FOUR

FOUR

#

November, 2011

     Someone loaded two travel-bags and a black briefcase into the back of his brother's minivan on a cold and clear, November night, and left –- his brother driving -– for the tiny train-stop in Crawfordsville, Indiana.  They arrived early and ate cheeseburgers and fries while waiting for the choo-choo from Chicago, southeast bound.  The conversation was boring; someone was anxiety-riddled and too withdrawn to communicate, and his brother didn't really know what to say anyway.  So, they talked about trains and travel in general until they heard the distant whistle and rumble and, suddenly, things mattered again.  Then someone –- I suppose I could say, “I,” at this point, though I can no longer identify with the “I” that I, James Freeman, was then -– strapped one bag over his/my shoulders, set the other bag and briefcase beside the curb, gently closed the minivan door so as not to wake the sleeping toddler in the backseat, and hugged his/my brother.

     “I love you.  Keep in touch,” someone/I said, picked up his/my bags, and boarded the train.

#

     It was obvious from the way he snatched at my ticket that the passenger attendant did not know, and would not have cared had he known, that my silly life was, at that very moment, taking a ridiculously serious and seriously ridiculous change in trajectory.  The train sounded three, long blasts as it picked up speed and lunged smoothly forward like the single bristle of a toothbrush into the open mouth of space and blackness.  Modern transportation, I realized, cares nothing for sentimentality.

     It doesn't really matter, at least not here and now, what I thought about as the train glided through open, farm country toward its first stop in Indianapolis, but here is what I did not think about: girls, night terrors, anonymity, shame, guilt, consequences, and God.  I think about God continuously now -– I try to, rather.  I think about girls a lot, too.  I think about women, God's final act of creation, made in His own likeness.  I see God's beauty best in women.  I see His kindness better and His desire to be loved.  God's feminine qualities are almost never labeled as such in church, which is sad and irresponsible to Christian women and men, and discourteous to God.  God wants us to desire Him with the same intensity that He desires us, and women provide me with the best example for how and why to do that.

     I sat comfortably in my seat watching the rolling, Midwestern hills give way to the vast, mountain vistas of West Virginia.  I changed synchronously with the landscape, mile by mile, becoming less and less frozen, less flat, less familiar.  I drank two bottles of cough syrup during the day-and-a-half trip.  I allowed myself to purchase five or six beers, but, at three dollars per can, the cough syrup was much more budget-appropriate.

     I thought of a story I'd read as a child in Indianapolis.  It's the very first, lengthy story I can remember reading by myself, but I cannot recall its title.  It is a story about a man who is given a magic button, or something to that effect, that, when pushed, will place a particular moment or event -– any moment or event -– into a continuous, never-ending state.  The man is given the “button” by the devil and told that he can press it at any time he chooses, but that if he fails to press it before he dies then he forfeits his soul along with the opportunity.  The man then goes about his life, nearly pressing the “button” during many of his happiest moments, only to reconsider, always wondering if there might be an even happier moment just around the bend.  Finally, as the man is near death, the devil comes to mock him for lacking the courage to choose to be forever happy due to his greed and lusts, however optimistic.  He boards the man onto a train, or possibly a bus, filled with scores of other men who, likewise, could never be satisfied enough to push the “button.”  The men are all sitting around on the bus or train, playing cards and talking and smoking cigars and reminiscing as the devil starts the engine and begins to pull away.  Just then, the man -– who, according to my recollection, still has the “button” in hand, apparently -– decides that an eternity traveling with like-minded individuals, riding along aimlessly, reminiscing with good company about all the wonderful times when they almost pushed the “button” doesn't sound too bad.  So, he presses the “button,” the devil's sinister plan is thwarted, and the men roll on towards an eternity of talking about how great their lives were and how each of them nearly pushed the “button” a hundred, different times.

     I also had a button, just above my seat, but I knew that it would only call the passenger attendant with the chip on his shoulder.  Otherwise –- had I been given the power to put time on an infinite loop -– I would, maybe, have pressed it just outside of Wheeling, West Virginia, with the sun like a thousand, misty, peach-tinted fingers passing through the silhouettes of distant, bare trees; the mountains rising up like a wall of God's own offensive linemen, threating to overpower us all; and the pretty girl across the aisle shooting flirtatious smiles at me every few minutes.

     We'll never know for sure.

     At some point I dozed off.

