authorjeffbaker

The Milk Grotto

By Jeff Baker

The police were after me.

I’d been in the city three weeks and I was pretty sure I was innocent of anything, but if they really checked they’d find out that my name wasn’t really Bryce Going and I was a runaway from New York City and I’d been working my way across the country for about a year. And they’d find out that I’d only just turned seventeen, making me pretty much legal but I was still a runaway and I didn’t want to spend any time in a youth center. That was why I’d run away after my Mom split. Teenage gay runaways didn’t do too well in those places in 1978. The police had come into the place I was working and started asking questions about the employees. For all the above reasons I’d ducked out the back door, cut across the parking lot, jumped the fence and run over to the old stadium that was largely vacant since the city lost the arena football team.

I looked around quickly for security and then ran down the stairs labeled “Exit,” climbed over the gate that had been set up and found myself in the dim back hallways of the stadium. I saw a door labeled “Basement,” and I ducked inside. There had been a couple of lights on upstairs but the basement was pitch-black; a good place to hide if anyone came looking for me. And I knew the electricity worked but I wasn’t going to fumble for any light switch yet.

I felt my way carefully down the stairs and stayed still, listening for any sounds from upstairs. Instead, I heard a rustling in the room with me. I stayed in the middle of the stairway, unwilling to walk into a basement of scurrying rats.

“Company,” a voice said.

“Don’t turn the lights on yet,” said another.

I heard a scuttling on the stairs behind me and I groped for the lights. After a moment I found the switch and the lights turned on. When my eyes adjusted to the light I realized this wasn’t the huge stadium basement I’d imagined in the dark; just a medium-sized storeroom lit by a bare bulb. Probably not the only storeroom or basement. I took that in in an instant as my major concern was the three men I saw standing at the bottom of the stairs, all wearing grey sweatpants and sweatshirts.

“We’re not going hurt you,” came a voice from behind me. I almost jumped down the stairs.

“We saw you running from next door,” one of the men said.

“We figured you were trapped,” said the other.

“Cornered,” said the third man.

“We unlocked the doors. Locked them again. Anyone comes in; they’ll think this door has been locked for years,” said the man behind me.

“Look, where did you…” I started. Then one of the men put his finger to his lips.

“Shhhhh,” he said. “People. Upstairs. Lights.”

The man at the top of the stairs turned off the lights. I thought I heard someone upstairs. I didn’t make a sound. I hard rats squeaking in the storeroom. I wanted to run. I would have counted the seconds except I had no place to be at any time. After a while, I couldn’t hear anything from upstairs, just the rats downstairs. I waited a while longer. I was sweating. Then, the rats suddenly stopped squeaking.

“They’re gone,” said one of the men.

“We can tell,” said another.

“Our hearing is better than yours,” said the third.

“You can stay here for a while,” said the fourth.

I let out a deep breath. “I’d better be going,” I said. “Thanks. You guys got a place to stay?”

“We stay here,” one of them said.

“We like the dark,” said another.

“And the nearby dumpsters are kept full,” said the third.

“Yeah,” I said. “Thanks again.” I cautiously opened the door and made my way back outside into the evening air. Luckily I had been keeping my money in my shoe. I would catch a bus out of town, no sense trying to settle down in this city. I realized I’d seen a lot of strange things as I glanced back at the closed stadium, imagining the four men in grey in their storeroom, as they dwindled down to smaller shapes, the grey clothing becoming grey hair covering them entirely, their voices becoming the squeaking in the communal dark.

—end—

AUTHOR’S NOTE: “The Milk Grotto” is a reference to a legend connected with the Biblical “Flight Into Egypt.” Most of my other stories about Bryce Going have titles using that imagery “The Miracle of the Palm Tree,” “The Way of the Sea,” and the aforementioned “The Flight Into Egypt.” “Riding the Rails” from a few weeks ago didn’t fit the pattern; I couldn’t find a reference to the Holy Family riding a train. And one of the cool things about this flash fiction gig is that I found I like writing series stories!—jsb

Riding the Rails

By Jeff Baker

I’d ducked into the freight car thinking the train was headed west. By the time I realized we were heading north there was no way to jump off. But I was seventeen that year and had nowhere else to go. We, meant me and the older man I found hiding behind a row of boxes in the train car.

“You really shouldn’t be here, kid,” the man said. His clothes looked shabby, including his jacket and worn shoes. His felt hat looked like he’d slept on it.

“I know,” I said. “I hadn’t expected to be on the road. But my parents split and I didn’t want to be sent off to a boy’s home, so I hit the road. I’ve been on the road for about a year. I turned eighteen last summer.” Except for the reason I cut out most of that was a lie.

“George Peters,” the man said, not extending his hand.

“Bryce Going,” I said. That was a lie too but I was protecting myself.

“I know how you must feel, kid,” Peters said. “I was about sixteen in the early thirties when my folks lost everything they had and I spent the Depression bumming across the country, riding the rails, working to earn my keep and some food along the way. Keeping an eye out for bulls when I hopped a freight. Learning to read the symbols we riders would carve in people’s fences, learning which ones were warnings. It could be rough, but there were moments I wouldn’t have traded. Riding on top of one of these cars as it stretched and travelled across the country with the sun setting.” He shook his head and smiled.

So far, I didn’t have any memories like that. The last year or so had been hectic and unpleasant. I had no problem with running away across the country but I still wasn’t sure what I was going to do when I got there. Wherever there was. I had planned just to go west, maybe to L.A. but I did not have any specific plan. I probably should have. Or maybe I should just stop the wandering.

“Where’s this train going anyway?” I asked.

“I think up to Canada,” George said. “It depends on its mood.”

“Okay,” I said. I’d learned not to push when someone started sounding a little crazy.

We rode on for several more hours, hiding behind the boxes when the train stopped, so, as George put it, “the bulls” wouldn’t find us and throw us off the train. Or worse. It was past ten in the evening by my watch when George said that since the train wouldn’t stop until next morning I should try getting some sleep. I sat down in a corner with one hand on the knife I carried with me. I was taking no chances.

Light shined in my face, waking me. I saw blue sky, felt hard ground and saw a man standing over me. I about jumped up. But I realized I was caught, wherever I was.

“Hold on there fella,” the man said. He must have noticed me tensing up. I was tense, I didn’t know where I was—had I fallen off the train?

“Mind telling me where I am?” I asked cautiously.

“You’re just outside Hawkes, Wisconsin,” the man said. “Mind telling me how you got here?”

I didn’t seem to be hurt. I rubbed my head and decided to come clean.

“I think I got thrown off a train,” I said.

“Train?” the man said. “There’s no train around here, not since they built the airport over in Deadstone.”

“What?” I managed to say. “I got on a train about, well down in Missouri.” I was trying to remember my geography.

“No railroad line has run up through here in almost twenty years,” the man said. “Look for yourself.” He pointed over to where I could see what looked like an old depot building. I could see peeling paint and shattered windows and a caved-in roof. “Storm got the building; they had no reason to repair it.”

I got up and walked over to the building. What caught my attention were the railroad tracks, or what was left of them. They were overgrown with weeds in front of the depot but they trailed off into nothing a few yards away where they had been removed.

“There’s talk of putting in a highway where the tracks were,” the man said, “but for now there’s a bus that comes by once a week.”

I kept staring at the overgrown tracks, and thinking of George. I almost imagined I could hear a train whistle.

—end—