Valknut: The Binding, page 7
Where the hell is Junkyard?
Sharp pain shot through her wrist and her fingers sprang open. The spray fell to the ground and the pain stopped, but she saw her death in the Ragman’s contorted face. He raised the knife. Screaming, she shielding herself with her free arm and waited for the slice of the blade.
But the blow never came. A harsh laugh erupted from the Ragman. She lowered her arm and found him staring at the tattoo on the back of her hand.
“Shit, man!” Grinning unpleasantly, he touched the design with the knife. “Looks like you gonna be no fun, after all. I gotta save you for El Lobo.”
Lennie met his feral gaze and her breath caught. He twisted her hand into her face, as if she needed a reminder of what was branded there. But she couldn’t look away from his eyes.
His animal yellow eyes.
They burned like acid into her brain. An answering burn flared in her tattoo—an electrical charge that radiated through her hand and prickled up her arm like a column of fire ants.
Then Junkyard tackled the Ragman and Lennie stumbled as his grip tore from her arm.
Dazed, she straightened slowly, still seeing those yellow eyes, full of alien malice. El Lobo—didn’t that mean “wolf”? Like in her dream.
The Ragman yelled somewhere nearby. There was a loud smack, a fist striking flesh, and the thud of something large hitting the ground. A knife bounced to her feet. She looked at it stupidly, then scooped it up with a foggy idea of helping Junkyard. But the Ragman was already flat on his back. Blood streamed from his nose, and Junkyard’s booted foot pressed down on his throat.
Blood ran from Junkyard’s temple and smeared his chin. He glared down at the Ragman, the whites showing around his eyes. Mouth twisted in a snarl, he drew a harsh breath, ready to bear down on the Ragman’s neck.
Lennie shook off her stupor. “No, Junkyard! You’ll kill him!”
Junkyard didn’t look up. He was going to do it. Lennie started toward him, but Jungle Jim got there first and laid a hand on his arm.
“Let it go, Dougie.”
They stayed that way for a moment: Junkyard’s foot pressing down on the Ragman’s neck, Jim’s hand on Junkyard’s arm. Then the wildness drained from Junkyard’s face. His shoulders slumped as if he were the one who had been defeated. He released the gangbanger and nudged him with his boot.
“Get up,” he said dully.
The Ragman lay as if still pinned, chest heaving, looking up at Junkyard with wide, terror-filled eyes. Brown eyes.
Junkyard waved his hands as if shooing a fly. “Ya estuvo. It’s over. Go home.”
Watching Junkyard suspiciously, the Ragman scrambled to a safer distance before climbing to his feet. He backed away, rubbing his throat. His smirk returned.
“Pay now or pay later.” He shrugged, grinning. “It’s all the same to El Lobo.”
Irritation crossed Junkyard’s face. “I said go!” He stomped a foot toward the Ragman, who jumped like a startled dog and ran.
Junkyard sighed and worked his jaw. Wincing, he probed his bruised and bleeding temple. Reaching into an outer pocket of his pack, he took out a wet wipe and dabbed at his injury. Lennie watched, nervous about him all over again. He might look harmless, but she would never forget how he took down that streetwise punk so thoroughly.
Still, she had been with him for more than twelve hours, and he had done nothing but protect her.
“Here.” She reached for the wipe. “Let me do that. You can’t see.”
“You might want to put that away, first.”
She looked down and realized she still held the open knife. The blade looked sharp enough to cut herself just thinking about it. She tried to figure out how to close it, fumbled, and let it drop to avoid slicing her thumb off. Junkyard picked it up and folded the blade away, showing her how the mechanism worked. To her surprise, he handed it back to her. She held it between finger and thumb like a dead fish. “Aren’t these illegal?”
“Probably. Some places, anyway. But death is more unpleasant than a little jail time.”
She shook her head and tried to hand it back. “No thanks—I’m more likely to cut myself than someone else.”
His lip twitched. “Yeah, I know.” But he closed her fingers on the weapon. “Take it. The threat alone might be enough to stop a fight.”
Under his firm touch, she realized her hands still trembled. She met his eyes. “What you did to that guy—I’ve never seen anything like that before. You saved my life. Twice, now.”
