Chapter 4
"You want to go where?" screeched Contempt, leaping down from her box and out of the alley into the sunlight. She looked well-rested and energetic, if as disheveled as always. Muse looked at Watch questioningly and Watch nodded. He did not look as foreboding in the daylight.
"You can take us to the train tracks," he said. "Find a place close to the train station, where the trains will be going slowly enough, as they pull in and pull out of the station. But far enough away from the station house itself, to be out of sight of the people. You're the only one who knows the city well enough to find it."
"And you're just going to leap inside and ride on out of the city? Just like that?"
Muse smiled. Why not?
"Well, you I'd expect that of," said Contempt, "since you're not wise enough to know any better. But you, Watch, what are you thinking? This is hare-brained!"
"I'm thinking it's the only fast way out of the city. A train can take you straight into the country within hours."
"The country though!" Contempt shuddered. "Why would you want to go there?"
I belong there. Muse looked at Contempt steadily. My heart is already out there.
"But child," said Contempt shaking her head. "You're completely isolated out there. Completely alone. No lights, no fish, no hand-outs, no warm alleys, no saucers of cream set out in back of restaurants –"
No cars, countered Muse, shyly, but gathering boldness to speak plainly to Contempt. No beeping horns, that make me leap straight into the air from fear. She could only imagine how Watch felt when a blaring horn stridently pierced the air, as the cars careened down a city block. And freedom. Freedom from all those things you named – restaurants, hand-outs, and people. Freedom from people, and from being—she hesitated until she had Contempt's full attention – pets.
"Pets!" hissed Contempt. She tossed her head and sized up Muse, then glanced at her brother. "Well. Well then. All right. The train tracks it is." She smiled suddenly and abruptly trotted away. "Follow me! All aboard for the adventure of a lifetime!" She broke into a run, laughing, and Watch and Muse chased after her. Muse's heart soared, and she felt giddy laughter jingle through her head. Watch smiled wistfully at her as they ran; he could feel her laughter.
The cats ran through the streets, keeping up with Contempt as she cut through side streets and alleys, dodging a bicycle once, stopping to sniff the air once before she raced on in a different direction. They were getting closer. Muse could hear the merry train whistles and the clacking sound of the tracks. Contempt let out a whoop as she knew she was finding the right way, proud of navigating the city.
"We're here!" she said triumphantly. The cats slowed down, panting for breath. Muse's paws ached. "There's the station. Look, you can see the smoke from the trains. Over there are all the tracks. If we sit here until a train comes through this way, we should be able to find an empty freight car and hop right in. And then, home free!"
Yes, said Muse gladly. Home free indeed.
The train station was not a pretty place. It was near the harbor, where the oil pooled in greasy streaks on the surface of the water, and large forklifts and cranes lumbered through dry and patchy land to offload huge containers from docked ships and place them on the trains. It was not a passenger station – there were no excited people with shiny luggage excitedly waiting to begin a vacation. There were no children anxious to go home or families embarking on an adventure. There was no ticket booth, and no jolly conductor wearing a smart uniform. There were no tired traveling salesmen despondently waiting for the next destination, the glamor of travel having long since worn off.
This place had no glamor. It was strictly a working yard. The air was heavy with the smell of burning fuel, and the straggling weeds were bent and faintly colored. The cats picked their way slowly towards the tracks on the outside of a loading dock. There were few people to avoid, and those people were far too focused on their work to notice a cat. The sounds of machinery filled the air, and the train whistles, which had seemed so merry, now just sounded industrial.
If Muse needed another ugly view of the city to convince her why she was a country cat, she had it. Even the sun seemed to turn its face from such a wasteland of industry, weakly tossing its light through the grey cloud cover it hid behind.
The cats stopped near the tracks. There were rows and rows of freight cars in various stages of readiness for travel. So many clatters and whistles and whines of machinery competed in the air that it was impossible to know whether a train would be pulling out of the station soon, in time for them to try to leap aboard.
The noise level didn't seem to bother Watch. It was just noise; there were no thoughts, no aggressions, and no passions in the sounds of machinery. The few workers' thoughts must have been repetitive and dull enough that Watch wasn't pained.
"Are you actually coming?" Watch asked Contempt.
"Heck yes!" said Contempt, rashly. She was immune to the ugliness around her. The city, for all its beautiful parts as well as its uninviting ones, was her home, and she did not judge. Hand-outs could be gotten anywhere, and almost anything was edible. "I wouldn't miss this for anything. I didn't get you all this way to turn back around!"
"But you hate the country."
"Oh pooh, you silly boy. I'm not staying. I'm just going along for the ride." She grinned smugly at Muse. "And here," she said, "comes our ride."
A train was slowly picking up speed on one of the tracks, as it departed the station. It was a long freight train, with cars of varying colors hooked up one by one, several of them standing open and empty. "What did I tell you," exclaimed Contempt, happy with herself. "What are you waiting for? Let's go!" She raced to the tracks and kept up with the train, alongside it, the others following. The world seemed to move slowly for Muse. The train's wheels groaned next to her ear and filled her eyes with dust as the axels worked their way in faster and faster circles. The train was massive, this close to her, and Muse felt exactly like what she was – one little cat, dwarfed next to the bleak and dusty corrugated metal cars which were starting to fly down the tracks, faster and faster. Muse pushed her body to its limit, racing through the long weeds along the track, leaping over railroad ties and keeping her eyes fixed on Watch and Contempt running ahead of her.
"Now!" yelled Contempt. The cats sprang high into the air with as much strength as they could muster and seemed to hang in space next to the train, the empty freight car hovering before them for a fraction of a second, before they landed hard and tumbled safely within the train, knocked to the back corner.
None of them moved for a moment. They felt the wheels vibrating beneath them and heard the whistle singing above them as the train signaled its departure from the station. Muse was first aware of the dusty cool dark air inside the car, and she tested the floor with her paws to make sure it was solidly there, and that she wasn't still flying through space. Carefully she stood. She was really there, chugging along in a train, the city drifting by outside the open door of the freight car. Her mouth opened in its silent meow as she gazed with wonderment at the scene before her: city blocks receding, obscured in the distance by the smoke of the train; the weeds and long grasses growing next to the tracks rushing by so swiftly she couldn't distinguish one from the other; a breeze kicking up from the wheels and Contempt and Watch struggling to their feet, Contempt with her proud smile and Watch with his silent absorbing gaze.
The day that followed was a happy one. The three cats sat in companionship watching the city fall away from them and the suburbs pass them by. They saw the factories by the harbor, and then the dumps and the industrial parks, and then the long strings of row houses and chain link fences painted green, and playgrounds and scattered streams, and then the tiny farmhouses dotting the hillside and rolling fields of crops blanketing the land. They went over a bridge that seemed to be a mile long, and they looked down over the water – a river? the bay? – that was so far beneath them they felt they must be in the sky. The air became f
resher, and the ground leveled out again and they were back on a track running over the earth. The wind tasted salty, in an odd way, as minutes became hours, and hours lengthened the day into a late afternoon, and then an evening. And, always, there was the endless rumble of the wheels, bearing them further and further away.
Muse became anxious as the light began to fade. Trees were sparser and the ground looked fallow, rather than the wide open richness of woods and meadows she was expecting as she got further into the country. Watch's tail began to twitch a little more quickly than usual and Contempt looked annoyed.
"Well it doesn't look like we're getting anywhere today," she said.