Page 17 - WTP Vol. XIII #1

I find an article about a local senator attempting to pass legislation putting more white cops on Indian reservations. There are apparently plenty of tres- passes to go around.
On my way back from breakfast, I attempt to stop in the observation car for some human contact, but there’s too much of it for me—people crammed into every available seat for a glimpse of the soft hills
and hay bales of North Dakota. An elderly tour guide shares local facts over the P.A. system as I begin to recognize the other occupants of my sleeper car, though none of them speak to me when we pass. As
I continue through the clotted observation car, I spot the nearly deaf widower from yesterday’s dinner. Over the next day and a half, I’ll see him there twice more, a permanent sightseer. He looks lonely in his checkered shortsleeve shirt and disheveled gray hair, unable to hear those around him, staring off toward the horizon. I have no doubt he once made this trip with his wife, and just as I find the train imbued with an indefinable wistfulness, he seems haunted by her shadow on these tracks.
There are no “flyover” or “middle” states on the Empire Builder. Instead, I sit and watch each state roll by, seeing them not as arbitrary political divi- sions but as a steady, even progression. The dif- ference between Wisconsin and Minnesota isn’t a state border, but the movement from light to darker greens. North Dakota isn’t simply one of those rectangle states, but a further movement from Min- nesota’s greens to its own golden wheat and haunt- ing brown wastes. West Glacier is more than an entrance to one of Montana’s national parks; it’s the moment when the Rocky Mountains consume the landscape like jagged god-teeth.
I learn this last bit as I sit down to my second dinner with two sisters and their wizened mother. They keep telling her to look out the window, to not miss the unspoiled nature. But she is more interested in her steak. When I returned to my room, I find that my old neighbors have disembarked in Whitefish, only
to be replaced by an equally untalkative couple. At first, this depresses me as the first concrete sign that the trip will eventually end. But this is also the allure of train travel—the right to choose quiet and isola- tion while you can have it. I feel this on the second night, sitting in a dark compartment, shut off from the stream of people treading up and down the cor- ridors, watching ghost trees fluttering dimly by. The train is a specter, too. An afterimage of the origi-
nal Great Northern Railroad that drew Americans inexorably from the rapidly subdued Midwest to the
unconquered frontier. The insight, I think, is keen, but I quickly explode it by taking my iPod out and putting Kenny Rogers’ “The Gambler” on repeat as I sip whis- key from my pocket flask. The constant movement is wearing on me, and I’d rather fabricate a past than search for meaning in the present.
By six the next morning, we’ve blown through Pasco, Washington, and lost the front half of the train, which uncoupled in the night and headed for Seattle. My half pushes on to Portland, and the finality I sensed the night before is now palpable throughout the cars. Some new passengers have boarded in the night, but most of us have been there from the early stops in Chicago, Milwaukee, and Minneapolis. We’ve watched the country change around us incrementally, as if we’ve flipped through animation cels slowly, one by one. I can’t imagine many people get this perspective anymore. As we light across the precarious trestle spanning the Columbia River Gorge, I see my first glimpse of Oregon and know the world will be back soon, whether I like it or not.
I enjoy a last shaky shower, drink a hand-delivered cup of coffee, and prepare to leave the shadow rails behind. I think of the deaf old man once more, though I don’t see him again. If he rides the train to look for his absent wife, I realize I’ve done the same, only without an object. I am not homesick for something I’ve lost, but for something I’ve never known. For stories I’ve internalized from an idealized, fictitious past. When I disembark, I’ll pretend to take control of my life again, and I suspect I’ll never step into another sleeper car for the rest of my life. As we pull into the station, I wait for the moment when I know the trip is over, assuming it will happen as I step back onto the hard ground from the door of the car. It comes earlier, though, when the train comes to its final stop. In two days, I had grown accustomed to the constant rock- ing of the train, learning to anticipate it and sway my body accordingly. Now, the train stands motionless, lifeless. The champagne is gone, the china is stowed, and I step off, not trusting the feeling of solid earth beneath my feet.
Drew is an Associate Professor of English at Indiana State Univer- sity, where he teaches creative writing and trains future second-
ary English/Language Arts teachers. His essays and stories have appeared in a variety of publications, including Bellevue Literary Review, Quarterly West, Concho River Review, Vita Poetica, Mad River Review, The Sycamore Review, Red Wheelbarrow, Big Muddy, and Twisted Vine.
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