A thousand questions were itching on my tongue, but I said nothing. The sun was glaring down, and the morning was almost gone. I looked around for what seemed like the first time; there were still long hills of nothing but the Trashlands all around us, and in the distance behind I could see the high south wall, small and distant, baking in the light without a shadow anywhere. Soon the sun would break over the top of its shade, and the Revs sleeping off last night at its base would begin to stir. I turned away. We kept walking.
Soon I started to notice the hills were getting bigger. It was taking longer and longer to get to the top, and the little valleys in between weren't so little. Soon we were climbing up and up, leaning forward to keep our footing and sometimes almost crawling to make way up the steeper and steeper slope. Then we were almost at the top, and I slipped and nearly fell all the way back down, but Shimmy caught me. Then we were standing on the top, and I looked down, and I almost fell down again from what I saw.
It's the sort of thing that's easy to describe if you've seen one before, but impossible to see clearly if you haven't, so I'll do my best and hope that you understand. There was a little shelter down below us, without walls, just a roof and several thick beams holding it up. This by itself was enough to make me stop in my tracks; in Our Town there are mostly walls and few roofs, roofs are hard to put up and harder to keep up when you're building out of a trash heap. This was old looking and stained all over, but it was sitting clean and even-looking, lines smooth and easy like the cover of the book had been. There was a little squared-off raised ground under it, like someone wanted to stand on the solid ground but weren't happy that it was low and flat, so had piled up and squared off part to stand on and be high up and solid at the same time. And there was a strange and squarish bunch of metal in the shade of the little roof, with holes in the side like the eyes of a house. I figured it must be some sort of secret house of Shimmy's, but why it needed two roofs I couldn't figure. All of this was new and strange, but none of this was what made me almost fall down.
There was a path dug through the trash, all the way down to the foamy ground underneath, and it ran straight away from the little houses into the distance and out of sight. I'd never seen so much trash dug away, much less all in one place and all in a straight line. It was like seeing a plank that could cross the hole Yemmi River, or seeing a hole in the sky.
But as if the long, long, long line of clean groudn wasn't enough, there were two long lines of clean, bright metal. When I say clean metal I mean truly clean; no stain, no rust, no loss of light all along the great length. They ran like two thin, perfect, still rivers down the middle of the clean path, cutting away through all the lines of the hills of Trashland, meeting with the brightness of the sky in the distance.
There was a word for this, I realized suddenly, and I felt like I'd been put back into my body from somewhere else. There was a word for this my Dad had used, God rest, and had told me about, when he'd told me everything else about the way the world had been when he'd been a little boy like me. How I remembered the word I have no idea, as most of that stuff has been picked up and washed away by all the thousand little things I worry about between waking up and dreaming, but this word I remembered, and it came back to me then when I saw it under that hot, stinking sky.
"Railroad," I said, in a little voice like I was going to cry. I thought I was going to cry, because I was wishing Dad was there, God rest.
Shimmy nodded, if he were surprised I knew what it was he didn't show it.
"It was dug out," he said, "when I was young. I help keep it clean." He stood looking for a while, then gave a little shrug and turned away. "We have a journey," he said, and started down the hill. I came after him to keep up, slipping and nearly falling again on the way down.
'Railroad' had come back to me, but somehow hadn't brought 'train' with it, which puzzled me when we were inside it and Shimmy was trying to tell me what it was. The little metal house was built on wheels, firm and clean and still movable like all the rest of this miracle-place was, and it could move and run along the tracks. It was what the tracks were for, though they were bigger and harder to keep clean. When we'd reached the bottom of the hill, Shimmy had walked without stopping right up under the little roof, climbed up on the raised ground, done something to the side of the little metal house, and had climbed inside. I was still standing in the sun and staring at everything when he opened one of the metal house's eyes and shouted at me to come. I came.
It was hot in the metal house, and Shimmy and I went around opening all the eyes. These, like his screen, were mostly still in place, and only a few were even cracked. It was all one long room, full of chairs facing away from each other and stuck in place, all along the walls and rising up out of the floor. It had a funny smell, like heat and oil and something else I don't know, but sweet and sour at the same time. And over all was the flat blank biting smell of a shock line.
Shimmy left the two doors to the raised ground open to let the room air out, and started fidgeting with something like an engine way in the back. I asked him questions, and he gave short answers, but all his answers made me ask more questions, and soon he got quiet again as he worked, so I got quiet to and rested on one of the chairs. I kept staring around me. Everything looked so clean. I forget now most of what he told me. I wish now I'd paid closer attention to what he was doing, I've never been able to get the engine in the back working on my own.
There was a buzz, and a jolt, and the doors closed, and the shock smell got stronger. I stood up to see what was the matter, and suddenly the whole room moved, and I fell off my feet and hit the floor. There was a clattering everywhere and the smooth floor under me was humming, and someting in me said it was too much, too much, and I'm sorry to say i just sort of curled up and started whimpering. Shimmy helped me up, and said it was alright, and I sat in one of the chairs again. Shimmy walked about, checking on the engine in the back and hauling the two doors open again so the air could move.
It is difficult to imagine clearly, but although we were sitting still inside it, the house was moving. Through the open eyes and the two doors I could look, and see the hills of Trashland moving by on either side, sunlight and shade flowing by like water. I stared until I got dizzy and short of breath, then I looked at the inside of the house again, mostly the floor between my feet. I wish now that I'd kept looking outside, I'm sure there were many things to see, but I didn't see them, it was all too much, too much. At least we were in the shade inside the house, and I remember the breeze felt cool against my neck.
Presently it began to rain outside. Shimmy, who was standing at the front of the car, muttered and staggered about, hauled the two doors closed again. He had a curious rolling way of walking on the floor of the moving house, which I realized was so that he could stand up and keep standing even though it bounced sometimes and swaying this way and that.
Somehow the rain helped calm the idea of our moving down, and I looked out the windows again at the storm flowing over the hills. Only the hills were mostly gone, and it was just flat ground outside; it wasn't black, and it wasn't sand, it was just try earth without leaves or towns or anything. There might have been hills in the distance but I'm not sure. The rain was falling over all.
"Rain's coming more and more," said Shimmy to himself, looking out the front eyes and getting wet, as he hadn't closed them. "The drout is finally passing. Maybe one day it'll do some good." I remember he said that now, but maybe he didn't and I'm not remembering right. Anyway it feels right to say he said it, and the rain felt good when it sprayed in the window now and then. After a while I held my first fours out the window to catch some of the rain, and drank most of my second in silence.
After a long time the rain stopped, but the sun stayed behind the low clouds. The day wasn't as hot here, but it somehow seemed very very still, even with the wind blowing through the eyes and the doors of the house, which Shimmy opened again.
The sun was slanting down and swaying the motion of the house was making me sleepy when Shimmy said something.
"What's that?" I said.
"Climb up here, if you can," he said. "You want to see this."
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