Train I Ride

by Paul Mosier

  “You told them twelve was too old to be a princess.”

  “I know,” I say. “But I was glad to be princess for a day.”

  “It ended up being the best birthday ever,” she says.

  “Yes. Until today.”

  She wipes her eyes on her shirtsleeve, then smiles. I wish her a happy birthday, and she wishes me the same. Then we blow each other kisses, and I leave her.

  I walk upstairs, across and back downstairs to see Neal at the snack counter.

  “Hello, beautiful,” he says.

  “Hello, handsome.” I look at my shoes and then back to him. “I’m not really going to Disneyland.”

  “I’m glad, ’cause it’s the other direction.”

  “My gramma died. That’s why I’m on this train.”

  He nods, and takes off his cap. “I’m sorry.”

  “I was living with her for two years after my mom died.”

  His hand goes to his heart. He seems to be searching for words but nothing comes out.

  I look at his beautiful dark hair. “I don’t want you to feel bad. I just don’t want to be dishonest about it because it’s nothing to be ashamed of.”

  “Are you going to your grandmother’s funeral?”

  I shake my head. “It already happened.” I kick at the carpet. “I didn’t really like her very much. But she kept me alive, especially when my mom couldn’t.”

  Neal nods, a faraway look on his face. “Sometimes that’s how it is.”

  I look at my fingernails. “Also, my name is spelled R-Y-D-R. ’Cause I say so.”

  I don’t know why but he puts his hand to his mouth, like he’s covering a smile. His eyes shine.

  “I’m not the bad things that have happened to me,” I say. “I’m nothing but who I choose to be.”

  “Yes,” he says. “You’ve chosen well.”

  The train rolls on but it isn’t in a hurry. It knows that it has to stop and wait at the Mississippi River, which we can’t cross until at least tomorrow. We should have been in Chicago already but we aren’t even in Illinois yet, thanks to the delays.

  I don’t care. Let it rain. Let the river rise and wash away the tracks that would take me to Chicago.

  Tenderchunks passes through my coach, nods at me, and heads downstairs. I count to five and follow after him.

  At the bottom of the stairs are a few bathrooms. I stand halfway from the bottom and wait until I hear the sound of a bathroom door opening, and then descend.

  It’s just a man with a beer belly. I turn sideways to let him pass, then go back up a few steps. Another door opens, and this time it’s Tenderchunks.

  “Oh, hey,” I say.

  “Hey.”

  I’m standing square in the narrow stairway, blocking him. “So, I thought I’d eat in the dining car tonight.” I glance down at my dead SpongeBob watch. “I’m kinda sick of doughnut holes and veggie burgers. But you have to have two people to get a table.”

  “Really?”

  I nod. “Yeah. And since you’re pretty much the only scout capable of conversation, I thought maybe you could be the other person.”

  “The other person?”

  “You follow quick. Yeah, the other person. So I can eat there.”

  “Your invitation for me to be the other person is extremely flattering. But I don’t have enough money. That food is pretty expensive.”

  “Right. Well, it just so happens I made enough money delivering food today to pay for both of us.” I’m standing two stairs above him, looking down.

  “Do I have to pay you back?”

  I roll my eyes. “No. Look, I’m sure I can find someone else—”

  “I’d love to.”

  It takes me a second to figure out what comes next. I glance again at my broken watch, broken since the day I fought off the bully girls. My heart is racing now. “Okay. I’ll meet you in the dining car at six thirty.”

  I’m having dinner with a boy. I think this is okay and maybe even good. Maybe I won’t know until after it’s over.

  13

  I SIT WITH Tenderchunks in the dining car at dinner. His goon squad is eating freeze-dried scout kibble from foil pouches in the observation lounge and at their seats, but he’s sitting with me in the land of white tablecloths, waiting on a delicious meal.

  Dorothea is at the table across the aisle, eating a mopey-looking sandwich from a Tupperware container. She says she has to be there because it’s her job to watch me, especially if I am having dinner with a boy.

  Tenderchunks puts the white napkin on his lap.

