by Paul Mosier
I look at Carlos and he gives me a secret smile before he asks Dot, “Why do you take the train?”
People ask this question a lot on the train. What they mean is, Are you afraid of flying? But nobody ever asks it that way. I’m afraid Dot will give another long-winded answer so I make my eyes big at Carlos to scold him for asking her a question.
She smiles and looks out the window. “I like the scenery, the slow pace. I like meeting people. I’ve learned that I’m not in any hurry to get anywhere, so I just try to enjoy the ride.”
“I’m not afraid of flying,” I say. They both look at me and smile, like they have me figured out.
My stomach growls. I should have said yes to the cookie. Dr. Lola said I have a hard time trusting women. But I trusted Dr. Lola. She was the only woman who never tried to find a way out of taking care of me.
“I’m a professional magician,” I say.
“Really?” Carlos asks.
“Yeah. I do birthdays and bat mitzvahs and stuff. Do you wanna see a trick?”
“Sure.”
“It costs a dollar. And I need a paper dollar to perform the trick.”
Carlos leans to the side to take the wallet from his back pocket. He gives me a crisp five.
“Do you have two paper clips?”
Carlos raises his eyebrows, but Dot starts fishing in her purse.
“I probably do, dear. Oh, how did that get in there? Anyone want an old stick of gum?”
I nod. She hands it to me and keeps searching. I chew the sad-tasting gum as she drops a handful of debris from the bottom of her purse onto the table. There’s an aspirin and a thimble and some pennies and nickels and dimes, and a raffle ticket, and a safety pin and three paper clips. She picks up the raffle ticket and looks at it.
“May I?” I ask, my fingers poised above the paper clips.
“Of course.”
“So, in this amazing trick I will fold the bill into three panels in the shape of the letter Z. Then I put the two paper clips onto it. The first paper clip connects the first and second panels, and the second paper clip connects the second and third, like so.” Carlos smiles, amused. “The trick is, I’ll pull the ends of the five-dollar bill apart, and the two paper clips will be magically joined, and the bill will remain intact.”
“What if it doesn’t work?” Dot asks.
“Then the paper clips remain apart and the bill is shredded.”
“Do I get the five back if you shred it?” Carlos asks.
“I never shred. I’m magical. Okay, now don’t blink or you’ll miss it. I’m going to close my eyes and call upon the powers of the magicians who have passed to the other side to assist me.”
“Dead magicians?” Dot asks. She pretends to be creeped out.
I smile. “I also close my eyes because the paper clips tend to jump up into my face. Okay. One, two, three.”
There’s supposed to be the snap of the paper like when you shake out laundry, and the ting of the paper clips coming together. Instead there’s the rip of the five-dollar bill and the weak clinks of two paper clips falling to the table. Then the sound of Carlos laughing.
“Carlos,” Dot reprimands him.
I drop the two torn halves of the five on the table. “Excuse me,” I say, and get up from the table.
I think I was thrown off by the fact that it was a five and not a one. I can’t afford to have my tricks not work. Where I’m going, I’ll need every trick in the book.
I walk down the aisle and through one of the gaps into the next car. To leave one car, you push on a panel and the door slides open, and then you walk two or three steps, push another panel, and a door slides open to the next car. In between it’s noisier and harder to walk.
I go down the next stairway to the lower level and into one of the bathrooms. They’re tiny, and smelly. They’re getting smellier as the trip wears on.
I wash my hands and look at myself in the mirror. I look like I haven’t slept for my whole life. Aside from that, I have green eyes and some freckles. I look bored. I look bored even though my hair is dyed bright green like candy. Gramma would have never allowed me to dye my hair green or give myself punk-rock haircuts, but she was nearly blind and kept her house dark, so she never knew.
Grown-ups always say, You’re so pretty, why don’t you smile? You’d be so beautiful if you’d just be happy. Gramma never told me to smile. I don’t know whether she thought I was pretty, but she knew too much to ask me to be happy. She didn’t think people should expect to be happy, and she certainly didn’t think I deserved to be.
Sometimes I feel like making myself ugly on the outside to match the way I feel on the inside. Then maybe people would stop asking me to smile.
I think about trying to pee but I look at the disgusting toilet and decide not to. I wash my hands again and leave the bathroom.
I pass by my seat and check on my bag and the heavy little black box to make sure they’re still there. I don’t know where they would go or who would possibly want them, but I check anyway. Then I go back to the observation car, nod at Carlos and Dot, and go down the stairs.
“Hello, Rider,” Neal says.
I look up at him like I wasn’t expecting to see him. “Hi. I’m sorry, what was your name again?”
“Neal.” He smiles.
“Neal,” I repeat. “Hi, Neal. I’ll try to remember it.” His name has been stuck in my head ever since I saw him, but there’s no way I’m gonna let him know that.
“Are you hungry yet?” he asks.
“Well, I just had a humongous breakfast in the dining car.”
“Ah. You like?”
I run my fingertips over the snack selection. “It was okay.”
“I like your hair,” he says.
I touch it, moving it behind my ear. “Thanks.”
“When I was about your age I dyed my hair blue.”
