Elephant Bangs Train Read Free Page A

miles away. The magic was ended. The dragon kite descended like a goblin from the moon.
    Beating her bony wings, she nested on him, pressing his head into her ribs, burying him in her paper gown. He was doomed, he was going under. He tried to save himself. He yelled the secret.
    'Marie Cobbinski showed her panties!'
    The earth stopped, the wind died, the dragon kite collapsed into an old woman. Far away in the next county, the summer goddess shuddered, fell to the grass.
    'Yeah, yeah!' screamed Ralph Jenkins, unable to bear the silence he'd created with the enormity of his curse.
    I looked at Marie. Her head was down. She was crying. The class was laughing. They would sing, we saw your panties .
    'Marie, I'm ashamed of you,' said the teacher. She walked slowly to the front of the room, climbed wearily on to her perch. So this is how it ends, she thought. This is how they leave me.
     

 
    Follow the Eagle
    J OHNNY E AGLE climbed on to his 750-cubic-centimetre Arupa motorcycle and roared out of the Navaho Indian Reservation, followed by the Mexican, Domingo, on a rattling Japanese cycle stolen from a Colorado U law student.
    Up the morning highway they rode towards the Colorado River, half-drunk and full-crazy in the sunlight, Eagle's slouch hat brim bent in the wind, Domingo's long black moustaches trailing in the air.
    Yes, thought Eagle, wheeling easy over the flat land, yes, indeed. And they came to Navaho Canyon where they shut down their bikes. Mist from the winding river far below rose up through the scarred plateau and the air was still.
    Eagle and Domingo wheeled their bikes slowly to the edge of the Canyon. Domingo got off and threw a stone across the gorge. It struck the far wall, bounced, echoed, fell away in silence.
    'Long way to the other side, man,' he said, looking at Eagle.
    Eagle said nothing, sat on his bike, staring across the gaping crack in the earth.
    Domingo threw another stone, which cleared the gap, kicking up a little cloud of dust on top of the other cliff. 'How fast you got to go—hunnert, hunnert twenty-five?'
    Eagle spit into the canyon and tromped the starter of his bike.
    'When you goin', man?' shouted Domingo over the roar.
    'Tomorrow!'
    That night was a party for Johnny Eagle on the Reservation. He danced with Red Wing in the long house, pressed her up against a corner. Medicine Man came by, gave Eagle a cougar tooth. 'I been talkin' to it, Eagle,' he said.
    'Thanks, man,' said Eagle and he put it around his neck and took Red Wing back to his shack, held her on the falling porch in the moonlight, looked at the moon over her shoulder.
    She lay on his broken bed, hair undone on his ragged pillow, her buckskin jacket on the floor. Through the open window came music from the party, guitar strings and a drum head and Domingo singing
    Uncle John have everything he need
    'Don't go tomorrow,' said Red Wing, unbuttoning Eagle's cowboy shirt.
    'Gitchimanito is watchin' out for me, baby,' said Eagle, and he mounted her, riding bareback, up the draw, slow, to the drumbeat. His eyes were closed but he saw her tears, like silver beads, and he rode faster and shot his arrow through the moon.
    'Oh, Johnny,' she moaned, quivering beneath him, 'don't go,' and he felt her falling away, down the waving darkness.
    They lay, looking out through the window. He hung the cat's tooth around her neck. 'Stay with me,' she said, holding him till dawn, and he rose up while she was sleeping. The Reservation was grey, the shacks crouching in the dawn light.
    Eagle shook Domingo out of his filthy bed. The Mexican crawled across the floor, looking for his sombrero, and they walked across the camp to the garage where the pickup truck was stowed with Eagle's bike.
    Eagle pulled the cycle off the kickstand and they rolled it up a wooden ramp into the back of the truck, then slid the ramp in the truck, roped it down, and drove quietly off the Reservation.
    They went down the empty highway, Domingo at the wheel, Eagle slouched