The Nine Pound Hammer Read Free Page A

darkness. At what point had the train entered a forest? Towering trees curled over the tracks, blocking any moonlight that would have helped him see where he was going to leap.
    Ray removed his wool cap, folded it, and stuck it into the pocket of his tattered coat. He had jumped off a moving train before, but those had only been streetcars and omnibuses. They were never going this fast.
    Ray swung a leg over the railing to the side of the train. The wind intensified as he eased his other leg across and tightened his hand on a beam overhead. He tried to gauge what lay to the side of the tracks—bushes or boulders, grass or tree trunks? He wiped a hand across his eyes, but it was no use. There was no telling what was out there.
    Ray touched his hand to the lodestone in his pocket. The lodestone would guide him—to what, he did not know. But Ray was certain his father had meant for it to help him.
    He leaped into the dark.
    Ray’s mind went blank. By the time he reached the ground, he had spun completely around. The heels of his brogans touched for a moment on the loose earth and then he tumbled, somersaulting over and over until he landed on his stomach with a gasp.
    For a brief moment, he was conscious enough to look up and watch the sooty orange glow of the train as it disappeared into the night.

R AY OPENED HIS EYES . R AISING HIS HEAD FROM THE HARD earth, he saw a faint pinkish color beyond the treetops; it was nearly daybreak. He tried to lift himself but was so sore and bruised, it was easier just to roll over onto his back first. He gingerly poked a finger along his chest. There were plenty of spots that caused him to flinch, but nothing seemed broken. He touched his palm to his forehead but found no blood.
    Ray slowly sat up. His first thought was to check his pocket for the lodestone. It was still there, securely tied to his belt with the length of twine, but a painful bruise had formed where the stone had hammered into his thigh. He felt lucky that this was the worst of his injuries.
    He got to his feet, stiff, sore, and thirsty. As he spat dirt from his mouth, Ray looked around at the vast woodssurrounding him. Leaning his head back, he listened. All he heard were birdsongs and the wind swishing through the trees overhead.
    Ray took out the lodestone. As he held the cold, dark stone in his hand, it began to move across his palm, inching toward his thumb. Closing his fingers to catch it, he turned until he faced that direction. He wondered if it was still pulling south. The sun was rising to his left, so he decided it had to be.
    The lodestone tugged toward the shadowy wall of trees. Ray looked once down the train tracks in the direction Mister Grevol’s train had gone. He turned back to face the forest. Taking his cap from his pocket and squaring it on his head, Ray set off into the trees.
    Ray walked on and on throughout the morning. What began as a rolling hill country set beneath a canopy of oaks and maples soon grew more dense and dark. He could not imagine any stretch of forest going on so long. But this was the South, and to his mind, that meant a wilder, greener, and more mysterious place than the cities up north. The forest was brimming with an eerie solitude, punctuated only occasionally by a rustling squirrel or flittering birds. By noon the wilderness grew so dark that Ray could barely tell if it was night or day, and a spell of dizziness struck him as he considered the vastness of the wild that surrounded him. He cursed himself for being so ridiculously impulsive. Did he think he could jump into themiddle of nowhere without any thought to what he’d eat? It wasn’t Seventeenth Street, where he could swipe a cold sausage from a street vendor’s pushcart. This was quite possibly seventeen miles to anywhere.
    Ray was not sure what he had imagined the lodestone would lead him to, but it had not been this looming, desolate wilderness.
    He rested in the afternoon at a creek bubbling from a mossy boulder.