  “What’s your mom like?” I ask.

  He’s looking rather cute, with his scout bandanna tied loosely beneath his neck.

  “I don’t know. She’s okay, I guess.”

  His left eye—the one that’s a little higher—has a tendency to drift to the center. I decide I’ll maintain contact with the right eye.

  “Just okay?”

  He looks out the window for a second. “I guess she’s pretty cool. I mean, I love her, but she’s my boss. It’s a constant source of conflict. You know?”

  I don’t know, but I nod anyway.

  “What’s your mom like?” he asks.

  “Dead.” I say it flatly, and I feel bad for the look on his face. I probably shouldn’t have blurted it out like that.

  “Oh my gosh. How?”

  I look at him and think about spilling it. I think about how I should just tell him my mom was a junkie and died from an overdose. Instead I answer the follow-up question. “And my father is a mystery.”

  “A mystery?”

  “Meaning I have no idea who or what he is, or whether he’s even alive.” I take a sip of water. “He probably isn’t.”

  “Who do you live with?”

  “I was living with my gramma. But she died too. But now I’m going to a fabulous new life in Chicago.” I say it brightly.

  “Really?”

  “No. I’m being shipped off to live with an old man I’ve never met. My great-uncle. He needs to stay alive for five years or I go into foster care.”

  Tenderchunks gets this miserable look on his face that people get when they ask about my life. “I’m . . . I—”

  “You’re not asking the wrong questions,” I say. “You’re just sitting with the wrong girl.”

  The server approaches our table with two plates of food, but it isn’t ours and she keeps walking past.

  “I’m pretty sure I’m not sitting with the wrong girl,” he says.

  I smile. I want to tell him he’s nice, but I don’t.

  We both glance out the window. Then, fortunately, he changes the subject. “Have you started reading Howl?”

  “Yeah. It’s really long for a poem, but I’ve finished it. Twice.”

  He looks excited about this. “What do you think of it?”

  “I can’t get it out of my head.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah. The chanting made me feel like I was hypnotized. And what he talks about. It’s everything wonderful and terrible. It’s the world I’ve seen my whole life. I didn’t know anyone else saw what I’ve seen.”

  “Good. That’s good.” He takes a sip of water.

  “What’s Moloch?”

  He looks even more excited that I’ve said a word from the poem, proof that I really have read it.

  “Moloch is, like, this terrible ancient god that people sacrificed their children to. The whole poem is about how maybe the best kinds of people are the people who fail and go crazy. Like, the problem isn’t the people, the problem is what they’re supposed to do.”

  I nod, but I’m quiet for a minute. This is a revelation to me. That the misfits are the best people. That there’s nothing wrong with the people who can’t survive. It’s the world that destroys them that needs to be fixed.

  “So, what do you think of it?” he asks.

  “I’m going to need to read it again.”

  He grins. “You’re gonna read it over and over for the
rest of your life.”

  I feel like I’m not wearing any clothes. Like he understands me better than I understand myself. “How do you know?”

  “I can tell. There’s a light in your eyes.”

  I take a sip of water from the heavy glass. “A light?”

  A plate appears before me. It’s a big white plate loaded with food, and when the server sets it down, there’s heat rising from the asparagus and fries that accompany my humongous portobello sandwich. I look at it in disbelief.

  Tenderchunks’s food arrives too, and as we start to eat I can’t tell whether the strange feeling in my stomach is coming from the first real food I’ve had in days, or the revelation that there’s a light in my eyes.

  The reservations are only for forty minutes so we have to leave to make way for the next table. And Tenderchunks has to go to the observation lounge, which the scouts have basically commandeered for some ridiculous wood-whittling instruction.

  I spend this time in my seat, thinking about writing in my journal, but I don’t. My head gets noisy so I head toward the snack counter to see Neal. As I pass through the observation lounge, Caleb and the other scouts stare at me. Someone nudges Tenderchunks, and he looks up and smiles. I wink at him, making sure that Caleb and the others can see.

