We were supposed to be in school, but we were never where we said we'd be back then. Most times, we weren't quite sure where the hell we were. Stoned, dead broke, and bored with life, that day, we were walking the tracks, trying to hop a train, just looking for some trouble to get into. The small amount of money we'd pinched earlier was gone faster than it had been stolen. This was free entertainment.
There were four of us, running and leaping onto the back of the train, as we had done a hundred times, but this day, a train hat man came, exploding, out the back door, shouting, snarling. None of his snarls were intelligible, but we knew he wasn't wishing us a nice day. Panicked, jumping back off the slow moving train, we ran. The train hat man took chase. He was a big, dark, looming, son of a bitch with sunken cheeks, big bushy gray eyebrows, and a dark blue train jacket with metal buttons down the front.
Everything is bigger, surreal, when you're a stoned kid and the train hat man was a damned giant. If I had to hire someone to chase bums and teenage fuck ups off the train, I'd hire a guy like the train hat man, a permanently pissed-off giant with no particular qualms about banging some young skulls together just to see if they ring like hollow bells or crack like milk-filled coconuts.
Our dope-addled feet felt like ten stones were tied to each; we couldn't move fast enough. The train hat giant grabbed hold of Scott's jacket and started shaking him like a pit bull shaking the neighbors cat that had wandered into the yard. It was one of those stuffed winter jackets, easy to grab. Should have worn leather. Though, it was a wonder any of us survived those years, Scott had the least talent for survival of our band of misfits. Buck-toothed, gangly, six foot two and about a hundred knock-kneed pounds, he was quite the unlikely hero.
We looked back a few times, to be sure the train hat giant wasn't actually killing Scott, the poor, dumb fuck. But, we kept running. We were always running from something back then.
YOU ARE READING
juvenescence: tales of boyhood
Ficción GeneralThis is a collection of short stories and prose regarding the evanescence of childhood and the common confusion of the teenage years. I have many parts to add to this, childhood, though fleeting, had its share of tales and lessons.
