Out onto Division Street, and then from train station to train station, dropping a man at each. Thomas’s view from the back of the bus is of the men shoulder to shoulder, Outreach Christian Fellowship in large white letters across the backs of their orange jackets. The ranks thinning gradually, spaces opening in the seats as the bus makes its way around the city.
Thomas gets off at Clark and Lake. His territory is the handful of stations at the far reaches of the Blue Line, just past the city limits. There is some overlap, one or two stations where Thomas could see another orange jacket walking the aisle a few cars down. There was no contact between the men if it could be avoided, nothing but the briefest acknowledgment, a nod through the windows at the ends of the cars. As a rule, the men worked alone. Reverend Lee did not want them to be seen as a gang or a cult. Bible Riders was the term people in the city used for them. It was meant to get a rise out of the men, but Reverend Lee told them it was nothing to get upset about. If the shoe fits, he said.
Down the stairs to the subway platform. The cold-air sewage smell of the station, garbage from overflowing trash cans. The bright metal smell of the rails. Thomas feels the wind of the train from the tunnel and hears the oncoming rush and then finally sees it. It is the most beautiful thing. He has always found it beautiful. A train is a prayer moving through a city. The engineer’s voice squawks through speakers in the ceiling. Doors open on the left.
He had been approached on a train. They all had. There was a rightness to the symmetry of the process. They came from trains; they returned to trains. For Thomas, it was at the Kimball station by a man named Kimble, who disappeared not long after, one of the men who worked the Ministry for years and then went out one morning and didn’t come back. Returned to the places past the walls of discipline and routine.
How many people on this train, do you think, share the name of the station? This is what Kimble had first said to him. Sitting beside Thomas, close, their knees touching, their thighs. Probably just me, Kimble had said. With the same name. I am probably alone in this regard.
Let me pray with you.
Thomas walks down the aisle of the first car. He slides open the door at the end and steps through. A second in the unprotected passage, then into the next car. He walks forward against the momentum of the train. Screech of the wheels grinding through a curve. Keeping his feet firmly pressed to the floor, redistributing his weight automatically in counterbalance to the sway and jerk, the thousand tiny movements of the train. Hands in his pockets. A small act of vanity, this ability to walk the cars without touching a pole or seat back.
You’ve been crying, Kimble had said, which surprised Thomas, because he hadn’t cried in days. He’d done nothing but cry when he left Oakland, but by the time he’d reached Chicago he had stopped, as if there were nothing left, as if he was dried out. So he thought this was remarkable, how Kimble knew. It would be weeks of riding on his own before he could see what Kimble saw. What he’d looked like in that moment, on that train. Weeks of riding before he would learn that nothing was hidden if you had the strength to see.
You’ve been crying. Let me pray with you.
He averaged two or three a day. This was initial contact only. Most of this contact was ignored or rebuffed. Spat upon, hissed at, pushed away. Maybe one man a week he gave a card to would actually call. One man who would find the card in his pocket at some terrible hour and maybe find the dimes still taped to the card and find a pay phone and call the number and talk to whoever was assigned to the hot line. Maybe one man a month would actually come down to the barracks. Maybe one in three of these would stay. The odds are not good, Reverend Lee would say. The odds are great. The odds are exceptional.
Kimble hadn’t asked who Thomas was, how he had ended up riding the train. It was as if those things didn’t matter, as if they were so far beside the point that they were not even worth mentioning. It was early evening, rush hour, and Thomas had been riding for days. The other passengers forcing themselves not to see him. Not looking at Thomas and not looking at the space beside him. The empty seat a shared, shameful act among the other passengers. Then Kimble sat, without hesitation, their legs touching at one and then two distinct places. The raw, burned smell of cigarettes on Kimble’s breath. His head bowed and his cowboy’s growl low but clear enough that it was easy to hear through the rest of the noise, the conversations and radios and rattling progression of the train along the tracks.
We believe in one God, the Father, the Almighty, maker of Heaven and Earth. Of all that is seen and unseen.
