Train by Pete Dexter Read Free Book Online Page A

there. Once you crossed Sweet like that, you might as well look for other work.
     
     
Train sat in the corner, thinking. He didn’t know how to find Florida’s wife, or even if he had one. He didn’t know where he lived, and he didn’t know his real name, the one that would be in the telephone book. He looked at Sweet, sitting behind his cage smoking a Lucky Strike, his eyes half-closed. A contented man. Train didn’t want him paying attention to him now, holding all that cash, but he was the only one who would know Florida’s address, or even the family name.
     
     
Train put the club down on the bench and walked over to the cage. Sweet raised his eyes, and Train had a distinct, last-minute thought not to let him find out what was in his pocket. That was followed by another thought, just as distinct, that somehow he already knew.
     
     
“So, man,” he said, “Florida just up and died.”
     
     
“Yes he did,” Train said. “He passed away.”
     
     
Sweet smiled at that, a secret smile. “Did he said he done eviscerated when he went?”
     
     
“He didn’t say nothing,” Train said. He decided not to ask Sweet about Florida’s name, and turned to sit back down.
     
     
“What is it y’all wanted?” Sweet said behind him.
     
     
Train stopped, didn’t look back there. “Nothing,” he said.
     
     
“You just come over here to pass the time.”
     
     
Train didn’t answer. He felt the money in his pocket, and wished he’d put it in his sock, where it wouldn’t show.
     
     
“Nigger, I ast you what it was.”
     
     
Train turned back around. “It was did you had his address,” he said.
     
     
“Who?”
     
     
“Florida.”
     
     
Sweet studied him, putting it together. “What you want that for?”
     
     
“I got something for his people,” Train said.
     
     
“What’s that?”
     
     
Everything he said made Sweet more curious. “Something from the man he was toting,” he said.
     
     
Sweet stood up, and that was a sure sign of trouble. He avoided movement, went all day usually without standing up. He wanted something, he sent a caddy for it, usually one named Arthur, a coal black Oklahoma boy about Train’s age, and twice as big. Arthur’s flesh moved like the tides beneath his T-shirt, and he smelled like baby powder and never spoke to nobody but Sweet. Everybody was afraid of Arthur except Plural and Sweet himself.
     
     
“Let me see that,” Sweet said.
     
     
“It’s for Florida’s people,” he said, “for his wife.”
     
     
“Let me see,” Sweet said again, and stood by the opening in the wire cage, waiting. The other caddies were watching, and Train went into his pocket, felt the crumbs in there from some crackers he’d brought to eat that morning and crushed on the run to the clubhouse, and then the ridge of bills. There was nothing for it now but to take them out, and he did that, and cracker crumbs spilled down over his pants legs and shoes.
     
     
Train passed the bills through the opening in the cage. Out on the edge of his vision, Train saw Plural stand halfway up, looking at the money, probably trying to remember if some of it was supposed to be his. A long time ago Plural was a knockout artist, twenty-some fights in a row, and then they moved him up to the Hollywood Legion Stadium and he run into a different class of fighter, one that had good legs and wind and took him past six rounds, and that’s how Plural Lincoln found out there wasn’t any seventh round in him. No matter what he did, how far he ran, how long he trained, six was as far as he could go. These days he sometimes sat on the floor and argued with people that wasn’t there over his share of the purse. You naturally knew not to move suddenly when he was like that. Other times he was like an old man who seen everything twice and decided it was all funny. Sweet always checked to see which Plural he had on his hands before he sent him out. However he was, though, when people had