  Downstairs in front of Neal, I don’t know what to say. So I say hi.

  “Hi,” he says. “What’s shaking?”

  “Shaking?”

  “You know.” He does a little dance.

  I shrug. “I just came down to say hi.”

  “Are you hungry?”

  “No, I just had dinner in the dining car.” I look at my fingernails. “With Tenderchunks.”

  “Ahhh.”

  “What?”

  “Nothing. Was it nice?”

  “Yes. But not nice like that.”

  “Nice like what?”

  “It wasn’t like a date. We’re not, like, in love.”

  “Not in love?” He smiles.

  “Never mind. Nothing.”

  I wave good-bye to Neal and go back up and through the observation lounge. This time I keep my eyes to myself but I can feel theirs on me, the scouts, and I am suddenly aware of my hips, which seem to have a way of swaying when I walk, which I hadn’t noticed before. The scout leader stops talking like he’s lost their attention.

  I feel my powers, my charms. I have dominion over boys.

  Back in my coach, at my seat, I think of Dr. Lola’s words. Boy crazy.

  I reach up and feel my hair, wondering what it looked like when I walked through the observation lounge.

  This is stupid. There’s only one boy I want looking at me.

  I take a deep breath, hold it, let it out. A deep breath, hold it, let it out. I don’t know how long I do this before I fall asleep.

  I dream I am camping with Tenderchunks. We’ve hiked for days and have run out of food. He’s looking in his scout guide and reading the suggestions aloud, but there’s nothing in there to help us. Just some pages about hair stew and having your friends for dinner.

  We’re starving.

  We’re in the middle of a big plain as vast as the grasses of New Mexico. There’s nothing but trampled yellow blades, nothing to eat. The sun sinks and the sky fills with color, then goes dark. Tenderchunks says good night to me and zips himself into his sleeping bag.

  I stay up all night in the dream, facing the point on the horizon where the sun vanished, watching the stars move in the sky. They move very fast, like stars in time-lapse photography. Like science class.

  Then the sun comes up on the other side of the sky, behind me, and illuminates a sea of portobello mushrooms that have sprouted overnight. They are everywhere, as far as I can see.

  I wake up Tenderchunks. “It’s a miracle!” he says, and laughs. “It was our only hope! Now we can make portobello burgers!” He takes a bag of hamburger buns from his backpack, and I wonder why we didn’t just eat the buns if we had them and we were so hungry.

  “Is this a dream?” I ask.

  He hands me a portobello burger. “Does this taste like a dream?”

  I take a bite. It tastes like a dream. It tastes like a dream where I trust my instincts and everything works out okay.

  My head snaps back and my eyes open. It’s dark in the coach.

  I slip past Dorothea’s sleeping form and into the aisle, and hurry to the observation lounge. Tenderchunks isn’t there.

  I’m broke again after paying for dinner for me and Tenderchunks. Schemes present themselves in my mind.

  There’s a guy with a book bag at another table. I borrow a pen from him and make a sign on a napkin. It says Your future foretold! Tips accepted.

  I sit at a table with my sign in front of me. Nobody is coming or going.

  Finally some of the scouts come in, quieter than they usually are, presumably because it’s after “Taps” and they aren’t supposed to be out of their seats.

  I feel my heart beating. Tenderchunks is among the four.

  “Look, it’s sweet little Rydr,” Caleb says.

  My eyes are half-closed, fingertips to my temples. “Silence! I’m having a vision.”

  He looks down at my sign. “Desperate for money again?”

  I open my eyes. “No. I have a gift that presents itself when magnetic conditions are favorable, and I try to share it with those brave enough to peer into the future.”

  I give Tenderchunks a small wink.

  Caleb looks askance at me. “And it doesn’t cost anything?”

  “Tips are accepted.” I clear my throat. “But in your case, prepayment is required to clear the hostile mists of uncertainty.”

  He scoffs. “What a bunch of garbage.”

  I shrug. “That’s what the pilot said to me. And then I saw the news.” I lower my eyes and try to do the sign-of-the-cross thing that Catholics do.