He had come to Chicago because it was the only other place he knew. His mother had told him stories about how she and his father and Hannah had lived there before he was born. Hannah lived in Los Angeles, he could have gone to her, but he didn’t know that place. To him there was Oakland, there was Chicago. He had maps and he thought that he might know the way.
He’d lived in the house with her for a while, after she passed. Her body on the kitchen floor. He arranged her arms and legs so she was lying comfortably. Placed a blanket over her at night. Stared into her eyes, but there was nothing there. This was the shell. He lived in the house and then he knew he had to leave, that if he didn’t then someone would come and get him, and so he took what money he could find and rode a bus east. Days and nights, through mountains and farms, towns, cities. He remembered a trip like this from when he was a boy, sitting beside his sister in the station wagon, watching out the windows, the world moving in time.
He was tattered and dirty. He had been crying since Oakland. People kept their distance. When he reached Chicago he walked into the cement and noise, and then he saw the train overhead, the rusty trestles, the cars shaking by. His father had told him about this, years ago. Riding the train. Thomas sat and rode alone until Kimble found him.
It had taken Thomas weeks of riding to finally approach someone. Kimble had told him it would be hard. There was nothing easy about it. Those he needed to approach would be those he didn’t want to approach. Those he was fearful of. Those clenched with rage. Those whose anguish came off their bodies like waves of heat. Those actually shaking with fear. Men speaking to themselves, whispering, moaning into the palms of their hands. Men smelling of sweat and other bodily fluids. Smoke and neglect. Terror.
Men on crowded trains with empty seats beside them.
The first few times he couldn’t look the men in the face. He looked at their hands as he spoke. The calluses and cracked knuckles, the mighty rivers of vein. Thomas speaking so loudly that every other head in the car turned to see what was happening. But he learned to lower his voice, and he got enough courage to lift his face, to look these men in the eye. What he saw was great and terrible, just as Kimble had told him. After he’d looked at the first face, he was unable to look away.
Let me pray with you. Let me read you this passage. Let me give you this card with a phone number you can call. Let me give you change for the call. My name is Thomas. I am going to sit here in this seat beside you.
They did not approach women. There was a sister ministry farther down on Division Street that worked with women. They did not approach children, though there were plenty of children riding the trains alone, running from something. Children were the responsibility of the city. They would be pulled from the trains into foster homes, group homes. Out of one fire and into another. We’ll see them when they’re older, Reverend Lee said. Be patient, though it is difficult, though you see the fear and suffering. Be patient. You’ll encounter them on the same trains when they’re men.
He has lunch on a bench on the Jefferson Park platform, a bag of pork rinds, a bottle of Filbert’s grape soda. Licking salt and grease from his fingers as he watches the traffic on the expressway below. He keeps his Bible on the bench beside him, unopened. That morning’s prayer or verse still in his head, regaining volume now that he is outside the noise of the train. The buildings of the city far in one direction, th
e plains stretching away in the other. Blue sky, clouds piled high like towers. The train cars that stop at the station shedding steam in the cold air.
When he was a child, he’d believed he was a boy made of metal, with an engine for a heart, a computer brain full of schedules and routes. He’d moved along tracks that he’d constructed, or that he had found, left behind by others like him. Something had changed, though, he knew this. He had changed. The metal skin was a suit for a child and he could no longer fit inside. It still called to him, though. When he was sad or angry, or when he thought about his mother, when he missed her, he could feel the pull of the wires. He could still see the tracks stretching before him on sidewalks, along the barracks floor. In those moments he had to remind himself that he was no longer that child. There were no clear tracks to follow anymore, no metal skin for protection. But sometimes he still ached for the machine.
Early afternoon. Light through the grimy windows of the train. Forced-air heat. Seats nearly empty. Thomas walks the aisles, crosses between cars, sits for a time, watching the city blurring past. Telephone poles and wires, television antennae on rooftops. Montrose, Irving Park, Addison. Belmont, next stop. Doors closing on the left.
