Love Ain't Nothing But Sex Misspelled by Ellison Harlan;

Author:Ellison, Harlan;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Open Road Media
Published: 2007-12-31T16:00:00+00:00

When they had licked the last of the weiners’ taste from their fingers, they settled back, and Cappy offered Ernie a cigarette. Nice kid, Ernie thought. Too bad.

“How come you’re riding the rods, kids like you?” Ernie asked. “There’s damned little of that done these days, even by old stiffs like me. Most kids today never even been on a train.”

Cappy looked at his wide hands, and did not reply. But surprisingly, Kitty’s face came up and she said, “My father. He didn’t want us to get married. So we ran away.”

“Why din’t he want you to get hitched?”

This time even she did not answer. She looked down at her hands, too. After a few seconds, she said, “Dad didn’t like Cappy. It was my fault.”

Cappy’s head came around sharply. “Your fault, hell! It was all my fault. If I’d been careful it never woulda—” He stopped abruptly.

Ernie’s eyebrows went up. “What’s the matter?”

The girl still did not raise her eyes, but she added simply, “I’m pregnant.”

Cappy raged at himself. “Oh he was stupid, her old man! You never heard nothin’ like it: Kitty’s gonna go have an abortion, and Kitty’s gonna go away to a convent, and Kitty’s this and Kitty’s that…like he was nuts or somethin’, y’know?”

Ernie nodded. This was a slightly different matter. He remembered Midge, and the child. But that had been a time before all this, a time he didn’t think about. A time before the white lightning and the bumming had turned him inside out. But these kids weren’t like him.

Oh, crap! he thought. Pull out of it, old son. These are just another couple of characters to roll. What they got, you get. Now forget all this other.

“Wanna drink?” Ernie pulling the pint of Sweet Lucy from his jacket pocket.

“Yeah. Now that you offer.” The answer came from the open door of the boxcar. From the man who had leaped in from the high bank outside, as the train had slowed on the grade.

Ernie stared at the man. He was big. Real big, with shoulders out to here, and hair all over him like a grizzly. Road gang, Ernie thought, staring at the great, pulpy muscles of the man’s arms and neck.

“You gonna give me a drink, fellah?” the big man asked again, taking a step into the boxcar.

Ernie hesitated a moment. This character could break him in half. “Sure,” he said, and lifted the pint to his own lips. He guzzled down three-quarters of the strong home-blend and proffered the remainder. The man stalked toward them, his big boots heavy on the wooden flooring. He took the bottle with obvious belligerence, and making sucking noises with his thick lips, drained it completely.

He threw back his head, closed his eyes, and belched ferociously. He belched again, and opening his eyes, threw the bottle out through the open door.

“Well, now,” he said, and reached into his pocket. “I didn’t know I was gonna have company in this box.”

“We’re going to Philadelphia,” Kitty said, pulling her skirt down around her legs all the more.

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