Free Texas Summer by Terry Southern

especially, the cowcatcher, seen as a gigantic black plowshare, appearing knife-pointed and razor-sharp. And then the sound of the train’s whistle was an ear-shattering hysterical scream, but inside it, above it, came Lawrence’s own scream: “ Don’t fergit! ” And suddenly the train was on them, an unimaginably explosive eclipse. Harold strained to keep his eyes open, because that was the thing, and it was what Big Lawrence had told him not to forget.
    And afterward, it was the first thing Lawrence wanted to know. “Well, did you?”
    “Yeah,” said Harold, then added, “as long as I could...till the cinders got in ’em.”
    “Yeah,” Lawrence admitted, “me too. Anyway, it’s just the first part that counts — when it’s comin’ right for you, that’s when it really counts.”
    “Yeah,” Harold agreed, “that’s when it really counts.”
    Or at least he said he agreed. It was not easy to disagree with Big Lawrence. Also he believed in his heart that Lawrence was probably right; if something was so scary that you didn’t want to do it, then it must be worth doing. The whole idea, of course, had been Lawrence’s. At first it had somehow seemed quite natural. They had been walking across the trestle, and when they heard the train coming, they started to climb down the side, at least enough to be well off the track.
    “Wait a minute,” Lawrence had said, taking hold of Harold’s arm. “We don’t have to git off yet. It ain’t even in sight.”
    They had waited until the locomotive had come around the bend, about a hundred yards away.
    “We’ll make him blow the whistle first,” said Lawrence, but the whistle was already shrieking, and the engineer peering ahead and shaking his fist.
    Then, clinging to the crossbeam beneath the tracks, they had watched the train roar by overhead. That was when Lawrence got the notion of climbing high enough to put their heads up between the ties. The idea of keeping their eyes open to watch the train’s horrific approach was fairly new, and this was only the second time they had tried that part of it. Harold was relieved that even Lawrence had not been able to keep his eyes open the whole time.
    They climbed down from the trestle and went back to get their guns. Then when they passed near the stumps, Harold crossed over and picked up the dead rabbit, Lawrence watching him.
    “What’re you gonna do with that damn thing?” Lawrence asked, sounding angry.
    “Aw I dunno,” said Harold. “Might as well take it along.”
    Lawrence watched while Harold held it by the ears and kicked at a piece of newspaper, all twisted dry and yellow in the grass. He got the paper, shook it out straight, and he wrapped it around the rabbit.
    They started across the field, Lawrence not talking for a while. Then they stopped to light a cigarette. “I got a good idea,” Lawrence said, cradling the rifle to one arm. “We can cook it.”
    Harold didn’t answer, but as they walked back toward the stumps, he looked at the sun.
    “I wonder what time it is anyhow,” he said.
    Using Harold’s pocketknife, Big Lawrence, after it was decided, sat on one of the stumps to skin the rabbit while Harold went pushing around through the Johnson grass, folding it aside with his feet, peering and picking up small dead branches, bundling them to build the fire.
    At the stumps, Lawrence cursed the knife, tried the other blade, and sawed at the rabbit’s neck, twisting the head in his hand.
    “Couldn’t cut hot nigger-piss,” he said, but he managed to tear the head off, and to turn the skin back on itself at the neck, so that he pulled it down over the body like a glove reversed on an unborn hand, it glistened so.
    He had to stop with the skin halfway down to cut off the front feet, and in doing this, hacking once straight on from the point of the blade, the blade suddenly folded back against his finger. Grimacing, he opened the knife slowly, saying nothing, but he sucked at the finger and