He had followed Kimble off the train. Thomas was one of the few who’d come directly onto the bus, into the barracks. He had dinner in the dining hall, went up to the bathroom to take a shower. When he came out of the water a towel and toothbrush and clean clothes were waiting for him on the edge of one of the sinks. He became Kimble’s roommate. That was another rule: If you brought a man off the train, or a man called with a card you had given him, he came to live with you. He was your responsibility until he could stand on his own, until he was issued an orange jacket.
It took Kimble three nights to tell his story. Both men in their beds, Kimble smoking, the glowing red tip of his cigarette the only light in the room, pulsing like a radio tower. Kimble spoke slowly, deliberately. Where were we? he said at the beginning of each night, right after lights-out, lying flat on his back in the dark, the tiny red glow floating a few inches above his voice. His story a polished, oft-told thing. Kimble out beyond the limits, his old life, then Kimble on the train, approached by a Rider, then Kimble calling the number, coming to the barracks. Lighting a new cigarette from the dying end of the old. Telling his story until the first blush of sun out the window and then the alarm ringing, alarms ringing in rooms all down the hall, and Kimble saying, To be continued, rolling himself upright, placing his bare feet on the floor, toes, balls, heels, showing Thomas how to find his footing for another day.
More passengers on the train now, the end of the workday. Thomas walks, watches the faces and the prayer in his head. It is in the last car that Thomas sees him. A black man, middle-aged, sitting with his knees up, elbows on his knees, his hands open, head resting in his long fingers. The car crowded, but the seat beside this man empty.
The man’s clothes are grease-stained and worn. A workman’s jumpsuit. His eyes are closed. He is taking slow, shaky breaths, trying to get through some ferocious moment. Thomas checks his Bible, his watch. Begins to move through the car.
The apprenticeship with Kimble lasted a month. Thomas riding with him, plain-clothed, sitting inconspicuous, watching the man work. Having lunch together on a bench on the new Jefferson Park platform, then back on the train, Thomas watching, gradually realizing that he was hoping Kimble wouldn’t make any contact, hoping that no one would take Kimble’s cards, no one would stand with Kimble when he stood, for that would mean Thomas had been replaced. Kimble bringing this up one day while they ate lunch on the Jeff Park bench. Kimble already knowing this was something in Thomas’s head. Telling Thomas that this was normal, this was what they all felt at first. That it was something to be embraced. You want to be replaced, Kimble had said. Being replaced is a joyous thing. It means someone else has heard. It means another man who realizes he is not alone.
There was no ceremony in the receiving of the jacket. Thomas didn’t know what he had expected, some kind of formal presentation, but one morning it was simply hanging on the doorknob when he left their room. No one said anything. No one acknowledged anything. He dressed and ate breakfast and put on his jacket and sat with the other men in the Fellowship Hall and listened to Reverend Lee and then boarded the bus. When they reached Clark and Lake, Kimble nodded to Thomas and Thomas exited the bus alone. It wasn’t until he’d got enough courage and looked the first man in the eye that it all made sense. It wasn’t until that man had looked up at Thomas, until Thomas had sat. In that moment he realized the ceremony. The jacket was just a jacket.
Getting dark now. Thomas works his way to the back of the car, the black man sitting alone. The man’s eyes closed, his mouth open, limbs pulled in like a mantis. Thomas squeezes past the man’s upraised knees, sits in the empty seat. Other passengers looking and then looking away. You do not need to open your eyes, Thomas says. You do not need to uncover your face. Thomas’s head down, his voice low through the noise of the train. The train’s brakes screeching then silent then screeching. Let me pray with you. The other man’s mouth closing, his jaw clenching. Let me be with you through this. Thomas speaking the words he had woken with, the prayer he’d found in his head that morning. The other man’s knees lowering, his leg touching Thomas’s in one place, in two.
The holy moment.
2
Raw light at dawn, white and blue, a clean chill in the air. Hannah stood at the pasture gate, her hands on the rough wood, fingertips finding the cracks and splits. She wore an old sweatshirt, the hood back so she could feel the air on her neck, her ears.
