I took the #11 train, the Coastal Starlight, south from Portland to Sacramento. As with every train in the west since Covid, most of the passengers are dislocated, economically or due to a relationship; perhaps a divorce, the death of a spouse, the ailing condition of one’s parents back east requiring a family member at home… We are living through—dying during—a great die-off, a top-down cull of people made obsolete through the silver-tongued atomotons of Vulcan’s workshop.
Half of the passengers, including all of the single women—mostly middle-aged—are asking for a guide a seat-mate, a luggage handler from among the their fellow passengers in coach. I decline stone-faced. My eye has been very bad. Speaking is agony. A big brown man, a “su chef,” he says, is a weak late for his new Sacramento job, as the train line has been down five days. The conductor assures him, “At least one freight train derails every week. It is a constant problem on this line.”
It has not even been a wet rainy season. I sleep sitting up next to a big bicycle man, who keeps to his smart phone. I feel bad for my Eskimo wife. She dropped me off at the train station after her savage Cheyenne Son was circling like a vulture, ready to pounce on Fort Eskimo, as soon as The Magic White Man was gone.
Two displaced middle-aged women, and a middle-aged rail pass weed head hippy, try and befriend me. I look away. I have serious writing to do. I don’t need to write five life stories of the ever-expanding army of the USG displaced. Most of those on this train, of both sexes and all ages, are alone. Rolling into Sacramento, which was a homeless nightmare three years ago, I see some feral homeless, but mostly very nice, three-section, C-shaped tiny houses in fenced parks, free of trash. The problem has been shifted to Reno and Oakland.
A young bald fellow, leaving Portland, in heavy clothes with torn black hood and eye brow ring, tries to make eye contact with me. This is usual across the country, from Amish elders to teenage hoodrats, looking to the crumbling cracker who alone need ask no directions of the crew, or driver, for guidance. This pale cοοn still feels giddy on every train platform. There is something nerve-addling about waiting for this great steel dragon to roll up horn roaring, hiss, and open its armor plates for us meat stakes.
Arriving in Sacramento in Platform 5, at 7 AM, I look forward to the quarter-mile walk through the covered tunnel and raised garden, across the bus lot, into the large marble station. I get the code to the very nice bathroom. I read a Vietnam War memoir and ponder until 9:50. A pretty black girl, the chocolate baggage-gimp pilot, asks me if I want a ride. “No thanks, darlin’ I’ll walk.”
Just before the bus park I pass her extra long baggage-people cart. Seated in it is the eye-brow ring guy, who nods to me. He is perhaps 21. I make the walk before the transported lazy and old get there. I used to make this on crutches until last year. He is lazy. It marvels within that these folks, facing days of sitting, would rather sit for this short chance to stretch their legs.
The kid lands next to me. He is moving, displaced, with a large carry-on, a back pack, and a duffle. He says, ‘I see you everywhere,” from seven paces. I wave and smile slightly.
He walks to me and says, “I’m Austin,” and extends his hand, shopping with good will for a daddy. His frame is potentially rugged, but non athletic—at least not fat.
“James, nice to meet you.”
“Nice to meet you, Sir. If you don’t mind me asking, where you are going?”
“Salt Lake City.”
“I’m headed to Nebraska. Never did this before, it’s strange, kind of disorienting.”
“They will wake you day after tomorrow, early morning, before dawn. You’ll hit Denver about sundown tomorrow.”
“That’s what Mom says. My mother is tracking this on her phone.”
“This is an interesting, fatherless cat, with no smart phone. If I still wrote human interest, still wanted to coach, I would have let him befriend me. This kid was down on his luck, not addicted to, or even it seemed, in possession of, a smart phone, smoked cigs but was not jonesing for weed. Sean could make a better man of this kid. I turned away. Over the course of our trip, he nodded friendly like to me, even to sit with him in the viewing car, and I ignored him. Maybe the extreme pain in my eye and face for three days now is punishment for this sin.
A seizure so bad I could not speak or open my eyes had the old boomer cafe attendant tapping his keys on the only open table and accusing me of sleeping. I managed to point at a pill with my shaking hands, rasping weekly, “I’m having a seizure,” and he let me be, still unable to drink my diet soda. [1]
Above, an old lady tried to make friends in the viewing car, speaking about the beautiful sunset I was afraid to look at. I nodded to her and ignored her. I could feel that it hurt her—she had been cute once and adored… Now she was lonely luggage. I did take her lunch trash to a can when I left her.
I was seated next to Mike, a big, kind, rail pass man, who introduced himself and shook my hand. “Nice to meet you, Mike,” and I avoided conversing with him there after.
Chico, the Chicano coach attendant, best of his kind, who knows me by sight, took me from Mike and gave me my own seat at Reno, “When you get back on after your exercises, you can spread out, sir.”
“Thank you,” I managed to hoarsely whisper.
Noting that I go down stairs a lot to exercise during travel, he sat me at the top of the stairs. Exercising for 40 minutes in the concrete trench at Reno, Mike and Chico and another rail pass retiree bachelor speak of the natural wonders and of the troubled train. The crew is on tight service. They normally have half a sleeper car. That sleeper car was pulled, and passengers downgraded to coach, accounting for the lonely middle-aged and elderly women in distress, headed to a death camp for serenity called America. The crew had to sleep sitting up in the back of the cafe car at those tiny diner tables. The equipment is starting to fail.
When I return topside, a 12-year old girl is sitting on my jacket! She has no luggage, just a ticket in a small hand.
I said, “Miss, I’m taking my jacket from under you.”
She smiled, happy that a grandpa was sitting next to her. “Would you like me to move, miss?”
“No,” she shook her head.
Chico gets on, looks at her, having chosen to sit with someone rather than alone, as a giant man from Durango seated in front of us, said, “That young fellow gave me this signed Bible—how nice!”
I shrugged my shoulders to Chico, both of us knowing than an unaccompanied minor may not sit with a strange adult, and is supposed to be seated in the cafe/crew car.
“Sir, come with me. I promise this is your last seat change.” No other attendant tries so hard to maximize customer comfort. The lass objects with a frown. She wants me to stay. Chico says to her, “Just trying to make everyone comfortable—you did nothing wrong.”
I said, as I took down my suit case, “Nice to meet you, young lady,” and she smiled.
At three in the morning I offloaded at Salt Lake City, and, as I passed her, she waved to me, the ticket still clutched in her hand, seated cross ways, back to window, feet together, facing the exit stairs with her sneakers pressed against the arm of the aisle seat.
Cross country trains have become a combination of an orphan and elderly refugee wagon, a conveyor belt of soft dooms for losers, and a magic carpet ride for to hospice for dashed hope.
Notes
1.) The onboard service staff with seniority, the boomers who run the cafe and dinning cars, have been getting so mean, that I no longer order food or drink, fasting instead. The passenger switch from vacationing middle-class boomer couples to broken retires, widows, widowers, orphans and economically displaced Gen-X and Millenials has soured their dream job.
