Free Jack on the Tracks by Jack Gantos Page A

thought.
    “Is there a reward for ‘em?” Jock asked.
    “Yeah,” the cop replied. “Automatic thousand dollars on any escaped prisoner. Well,” the cop continued. “I know it stinks that Halloween is off, but help us out and don’t roam the streets. We don’t want to think that
you
are the convicts.”
    “I got a hunting rifle and if I see those guys, pow-pow-pow, I’m two grand richer,” Jock said.
    Yeah, I thought. Then you can buy a boat and some water skis.
    The cop gave Jock a stern look. “No gun play,” he said. “You just leave these guys to us. If you see anyone suspicious-looking, give us a call.”
    As soon as the police left we all ran around back to the tracks to see if we could find the prisoners.
    “What do we do if the prisoners see us first?” I asked, feeling a bit nervous.
    “Hide,” Jock said.
    I looked around. There was nothing but the tracks and gravel and sand. “Where?” I asked.
    Jock smiled slyly. “I’ll show you,” he said. He walked over to a gap between two railroad ties. There was a hollowed-out space, like a shallow grave, big enough for one person to curl up in. “I dug it out myself,” he said. “It’s awesome. You just lie down in it and when the train comes it passes over your face and it is the most scared you will ever be in your life, but it’s perfectly safe because you are lower than the tracks. Either of you guys want to do it?”
    “Not me,” I said. “That’s insane.”
    “Come on,” Jock said. “It’s Halloween. If you don’t get a good scare today you have to wait another whole year.”
    I didn’t care if I had to wait a lifetime. I was not going to have a million-ton train just missing my head by inches. Our house had already been hit by lightning and I didn’t want a train peeling my face off. Plus, I remembered what happened to Miss Kitty I. Her grave was not far away.
    “I’ll do it,” Tack said. “This Halloween’s a bust anyway and I could use a thrill.” He curled up in the grave with his hands neatly folded over his chest and waited. Soon a train rumbled up the straightaway. Jock and I skipped down the gravel bank and watched as it roared over Tack.
    After twenty-seven freight cars and a caboose passed we yelled out his name. But he didn’t answer, and didn’t get up. I feared the worst. We charged up the bank to where he was lying with his hands over his face. Blood was everywhere. We pulled his hands away and I expected to see a cracked-open skull and a bucket of fresh brain mush. Suddenly he popped up.
    “Gotcha!” he howled, and threw a few empty ketchup packets at us.
    I screamed bloody murder, then staggered away as if a dagger was in my belly. I was so scared I couldn’t breathe. I held on to Miss Kitty II, sat down and put my head between my legs, and brayed like a donkey.
    “I know you think you’re scared now,” Tack said, wiping the ketchup off his face with his shirttail. “But you got to get into that hole. I had my eyes open looking up at the bottom of the cars and then I peeked down the tracks, and there was this big old rusty chain hanging down hitting the ground and swinging back and forth and I thought if that thing hits me I’m d-e-a-d. But it just missed me. I could feel the breeze as it whizzed by like I was almost hit with a bullet. That close to death.” He held his thumb and finger about a hair’s width apart and stared between them. “Yep,” he said reflectively, “I was this close to being a ghost.”
    “That’s nothing,” Jock said. “One time I was lying underneath a long, slow train, and I was tired of it, so I rolled out between the wheels. Man, if one of those things had caught me I’d be sliced in half like a fish.”
    I held Miss Kitty II even tighter. “Are you guys going to finish decorating?” I asked.
    “Not me,” Jock said. “What’s the point? Nobody’s going to be around to see it.”
    “I figure the only trick-or-treaters out tonight are the two convicts,”