The following contains descriptions of graphic sexual acts between consenting teenage boys. It is a work of pure fiction and has no basis in the real world. Any similarities between people and places is just simple and plain coincidence. Do not read this story if you are under 18 or the legal age in your area; or, if it is just down right illegal to read this material where you live. And, don't go any further if you don't want to read about gay/bisexuals falling in love and having sex.

The author of this story retains copyright to this story and its characters. Reproducing this story for distribution without the author's explicit permission is a violation of that copyright.

Please, feel free to email me with your comments, questions, or just general thoughts for this story at mavjk99@yahoo.com.

Strangers on a Train

by. J. A. Adkins

Part 21-Hitching a Ride With One Lonnie Edgerly, Esquire.

"Oh, God!" My throat seized up.  I gagged, which made me stagger which broke the rhythm of the run I had been holding for too long anyway.  My legs became a sweaty pretzel.  I fell fast into Darren.  By the time we had mowed down several stocks of corn in our jumbled, painful roll across the packed earth, I was still gagging.

"Wha..." Darren tried to say, out of breath.  "What?!"

I gagged, "I think I swallowed a bug!"

"Oh, for the love of-"

"It's not like I wanted to!  I was just trying to breathe!"  I swallowed successfully for the first time.  I almost gagged again at the same time.  I swear I could still taste the six-legged, winged vigilante of the cornfield that had just tried to do battle with my tonsils.

"I know.  It doesn't matter," Darren said with a heat-exhausted sigh.

"Why is that?"

Darren looked up slowly as a small propellor-powered plane soared low over the cornfield.  I watched it with a start as it descended quickly out of sight just past the sun-licked tops of the sturdy corn stalks.

"Because we're here," Darren said, pushing himself back onto his feet.

I glanced around, looking up again at the sky.  "Really?  Oh... good."

A dozen more paces-made awkward by the dizzying fatigue I was feeling after our multi-mile sprint-and we came to the edge of the cornfield.  Before my dusty, dry eyes a medium-sized airfield stretched across the terrain.  At the far end of the summer-baked tarmac, a group of buildings were tightly clustered together.  Single-storied office complexes neighbored much larger airplane hangars.

"I thought..." I said before trying to swallow again, my throat raw and tight from my gagging spasms.  Luckily, such a thing wasn't a chronic condition.  "I thought we were trying to catch a train," I finally managed to say.  "Not a plane."

"We are.  But..." Darren said, breathing deeply.  "But to get to the one... we... need the other.  Besides... I have an... old... fr.. friend who...."

I looked at him knowingly.  "Owes you a favor?"

Darren nodded, taking a deep breath.

"Did you save his life or something?"

Darren shook his head.  "No.  But my father did."  He stepped out from the thick-leafed stems holding up the towering corn which had been brushing and scraping our shoulders, sides, and faces.  I followed him close, thankful to be free of Orville Rednbocker's backyard.

"My dad died before he could cash in the favor.  So... I'm here on his behalf."

"So this should go well," I said hopefully.

Darren cocked his head to one side ever-so-slightly.  "Well... maybe."

I laughed, but not happily.  It was the kind of laugh you hear a person make when they realize that after so much strife already, the end of their rope is much shorter than they thought; or, when the silver lining to their troubles turns out to be more trouble with a flashlight.

Our trek across the criss-crossing runways was brief compared to our journey through the land of a thousand "ears".  I watched the small plane that had passed us low in the sky creep across the tarmac in the distance. Then, beyond it, the flashing lights and squealing sirens of a half-dozen police cars suddenly became visible.  I tapped Darren on the shoulder, still watching the white and brown-painted metal calvary swarm the entrance of the airfield.

"We have to move fast," Darren said, already several more steps ahead of me.

"Do you even know which building you're looking for?"

Darren hesitated long enough for me to notice.  "Darren?!"

"I think so!  We're looking for the offices of one Lonnie Edgerly, Esquire."

