THUGLIT Issue Thirteen by Egan Kevin & Hall Tim & Richardson Travis & Garth Paul & Cebula Michael & Barrett Kate & Rouleau Bryan & Fitch Marc

Author:Egan, Kevin & Hall, Tim & Richardson, Travis & Garth, Paul & Cebula, Michael & Barrett, Kate & Rouleau, Bryan & Fitch, Marc [Egan, Kevin]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Thuglit Publishing
Published: 2014-08-31T04:00:00+00:00

Beau Jean gave me directions. He told me what time and what color clothes to wear, and what way to cradle the box of our shit so none of it dropped. He gave me a plastic watch from Wal-Mart so I could keep track for myself. It kept beeping at 3:13 pm for no reason, so I had to be gone from the house then, or at least away from Mom and Pops, or else they might ask where I got it. They didn't notice anything if it didn't make a noise.

When the night came, I did everything Beau Jean told me. I snuck out through my window and went straight to the hiding spot we picked out. I moved the car tire and tugged up our box of shit from the shallow hole we dug. Then I held it just so and started for the train yard.

I wasn't ever supposed to go in the train yard, I knew, especially not in the tar black part of night, which it was. People in the train yard get chopped in half, snap, just like that. That's what Pops did—he snapped his fingers, pop—when he told me about his buddy getting caught between two train cars. He said the guy's stomach came out all over the place because two trains came together and just smashed his middle while he stood there. Even after he got smashed he kept trying to push the one train off but he couldn't of course, because he was almost dead, but also because not even God could move a train if it trapped Him. They're too big and they come on slow so you don't know you're trapped until you are, and then your ribcage pops like a balloon.

I didn't want my ribcage to pop but I didn't want to disappoint Beau Jean neither, so I sucked it up and slipped under the fence.

There was a lot more light than you might think would be in a sleeping train yard. They had gigantic white lights burning, sort of like the long lights in halls at school but bigger and more like x-rays. I thought they had to see my bones. But I did just like Beau Jean told me and stayed flattened up against the fence until I got to the way far end, away from the bridge and the main part of the yard where things still breathed and squealed even in the middle of the night. At the dark end, they stash all the cars too ugly to go out and do their job. It's everything marked up with too much graffiti, or so rusted the wheels are going to spin off and kill all the cows in the middle of nowhere.

I found the two guys Beau Jean told me would be there. They were smoking cigarettes in between two cars. I put our box of shit down so they couldn't just grab it, and stepped out so they could see.

"What the fuck is a