He reddened and looked away, withdrawing his hand. “So bake me a cake when I get you back to your house. I like chocolate.”
An awkward silence followed, and he avoided her eyes as she cleaned the blood off his face. She was on her third wet wipe when Jungle Jim gave a yelp and bent close to the ground.
“Hot dog, Dougie! Lookit what I found.” He scooped up the Ragman’s spray paint. “Just the thing I need.”
He wandered off behind the train, shaking the can and chuckling to himself. The hissing Lennie had heard earlier began again. Baffled, she stared after him. Junkyard grinned and shrugged.
“You want that?” He pointed at the pepper spray lying near the track.
“That stupid thing!” She picked it up and thumped on its impotent nozzle. “Do you know how long I’ve been carrying this piece of crap? Going on midnight runs through the park? Walking home from work after dark?”
“Too long, maybe,” Junkyard said.
The amused glint in his eyes irritated her beyond tolerance. With a yell, she heaved the canister as far as she could. It bounced on a stretch of empty track and came to rest in the gravel. A stream of pepper spray fountained high into the air. Lennie watched it stonily.
“Perfect.”
Behind her, Junkyard cleared his throat and said in a flat voice, “I hate to rush you, but we should probably get going.”
“Right.” She didn’t move.
“Don’t want to get caught standing right under the Brotherhood’s logo.”
“True.”
She gave the canister one last, dark look. As she turned to go, her gaze caught on the fresh graffiti emblazoned in red and yellow on the side of the hopper. Three interlocking letters, BRR, were laid out in a rough triangle that was much too similar to the tattoo on her hand. Her head swam at the sight of it and she had an urge to run far away from anything to do with trains, gangs, and spontaneous tattoos.
Junkyard touched her arm. “You okay?”
“No—yeah.” She thrust her tattooed hand into her pocket. “Just shock setting in, I suppose.”
She smiled to show she was joking. He didn’t look convinced. She tried to match his casual calm, but her voice cracked when she spoke. “So, do you think the Ragman’ll come back?”
“Maybe. And if he does, he’ll bring friends.” Junkyard raised his voice. “Hey, Jim—time to go.”
The hiss of spray paint stopped and Jungle Jim’s voice drifted around the corner of the hopper. “Be there’n two shakes, Dougie.”
The paint can rattled exactly twice, and then hissed one more time in a staccato burst. Silence followed. Lennie and Junkyard exchanged puzzled glances. Jungle Jim came out from behind the hopper. He was wearing bright yellow shoes.
He looked from Junkyard to Lennie and then down at his feet, a big grin on his face. Gravel stuck to dripping laces and yellow spattered the cuffs of his baggy pants. “What d’ya think, guys?”
“Uh,” Lennie said. She looked at Junkyard, hoping he could do better. He was laughing.
“I think the kids are going to love ’em.” He patted Jim on the back. “Grab your bag and let’s go try them out.”
Chapter 5
The back of Lennie’s neck prickled with the feeling of being watched as she followed Junkyard and Jungle Jim through the train yard’s exit. She glanced back, half-expecting to see a pack of gangbangers charging after them, led by the Ragman.
His eyes haunted her. Brown eyes. She had seen them clearly before the Ragman had run away. Had they ever been a different color?
And who was this El Lobo that was supposed to be looking for her?
Lennie’s feelings of unease faded as she reentered the everyday world of cars, commuters, and well-kept buildings. The return to mainstream seemed to have the opposite effect on Junkyard. He slowed as the sidewalk grew more crowded, letting Jungle Jim rove ahead. Signs of strain lined his face, as though ordinary people made him more nervous than a train yard full of gangbangers.
“Is something wrong?” she asked.
His jaw muscles worked under his long sideburns. He didn’t look at her.
“No.”
His tone ended the conversation. They walked in silence along a street lined with red brick buildings and crowded bike racks. A pair of girls came toward them on the sidewalk, backpacks hanging from their shoulders. Though the walkway was plenty wide, Junkyard kept his head down and stepped onto the grass to let them pass.