The offices of one Lonnie Edgerly, Esquire were found in a one story, brick and concrete addition of one of the far hangars in the cluster of buildings.  This was somewhat of a good thing-a break in the string of bad luck we'd been having.  The angry, teeming swarm of various law and government officials were busy near the front of the commercial neighborhood we had quickly and quietly hurried through.  When Darren spotted the name printed on the glass entry doors on the brick-walled offices, a smile crept across his tanned face and things, once again, began to get interesting.

SLAM!!  The flimsy wooden door at the end of a short hallway leading away from an air-conditioned lobby crashed against a filing cabinet I imagine was just as surprised by Darren's entrance as the nervous looking man behind the paper-littered desk in the corner of the room.  A glass decoration fell in a crooked spiral off the top of the desk as the man I assumed was Lonnie Edgerly, Esquire. jumped to his feet.

"Hey, Lon!  How's it going?"

"Darren?!  Little Darren Brasier?!  Hey!"  He laughed with obvious worry.  "How's it going?"

"Oh... you know.  Same old."

Lonnie laughed again.  His round cheeks, dusted by splotchy, almost orange looking freckles, were turning a bright red.  "Yeah.  I know what you mean.  What's new?  Sorry about your dad."

Darren's expression turn from one of strange, semi-psychotic malevolence to something dark and wrathful in a single sneer that could make dry paint suddenly peel.  The small gun was out of the waist of pants and in his hand point straight toward Lonnie's head in such a quick and smooth motion I caught myself blushing.  Then, there was that familiar stirring below my personal equator.  Yet, the escalating situation would demand all my attention.

"Darren, what the hell?" Lonnie cried, backing up and stumbling into his chair.  He fell backwards into it, the wheels on its three-legged base carrying him, with another loud crash, into the back wall.

"I know about you and Devoy!"

"You're crazy!  You know that?!"  He looked toward me with beady, glazed brown eyes.  It donned on the poor the old boy was high.  I glanced at the powder traces on his desk, visible now that the papers he had used to cover it had shifted aside.  "You're friend is crazy!"

I shrugged my shoulders.

"Angie!  Call the cops!" Lonnie yelled past us to his receptionist staring down the hall from the lobby.

"She can't."  Darren tossed the phone cord in his other hand onto the desk.  Lonnie's eyes darted toward the dark coil of cord half-buried on his desk.  "Don't bother," Darren ordered.  "You'll be dead before you hit 9."

Lonnie glared at Darren.  "What do you want, anyway?  Or did you just drop in to raise my blood pressure?"

"I'm here to cash in the favor you owe my dad."

Lonnie's frightened  pout turned into a smirk.  "I don't owe you or your dad shit!"

The words had barely hit my ears before they started ringing painfully from the thunderous snap of a gunshot.  I only saw the muzzle flare in the corner of my eye.  In the same split-second that my pulse had froze, Lonnie flinched.  The bullet struck the wall just behind his left ear and shoulder.  Paint and dust flecked against his cheek.

"Whoa!" he yelled, panicked again, as he sank to the floor.  "Calm down, man!"

"We are not going to play this game, Lonnie!  You get your stuff from Devoy.  When you couldn't pay him you went to work for him.  But you messed up!  And you needed my dad's help.  In the end, he inadvertently put you back on Devoy's good side when you put him in Devoy's cross-hairs.  You're still alive.  My father isn't.  I consider that a favor he gave you."

"You're crazy!"

Darren cocked the gun.  Angie the receptionist shrieked behind us, disappearing into the lobby.

"Are you going to kill me?" Lonnie asked, his voice cracking. It looked like he was on the edge of sobbing.

Darren held that cold, shudder-inducing sneer for several more seconds before his face suddenly relaxed and he smiled again.  "Lonnie, killing you would be like hunting a deer.  It would serve no real purpose.  Only... I'm sure deer are much smarter than you."

"What do you want then?"

"A ride."

"To where?"

"You're going to get us back on the Blue Sky, no matter what it takes.  You do this successfully-"

"Which means with both of us alive... is my understanding ," I interjected.

