CHAPTER 13

Chad picked himself up carefully, checking for broken bones and choking on dust.  The Brakeman who had thrown him out of the boxcar hadn’t been too concerned about how fast they had been moving.  He looked over his shoulder, harboring a thin hope he could roll back into the train, but it had moved on. He stood on quaking legs and looked back. “My luck,” It came out of his mouth without any thought.

He stepped over the tracks and down the rock-strewn dirt road that led to what promised to be a town. It wasn’t big or fancy, which suited him fine, but was it big enough to find some work?  He made his way down to the main street of town, which, almost like a bad joke, was named Main Street. It didn’t look as Main as most main streets went, but then he saw the wooden sign telling him he was in Jerkwater.  “So this is probably as good as it gets,” he mused.

Looking away from Main, he saw flickering neon sign of a cocktail glass a few doors to the left. He entered the dark coolness and expecting to hear the crack of a pool table but instead his quick eye fastened on a wall of old photos, some of them so faded he could hardly tell what they were of.   The two that were in direct sunlight right then were of two men and a boy standing by piles of wood in what was obviously the parking lot of this bar, and a middle-aged giant leaning on a 1957 Studebaker Champion.

“Boy,” Chad said to an older version of the giant who had suddenly emerged from deep within the bar, “You’ve got enough pictures here to start your own museum.”

“Aw,” the giant grumbled, “My ex liked to mess around with a camera, I got three boxes of that junk in the storeroom.  What’ll it be?”

Chad smiled and extended his hand. “ I’m Chad, Chad Steeple. I’ll take anything on tap.”  “I’m Rude Crawlback, this here’s he Crawlback Inn.”  He gave Chad a dubious glance.  “We like things pretty quiet around here.”  “Quiet’s alright with me,” Chad said with a smile.  “All I want is a beer and a job.”  “Yeah, you think you’re some kind of cowboy or something?”

At the dark end of the bar, Clem’s face flashed in the light of a beer sign.