  “Whatever. How much?”

  I close my eyes and move my lips as if I’m consulting the spirits. Really I’m remembering how much a bag of M&Ms cost at the snack counter. “Three dollars.”

  He fishes in his pocket and finds the quarters I won from him once before. It’s good to have them back.

  “Sit,” I say, and nod at the seat across from me. Caleb sits across and the others crowd in—Tenderchunks, Stinky, and a kid called Wispy. “Hold out your hand.” He does. I hold it in mine and trace the lines with my fingertip. I look up at Caleb’s handsome face. “You’ve never done any hard work, have you?”

  “Says who?”

  “Says the soft, tissue-thin skin of your palm. It’s like a baby’s butt.” One of them suppresses a laugh. I look back to Caleb’s hand. I close my eyes, and speak in a faraway voice. “Bed-wetter.”

  Stinky snorts and Caleb elbows him in the ribs.

  “What?” I ask. “Did the spirit communicate through me?”

  “What else does it say?” Wispy asks.

  I close my eyes again. I can feel someone’s shoe on mine under the table. I growl my foretelling. “Beauty fades, leaving nothing!” Then I shudder and open my eyes.

  Stinky laughs again, and Caleb pushes him into the aisle.

  Then the scout leader appears in the doorway. He’s wearing his Smokey Bear hat even though we’re inside a train. He blows a whistle, which I’m sure doesn’t sound pleasant to the people sleeping in the observation lounge and the next car.

  The scouts tumble out of the booth like it’s on fire.

  I laugh. “Doomed! All of you!”

  I was hoping to get a chance to hold Tenderchunks’s hand and tell him his fortune. I’d tell him that in spite of what it says in Howl, the best minds of his generation aren’t always destroyed by madness, that sometimes the best minds get lucky. I’d tell him that he’d find love while on a journey, or that maybe he’d found it already. I’d tell him this while holding his hand and feeling the blood come and go with the beating of his heart.

  Instead I have to settle for a quick smile as he leaves.

  I sit i
n the observation car, hoping Tenderchunks will come back alone. I wait for a while until I feel pathetic and needy, then get up and head to my seat.

  I run into him in the vestibule. The door he came through closes, then the door I came through closes. We’re there in the little space between the coaches, where the noise of the train is louder. Another scout encountered here, but this time it’s the right scout.

  “Hey,” he says.

  “Hey,” I reply. “Where are you headed?”

  “To find you.”

  This makes me want to smile, but I’m afraid I’ll look stupid if I do.

  “Here I am.”

  He smiles. The train shimmies back and forth.

  “How did you get into poetry?” I ask out of nowhere.

  His face turns down. He covers his grin.

  “What?” I ask.

  “Nothing. Well, first it was Walt Whitman. We had to read Leaves of Grass in English class. It’s this huge poem.” He spreads his arms wide and gets this faraway look on his face.

  “And you liked it?”

  “I loved it. It was the first time I read anything that made me . . .”

  “What?”

  He shakes his head. “It’s the whole continent. It’s all of life stuffed into one little volume.”

  I nod. “And that’s good?”

  “Yeah. It’s like borrowing a great set of eyes. A wonderful, wise set of eyes.”

  “I’ll read that next,” I say.

  He takes off his glasses and starts laughing, then wipes his brow.

  “What?” I ask.

  He smiles, but he doesn’t look at me straight on. “I’m in this small space with a beautiful girl, talking about poetry. It’s like a dream.”

  “A dream?” I ask. Then I understand what he’s really saying. “Oh.”

  The train shudders, and I lose my balance and fall forward. He puts out his hands and steadies me.

  “Thanks,” I say.

  His face is inches away. His good eye is looking at me, the other is gazing off to the side like it’s distracted by something else.

  I can practically feel the vibration of his voice when he speaks. “If we lived in the same town I’d wanna hang out with you.”

  “I’d let you,” I say, and my voice sounds funny. I feel like I want to breathe the breath he’s breathing.