Train Read Online Free PDF

fourteen dollars. He liked to lie in bed at home at the end of those days and take an ink pen and color in George Washington’s eyes. Color them blue. He gave half the money to his mother, rolled the other half up in a sock and put it in his drawer with the other socks, didn’t look any different from them. Then there was two socks, and then there was three. He always knew exactly how much was in the socks, and sometimes at night he pulled one on his foot, just to see how it felt to push his toes in there with all those dollar bills.
     
     
This particular morning, though, he wouldn’t minded being a dollar-a-day Mexican in a flower bed. The fat man was staring at him again, trying to see if Train was laughing at him. Train could tell sometimes what white people were thinking, and was afraid it went the other direction too. He heard Mr. Packard again, sounded like he was fooling in a way, and in a way it didn’t. “So what are we going to do, Pink? We waiting for the kid to apologize for you hitting the ball in the water?”
     
     
“Miller, you mind?” There was a bad note in that, stepped over the line between them, and the fat man heard it too, and then tried to change it after it was already out of his mouth. Tried to pull back the reins. Even now, mad as a snake and the best shot he hit all day laying in the pond, he seemed a little afraid. Like he worked for Mr. Packard, only it wasn’t that. Train guessed that he’d seen the man’s bad side, or maybe just knew it was there, the way Train did.
     
     
“Lookit,” the fat man said, “I’m the one down five, one and three. This is between me and him.”
     
     
“If that’s what’s bothering you, forget the bet,” Mr. Packard said. “We’re just hacking it around today anyway.”
     
     
“No,” the fat man said. “Fuck no, a bet is a bet.” Train heard in his voice how bad he wanted to win, and knew then the way it would turn out. You wanted something too much, it never came.
     
     
Florida was sweating. He’d set his bag down and was standing beside it, looking out of focus. The fat man pulled the thermos out again and had another drink. Loose lips sink ships, that was an expression he heard out here too. Fat lips sink ships. Train liked the sound of that. Mr. Packard was watching the fat man too, and then he looked around and seem to chuckle again without making noise and said, “You know, Pink, I been thinking maybe we ought to call it a day.”
     
     
“I never said I didn’t want to play,” the fat man said. He was eager to clear up the misunderstanding, couldn’t get his feet under him fast enough. “I only said this fucking kid’s spooky, is all,” he said. “I didn’t mean nothing about you. I just want to switch caddies at the turn.”
     
     
“Fine with me,” Mr. Packard said, “unless the boy’s gotten too attached to you to change sides.” And then he looked over at Train and winked.
     
     
So Train and Florida traded bags, and Florida stumbled backward under the new weight, then caught himself, rattling the clubs.
     
     
“Now I got a problem with you?” the fat man said, trying to make it all a joke again.
     
     
“No sir,” Florida said. “I just eventuated to lost my balance.”
     
     
The fat man bust out laughing at that— eventuated — and somehow the word changed everything. One word, and the game was relaxed and easy, and Train’s troubles with the fat man seemed like the grudges that people hold without remembering what they were about, the kind they just kept there to occupy the space. Harmless. The sun was warm and the air smelled sweet and the new bag was lighter and comfortable against his shoulder, and five minutes later Florida was on the way to the next world.
     
     
He’d set the fat man’s bag down beside the green, taken a handkerchief out of his back pocket and wiped at his neck, and then smiled in a peculiar way, a confusion passing over his face, and then pitched onto the