Saint Oswald by Jay Bonansinga (motivational novels .txt) 📕

yer hands up, Injun!” Freddie’s voice is stern and shrill as he staggers forward with each pitch and yaw of the train.

“Calm down, Freddie.” Oswald cannot take his eyes off that huge cut-down muzzle, which is pointed directly at him, and he cannot stop thinking that he could very easily be responsible for at least a half a dozen deaths tonight on this very train once a firefight breaks out, and he cannot let that happen if he wants to avoid going to hell, so he screams again for everybody to get down.

Like laboratory rats scattering in a maze, the passengers duck down behind seats, flop to the floor, crawl behind fallen suitcases, and cower down into the creaking corners as the vapor lights outside the windows blur past the train at a faster and faster clip, like a vast electrocardiograph signaling an imminent heart attack.

“Don’t tell me to calm down,” Freddie says, approaching with the bazooka in Oswald’s face. “You calm down—you calm down!”

“Freddie, there’s something I should explain—”

“Git yer hands up, cocksucker!” Freddie’s close enough now to breathe his garlic breath in Oswald’s face, the muzzle of the shotgun only inches away. The train pounds over a bridge, and the dome lights flicker.

Oswald can see a figure lurking behind Felson, but cannot identify it yet. “Okay, Freddie, just take it easy, just take a deep breath,” Oswald says, raising a single hand as though he’s in a classroom and has a question.

“Raise ’em both!”

Oswald sighs. “Freddie, the thing is, if I raise ’em both I’ll fall over.”

Felson sticks the bazooka in Oswald’s face. “GODDAMNIT, RAISE BOTH THEM HANDS!!”

Oswald complies, rolling his eyes. “Freddie, you got this whole thing backwards.”

“Shut yer trap! I need to know something—before I air you out.”

“If I could make one point—”

“CLAM UP!”

“Okay, all right, I’m just saying, if I was gonna pop you, don’t you think I woulda done it by now?”

Felson blinks. “What does that have to do with the price of broccoli?”

“I’m here to save your life, you idiot.”

Felson smirks. “You’re here to save my life.”

“That’s right.”

“Isn’t that heartwarming.”

Oswald shrugs. “It is what it is, Freddie. What can I say?”

“Bullshit!”

“You’re on the to-do list tonight, Freddie. I’m the only one’s gonna get you off it.”

The train pitches as it thunders and screams around a curve, the sparks jumping in the windows, the overheads flickering off again, and now Oswald can see the figure behind Felson a little more clearly, a girl, sneaking up on the skinny thug with a big, shiny object in her hands.

Felson lets out an angry chuckle. “A regular Robin Hood, this guy.”

“Actually, Freddie, I’m not a hundred percent sure that’s the analogy you want to make.”

“Whattya talkin’ about?”

“Correct me if I’m wrong, but Robin Hood robbed from the rich and gave to the poor. I don’t give a flying fuck about the poor.”

Behind him, the figure is edging closer and closer to Felson. Only inches away, her face becomes visible in the overhead light.

Oswald freezes. He lets out a pained breath. His guts fill with ice. “Oh shit no... no, no, no.”

Freddie cocks his head. “What’s the matter? You scared to die?”

The floor quakes, the lights flickering, the car pitching. Oswald gazes past Felson at the girl standing in the aisle with the tuba. The massive instrument shimmers and reflects the blur of lights outside the windows.

Oswald closes his eyes, shakes his head, and mutters softly, “Goddamnit, Gerbil, how the hell did you—?”

Felson blinks. “What did you just say—? Did you just say—?”

“I warned you.” Oswald’s voice is hoarse with emotion, cracking a little. “Goddamnit, Gerbil, I warned you. I told you to stay away.”

Felson frowns. “Who the fuck you talking to? Some imaginary animal lives up your ass?” Felson glances over his shoulder—at the precise moment that Gerbil Goldstein swings that massive tuba at him.

The blast pops open the air like a flash bulb in the flickering train car, and for a moment Gerbil Goldstein thinks somebody just slapped her in the face. She jerks backward in a cloud of cordite and buckshot. A chorus of screams erupts all around the car.

The impact drives Gerbil to the floor, the tuba flying out of her hands, the big brass bell evaporating like a flower gobbled by a Weedwacker.

Lying on the aisle floor, ears ringing, eyes flash-blind, half her face charred and stinging from the stray shot-wash, she realizes with a sudden intake of air that the tuba just saved her life.

Gerbil rolls over and pukes half her guts out in a noisy, heaving retch. Her pounding head and the roar of the train distract her from the menacing shadow looming over her, accompanied by the sound of Freddie Felson’s voice: “That was not nice,” he says, pumping another shell into the breach. “That was downright—”

A hard, sharp thwack rings out, making Gerbil flinch. Blinking convulsively, shivering, she gazes up through watery eyes at the skinny gunman towering over her. Felson stands very still, head cocked, eyes bulging. The shotgun falls out of his hands.

THWACK!

Oswald hits Felson again with the leather sap, this time putting all his might into the blow, which lands squarely on the man’s skull above his left ear. Felson topples then—landing in a fetal position on the aisle floor—looking almost tranquil in his stupor.

“Mommy, can you hear me...?”

At exactly 9:43 p.m., eleven miles west of Michigan City, Indiana, in the darkness of the vibrating cab, Mark Ferri travels back in time to his own birth. The epiphany comes in waves, in great plumes of blue sparks like radiant violets against the windshield.

“It’s Marky, Mommy, can you hear me...?” Marky has tears on his face as he pushes his way through the moist envelope of his mother’s imaginary womb, his right hand death-gripping the throttle.

The train is screaming, the world tapering into a narrow tunnel—a phosphorous opening, a star gate—as Marky pushes it all the way back to the moment he was born.

“MOMMY, I’M HERE!”

There is a loud snap, and the throttle comes off in Marky’s