Freaks: Alive, on the Inside!

A whistle sounded in the distance.

“The morning train,” guessed Moses.

“That train’s gonna come between us and Mink,” said Earle in a rush of excitement. “It’ll cross the road slow.”

Tauseret gazed at me expectantly. With a jolt I noticed that they were all looking at me that way. When had I become a leader? I couldn’t let them down. “Come on,” I said. “Let’s find that path.”

We scrambled into the wagon and set off, Earle in the lead. Tauseret sat up front with me and sang a low song. Perhaps it was a prayer. I didn’t hear a sound from the children inside.

The train whistled again, closer now, warning us it approached the crossing. The tracks were ahead. Earle’s shadowy arm waved to the left, and he turned his cart off the road.

The rumble of huge metal wheels shook the earth.

I heard a shout. Up the road, on the other side of the tracks, a stick figure gestured toward us. Like phantoms, men emerged from the bushes. They pushed a covered wagon out of the weeds, then a paneled wagon, and clambered aboard.

“That’s Mink!” I cried. Maybe it had been Earle’s size or the outline of our stolen wagon, but he had recognized us.

The train grew louder. It neared the crossing and slowed to mind the road. I prayed it didn’t slow enough to let Mink cross the tracks to our side.

I turned our wagon to follow Earle onto the dark path.

The train screamed. Tauseret grabbed my arm, and her nails dug into me. The Eater of Souls, I remembered, and knew her gods haunted her.

I heard curses and screams of dismay from behind me. “They made it,” yelled Mr. Bopp. “The bastards beat the train.”

“Mink is on our tail,” I screamed to Earle.

Earle whipped his horses up and took off.

How could we outpace those men? I could only hope they were as overloaded as we were. I slapped my reins, and the horses picked up their feet a tiny bit faster.

The narrow path was rutted and rocky, and the wagon near shook to pieces; my bones clanged with the jolts. Moans and muffled shrieks came from inside. Ahead, Earle’s cart joggled and bounced. A few times it even left the ground, though how it could with Earle aboard, I could not tell.

The train let out a series of staccato shrieks, to warn us away from the tracks.

Earle stuck out his arm, and the giant square of his tablecloth handkerchief flapped in the breeze. He was signaling the train to make it stop. Perhaps he thought they’d save us from Mink and his minions.

The train huffed and puffed level with us.

My wagon couldn’t take much more.

Earle charged ahead, waving his banner furiously.

The engine passed me, snorting and growling.

Had Mink and his men caught up? “Dump what you can on the road!” I cried. “Make them crash.”

The train closed in on Earle. It didn’t slow down.

My wagon bucked and bounced as who knows what went flying out the back.

Earle swerved in to wave his banner in the dragon’s face.

The engineer set off a short then a long blast—“Look out.”

Earle’s cart burst apart like a matchstick toy. Fat man and mattress went in opposite directions, and the panicked horses, their traces broken and flying, fled up the track, dragging a few spars of wood behind.

Had an axle caught? Had the wind from the engine wheels set his balance astray? Maybe his cart had merely given up the ghost. But oh, my God! He had to be the fattest hero that ever lived, for the train screeched to a halt, wheezing like a consumptive dinosaur.