I turn to him and feel myself smiling. “Really?”
“Yep. It didn’t turn out as well as yours.”
“You have to take the color out first. And then put it back in.”
He rings up someone buying an orange. “I think I did it ’cause I was mad at my parents,” he says.
I turn away from him and look at the fruit. I pick up three oranges and start juggling them. I learned how to do that when I was, like, seven.
“Nice,” he says.
When I hear his voice they fall to the floor. They try to roll away with the movement of the train as I try to pick them up.
“I’m out of practice,” I say.
“You can keep those. Work on your act to pass the time.”
“Really? Thanks.”
“No, thank you. For keeping me entertained.”
I bring one of the oranges to my nose and smell it. I feel my heart beating. “Well, I better go practice.”
He tips his cap to me. “Come back and visit soon. Your face makes me happy.”
I smile, but my eyes feel melty, so I turn away and run up the stairs, almost knocking over an old man coming down.
Sometimes I just need an impossible wish to convince me to take another breath, another step. Right now my impossible wish is that I have a dad and his name is Neal.
Back at my seat I’m glad that Dorothea isn’t there to see me eating. My fingers tremble as I tear open the oranges. They’re sweet, and juicy, and they were given to me by a beautiful saint.
When I finish eating them I smell my hands. They smell like an instant replay of the happiness I’ve just felt. I put the peels into the pocket of my hoodie and sit looking out the window, hands cupped over my mouth and nose, breathing it in, holding it inside me, and letting it out.
I drift off to sleep and dream of oranges, and of Gramma, whose trailer sometimes had the smell of orange blossoms coming in the window. I dream I’m in Palm Springs, riding my skateboard. It’s dusk in winter, and the light is disappearing quickly. I hear Gramma calling my name, but when I rush home to the trailer she isn’t there. She’s nowhere
to be found, and everything is in cardboard boxes. The smell of cigarettes is gone, replaced with the fragrance of orange blossoms.
I wake up and look at my SpongeBob watch, but it’s still broken.
We’re in Flagstaff, Arizona, and new faces get on the train.
I’m hungry again.
Gramma used to fix the best pancakes. She had a cast-iron skillet, and she’d melt a bit of butter on it as it warmed while she cracked the eggs and mixed the batter. Then she’d pour it on the skillet and I’d watch the bubbles appear until it was time to flip them over. I’d offer to help but she said she’d do it until they put her in the ground, and when they put her in the ground I’d know how to do it from watching her.
One morning in late spring, after the orange blossoms had fallen from the tree outside the kitchen window of Gramma’s trailer, I stood watching her make pancakes for my breakfast. She poured the batter in the iron skillet. The batter hissed; the fragrant steam rose to my nostrils.
“You can take it from here,” she said. “I ain’t feelin’ well.”
She put the spatula down and shuffled off to her bedroom.
I picked up the spatula and watched the batter. I had seen her do it so many times. The bubbles appeared at the edges but I waited until they spread to the middle of the pancake. I knew that once the pancake loses contact with the griddle, it can never have the right contact again, so I waited an extra ten seconds to be sure. Then I slid the spatula beneath it, lifted, and flipped with a swift, fearless motion.
The cooked side facing me was golden brown, and the batter side made just the right contact with the hot iron.
Perfect.
With the second side there are no bubbles to watch for on top, so I waited until the middle no longer looked gooey, and the pancake had risen from the skillet. Then I lifted it onto a plate and poured in the batter for another, after melting a fresh tab of butter on the griddle. That was Gramma’s secret for making it taste the best—using butter instead of oil.
When they were done I sat down at the table with a glass of cold milk. They were warm, cooked through evenly, with just the right amount of butter and maple syrup. They tasted amazing. I wondered whether I should tell Gramma how good they were. I decided I’d better downplay it so she wouldn’t think I was being sassy.
Finished, I washed the plate and fork by hand and put them in the rack to dry.
The trailer was quiet. Through the glass door I could see The Chevalier, sleeping in the sun.
I walked to her bedroom and stood in the doorway.
“Gramma?”
My shoulders sagged. I approached the bed slowly, and got down on my knees beside it. Her eyes were wide and unseeing, her mouth agape. I watched the fabric of her God Bless America nightgown for a moment to see if she was breathing, but she was absolutely still.
I closed my eyes and dropped back until I sat on my heels. I took a deep breath, held it, and let it out. I did this for a while, until I felt ready to face all of it.
First I shut her eyes and mouth, then combed her hair away from her face, freeing the tangles until the gray almost shined. With a wet washcloth I wiped the corners of her mouth, wiped away the scowl.
Then I covered her dirty old feet with a quilt, arranged her lifeless hands across her chest, and kissed her temple.
She wasn’t my mother. She was a grumpy old lady who bought me underwear, taught me how to make pancakes, kept me alive. She wasn’t my mother, but I did for her dead body what I wished I could have done for my mom’s, instead of just running away.
I filled The Chevalier’s water bowl and walked next door to Les and Ray’s. They held me, they called 911, they went with me to get my things from Gramma’s trailer, but in the end they had to let me go.
I sigh, and look from the back of the seat in front of me to the view of pine trees outside the window, to wash away the memory.