     When I awoke, the empty seat next to mine had been filled by an older, white gentleman in a corduroy suit.  He had a look of mild excitement on his face and his wide-open eyes scanned the passenger car sporadically, searching for something to focus on.  He was trying, it seemed, to look nonchalant, as if he traveled by train frequently, but -– like myself, I imagined -– the fascination with each unfamiliar detail of the trip bled through, betraying his desired affectations.  He, like most of us at times, seemed to be a bit ashamed to express anything resembling child-like amusement.

     This is silly.

     I said, “Hello,” and excused myself to go to the restroom.  Once inside the toilet room, I proceeded to piss all over myself, bouncing around about a half-a-beat behind the general discord of the locomotive's locomotion, cleaned up as best as I could manage, washed my hands, returned to my seat.  There was a can of Budweiser waiting there for me.

     “I thought you might like a beer,” said my new companion.

     “Thanks,” I replied and took a sip.

     “No problem,” he nodded.  We sat peacefully for a few moments, enjoying the taste of morning beer and the hypnotic receding of the landscape outside the window.  Finally, he continued, “So, where're you headed?”

     “South Carolina.”

     “What's in South Carolina?”

     “It's what's not in South Carolina,” I answered.

     “Yeah?”

     “Yeah... snow.  Where are you going?”

     “Baltimore.”

     “What's in Baltimore?”

     “It's what's not in Baltimore,” he said with a wink.

     “Yeah?  What's that?”

     “Terre Haute and its maximum security prison.”

     “Oh.  That's good, I guess,” I offered.

     “After twenty-two years?  Yeah, that's real good.”

#

     Snow is white, and shorts are not intended to be worn outside the house during the snowy, winter months of Indiana.  It is possibly this very contrast that led me to wear the snowy-whitest, loosest-fitting, airiest, lightest pair of athletic shorts I owned while we slithered south through the empty woods aboard the long, silver, mechanical snake.

     Snow, white, cold; snow-white shorts; Midwest; Southeast; my prison break; his time served; a long, silver, mechanical snake shedding skin for two.

     A few more beers, a little more conversation.  I dropped my pen.  A tiny, insignificant, black dot on my snow-white shorts became a large, black stain when I wet my thumb to clean it.  Someone/I should have left it alone.

     After a couple more shots of cough medicine, I forgot for a moment about the absolute purposelessness –- or, at best, the directionless drive -– behind my impromptu journey.  I eased up, relaxed, and asked my new friend, whose name I'd learned was Sylvester Lee –- a bit of nomenclature, by the way, that I feel would make a wonderful adverb: "sylvesterly," meaning, “in an evil yet adorable way” -– why he'd been in prison for so long.  He did not answer.  He drank his beer and looked out of the window at the passing city of Wheeling.  He was my kind of guy.

     I fell asleep again and awoke a few miles from Charlottesville, Virginia.  My new friend -– my beer ticket, my nearly silent, mirror image from twenty years hence in some potential future -– was gone.  On the tray before me was another unopened, still-cold can of Budweiser.  It served as a parting gift and paper weight, I suppose, pinning the following note to my tray:

#

     Thanks for the company.  Don't try too hard

     to forget about the snow.  Constantijn Huygens

     called it, “white soot, cut feathers.”  Do you

     suppose it might be possible to one day think

     on it thus?

                              Yours, Sylvester Lee

#

     Now that I'm remembering this note, I realize that it changed the future of letter writing for me, and, suddenly, I can't decide if habits are good or bad.  On the one hand, a habit becomes a habit because it's comforting in some way or another.  It's convenient.  It's useful.  On the other hand, a habit is the very definition of an effort that no longer needs examining or consideration or requires any effort on the part of the cerebral, creative process.  A habit is a done deal.  A ritual, however, is like a habit except that it is intentional to the nth degree and carries with it a far greater meaning and significance than the simple act itself.

     A ritual is an expecting mother.

     A habit is a ritual with its throat cut.

     Prayer is a ritual: it is useful and comforting, like a habit, although it is often inconvenient, and it is both intentional and significant.  Masturbation is a habit: it is comforting, usually convenient, and -– ask any male between thirteen and dead –- useful, but it is not significant and is the polar opposite, sexually speaking, of an action with greater meaning.  It is, in essence, the absence of meaning.

     All rituals, as far as I've experienced, are or may become habits, but not all habits can aspire to ritual-status.  I've decided: rituals are good; habits just are.  My newest ritual is to daily embrace a non-habitual life.  It's a hard one and, ever since Sylvester's goodbye-note, I've habitually, somewhat ritualistically, signed my letters with the closing, “Yours,” in remembrance of him.  It's brief and casual, yet strangely intimate.  Just like Sylvester Lee.  Just like me.