Darren nodded at me.  "Of course."  He looked back at Lonnie.  "You do that and you and I are even.  You'll never have to see or hear from me again."

Lonnie didn't respond at first.  His sobering eyes shifted uncomfortably back and forth between Darren and me for several seconds.  Finally, he said simply, "And if I refuse?"

Darren pursed his lips, thinking of the alternative.  It was only a moment or two before that mischievous grin was back on his face and his gaze was drilling past the blood vessels in Lonnie's eyes to the tiny, sad, soul cowering deep within the balding, middle aged pilot.  His round shoulders dropped; so did his jaw.

The cops were closing in.  The pressure was mounting.  I could feel my adrenaline starting to rise with each heavy pump of my heart.  I walked just behind Darren's left shoulder as Lonnie led us into the mostly empty hangar.  There were two planes in the hollow, metal shell that stretched into the shadows twenty feet above us.  Well, there was actually more like one-and-a-half planes.  The first one we passed was parked in the middle of the hangar floor.  One wind was missing along with all of its landing gear, most of the fuselage, and the controls inside.  One propellor blade reached out from the center of the mud-covered nose.  Suddenly, I wasn't so keen on Darren's newest choice of transportation.

Near the wide, flat doors pulled open to reveal the expansive tarmac beyond the structure, a more complete version of an airplane sat silently in the late-afternoon light.  A mechanic whistled noisily as he tightened something just out sight.  I wonder if the rocket-scientist had anything to do with the muddy wonder behind me.

Lonnie patted the slender man on the shoulder.  The young mechanic-who didn't look much older than Darren or myself-flinched and bounced back against the orange painted bi-wing plane.  A lollipop stick dangled from his bottom lip.  His sleepy eyes looked at Lonnie with mellow surprise.

"Oh!  Hey.  Didn't hear ya' comin'!"

"Right.  Anyway..." Lonnie said hastily, feeling the presence of the gun tucked within easy reach in the waist line of Darren's pants.  "Is she ready to fly?" he asked, gesturing toward the single engine craft that looked like one of those stunt planes from an air show.

"Yes, sir.  Just finished up.  But I thought ya' weren't goin' to take 'er out 'til later today?"

"Well, I changed my mind," Lonnie said, glancing with annoyance and hesitation toward Darren and me.

"Oh," the mechanic said simply.

Lonnie was quickly getting impatient.  He reached into his pocket, pulling out a sweaty handful of wrinkled money.  "Okay, here.  Here's a hundred bucks or so.  Go play with yourself somewhere."

The mechanic looked at the sweaty bills of stale smelling green paper Lonnie had slapped onto the palm of his hand.  "Umm... okay.  Thanks.  I will."

"Good," Lonnie said as the mechanic headed toward the office door at the back of the hangar.

"Bright kid," Darren quipped.

"He's not the brightest bulb on the Christmas tree, I'll say that.  But he sure as hell can fix a plane."  Lonnie started his quick climb into the back seat of the two-seater plane.  He glanced down us, hurriedly attaching his most crucial flight gear.  "Well, are we leaving or not?!"

"There's only two seats," I said.  "And there's three of us."

Lonnie fastened the straps of his little vintage leather pilots hood.  "Well, one of you will have to ride on the wing."

"What?!" Darren and I said simultaneously.

"This is a stunt plane!" I said loudly.

"You don't have anything bigger?" Darren said over my exasperated declaration of the obvious.

"It's the only plane I've got that works."

Darren turned around to face me.  "And the only chance we have of catching up with the train."

"Well I don't want to ride shot... wing... Whatever!"

"Well I don't want to ride on the wing, either!"

"One of you better damn well ride on the wing or I'm going back to my office!" Lonnie said, eagerly interrupting us.

"Shut up!" Darren and I yelled together.

"Okay... how about we shoot for it?  Best two out of three."

"Fine.  I'll take odds," I said.

Darren nodded.  "Okay.  I've got evens."

"You should know," I said smugly, "that I was champion of this game in elementary."

