Blindfold

by Orrick Johns

At first he did not mind the bumping, nor the penetrating wind, nor the coldness of the metal on his palms. The occasional showers of cinders were annoying, and this grew worse as the train increased its speed. Nevertheless, he was exhilarated; the motionless friendly stars overhead, the sense of succeeding in a wild and unreasonable adventure gave him courage and high spirits. He only had to stand it for a few hours and a few hours of discomfort never had killed anybody.

Misgivings crept over him gradually. His seat was being severely lambasted by the bumping. It seemed incredible, in a way, how it kept up and the violence of it. The steel bar to which he held grew increasingly cold, yet he realized that come what may he would have to cling to it or stand a chance of falling. The wind became more biting and between it and the bar his fingers were stiffening fast. The cinders, stinging his face with only brief cessations, might soon be unendurable.

However, he argued, he could bear all these for some time, and when he couldn’t bear them any longer, he could do something else, shift his position. He deliberately decided to stand his present one as long as he could, then change and stand the next one as long as he could. In that way each new position would be so much the greater relief. He would see the night through. A long pull at the flask revived him.

“I’ll get my second wind pretty soon,” he thought, “and it won’t be so bad. That flask was an inspiration.”

The night wore on and Potter resorted to first one expedient and then another. He put his right side to the wind and then his left, thus partly protecting his face from the cinders. He wrapped handkerchiefs—fortunately he had two—around his hands. It was no good trying to get a decent hold of his board seat. He didn’t feel secure that way. These makeshifts did not help his sore buttocks, which were being hammered to insensibility, nor keep off the cold which was creeping over his whole body, but they lessened the number of his pains.

Finally he could endure sitting no longer. He laid down first on one side, then on the other, on his belly, and even for a while on his back. He threw his arms around the brake shaft and doubled his body into a bouncing, shaken ball, in order to keep the cold out of his vitals. At the moment when he thought he was beginning to see the end of his endurance the train ambled benevolently to a stop. He breathed a sigh of thanks and drank.

They were on a siding. As the train continued still, for five minutes, for ten minutes, a fresh fear assailed him. He had forgotten about the train crew. The fellow at Jamestown had told him to get off and hide whenever the train stopped.

“You got to do that if yer ridin’ in sight,” he said. Indeed, had the man been a professional tramp instead of a village lounger, he would have scouted the whole idea of riding on top.

But by this time Potter was so stiff and sore in every muscle that he feared being unable to climb back while the train was in motion. The relief from the rushing wind and bumping and cinders was too much. It was too sweet to sit there and recover some use of his limbs, to feel the warm blood in him once more for a brief spell. If he could only smoke or get up and walk about—but that would be dangerously courting attention. He had gone this far, and he would finish it; there was no sense in taking more chances than were necessary.

It was unearthly still. Not a living thing seemed to stir for miles about, over the uninterrupted fields of stubble just visible in the starlight. Even the frogs were silent. Against the sky far off he saw the silhouette of a group of buildings and trees, but they seemed like apparitions in a dream. On the train he was in a separate world, cut off from the other, a lonely world consisting of himself and his thoughts. The long, tapering string of dark cars ahead struck him like a procession of elephants asleep. They were impersonal and cruel, but alive; and presently would begin to sway and lumber frightfully through the murk. With their stopping his life, it seemed, had stopped.