Short Stories
The houses and factories thinned out and the open spaces in-
creased as he approached the country. At last the city was be-
hind him, and he was walking down a leafy lane beside the rail-
road track. He did not walk like a man. He did not look like a
man. He was a travesty of the human. It was a twisted and stunt-
ed and nameless piece of life that shambled like a sickly ape,
arms loose-hanging, stoop-shouldered, narrow-chested, gro-
tesque and terrible.
He passed by a small railroad station and lay down in the
grass under a tree. All afternoon he lay there. Sometimes he
dozed, with muscles that twitched in his sleep. When awake, he
lay without movement, watching the birds or looking up at the
sky through the branches of the tree above him. Once or twice he
laughed aloud, but without relevance to anything he had seen or
felt.
After twilight had gone, in the first darkness of the night, a
freight train rumbled into the station. When the engine was
switching cars on to the side-track, Johnny crept along the side
of the train. He pulled open the side-door of an empty box-car
and awkwardly and laboriously climbed in. He closed the door.
The engine whistled. Johnny was lying down, and in the dark-
ness he smiled.
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