The motel had once been a ranch of some kind. It still had some of the wide tractor trails, the sheds and animal pens. There had been horses out there once, maybe, in the pasture, gray figures stepping through the early light. But it was a windswept, lifeless place now. The scrub brush and tumbleweed had reclaimed the land beyond the half-rotted fence. The ranch overcome when the desert returned.
There were birds on the fence posts farther down the line, crows smoothing their wings, beaks darting, feathers rippling from the contact. This felt like a far country. It hadn’t felt that way the night before, the day’s drive still in her mind, the manageable space between two points. But this morning, in this light, she felt that she’d woken in a very distant place.
They had taken buses west from her studio, changing lines every mile or so, Dickie insisting that they keep to the most populous areas of the city, streets with crowds, buses with standing room only. Safety in numbers, Hannah supposed, though she didn’t feel safe. It was evening by the time they reached Bert’s house. Dickie waited outside while she spoke to Bert, telling him about her impromptu trip, assuring him that everything was fine. Bert offered her some cash which she immediately refused and then thought better of, accepting the small, thick roll along with the car keys. There was someone else in the house, she knew. She could hear music from upstairs, the bedrooms. Bert asked again if she needed help, but she’d already backed out the front door, started down the long driveway to where Dickie stood waiting.
She’d called the photographer who’d taken the cabaret pictures. He’d given her the address of a small bar in the shadow of the Silver Lake Reservoir where the cabaret appeared one night a week. Dickie stayed outside, keeping watch, while she went in. The room was still the daytime bar, with a handful of locals half haunched on stools, but it was beginning to transform. A few young men carried garment racks filled with gowns, others hauled lights and sound equipment through the front doorway. There was no door in the doorway, just a black curtain the men had to brush aside with no small degree of annoyance as they carried speakers inside, a mixing board, a cardboard box filled with colored gels for the lights.
The young Mexican was in the bar, directing traffic. The other men called him Gael. He recognized Hannah when she walked through the curtain. He stiffened a bit, watching her while he gave instruction
s to a man carrying a bag of multicolored boas.
It is the ghost catcher, he said. He nodded to the bar and when she declined he motioned to the bartender, who made him a drink, something dark with ice.
She told him she wanted to find the man from the photograph he’d seen in her gallery. She’d always been fascinated by the picture, couldn’t get the thought out of her head that he might really exist. She was hoping to make her own photograph of him, all these years later.
Gael laughed. I don’t think anyone makes pictures of the white ghost, he said. But he took a drink and gave her the information she asked for, the location of his father’s ranch, what little else he knew about El Fantasma Güero. He believed the man lived in one of the surrounding southern coastal towns, though he had no idea which one. The ghost always just appeared when Gael’s father needed him, standing at the gate to the ranch with his suitcase and tripod. Gael believed that he rode the bus up to the ranch. There was only one bus, which stopped a couple of miles south of his family’s home, and this was probably where the ghost disembarked, walking the rest of the way along the side of the dirt road.
“They met in my father’s office in the main house,” Gael said. “Wednesdays, always the middle of the week, in the afternoon. That was the routine. My father is a man of routines. I suppose the ghost received instructions then, if there was something that needed handling. If not, I don’t know what they talked about. Maybe they just had a drink. My father’s confidant, possibly. His confessor.”
Another young man stopped and asked a question and Gael pointed toward the back of the bar.
Gael looked at the camera hanging from Hannah’s shoulder, and Hannah asked if she could take his picture. He threw up his hands theatrically, said that he wasn’t dressed. Then his smile faded and he nodded, his hands returning to his drink. He looked away, out into the changing bar, a practiced pose of chilled indifference. Hannah waited, watching his profile in the frame, his jawline and dark eyes, the neon beer signs in the background, red and yellow and green. She waited until he turned back, confused, impatient, looking at her, into the lens, and then she pressed her finger, releasing the shutter.
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