Perseverance by Patrick Dearen

Author:Patrick Dearen [Dearen, Patrick]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781571682352
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Wild Horse Media Group LLC
Published: 2006-06-01T00:00:00+00:00

We must have been three or four sluggish hours out of Fort Worth when I felt the train slowing and a whistle sang out. I glanced at Delbert, who sat with lowered head.

“What’s up?” I asked, taking in the slit of light at his shoulder.

When he opened his eyes, he seemed troubled. He peeked out at the passing terrain, then tossed a cow chip at his friend. “Hey, Bright Eyes. Wake up.”

Jerry started and awoke. He rolled over and saw Delbert rising. “What the dickens you want, Delbert?” he asked drowsily.

“Get up—I think we’re about to pull into Sanders.”

“The devil you say.”

Delbert made the crack in the door wider, until there was a gale in his hair. As we joined him, he kept his unshaven face to the flooding light, and I found his eyes a little misty and dreamy. They seemed to focus on neither the sweet gums beside the track nor on the towering post oaks and elms on nearby knolls.

“You know,” he said quietly, as if to himself, “standing here like this with the wind in my face, tasting the cinders and my own sweat and wondering whether the bulls or wheels will get me first, it all makes me wonder if I really am where I’m supposed to be.”

Like his eyes, his words took me by surprise. “I don’t guess anybody can answer that for you,” I said.

He nodded. “I’ve been sitting here doing a lot of thinking, trying to figure out if I’m really doing anybody any good out here.” He sighed and pressed his hand against the door. “Sometimes I lay down in a stinking boxcar, sweaty and nasty, and get mad at myself when I try to figure out just what I’ve done today that really counts.”

I thought of my ill-fated trip back to the oil fields and understood. “Well, maybe we’re just going to have to start making things count a little more then.”

“Yeah.” He leaned out and looked up the track. “We can start by getting off this freight ’fore we hit Sanders. They got the meanest bulls in the country.”

We jumped.

A half-mile down the track, we came upon a trestle spanning an arid, sandy draw in a hollow thick with East Texas greenery: oaks, hickories, gums, sycamores, shoe-peg maples, and sassafras saplings, all interwoven jungle-like with mustang grape vines and rattan. The outskirts of the small town a few hundred yards distant were virtually obscured. Delbert stopped where the bleached bones of a rabbit marked the bed of the wash and looked at Jerry.

“As much as I hate to, you ugly bag of cow chips, I guess I’m gonna hafta ask you to go rustle us up some supper.”

Jerry grinned. “Yes, sir! What’ll it be today, filet mignon or rib eye steak?”

“I’d settle for a peanut butter and jelly sandwich,” I said.

“Now there’s a kid with style!” said Jerry.

“Style, the dickens,” mocked Delbert. “That’s pure class.”

As Jerry started up the opposite bank, he looked back over his shoulder. “Hey Delbert, ’member that watermelon patch we saw last time through? Betcha them boogers are ripe now.

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