The two of us, like the mature pre-adults we were trying to be, pivoted into the ready position for a game played throughout thousands upon thousands of playgrounds.

"Once, twice, three... SHOOT!" we said in unison.

Our hands flew out, stopping just short of each other's fingertips.

"Damn it," I said bitterly.

"Once, twice, three... SHOOT!"

"Shit," Darren hissed.

"Ha ha."

The office door suddenly opened with an echoing creek.  "The police are here," the mechanic shouted.

"Stall 'em and Lonnie will give you another hundred bucks!"

"Sure, no problem!" the mechanic quickly replied happily before closing the door and locking it behind him.

The last round.  We readied again.  "Once, twice, three... SHOOT!"

Hands and fingers brushed electrically against each other.  Our eyes watched our fingers before meeting in a tight, hot gaze.

The engine of the small plane sputtered and coughed as Lonnie cranked it quickly to life.  The wind from the fast moving blades billowed with an annoying rush through my hair.  "Everybody strapped in?" Lonnie yelled, amused by the scene.

"Funny!  Just get the damn plane in the air!"

"Okay!  Okay!  We're going!  Just hang on!"

With that, Lonnie was true to his word.  The plane lurched forward, pushing with an subtly increasing pace past the hangar doors.  He turned the plane a few degrees to the right, guiding it toward the runway.  Further off to the right, a state trooper hurried around the corner of the pale green metal wall.  He yelled something lost in the rapid stutter and buzz of the engine and propellers.  I'm sure it was something like, "Stop".

Lonnie must have seen the trooper, as well.  He suddenly fed more fuel to the engine.  Behind and around us the cry of police cars began to rise above the din of the plane.  I glanced as best I could over my shoulder, spotting two squad cars barreling toward us.

"We need to go faster!" I yelled.

"All in good time," Lonnie replied.

I felt the wind on me pick up some more.  Gravity was already trying to tighten its hug on me.  I watched the sun-warmed blacktop begin to race by beneath the wheels and the wing I was strapped tightly against.  When I looked back up, my eyes instantly locked onto the sheriff's car that had raced the perimeter of the airfield and was coming to a tire-tearing stop near the end of our runway.

"Oh, shit!" I yelled.

"I hope you're saving your best trick for last, Lonnie!" Darren said worriedly.

"Just hang on!" Lonnie yelled to us, giving the engine more gas.  "This is gonna be kinda close!"

Beside the plane, the two police cars sped across the tarmac in hot, excited pursuit.  Their lights danced over the orange and black paint on the plane's fuselage.  I could barely hear their sirens above the growing noise of the engine in front of me.  But it was only another second before I lost sight of them.  They began to drift behind us, our speed to great.  Lonnie pulled on the yolk, dragging the nose of the plane up.  I felt air wrap around the wings and wheels for a fleeting moment before being pushed aside from the jolting impact of the still spinning tires stomping back against the pavement.

"Hold on!"  Lonnie said one more time.

The sheriff's car stayed put.  I could make out the details on it's slick, steel and frame.  The sheriff himself watched with horror-stricken eyes from behind his cruiser as our plane came charging toward him at almost full speed.  Lonnie yanked the stick again.  The plane pitched up again.  The sheriff ducked at the last minute, diving to safety.  In the same moment, the wheels cleared the top of the car, leaving it dusty but unharmed.  When I didn't feel the ground kiss the tires or any other part of the plane, I let out a long breath.

A few minutes later, the Lonnie finally leveled out the fast-flying craft.  I gazed with wind-dried eyes at the monochromatic landscape of fields and farms stretched out all around us in perfect geographical symmetry.  It was beautiful in a way.  But very plain in another-no pun intended.  Still, it was better than being stuck on the ground in handcuffs or cross country sprinting through the infinite rows of green-stalked corn.

Now, it would only be a matter of minutes until we caught back up with the train.  I could already see the familiar gleam and sparkle of its tubular steel form near the approaching horizon.  My fingers gripped the soft handles bolted into the left wing body as I hung on for dear life for the rest of the ride.