Lennie watched him uneasily. What was wrong with him? Less than an hour ago, he had dismantled a punk carrying a gun and a knife, but now he couldn’t handle a couple of sorority girls.
Jim bounded back to them with his duffle bag half unzipped. “I gotta start getting ready,” he said. “We’re almost there!”
He plopped down on the sidewalk and dug through his belongings. Junkyard slouched against a lamppost, chin tucked under his jacket collar, hands deep in his pockets. He looked like a vagrant who planned to loiter all day.
He looked completely unreliable.
The low thrumming of heavy machinery vibrated the air. Lennie glanced around, but couldn’t find the source of the noise. They had stopped in front of an enormous building with a high, arching facade. It looked familiar. The sign out front said Williams Arena.
“Hey, isn’t that where the Gophers play basketball?” she asked. “We must be at the University of Minnesota.”
Junkyard gave an indecipherable mutter. Jim looked up from his duffle bag, a sock in one hand and a plastic snake in the other.
“That’s right, Missy. They hold the Festival right over there, every year.” He pointed the snake at a large oval building across the street. “That’s the Marr–ee–ooo–chee Arena.”
“Right.” Lennie had been here before, for an invitational track meet at the end of her high school career. She had done well, placing third in the 300-meter hurdles and first in the 800-meter dash. But it wasn’t a happy memory. Her mother had gotten sloppy drunk at a team dinner—
“Hey, Dougie, which hat d’ya think I should wear?”
Happy for the distraction, Lennie looked at the two hats in Jungle Jim’s hands. They were possibly the ugliest she had ever seen: a red-and-green checkered tam with a yellow pompom and an old bowler so dented it was more of a lopsided cone than a bowl. Junkyard gave a furtive glance up and down the sidewalk and pushed himself from the lamppost. He bent over the hats.
“Definitely the checkered one.” He grinned, looking more like the man Lennie had met on the train. “The pompom matches your shoes.”
Oh, yeah—the pompom tipped the scales for me, too, Lennie thought. She winced when Jim put the hat on. Of course, she would have winced at either choice.
Jim stuffed the bowler back in his bag and jumped up. “C’mon! The tents oughta be up by now. Ashley’ll be with her dad, I bet.”
As they started toward the Mariucci Arena, Junkyard resumed his unresponsive posture. Lennie walked beside him in awkward silence, while Jim alternately ran ahead and jogged back to hurry them along. The rumble of machinery grew louder as they rounded the building’s curved side. A large parking lot lay before them. They had reached the Festival.
The noise came from carnival rides in varying stages of assembly at the far end of the lot. The long, black arms of the Whirling Octopus were already in place. That ride used to make Lennie sick as a child. A kiddie roller coaster in the shape of a snake biting its tail idled next to it. Behind them were the usual pods, arms, cylinders, and tracks guaranteed to make weak-stomached customers hurl. She had never been fond of carnival rides.
Closer to the road, tent canvases flapped in the breeze as vendors and show-casers readied their displays. Jungle Jim skirted the crowd control barriers, bobbing and leaning to see into the tent village. Junkyard smiled and seemed to relax as he watched Jim’s antics.
“Is this the whole Festival?” Lennie asked. “It seems small.”
Junkyard shook his head. “Just the carnival and vendors, out here.” He hooked a thumb back toward the arena. “The bigger exhibits are inside.”
Encouraged by this relative explosion in conversation, Lennie asked another question. “I’ve been wondering, what did that graffiti stand for, back there? The BRR, I mean.”
She tried to sound casual. Even so, he frowned and took so long to answer that she feared he had gone back into his paranoid vagrant mode. “It stands for ‘Brotherhood of Rail Riders,’” he finally said. “You’d do best to stay away from them.”
He looked away and didn’t seem interested in elaborating. Lennie was beginning to think sucking strawberry gelatin through a straw would be easier than trying to get Junkyard to talk. She didn’t have that kind of patience. “Look, it’s not like I was planning to ask the Ragman on a date. I just want some information. If I’m going to find my father, I need to know what I’m facing.”
