Ch. 2 Travelin' Blues
Author's Note: THANX to all who have reviewed so far; I will TRY to lighten up with the descriptives, and shorten some sentences, but I tend to write just like I talk...so, we'll see!
Disclaimer: I do not, unfortunately, own Randall Boggs, nor do I own Lilo, Stitch, Moses, Myrtle(thank goodness!), Eleana(the other dark-haired girl), Theresa(the blond), or Yuki(the Japanese girl with the hockey obsession). They all belong to the Walt Disney Co.
"I've got to ride that lonesome train
My heart is heavy with aches and pain
I said 'but someday, someday baby,
After awhile, you will be sorry...'"
"Someday After Awhile", by Eric Clapton
After making what could only be considered a miraculous leap from the roof of a red Dodge Durango onto an empty flatbed car of a passing freight train, Randall was on his way...to WHERE, he didn't know. Not that he actually CARED, either. What mattered, more than anything, was that he was able to escape the jaws of death (a pack of pursuing Catahoula Leopard Dogs), and hopefully, this wretched swamp in which he'd spent the last 2 ½ years of his life. As he came to a landing, flattening himself out against the bed of the rail car, panting like an overheated dog, he couldn't help but mentally berate himself for not having thought of this before. As the lights of the railway crossing and the traffic faded behind him, and the darkness of the swamp once more closed in on both sides, Randall realized, though, that the open flatbed might not be the best mode of transportation for his escape. He was, after all, completely visible from both sides, vulnerable to exposure to rain, sun, and whatever other forms of meteorological phenomena Louisiana or its neighboring states cared to throw at him, and the flatbed was becoming more and more uncomfortable, besides. Glancing behind him, whilst still lying low, he could see that there were at least three more similar flatbed cars, followed by the black, cylindrical bulk of tanker cars. Not much use heading THAT way. Up ahead, he could see perhaps two more flatbeds, both loaded with what appeared to be 2x4 lumber, and in front of those, the more inviting squarish outline of regular boxcars. Hopefully, one of those would be unlocked and if he got REALLY lucky, also empty.
Summoning what seemed to be the last of his strength, Randall got rose shakily up onto all-eights, gathered himself like a coiled spring, and launched, landing on top of the stack of lumber on the car in front of his original escape ride. Moving forward, against the momentum of the train, he did the same again, and again, until he found himself on top of the first boxcar. Leaning precariously out over the edge, he tried the sliding door-locked! Sucking his teeth in frustration, he was forced to continue his pattern of leap-check door, for about six more cars. Glancing up ahead, toward the engine, Randall could see a faint glow in the sky where the tracks were leading; unless he missed his guess, that would be the lights of a town up ahead, and a town meant more railway crossings, and more people. He was beginning to get a bit desperate now, and the physical exertion he'd had to put himself through since the night began was really beginning to tell. Each leap he'd made from car to car, had been a tad more uncertain than the previous, and had left him with a few more aching muscles. Either he'd have to find a refuge soon, or face the prospect of being seen, or worse yet, missing his target and falling from the train, to no doubt roll right under the wheels of the next boxcar! Taking a deep breath, Randall made one final leap, barely making it, having to scramble up the side of the car to crawl across the roof. The engineer up ahead, oblivious to the stowaway, sounded the whistle as a warning to motorists at the next crossing, just outside of St. Martinville.
Cautiously, and without much optimism, Randall leaned out over the edge of the car, and tried the sliding door. Much to his relief, and disbelief, it moved open a few inches! Randall let out his breath in a gasp; he hadn't even realized he'd been holding his breath since leaning out over the edge of this particular car in the first place! Pushing open the door even further, and gripping the top with his uppermost pair of hands, he swung the rest of his body downward, into the interior of the boxcar, halfway expecting to find it occupied, which would have been just his luck. Landing on all-fours, he took a few minutes to let his eyes adjust to the blackness of the interior, and finally satisfied that it contained no living being save himself, he began to move about. From what he could gather, the car was empty, except for him, of course. It might not be first class accommodations, but beggars, as they say, couldn't be choosers. It would have to do, plain and simple. Wandering over to one end of the car, after closing the door, Randall felt his foot come into contact with something fairly soft. Pushing against it with his toes, he realized that the something was, in fact, a pile of cotton sacks, each stamped with the logo, "Thibideaux Milling Co.", and smelling faintly of rice. Leaning over, he spread the grain sacks out a bit more, then literally collapsed upon them on his side, staring at the blank nothingness of the box car wall in front of him, illuminated only by slivers of light from outside through the crack in the door. The sound of the train's wheels obliterated any other sounds from outside, its gentle rocking motion a comfort to its weary traveler.
