadn’t turned him in had been a fantastic stroke of good fortune; to count on another would be idiotic.
Luke thought he might have one high card in his hand. The paring knife Maureen had left under his mattress had disappeared somewhere along the way, but he still had the flash drive. He had no idea what was on it, for all he knew nothing but a rambling, guilt-ridden confession that would sound like gibberish, stuff about the baby she’d given away, maybe. On the other hand, it might be proof. Documents.
At last the train began to slow again. Luke went to the door, held it to keep his balance, and leaned out. He saw a lot of trees, a two-lane blacktop road, then the backs of houses and buildings. The train passed a signal: yellow. This might be the approach to the shit-splat Mattie had told him about; it might just be a slowdown while his train waited for another to clear the tracks somewhere up ahead. That might actually be better for him, because if there was a concerned uncle waiting for him at the next stop, he’d be at the depot. Up ahead he could see warehouses with glittering metal roofs. Beyond the warehouses was the two-lane road, and beyond the road were more trees.
Your mission, he told himself, is to get off this train and into those trees as fast as you can. And remember to hit the ground running so you don’t face-plant in the cinders.
He began to sway back and forth, still holding the door, lips pressed together in a thin stress-line of concentration. It was the stop Mattie had told him about, because now he