California Poppy

They left the Square and found the tracks along the Embarcadero and followed them north under the St. Adilene overpass to the railyard. They looked for bulls and aware of the surveillance cameras crouched down and moved between long lines of freight trains to a center track and climbed into a boxcar.

It was still dark when the train passed west of Los Angeles to Terminal Island near Long Beach. They rolled up their sleeping bags and as the train slowed they jumped. Past dawn through the smog across highways and through working class neighborhoods past warehouses and gasoline terminals they walked miles north and crossed a half dozen tracks where two lines of freight trains sat waiting, their diesel engines venting double columns of black smoke.

Which one, he asked.

GATX.

It's not on the crew change list.

Galveston, Texas. That means Houston. From there we'll find a ride to New Orleans.

They crouched in the bushes, looking for bulls or cops of any kind. A long shrill whistle blast and the train closest to came to life, its cars in a long chain pulling tight against the couplings, and moved south.

They climbed up into an open boxcar. For an hour they lay warm against one another and slept.

He sat up. Something was wrong. Heat radiated from the metal. Someone else in the car. No, the wrong direction. He woke her up.

Let me sleep.

We're still headed south. It didn't turn.

They stood at the open door looking east. The train was going very fast. Eucalyptus and desert scrub and tens of thousands of bright orange flowers open to the late-morning sun flew past.

It turned, he said. Further south.

Where are we going, she asked.

Mexico.

No way. We'll never get across the border.

We'd better not. We'll never get back.

They rolled up their sleeping bags and waited for the train to slow but the train picked up speed and houses and roads and apartment buildings up the steep tiers of mountain flashed by.

With a long whistle blast the train braked. They held on.

Let's go, she said.

They jumped and slid down the gravel of the railbed to a concrete drainage ditch. A loud clanking and the last dozen cars of the train sat idle while the rest of the train rolled on. They followed the dry ditch south and southwest for several miles, passing beneath the shadow of warehouses and switchyards and locomotives and heard the roar of traffic and soon crossed under a freeway.

At a dilapidated gas station called Hertzbergers they asked a man sitting in the sun washing his paint-stained hands in a bucket of turpentine where they could find the nearest railyard.

Thirty miles east, he said. Or back north to Los Angeles. What you want with a railyard.

We like trains.

Dumb question. How long you been jumping trains.

Two days, he said.

You'll get yourself killed.

Why, she asked.

Nowhere else to go, the man said. If you're down on your luck, where you think you're going? Downtown to sleep on a barrel bench? The public library? Pitch a tent on the beach? So they ride around on trains, bashing in heads.

They. Who's they.

Drifters. Homeless. Wetbacks.

We didn't see anything. In fact, we didn't see anyone.

In fact.

What's that way.

West? Town.

What's in town.

There's a mission. Not a charity. More like a museum. A festival this weekend, so don't expect to find a place to crash.

Festival.

Swallows. All the way from Argentina. Like clockwork. If they had any sense they'd keep on flying.

Why, she asked.

Why not, the man said. Maybe they already did. They're late this year. Where you two from.

Originally.

Originally, the man said. The last two days.

San Francisco. Oakland, actually.

Berkeley, she said. We're students.

Were, her companion said.

Took off, the man said. See the world. Your folks know. Of course not. It ain't '68. The Depression...