Randall tried, without much success, to will himself NOT to sleep. He had no idea where this train was heading, nor how much longer it would go before stopping. He did NOT want to be caught asleep if and when that train reached its next destination and some human came along and opened the door to this particular boxcar! To try to keep his mind occupied and put off sleep for as long as he could, Randall did something, which upon reflection, he wouldn't have wanted anyone else to see him do-he carried on a conversation. With himself. He'd taken to doing that rather often lately, not so much as to hear someone's voice, as to maintain practice. "Use it or lose it" would appear to apply as much to the art of conversation as to anything else.
"Well, looks like we're on our way, huh?", he inquired softly of himself. "Yep, done REAL good this time...just too bad that genius mind of your couldn't a thoughta this two and a half YEARS ago! Whatsa matter, gettin' SENILE in your old age?"
Ironically, the very act of talking to himself, for some reason, made him do something he'd tried to really and truly avoid doing, and that was thinking about THEM. "THEM", of course, were the two who'd thrown him into this godforsaken wilderness of algae and moss and mud in the first place. My, my-what would they think of seeing him sprawled out on a pile of rice sacks, on the bed of a westbound box car, with no destination other than someplace else, talking to himself like a lunatic? The thought of it all made Randall ball his hands into fists and clench his teeth. He hadn't even thought about the circumstances of his exile(you couldn't really call it "banishment", since in HIS world, banishment could officially only be imposed by a jury, following a trial, and he'd certainly not gotten one of THOSE)in many, many months, owing to his preoccupation with just staying alive, but now, the memory of it all came sniffing around once more, snarling and licking its chops, threatening to consume him with emotion. Shutting his eyes tightly against its onslaught, Randall tried to think of other things...ANYthing, to block it out, but when sleep finally did overtake him, his last concious thoughts were still of that fateful November day, what seemed so long ago...
In another, quite different, part of the Human World, someone else was having trouble fitting in, as usual. It was still daylight on the Hawaiian island of Kauai, aka "The Garden Isle". In the tiny, quaint little village known as Old Ko'Kaua Town, a children's hula class was wrapping up practice for the day. Moses H'aliewa, the class's gentle giant of an instructor, motioned for the final dancer to come up on the little stage, and explain the nature of her hula. A diminutive seven-year-old Native Hawaiian girl climbed the few steps to the stage, and stood smiling at her audience, which consisted of, besides her instructor, four other girls about her same age, all of whom had practiced their dances before she did. While they may have been close in age, it was clear, though, even to a casual observer, that the four in the audience would rather have to do ANYTHING than to watch this last performance. One of them, a pudgy red-haired girl with glasses, sneered to the others, "You just watch, THIS one's gonna be about zombies or vampires or some stupid, gross stuff like that!" The other three sniffed up their noses in agreement, all simultaneously folding their arms in front of them.
"Now, Lilo, how about showing us YOUR dance, and telling us what it's about", the instructor motioned to the little girl on the stage.
"OK," the little girl responded, as though she had no clue as to the opinions of the other girls about her up-and-coming dance. "Even my friends oughta like this one, 'cause it's not about zombies or vampires for a change! It's a fairy tale, and it even has a PRINCESS in it!"
"Yeah, I just BET...a MUMMY princess, most likely!", mumbled the red-head to one of her companions, earning her a warning glance from Moses.
