Photo by Small Wonder
The conductor comes over the intercom to tell us that the next stretch of rail is heavily used by Pacific Union freight cars and will be rockier than usual. He reminds us to hold onto the backs of seats when walking up the aisle, and to keep both feet placed widely apart to help maintain balance. Coming back from the bathroom, I try to follow his instructions but still bump into everyone who passes me. I keep accidentally touching the heads and shoulders of seated passengers, apologizing quickly and moving on. I have the window seat, so I have to climb over Jacob to sit down, I try not to brush his head with my butt or kick him between the legs. It’s more difficult than it should be because I pay so much attention to it. When I collapse into my chair saying “sorry,” he gives me a blank look. I say sorry more often than Jacob does. And thank you. He’s not used to being around people who aren’t in their twenties and he doesn’t bother to clean up his language.
“Shit,” he says, frowning at his Nintendo DS. “The flame sticks won’t let me past. These fucking flame sticks…” He trails off. On the tiny screen he holds in his hands, Mario performs a series of complicated jumps but falls short of the last one and off the screen. The classic tune of defeat trills from the system, and Jacob bangs it against his knee, breathing in sharply. “Motherfucker,” he hisses, and restarts the level.
His swearing makes me anxious. Across the aisle from us are two Hispanic kids, maybe ten or eleven, reclining in their chairs with the hoods of their sweatshirts up, and I know they’re listening. Probably they wish they could play themselves, show Jacob how it’s done, but they’re quiet kids, patient, and I feel like we should be making a good impression. This is the way people in their twenties act. This is how it will be for you. Behind us sit a couple in their seventies, wife and husband in matching pink polo shirts. The wife keeps up a non-stop running commentary on everything the train passes. “That was a baseball diamond,” she says, hitting the window with her index finger to point it out. “See there? It’s overgrown and the plants are different where it was. That’s what an overgrown baseball diamond looks like, I guess.” Her accent sounds southern to me, but I know now that Californian accents can be like that. “Look at that, I spilled tea on my shirt,” the woman says. “And I don’t have a warshing machine. I can’t warsh it out.” But maybe she’s not from California at all. She hasn’t said. I know where some of the people around us are from, where they’re headed, because the pink polo woman has asked them. She didn’t ask us. I suspect her of thinking we’re younger than we are. When we got on the train, she said to her husband, “Watch what the kids are doing, the kids know how this works.” We do, but only because of the trip down. Two days aboard a train and you pretty much know the ropes. “You be grateful for the day you got called ‘kids’,” she told me then. “Not like us.”
I try to take pictures of the passing scenery but it goes by fast and the train windows reflect back at me. “She’s taking pictures,” pink polo says. I put the camera down on my lap and she whispers loudly “I think she heard me.”
“Fucking hell,” says Jacob. The DS chimes. Outside the train I see rolling hills of brown grass. “Cattle country,” says pink polo. I see a few black cattle stuck on the sides of hills like fleas, every so often, but mainly just fences and telephone poles and turkey vultures. We pass three dead cows, skin stretched over their bones like a drum, and I point them out to Jacob. Then I worry about what I sound like. He goes back to his game.
When I fall asleep, I dream that I’m back in San Diego and drunk again, on the fire escape of the El Cortez. Ben is sitting on the metal steps with no shoes on, smoking and laughing, and I’m afraid he’s going to fall off. I like Ben, with his Scottish accent and his way of running around like a kid. He reminds me of a friend I had in elementary school who I lost touch with a long time ago. Ben is laughing and singing a White Stripes song. I can tell that we are gonna be friends. He tries to hand me a cigarette with his foot, clutching it between his toes. I reach for it and miss and he crows “Catch it and I’ll kiss you.” Jacob hears and frowns, which makes me angry. Then Ben falls backwards and away from us, all at once. We’re left five stories up, staring at the place where he was, and I wake up.
Jacob is sleeping with his head on my shoulder. I can smell his hair. Two days without showering and it smells like red meat to me, roast beef. I squirm away from him, closer to the window.
The kids across from us are curled up together like puppies, and behind me I hear the husband snoring softly.
“You’re snoring,” mutters pink polo, half-asleep.
“I’m not,” the husband cries softly, and keeps doing it.
I want to get out of my seat, so I do, straddling Jacob briefly and hoping he won’t wake up. He doesn’t. The rocking of the train is gentler now.
Through the windows I see lights moving past in the dark, slowly. Pink polo, an inflatable pillow around her neck like a collar, opens her eyes briefly to register me, and closes them again. Tall girl in wrinkled clothes, dirty hair, glasses smudged, still young. Check.
A tiny set of stairs leads to down to the bathroom and luggage area. I grip the greasy hand rail as I descend but it isn’t hard to keep my balance. On the lower level, I see a woman standing with a backpack on, and realize she’s waiting to de-train. We’re coming to a stop without an announcement because everyone’s asleep, I guess. They don’t want to wake us up if they don’t have to.
I don’t really need to use the bathroom, I know now, but to stretch my legs. A porter comes out of a door in the tiny hallway as the train shudders to a complete stop. He pulls a low metal stool from its hook on the wall and works some latches beside the exit. When the exit door groans open the conductor steps out. The woman follows. I come after. We step out into the dark. A few yellow lights shine weakly on the brick platform and bugs wheel around them. I hear crickets or cicadas, I don’t know which, and the air is warmer than it was inside the train. The porter jogs towards the station building and the woman pulls on the shoulder straps of her backpack with both hands, shifting it higher against her spine, and sets off in the opposite direction along the platform. I wonder if she’s got a long walk ahead of her, if she slept at all and where she’s going.
The train breathes beside me, hissing and grumbling every so often like a dog that dreams of running. I stand beside it, trying to feel with every part of me that this is where I am, when I exist, June 2007, somewhere between San Diego and Seattle, almost twenty-five. I’ve looked forward to this trip all summer, to meeting friends down in California, to the photos taken and exchanged over the internet later, the proof of life. I’ve spent so much time waiting for things to happen.
If I can only feel it, I think to myself. Time slows down if you pay attention. I can be this age forever.
I don’t know where the porter is, but I see the firefly glow of someone smoking a cigarette at the end of the platform, walking around in no particular direction. Then the ember falls to the ground and goes out.
The train sighs and moves backwards slightly, than inches forwards. The door is still open. Nobody else is around. For one second, maybe two, I’m alone. The train is leaving. I run to catch it.
