Read Online The Joy of Killing by Harry MacLean - Free Book Online Page B

and the train began to slow. The carriage jerkedand slowed further. Maybe the rails ahead were torn up. What if the train pitched to one side and fell down into the water? We’d all drown. I could really use a weed. I looked over at my old seat; the pack of Luckies was sitting on top of the sack with the dirty magazine, like someone had helped themselves. Which meant the Zippo could be gone. I glanced up the aisle—no sign of her. The train jerked again, the brakes squealed, and we slowed almost to a stop. Still no one stirred. I zipped myself up and stepped across the aisle, found the lone weed and the Zippo on the seat, just where I’d left them. A long time ago, it seemed. Before the girl. I stuck the Luckies in the sack and glanced at the cover of the magazine: a brunette in panties and bra, looking over her shoulder at me. I made my way to the back of the car. The crumpled forms on the seat were fast asleep, unbothered by the screeching of metal on metal, by the fact that we hung suspended in the air over a dark wide river. I punched the button on the door, it hissed and slid open. I walked a few steps onto the metal platform and into the cold night air. The wooden ties stuck out only a few feet beyond the tracks; the struts of the bridge itself were made of wood. Metal against wood. Two steps and I was off the train; another and I was in the air. The train jerked to a complete stop, knocking me back into the door. I leaned out and looked ahead; the entire train was on the bridge; I saw the struts beneath us crumpling like toothpicks from the steel weight. At the first cracking, I would jump free from the train, fold up into a cannonball, and spin down. Praying to miss a boat.
    On the other side of the river were the lights of a small town, huddled on the banks. Behind us, blackness. I stuck the Luckybetween my lips, clinked open the Zippo, cupped my hand around it, and struck the wheel with my thumb. The flame bent toward me. The first pull burnt my lungs. The smoke swirled off into the stars. I held the cigarette between thumb and forefinger and waited for the cracking sounds beneath me. I took another drag. The door hissed behind me, and I felt a presence.
    â€œHi.”
    It was the girl. She was taller than I thought.
    â€œWhat are you doing out here?” she asked. Before I could answer, she glanced down at the river and asked, “Are you going to jump?”
    â€œNo,” I said.
    â€œWhy are we stopped?”
    I shrugged. I felt a blast of desire. My hand rose and touched her neck. I leaned in to kiss her and felt the heat from her lips. After a few seconds, she pulled back. She was trembling. Her eyes held onto me. The sadness was gone and something else was there.
    I’ve never been able to put words to that look, and I’m not doing much better now. I can say the moment expanded into hours, yet lasted only a second. In her eyes, beyond the beauty and the heat, beyond the sadness, was a need so deep it held me fast in place. There was for an instant a communion of trust and belief, of gaining freedom from some unseen devils. Her eyes were an invitation. Her trembling hand touched mine. I willed my hand to turn and encompass it and hold it tightly. Instead I reached for the railing. I glanced away for a second, at the lights on the far edge of the river.
    I couldn’t have understood it at the time, I think now, as the keys strike the paper. She did, though. She saw it. She had made an offering, and I had fled. But, on my behalf, I have to say giving into her eyes felt scarier than jumping off the platform into the river.
    I feel it now, in my fingertips, her trembling, and I believe it is spreading into the rods and the keys, for the letters are smudged and uneven. I lift my hands, hold them in the air, then seek to force them down onto the keys to continue banging out the story and the scene as if I had grasped her hand and gone with her, wherever she led.
    There is no sound, I