Different Trains

Different Trains

-Do you want to sleep sitting up or lying down?

-I’m sorry?

-What are you sorry about?

America isn’t another country it’s a continent, another world, a new world. When I finally understood that, people finally understood me. Well, enough for me to make myself understood.

-I’m sorry ,  I meant excuse me.

-Do you want to sleep sitting up or lying down?

-I’ll just look out of the window . It’s what I usually do on trains.

-You some kind of funny guy. .

The booking clerk looked at me with a building suspicion.  -You talk funny.

-I’m sorry,  English isn’t my first language.

-How many languages do you need,  responded the clerk, - so what is your first language if it ain’t English? We’ll do it in any language you like, the customer is king on our railroad.

-German, I said

-We’ll stick to English, she said.

I gave her a second look, no, she wasn’t trying to be funny, or , as far as I could make out, obstructive, it was , to me, a funny way of being helpful.

I handed over a single bank note. It seemed only moments before I’d been carting bank notes around in a suitcase, then the suitcase got to be more valuable than the bank notes inside it. The world turned upside down, I left while everything was still up in the air, especially the parliament building..

-Track one , she said.

-Which platform?

-Look mister, here’s your ticket, scram.

 

 - All aboard, Super Chief, All aboard, Chicago, stations west, Kansas, Los Angeles

-Get the rest of your trunks , mister?   Said a man in a round cap and a shiny uniform. I wondered which brigade he was in. He said it again.

-Get the rest of your trunks, mister?

-I only have the one case, I replied. I’d left in a hurry.

-Recliner, sleeper, diner? he said.

Up to this moment I’d always thought my English pretty good but I supposed I’d never spoken  it this side of the ocean.

I showed the man in the round cap my ticket. He seemed to lose interest fast.

-Car 14 he said, pointing down the track.

-Which carriage? I said.

-You trying to be funny,  bud?  He said.

Never try and tell someone who says are you trying to be funny that you are not. It just makes things serious.

On the train I found my seat. As I set down, the train hissed forward. I pressed my face to the window, the lake giving way to the river, the skyscrapers to low rises, to plains. It was the greatest movie I’d ever seen.

As it grew dark, I pressed the lever I found beside the seat. It twanged up, out and down. With the seat lowered I realised I had a travelling companion, a mass of auburn curls in the seat behind me. I was amazed I hadn’t worked  out I wasn’t alone before, the scent was almost over whelming.  I thought it  was  something they put in the steam over here.

-You going all the way, honey?

-Yes, Los Angeles.

-Screen writer?

-Yes, how did you know ?

I just stopped myself saying, why are you in the recliners, not the sleeping carriages but she said-

-Honey, let’s go along to the observation car, you buy me a HiBall and I tell you a story about how little old me comes to be in the reclining seats of the Super Chief one evening in October, year of 1938. Hey it’s Halloween, it’ll be a scream.

-Halloween? I repeated, hoping she’d explain before I had to ask.

-Yeah, tell you what, she said, her eyes flickered back up from my suit, -tell  ya what, seeing as it’s Halloween and all, the HiBall is on me. My treat.

/

 

(Title after Steve Reich )

 

 

All Souls Day 2014

 

 

 Different Trains