I wonder if there’ll be a skillet where I’m headed. I wonder if there’ll be everything I need to make the batter.
Done with helping the new passengers board, Dorothea comes to check on me.
“How you feelin’, honey?” she asks.
“Just fine,” I say. When I talk to Dorothea I can feel my heritage slipping out. My mom was born in South Carolina, and we lived in New Orleans, and sometimes she’d talk that way, all twangy and polite. Especially when she needed something from someone. And sometimes when I’m talking to people from the South, I’ll hear it in my own voice. It kind of faded away the couple of years I was in Palm Springs, but it comes back easily.
Now, riding the train, I don’t know where exactly I belong.
“Albuquerque is the next stop where you can get off and stretch your legs,” Dorothea says. “It’ll be a while, but if you’re awake and you’d like to get some fresh air, let me know and we can get off together, okay?”
“Okay,” I say.
She smiles, and heads off to do her job.
Flagstaff looks nice. It’s in the forest, and there are big mountains towering above, with snow at the top, even now in June. Some of the people who get on look like they’ve been hiking, and they smell like it too. Like sweat and campfire.
Which reminds me. I stand up and grab my carry-on bag from the rack above my seat. Inside is a deodorant stick. It smells like lavender, like the Laundromat in New Orleans. I look up and down the aisle to make sure nobody is coming, and then reach under my shirt to apply it.
Putting the deodorant back, I see my journal. I ignore it, and stow the bag on the rack next to the black box.
I sit down again and look out the window. We’ve left town now and are in the woods.
If I were writing in my journal I would tell it about everything that has happened, and the people I have met on the train. I don’t want to do that right now. I don’t want to see the words my mom wrote on the first page, or see everything I’ve written in it flash past my eyes, especially the last words I wrote. So I leave it up there in the bag she gave me, the bag with the flowers and hearts.
I jump from my seat and rush down the aisle, through the coach and into the observation car. It’s filled with the new faces, people playing cards, and I head downstairs to the snack counter. When I arrive I see a sign hanging on a velvet rope that tells me the snack counter is closed.
I turn around. There’s a sunburned man with blond dreadlocks sleeping on the floor next to a backpack.
I rush back up the stairs from the observation lounge, down the aisle into my coach. I see Dorothea talking to a passenger. I can hear my breathing.
“Hey, honey, are you okay?”
“Yes.”
“Do you need your puffer?”
I hate it when people call it a puffer. I shake my head.
“Are you hungry?”
“No, I—yes.”
Dorothea smiles, like she’s got me figured out again. “Neal is taking a break, but he’ll be back in there in about a half hour.”
“Okay. Thanks.” I feel relief, and then realize I was worried Neal wasn’t on the train anymore. The crew changes every now and then and I was afraid he’d gotten off in Flagstaff.
“But if you’re hungry I might be able to find something for you before then.”
“No. I mean, yes. Please. Thank you.”
“No problem. Have a seat and I’ll be just a sec.”
I find my seat and sit, feeling better. I try not to feel, mostly. I’ve gotten good at distracting myself. Ever since I spent the money social services gave me on snacks at Union Station in Los Angeles before I got on the train, I’ve found that feeling incredibly hungry is a good way to not feel anything else. But feeling incredibly hungry isn’t much of an alternative, so I’d rather return to distracting myself in the other ways I’ve learned.
One of these is my favorite book, and I take it from my bag. It’s really not much of a read, and it’s too short and familiar to make the time pass on this train. Maybe it’s more like a security blanket in the shape of a book. It’s called Th
e Sun Is Shining, and it’s incredibly sappy. But it works. I know it practically by heart, but I open it and begin reading. It’s almost a chant.
The sun is shining, and shining are the stars.
The sun shines near, the stars shine far.
Bright is my spirit, bright are my eyes.
Illuminate my path, decorate the skies.
It’s small enough to fit in a big pocket, and I’ve carried it around so much that the corners are rounded. Sometimes it feels like a lullaby, and sometimes it feels like a big lie that I want to believe.
I have it memorized so I don’t even need to read it. But I like the shape of the letters and the way they look on the page.
“Do you like nuts?” Dorothea sits beside me, holding a bag of almonds and walnuts and pecans.
I shut the book and nod. “Thank you.” I take it with both hands and pull it open with too much force, and a few of the nuts fly up from the bag and then down to my lap. Dorothea chuckles and leaves.
I fill up on the nuts and The Sun Is Shining, believing its lies because I need to. Believing it when I need to let it save me is an agreement I have with myself.
I don’t know. Maybe it isn’t a lie. Maybe the sun is shining somewhere.
Between Flagstaff and New Mexico, the forest thins out and disappears, and the land becomes a vast stretch of yellow grass with very short cliffs and shallow canyons. The only trees are in places where the water goes when it rains.
The train spends part of the time along the path of old Route 66, and I see some of the architecture from the early days of highways that it’s famous for, like a motel made of fake teepees. I learn all this from Carlos, back at the table with him in the observation car.
He and I are doing a crossword with Dot, who’s also knitting.
“Working class. Eleven letters. Starts with a p.”