…
When
I went to San Francisco I put my
leather-bound suitcase under the backseat of where I sat on the train, and
looked out the side window. I couldn’t afford a berth; it was three times the
amount of the economy coach ticket. And back in the summer of 1968, when I was
but twenty-years old, it didn’t make a difference: I kicked my shoes off, and
as night come quickly, I couldn’t see much anyway. I tossed my black Swede
jacket over me—over my shoulders, took a newspaper I found lying on the open
seat next to me, turned on the overhead light and read the headlines, and
scanned the front page.
“Turn off the light,” said the porter, “Everyone’s trying to get some
sleep.”
“No,” I said, “I don’t want to. I’m not sleepy, Mister!”
“Well, I guess so,” he said, adding “we’ll be stopping in a few
hours if you want to get off the train
and stretch your feet for ten-minutes…” then he looked down at my feet, “you
should put your shoes on,” he grumbled.
“No,” I said, “I’ll not put them out in the aisle, if that’s what you’re
worried about.” He simply turned his head and walked away.
I got up and went to the washroom, washed my face: I wasn’t tired; I
walked about the train—although dimly lit in all compartments. (It was my second train ride I had taken; the
first being coming back from Seattle to St. Paul, Minnesota a year earlier
where I had visited the city for a short while)—
A few of the windows were left slightly open and the night summer’s air came in
cool. The moon was like a big white button in the sky. There were lights in the
distance that blurred as the iron horse, as they often referred to it in the
cowboy moves, raced onward.
We angled into Chicago, but before I could see
its tall buildings, we were on the outskirts. I looked out the window to see
the windy city but all I could see were railroad yards and freight cars lined
up to kingdom-come. Then suddenly we stopped—a dead stop, the porter came by
again, “If you need cigarettes or anything, there’s a stand outside on the
platform, be quick about it though,” he said and I jumped up, crawled out from
behind the two seats and onto the aisle, and then onto the landing area of the
train station.
“Where are we?” I asked the owner of a stand, that was selling
newspapers, magazines, cigarettes and warm quart beer, on the pier.
“Outside of Chicago, why?” he asked.
“No reason, give me a quart of beer.” I said.
“Will Hamm’s do?” he questioned.
“Yaw, how much?”
“$1.25 plus tax,” he quoted.
I paid the fellow, then the train started to move, and I found myself
running to just make the train, jumping onto its metal step with one hand on
the beer and the other on the railing. And there I stood in-between the two
cars, and drank the quart of beer down whole within a matter of minutes. Found
a trash can, throw the empty bottle in it and went back to my original seat. An
old lady was sitting in the seat next to mine, and I moved on over and around
her, to the window side and fell to sleep. When I woke up the train had stopped
again, we were someplace high up, it was cold and when I moved my jacket, the
old lady pulled her arm back, as if it was searching for something, where it
didn’t belong. I gave her a nasty look, one that perhaps said: it wasn’t safe
for her anymore here, and when I’d come back she’d be gone.
“We’re going through cold country,” said the porter. We were in the
mountains now. I put on my jacket, my shoes and reached under my seat to check
if my suitcase was still there, it was, thus, I moved out to find another quart
of beer, rushing from one vender to another, then finding a little store on the
pier, that was connected to the inside station and halfway out onto the
platform. And I could feel the cool air in my lungs, I let a Luck Strike, and
walked into the store casual like, knowing I was only twenty-years old, still
not old enough to drink, or buy alcohol, but I usually didn’t have a problem
with that. Hence, I walked inside the small store, two Negros were sitting
about on wooden stools, their shoeshine box in front of them “You-all wants a
shoeshine boy?” asked the Negro with the black and yellowish front buck teeth
extending through his open mouth.
“No, just a quart of beer,” I rambled.
The storekeeper was asleep behind the counter in the corner, his head
against a cushioned pillow.
“Hay, Ollie, wake up, yous got a customer,” said the middle-aged Negro
with the black teeth. When he smiled he opened up his mouth wider showing off
his damaged gums, and spit into a spittoon, the tobacco he was chewing was
blacker than his teeth, his eyes were as red as Marilyn Monroe’s lips; his head
was the shape of a football, he was wearing a brown fitted, knitted cap, and
his ears looked to be the cauliflower type, as if he was at one time a boxer,
perhaps forty-five, the other fellow was sleeping on his forearms and knees,
back bent.
I went back to my seat on the train and she was gone altogether with her
things, and so I drank the six-pack of beer without fret. And fell to sleep
sometime between the fourth and fifth beer, because when I woke up, there were
two half cans of beer on the floor and one full one in my lap. I found my way
back to the washroom carefully, as not to wake up the few folks still sleeping.
The bathroom now smelled vulgar, pee and vomit were all over the seats, and no
toilet paper.
Thereafter, I could smell the breakfast seep all the way down from the
dining car, three cars up. I looked out the window at the countryside; it was
now flat, not mountainous like before.
It was forty-shades of green, and lots and lots of telephone poles, and
fine looking horses grazing, small hills, patches of wooded areas here and
there. Seeing all this appeared as if I had never left Minnesota (perhaps I was in Montana, who’s to say), except there were no cornfields, not one, but
it was nice looking country anyhow.
No: 640
(6-23-2010) Notes: These short stories
were written between January of 2010, and February of 2012 (in a 25-month
period). The story numbers are between
#631 and #879 (as you may well know
if you’ve read the author before, the author numbers his poems and short
stories: the first one being “The Little Russian Twins,’ written in 1981, and
the most recent, “Distraught” number, 3879, written: 2-29-2012.
