Read Online Here at the End of the World We Learn to Dance by Lloyd Jones - Free Book Online

they discovered the station another two hundred yards away. It was too far. They wouldn’t make it. That’s when Louise saw the railway jigger.
    A year ago, Billy Pohl had taken her for a joyride at night on a jigger. Billy, who had introduced her in to the ways of silence, had wanted to show her the thick comforting silence of the countryside at night. At a certain point Billy had let the lever go and they had rolled through the darkness, the two of them, sitting side by side on the back, trailing their feet, shoulders touching, and Billy quoting to her from the Quaker Book of Discipline , George Fox’s injunction to ‘walk cheerfully over the Earth, ministering to that of God in every person.’
    She remembered to release the brake and to raise the arm. She could barely lift it—when she did the front wheels of the jigger creaked slowly forward. The shouting grew louder. Now Schmidt leapt to. Together they worked the lever until they began to build up speed. They were fifty yards north of where they started, and gathering speed, when the mob arrived. Bottles were thrown after them. But none of the mob gave chase. A number of them were railwaymen who knew you couldn’t outrun a jigger.
    They passed the backyards of houses. Dogs barked from their kennels. And where the tracks came out in farmland a cow burst from the fence line. The lever was effortless now. There was no resistance whatsoever and Louise was able to do it on her own. Schmidt sat down to rest in a muddle of sweat and confusion. Once the lights of a farmhouse came on and he jumped up to help with the lever. At Jackson’s Crossing she pulled on the brake. As they eased to walking pace, she saw Schmidt look warily around at the shadows. She told him not to worry. She knew a place that was safe and where they would never find him.
    They tried to push the jigger off the tracks but lacked the strength. So they left it as it was, abandoned between a herd of heifers and sheep. Under early evening skies they crossed a paddock on the seaward side of the road. Near the bluffs they heard the gratifying sound of the sea surging in at the rocks. It was pitch black in the nikaus. They had to push ahead of themselves, blindly feeling in the dark for the lighter built trees. Once when she told him not to worry—just in case he was—that no one would ever find them, she heard him say, ‘I can well believe that.’
    They came out at a different place to where she had scampered down with Billy Pohl and Henry Graham. In the dark it was rougher going. Schmidt hurt himself, not badly, but enough for him to forget the mob and raise his voice in anger. They crunched along the beach. ‘This is ridiculous,’ she heard him say. ‘I mean, it’s not as if I’m German.’ And further on, ‘I’ve never been to bloody Germany.’ And more irritably, ‘Just where the hell are we, Louise?’
    She was shocked when she saw the others. Only three days had passed but in the uneven light of the cave Billy Pohl and Henry Graham looked like they had been marooned for weeks. They hadn’t shaved. Their faces looked strained. They were relieved to see her, though when they saw Schmidt they leapt up. Billy Pohl was first to speak. ‘Louise, just who the hell is this?’
    She told them what had happened. Their going out for lemonade. And how the day had suddenly turned on them. Their escape on the jigger pleased Billy especially.
    But she also felt their resentment. Where had she been all this time? Why hadn’t she brought them food? Henry wanted to know if she had spoken with his parents. What about Tom Williams? Had he given her any news to pass on? Had she remembered to bring tea?
    She said, ‘I wasn’t thinking of tea when we left the house, Henry.’
    She walked to the mouth of the cave and stared at the moonlight on the water. Now that they had stopped running she started to notice the night