Читать книгу Train 653 - Angela Yvette Thurman - Страница 8

Chapter 4

Michigan was not the place for Sydney. No matter how he tried to distance himself from everyone, they always seemed to find him. Not only did the men on the yard hate him, everyone in town also treated him like shit. Finally he had reached his boiling point and stood up to the biggest man on the yard to take him down. After getting his ass beat and thrown around like a rag doll, he took a deep breath and tackled Henry George to the ground and kept giving him blows to the side of his head until he lay motionless. After that day, no one bothered him again, which caused him to become the king of the yard. It had gotten to a point that they were afraid to look him in his eyes. Sydney liked the feeling so much because his name had traveled through the town. Women started to find him desirable and threw themselves at him; some of them gave him money and gifts just to be with him.

Barbara was the one he had his eyes on. She worked the night shift in her family’s diner down the street. She saw how the other women were throwing themselves at him, and she also knew that he killed a man in a fight, so she stayed clear of him. He offered to buy her things if she would have him, but she rejected him time after time. Her mother tried to convince her to go out with him even though she knew that she did not like him. Every time he came into the diner, her mother would make her serve him, which she hated, but she did it. No matter how mean she was to him, he would leave her a small tip, which she did not accept.

One night as she gathered her belongings at the end of her shift, he noticed that her coat was worn, and it was too small. The next day he went to the diner to talk to her mother, and he gave her some money and told her to order Barbara a coat from The Sears & Roebuck Catalog, making sure that she did not let her know that it was from him.

For several weeks, he stayed away from the diner, thinking that eventually she would ask one of the men about him. He was correct in doing so. Charlie told him that the cute little waitress had asked about him. Sydney did not say anything, he just continued shoveling coal into the furnace. As he worked, he thought about Barbara. He wanted her now, more than ever before.

The train whistle snapped him back to reality. When he looked up, he saw that he had missed the only break they were given before their shift change. He had worked at the same fast pace all night that when his shift was over, he had cleared his mound of coal.

Instead of him going to his tent, he rented a room across the street so he could take a bath and go to the diner to see Barbara. When he got to the diner, she was nowhere to be found. Her mother informed him that she had moved to Kansas to help her sister with her new babies, and he became heartbroken.

Olivia, one of the many women who were after him, overheard their conversation, and she made her way to him and suggested that later in the evening, he should stop by to have a drink. He was so lonely that he took her up on offer, but he told her that he wanted her now, so they walked to his room down the street. He took two glasses off the table and poured them both a shot of whiskey. Before undressing her, he told her that she was there for only one thing, and when he was finished with her, he told her to get dressed and get out.

Olivia did not like his attitude toward her, especially after she had done things to him that a Christian woman would only do to her husband. She took her time putting on her stockings, so he grabbed her by her arm and forced her out of his room, and he threw her clothes out the door. She picked up her things and ran down the hall, screaming.

Suddenly, there was loud pounding on his door—it was Joe Coleman, the landlord who live on the same floor. He asked Sydney what the hell was going on. He told him that he was not running a whore house, and if he wanted to continue renting there, he would have to take his whores somewhere else. Sydney had been drinking a lot, and he did not want to hear that bullshit from Joe because the woman whom he loved was gone, and he just fucked the town whore. Either way, he was in a very low place in his life.

Life had been very challenging for him because of his good looks. He felt that he deserved more. He began to drink a lot of whiskey and not show up for work. Sydney felt the need to explore life away from the railyard. He wanted to travel, but joining the army was not an option for him, so he decided to stow away on one of the trains heading west. The ride was long and hot, and he realized that he had made a big mistake traveling without a plan.

Two days into his journey, several hobos jumped into the railcar he was sleeping in and demanded that he give them his money. At the time he had $600 rolled up in a sock in his back pocket. He told them that he was a poor beggar, and he pleaded for mercy. The men beat him and searched his bags and his pockets and found the cash. After they had robbed him, they threw him off the train, and he rolled down a steep hill into a shallow pond.

When he was able to get himself out of the water, he saw that the train was long gone, but he ran alongside the tracks, knowing that it was useless. Finally he gave up and sat on a tree stomp. All that he owned was gone except his switch blade. The sun was just starting to come up when he heard the sound of steel hitting the tracks. He saw the smoke and got to his feet, and he ran as fast as he could to jump aboard the train. It was a successful jump, and he made a promise to himself that he would find those bastards that robbed him and kill them one by one.