Junkyard stopped abruptly. “They’re criminals—that’s what you’re facing,” he said with unexpected force. Lennie flinched and stepped back, but he wasn’t finished. “Haven’t you been paying attention? Catching on to freight trains has never been safe, and it’s getting worse all the time. Drifters aren’t exactly known for self-discipline. You might be dead or...let’s just say, it’s no place for a woman.”
His eyes traveled to Jim, who was hiding behind a tree to spy on the festival. Junkyard’s face softened. “It’s no place for any decent person.”
Justified or not, his attitude rankled. “So then what makes you a hobo? Are you saying you’re not decent?”
“You’re damn lucky it was me. I could have been a jack roller, a drug addict...hell, the rails are littered with scum and criminals who just haven’t been caught yet.”
“And my father is out there!”
A woman passing by looked at Lennie sharply and she realized she was shouting again. She didn’t care. She glared, daring Junkyard to say something—anything at all. The blood throbbed in her temples, and she was dimly aware of an answering tingle in her tattooed hand.
Then Jim trotted between them, hopping from foot to foot with excitement. “She’s here! Ashley’s here!”
A huge smile lifted his fleshy cheeks. He dropped his bag and ripped the zipper open. “Your pardon, Missy, but I gotta finish gettin’ ready before we get too close. Can’t be lettin’ the kids see me like this.”
It was impossible to stay angry before this onslaught of happiness.
An odd assortment of junk piled up on the sidewalk as Jim ransacked his belongings. Some items didn’t surprise Lennie—rumpled boxers, a matted cardigan, a toothbrush, and other items he might need on the road. But plastic flowers? And bright red canvas high tops? At least size 12, by the look of them. And what did he need with pristine white evening gloves?
Frantic, Jim rummaged through the pile, muttering to himself. At last, he found what he wanted. “Hot dog! I knew I had one to match!”
He took off his hat and pulled an elastic band over his head, letting it snap around his neck. A purple bow tie with yellow spots dangled from it, slightly off-center. He didn’t bother to tuck the elastic under his shirt collar. She wasn’t sure how he thought it would improve his appearance.
Junkyard nodded. “I like that one, Jim. It really stands out.”
And that’s a good thing?
Feeling like the sane minority, Lennie didn’t comment. Jim rooted around and fished out the white gloves. He slapped them together a few times, picked off invisible lint, and pulled them on. Recognition set in when he fitted a red super-ball on his nose. Lennie burst out laughing.
“You’re a clown!”
Both men looked at her as if she were the one whose caboose had derailed. Embarrassed, she laughed a little too hard. “I thought...I thought...”
Jim looked hurt. “Ya didn’t think I dressed like this all the time, did ya?”
Still laughing, Lennie shook her head helplessly. Jim shrugged and gave his nose an experimental toot. It made a sound like a squeaky duck. He took the ball off, spread a thin layer of adhesive inside, and replaced it. Settling the checkered hat on his head, he climbed over the barrier and trotted toward the tent village. Lennie watched him through tear-filled eyes and decided Junkyard was right. The yellow pompom bouncing on the hat did match the spray-painted shoes. Not to mention the polka dots on the bow tie. Laughter gripped her like a bad case of hiccups. It felt good after the last twelve hours of craziness.
Junkyard gave her a quizzical smile. Still giggling, she wiped her eyes and tried to explain. “He always acted so...um.”
Junkyard waited for her to finish. She tried again, looking for the most polite phrasing. “I didn’t know he was a clown. I thought he was, uh,” she tapped her head, “mentally...”
“Handicapped?”
She nodded, feeling stupid. Somehow, she always ended up feeling stupid around Junkyard.
Jim bounced to the middle of the tent village, tooting his nose and yelling, “Halloo, halloo, halloo!”
He didn’t have to wait long. A blond girl around eight years old burst from an exhibit tent, yelling, “Jim’s here! Jim’s here!”
She threw herself at Jim. He caught her under the arms and swung her high in the air. A boy about the same age flew out of another tent and Jim bent low to let him crawl onto his back. The boy hugged Jim’s neck and reached over his shoulder to search the handkerchief pocket of his jacket.
“I can see why they call him Jungle Jim,” Lennie said.
