Rock Island Line by David Rhodes

Author:David Rhodes [Rhodes, David]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Milkweed Editions
Published: 2010-08-15T22:00:00+00:00

“Say, sorry to bother you, but could you tell me where Bettle Street is?”

“Three blocks ahead. It’s a one-way.”

“Thanks.”

The number Franklin had given him was the address of a large, low-lying building that offered only two doors, one very large and obviously a truck entrance and one small, for people. There were no windows anywhere. He pulled into the drive, up to the door, feeling quite inebriated with having succeeded in his ordeal and expected to be greeted with excitement. The small door opened far enough for a face to be thrust through it, then closed. The big overhead door swung back in two pieces. A man’s arm came into the opening and waved him forward. July drove in, the headlights of the truck illuminating thousands of boxes, both wooden and cardboard, stacked to the ceiling. When he could see through the mirrors that he’d cleared the door, he stopped.

“Keep going,” said a voice.

He went on several feet, then several yards.

“Far enough,” came the voice again and he stopped, cut the motor and lights and sat in a penumbra of exhaustion.

The door was pushed open. “OK. Let’s go,” said a harsh voice.

He climbed down onto a concrete floor.

“Here you are.” A bill was handed him by a large man with a shrunken face, with skin like white-and-pink scales. “Now run along.”

Once he was outside, the door was closed behind him and he heard it lock. He noticed that the sun was just coming up and looked down at his hand as he walked along the street, having forgotten that he was carrying the money. Fifty dollars. A lousy fifty bucks! he thought. Guys do what I just did all the time for a lousy fifty bucks! Those two guys back in Philly were going to make this run together—like they’d probably done how many times before—for twenty-five bucks apiece. July felt cheapened. He managed to flag down a cab and told the driver to take him to the nearest hotel, where he rented a room, had a six-pack of beer brought up to him and fell asleep before he could finish more than four. It was nearly dark again when he woke up and began looking into transportation back to Philadelphia.

Arriving by train at two a.m., he was reminded of how he’d come there years ago, small and lonely, an experience in a washroom in Cleveland hanging over him. He felt ashamed for himself. A hazy noise filled the station. Marginal people sat on the benches, neither looking at him nor away. He felt an urge to go home—back to Sharon Center, to stand in his father’s garage and let the feel of men come into him from the tools, watch the telephone wires cross the street to his house and the barn swallows line up as though waiting for a parade and old Mr. Stanton, blind as a toad, come picking his way from his yellow house a quarter-mile down the road, tap the elm tree at the edge

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