Unfazed, Lilo began her interpretive hula, narrating as she danced.
"Once upon a time, there lived a little princess. She was a very talented little princess, but she was very, very naive, as princesses usually are. One night, while the rest of the castle was sleeping, the little princess opened her closet door, but instead of her fancy clothes and toys she was too old to play with anymore, she found a WHOLE NEW WORLD, a world than no human had EVER seen!"
"In this new world, the princess saw many wonderful things, and even met a few friends. One of those friends was a big, hairy giant, who wasn't mean like most giants are and didn't eat people's brains or anything, and the big, hairy giant decided that he liked the little princess and would take care of her."
"But in this new world there also lived a dragon, since NO fairy tale can be complete without at least ONE dragon. Now, this dragon couldn't breathe fire like the dragons you read about, but he was very, very cranky! Nobody else liked him very much, partly because he was so cranky, but mostly just because he was a dragon, and everybody else had been raised up and taught by their families to hate dragons. One day, the dragon tried to capture the little princess, 'cause that's what dragons do. The big, hairy giant got REALLY mad at this, and he decided to rid his land of the dragon once and for all!"
"They ended up having a big fight, and at first the dragon beat the pants off of the big, hairy giant-except that I'm not so sure that big, hairy giants even WEAR pants-but then the little princess got mad, too, and jumped on top of the dragon's head! This startled the dragon so bad that he forgot all about fighting the big, hairy giant, and the giant took advantage of the situation and grabbed the dragon by the neck so the dragon couldn't bite him, since dragons have really, REALLY sharp teeth-even sharper than a werewolf's OR a vampire's-and then he threw the dragon into another world where the dragon couldn't hurt the little princess or be cranky around any of the other creatures in the giant's world again!'
Moses was starting to clap, but Lilo looked at him, her arms hanging by her side, and told him, "I'm NOT done yet! There's more story to tell!"
"Very well, Lilo; don't let me rush you! Continue with this...uh...interesting dance and story, please!"
Lilo carried on, "Now, where WAS I...oh, yeah...ANYWAY, the story doesn't end there! As it turns out, the dragon wasn't really so bad after all. He was just cranky all the time 'cause everybody had always treated HIM bad! He was the only dragon in the WHOLE world, and everybody treated him different. After all that time of being treated different, he had gotten a really bad attitude, but who WOULDN'T? Now, he was a very sad dragon, 'cause even though he'd been thrown out of a world that treated him bad, it was still the only world he'd ever known, so what was he supposed to do? He wandered and wandered in the world he was now in, but everybody here treated him even worse than back home! Some of 'em even tried to kill him and EAT him, but he managed to escape!"
"One day, when he was feeling especially depressed, the dragon found himself on a magical island, and on that island he found ANOTHER princess, but this one was a bit older and smarter than the first one. THIS princess has a special friend, who happened to be a dog, and they decided to take the dragon home to their castle, since he was on the streets 'n stuff. At first, the mean old Queen didn't like the dragon, but then she hadn't liked the princess's dog at first, either. After a while, though, the dragon was able to prove to the mean old Queen that he wasn't such a bad dragon after all, and she gave in and let him stay, and now EVERYBODY lived happily ever after!"
Lilo took her bows, while Moses clapped and critiqued her dance and accompanying story. "That was very interesting, as usual, Lilo, almost as interesting as Yuki's hula about the one-legged hockey player! I hope you plan on developing it further, right girls?"
"Only interesting if you're a TWO-YEAR-OLD, right girls?" sneered the red-head, gaining a follow-up chorus of "YEAAHHH!" from her cohorts. The little girl on the stage, Lilo, tried to hide her hurt. She had just known that for once, just this ONCE, her dance and story would be appreciated by the wannabe girl gang she euphemistically referred to as her "friends". Like all the rest, though, they had hated this one, too. As she left the stage and headed for the door, not even bothering to stay and listen to whatever instructions Moses was giving, she couldn't help but to identify with the sad, lonely dragon in her "fairy tale". Like him, she knew what it was like to be "different".