Max and Sam’s Wild Rides by Don Robishaw

Cold up here on this rusty iron span. For a few bucks, I’ll paint this ugly mother. Press a black watch cap real tight, take out a brown paper sack from my peacoat, and test the wind direction of the breeze by licking and lifting a finger. Toss a set of drumsticks and Sam from the downwind side of the Red Bridge into the River Charles.
He loved the sea. An eighty-mile waterway takes him through the four hams; Needham and Dedham, crosses paths with Waltham and Bellingham, and flows through Medway, Medfield, and other Massachusetts towns and cities, to run out into the Atlantic via Boston ‘Habah.’
My friend’s not coming back, no more. Sam used to always say:

Brother, can you spare a dime?
Need a drink, ain’t got no money.
And ain’t got a dime.
Rough out here for a panhandler.
Can’t even buy, Thunderbird wine.

His old ways don’t work these days. Panhandlers need patience, persistence, and writing skills. A Sharpie and invented spelling are acceptable on a raw sheet of cardboard.
Suits not around Government Center on weekends. Find em in their MGs or in a Benz along America’s highways, byways, and city roadways.

When broke, jump the turnstile in the subway or like today, hop a train. Must be a skill to it. Looks easy, though. Sam used to always say, ‘When in Rome, do as the Romans.’
There’s a northeast bound freighter coming up from Milford. I sense the vibration on the track and hear a sound round the bend. Get a rush when the engine roars and rumbles, and the tracks rattle and roll. The whistle’s blowing on that mile-long freighter. When she gets here, I’ll go halfway up that giant erector set. An easy climb -- even after a few shots of rye. Round that curve she comes, real slow-like. Five-foot jump to a slow-moving train. When I get near Cambridge, climb down and hop off.
Whistle’s blowing. I’ll soon be riding the rails. Dig it. Pick a boxcar out Max, got a hundred to choose. Here comes a yellow New England Freight Car. That be the one. As the sun sets over Western Mass, she comes to a crawl.
 Train, take me where I can ease me pain. Lost Mama, Big Daddy and Leroy in jail, Esmeralda ran away, Sandy’s dead, Billy and Danny killed in the war, my squad too, lost daughter and half-brother Melvin Missing in Action in Vietnam. Train, take me where I can ease my
pain.

Take me home train. Perched here, soaked, crouched, and listening to that whistle blowing. Rain and snow falling. Heavy now. I jump and roll. She picks up speed. It jerks. Stop this train. Max here’s getting off. I slip and stare into that bottomless river. Take me home Charles.

 Previously published as a short story in:

The Remembered Arts Journal, June 23, 2018. 
Carpe Arts Journal, June 25, 2018.

Before Don Robishaw stopped working to write, he ran educational programs for homeless shelters for thirteen years. 

Don's also well-traveled, using various ways and means: Sailor, Peace Corps Volunteer, bartender, hitchhiker, world traveler, college professor, and circus roustabout.

His work has recently appeared in, The Rye Whiskey Review, Drunk Monkeys,O’ Dark Thirty, Literary Orphans, Crack-the-Spine, The Remembered Arts, Open: Journal of Arts and Letters, Flash Fiction Magazine, and others. His chapbook, ‘Willie’s Bad Paper Odyssey’ was a semi-finalist in Digging Press 2018 Summer Chapbook Contest.

He like to write poetry, satire, tragedies, and gritty fictional tales — of men and women from various backgrounds — that may have sprouted from a seed, from his past.

Many of the characters he developed have been homeless, served for periods of time in the military, or are based upon archetypes or sterotypes he's met while on the road.