I’m thinking about Helen and Arnie. What am I doing here? I keep dreaming I’m outside looking in at them. A dream that I can’t shake. That’s my fate. Always outside looking in. So I succumb. I’m here and they’re there.
Hell, maybe I’ll try a new name today. Keep even myself guessing.
Cadence sat, stunned, holding the man’s confession in her hands. So I succumb … The crime scene — a remnant family. The confession — a note from the road …
Before she could get too angry the man across the aisle rustled, saw her awake. “You know the sounds?”
“What?”
“My name’s Julian. I was asking if you know the train sounds.”
“Nice to meet you. I’m Cadence. Yes, I’m hearing them, if that’s what you mean.”
“But if you know them like I do, there are subtleties. There are actually three signature sounds of trains.”
“OK, tell me.”
“Well, there’s the sing-song click-clack of the junctions in the rails. But listen. Listen. No song, right? Now it’s more like a delay, maybe ten seconds, then just one click-clack. Hear?”
The train rumbled, and then the isolated double-note came and went. It seemed like a rare passing comma in a jargon of flat and unintelligible steel on steel.
“Yeah, there,” she said.
“That’s not the way it used to be. Used to be every second or two, an almost constant beat. Up-tempo, sort of. You know, Chattanooga Choo-Choo, Pennsylvania Six Five Thousand, Orange Blossom Special. That’s all gone now, cause they changed the rails. They put in longer rails so there’s only a tenth of the junctions there used to be. So it’s a backbeat now, is all.”
“The other sounds are still there. It’s kinda like the Doppler effect. Another train whistle or clanging crossing signal, depending on where you are. It comes and jams together and then fades away. And there’s that long, lonely whistle going away in the night. The stuff of country songs — Hank Williams and Johnny Cash. Of all the ways people get around — cars, boats, planes — there’s only one, railroads, that has the music, the joy and the sorrow. So, what do you think?”
“I think I don’t know. To me it’s just trains. Nothing magical about it.”
“Don’t dismiss it. Magic sometimes comes in little packages.”
Cadence listened.
“Well, what’s your story?” he said.
“I’m going to New York to find out about my grandfather.”
“That’s great. That’s where he’s from?”
“No, it’s where he met someone famous. I have some documents from there.”
“Was he famous?”
“No, he’s … was kind of a bum. A drifter. He left my grandmother and my dad.”
“So why are you looking?”
“I don’t know. Just to find something true about myself, I guess. How come he left. How come my dad was the way he was. You know, that family thing.”
“At least you got something worth looking for. Me, I got nobody much to worry about. They know I’m here, wherever that is, but it’s here. On the train.”
“How’s that?”
“You know, like the Kingston Trio song about the guy on the Boston Metro Transit Authority. ‘Did he ever return? No, he never returned. And his fate is still unlearned.’ Only I’m here by choice.”
“You live on trains?”
He scooted over to the aisle seat. “Since 9/11.”
She scooted over to hear better. “OK, let’s hear your 9/11 story.”
“I was in D.C. I watched it, or rather felt it, hit the Pentagon. I felt the boom, the ground shaking, the big mushroom and then the plume of smoke. Suddenly everyone was in the street. Traffic stopped everywhere. The whole city stunned. I was outside the Willard Hotel, a couple of blocks from the White House.”
“Pretty scary, I bet.”
“Yeah, unreal. Strangers all stopped to talk to each other. We heard that more planes were headed to D.C. to blow up the White House and the Capitol. Then I heard it coming.”
“What?”
“Jet engines coming in full bore. I looked over toward the White House and the guy next to me. They were coming in to blow up the President. We all started to hunker down. I said to the guy next to me, ‘Shit, watch this.’”
He took off his watch, holding it in his open hand like a wounded butterfly, like it had been traumatized by the same experience he was describing. He massaged his wrist nervously.
“We were all crouching, some on their hands and knees, helpless, hearing it coming. Then it came, right flat overhead maybe two hundred feet, twin F-16s roaring over us wing to wing. They topped right over the White House, like they were saying, ‘This is ours and we are ready!’ The sound crushed all of us. I think I ended up curled up like a baby.”
“Then what?”
“I went to a packed outdoor restaurant with a TV wheeled out front and watched the towers fall. The traffic was jammed. I just wanted to get out of there. So did everybody else. There were a thousand people trying to get into a single Hertz office. Fools waving their Gold Cards — it was a joke! Cell phones were jammed. So I left my bag and briefcase in a conference room. I never went back. I walked to a highway that had some traffic moving. A guy in a convertible signaled for me to get in. I ran and hopped in as he was moving along. He said hang on and we cut traffic, onto the median, on the side lanes, heading, it turned out for Barksdale, Maryland. He took me to his house, we got on the computer and snagged the last reservation on a west-bound Amtrak leaving in six hours. It had been turned around before getting to D.C. He got through to his wife and kids by landline. We had beers and leftover fried chicken and he drove me thirty miles to the little train station. I got on. And I never got off.”
“You mean you live here?”
“I’ve been living on Amtrak ever since then. The first three days after I got on, I slept on the floor. I bought this little polyester blanket — you know, with the official blue Amtrak logo. This one here.” He held up a worn and travel-stained once-white blanket, limp with use, its edges frayed, folded carefully like an heirloom quilt.
“I slept on the floor, like I said, ‘cause there weren’t any seats. We all gathered in the bar car the next night. Maybe a hundred, two hundred people. Told our stories. Shared news. Got raucously drunk, sang songs, you know. Felt the kinship of disaster.
“So, when I got to Denver, I just kept going. Never even called in to my job. Then on to Portland, then Seattle, then back across to Minneapolis, then south to New Orleans. I had a long leash on my credit card, so I just kept on buying tickets. Until a ticket agent clued me into the MegaPass. Unlimited travel, one annual fee. I picked up bits and pieces of life in the railroad stations or a few blocks surrounding them. Toiletries, clothes, stuff to write letters with, books … It’s simple.”
“You’re still afraid?”
“It’s … deeper than that. I just can’t really get off. I scuttle to those stores to get things, then come running back. Literally, running. I’m safe here I guess. Sort of hiding while moving. Funny, I travel hundreds of miles every day …”
He left the sentence unfinished, his voice trailing away as he turned to the window. She noticed his watch. The sweep hand didn’t move.
Around dawn she awoke briefly and watched the gray world relentlessly trip by her window. She wondered how the man across the aisle felt. They were all strangers here, thrown into this long, shunting tube of aluminum, speeding on wheels of steel. She was grateful that, at some point, she would get off the train.
The next day, Cadence felt the change, the long, slow descent into the Mississippi drainage. They passed the continental cleavage, and she felt the easy strings of the West loosen and the verdant tugs of the East take hold. She was coming to pick up a trail, even if it turned out to be a cold and fruitless one. The fact of going and standing on the trail itself was enough for now. It was doing something.