Train Read Online Free PDF Page B

ground.
     
     
Mr. Packard got down next to him and rolled him over and loosened his shoelaces and his shirt. Florida’s eyes looked hungry, and white foam spilled out his mouth and down over his lips and chin and his neck.
     
     
“He’s taking a fit,” the fat man said.
     
     
Florida was curling into himself now, his arms tight against his chest, fighting to breathe. And then he seemed to relax. That fast.
     
     
“It’s a fit,” the fat man said again. He hadn’t looked at Florida, though. Train noticed that he hadn’t looked. “I seen them do this before; sometimes they swallowed their tongue.”
     
     
Mr. Packard spoke to Train like the fat man wasn’t there. “Run back to the clubhouse,” he said. “Tell them to call an ambulance.” There was nothing hurried in the way he said it, though, and Train knew there was nothing to hurry for.
     
     
Train let go of the bag, surprised at the clatter it made when it hit the ground, and noticed something shiny just peeking out one of the pockets; for an instant it caught his reflection.
     
     

He sprinted fifty yards along the cart path, thinking of Florida, scared to death, and then kicked off his shoes and moved into the grassy fairway, running directly into the golfers behind him. There were four of them standing together on the tee, leaning against their clubs. Two of them hitched up their pants over their stomach, two underneath it. One or two, it looked like they might be carrying a baby. Scabs on their hands and arms and faces; Train had been noticing for a while now that there was a certain age when old men begun to look like they been dragged home behind the car.
     
     
“Hey! Where you think you’re going, son?”
     
     
And: “This here is a golf course, Leroy, not a racetrack. . . .”
     
     
Some of the members called all the caddies Leroy.
     
     
And then one of them speaking to another: “Is that one of ours?” The golf course did strange things with sound. Sometimes late in the afternoon you could hear a whisper across the fairway.
     
     
One of the golfers hit a ball at him— at least he seemed to hit it at him— but it sailed out over the fence, and Train paid no attention and kept coming, straight into them. They quit shouting and then edged away from the tee, decided that the runaway caddy problem was something they’d take up with the pro back at the clubhouse instead of handling it themself.
     
     
Train went straight over the tee box without breaking stride. Once he was past it he heard them yelling again, but now he couldn’t make out the words. There was another group ahead of him then, waiting in the rough behind the old foursome, and Train headed off into the trees before any of them could yell at him too.
     
     
The air was damp in the shade, and the branches seemed to grab onto his legs. He became conscious of the sounds— his feet slapping against the ground, the brushing of his pants legs as he ran, his own breathing. The cracks of old limbs breaking off trees. He was sweating, and it felt cool and safe in there, being out of sight, and just as that thought arrived, his foot hit a root and he was spinning, deaf with pain, and the next second he broke back into the sunlight, crossing the third fairway just behind another foursome, and noticed his little toe was pointed off to the side, like a thumb, and was bleeding where the nail was torn.
     
     
There was a wide creek separating this fairway from the eighth, and he ran through it, too spent to jump, dropping into the stinking muck at the bottom all the way to his knees, stumbling, falling, then pulling out and scrambling up the other side. The fall used him up and stole what was left of his breath, and he thought he heard someone laughing. The sound could have been coming up out of his own chest, though.
     
     
He headed up the long slope of the ninth hole, keeping close to the cart path now, his legs beginning to go soft. He closed his eyes and pictured