Last Long Ride

I’m ridin’ suicide.

Below me the ballast stones blur with a pulsing flash of cross ties framed on either side by dull gray steel rails. My left knee straddles a rod in the bottomless car with a roar of metal and death in my ears. My ass sits on a narrow ledge of metal. My back presses against my guitar case strung across my back. The Gibson inside well padded by a pair of underwear and socks that are dirtier than what I’ve got on, a bundle of rope, a small canvas tarp and a slightly smaller wool blanket. I know in my right boot, used right now to keep me upright in this precarious position by tension on a crossbar, is a knife with a six inch blade. I’m hoping the vibrations don’t send it below, as there’s no way I could save it and me at the same time.

That’s what I know.

That’s all I know.

And I’ll be goddamned if I don’t care to know more.

I know I can ride like this for about four hours. By then the train will come through some slow pass, a bridge, a bend, a town, something that will make the roar dull, the vibration easier on the steel, then I’ll grab the side with my palms, take a chance, stand, stretch, shake the pinpricks in my feet and hands, crack the knees. You got to take a chance that the railroad bulls don’t see you in that moment, ready to chase and crack your skull wide open when you’re still shaking the blood back into your limbs. Feels like I’ve been at this a while. Every sway of the car sends a lightening bolt up my leg. My ass feels like iced fire. Gotta be a bend soon. Through the plains you’ve gotta be ready for hours of nothing but rush and roar, day to dusk, but here, through these mountains, there’s always a place with no room for bulls to run the banks, and plenty of opportunity to reposition.

But it doesn’t come. What the hell is that engineer playing at? What’s got him so all fired up that he’s gonna kill us all in order to make time?

I look up at the mountain side, high with dark pines. Remembering those words.

“In the pines, in the pines, where the sun never shines.”

Yeah, that engineer didn’t do so well. “His head was found in a driver’s wheel, and his body has never been found.”

Guess this asshole isn’t big on Ledbelly.

Still waiting. Waiting. Hours pass. Must be. Sun’s already gone even though it’s gotta still be mid-afternoon. That’s the way it is in the mountains. When it goes dark, it’s gonna go cold. Then I’m screwed. I won’t even know when the foot slips off, and I get dragged. Skin ripped off, head bouncing off the crossties till getting sent and sliced between wheel and rail. And that train won’t skip a beat, not even a jostle. Maybe, just maybe, there’ll be enough left for the next engineer to signal in at the next town that he crossed over my corpse. “Hell naw, I didn’t stop.” he’ll say. “You think I’m green?”

Then I see it. Over on the far wall of the car. I’ve been sitting here all these hours and didn’t notice, but there, plain as day, three lines chalked into the coal dust. Three lines. Parallel to each other. Slanted from bottom left to top right. I know what that means just as well as if it had been written, better even. Some other hobo put that there to say…

“This isn’t a safe place.”

No shit.

With that a steeper grade blocks out even the afternoon, and I can’t see it anymore. I gotta try to move. Gotta try another car. Dumb. Real dumb. If I knew why I picked this one, I might have reason to give myself hell for it. But I gotta try.

I push down with my hands on the ledge and raise up a bit, then grab at abrace in the sidewall, place my foot against the bar, and praying that there ain’t a loose tie in the next fifteen seconds, pull myself up so I’m standing on the bar. Then I place my left foot on the ledge, grab the top of the back wall, and pull myself up and over.

Looking back there’s a hopper car. The two cones, made to hold grain, that make up the hopper car leave space fore and aft the bed of the car for a place to ride. Sometimes a platform. Sometimes not. But whatever is there, it’s better than riding suicide.

The corrugated metal isn’t exactly a ladder, but it’ll work in a pinch. My feet come to rest on the swaying coupler between the cars. The wind presses back on the guitar case. The coupler gyrates with an unregulated rhythm. Pitch and flow of the strain of nature against the straight line of man. I try to roll with it. The split second I let go of this wall and reach for the ladder on the hopper car, only god, if there is one, gets to say how it turns out.

I wait, and as soon as the next sway steadies, I reach. I grab. I pull across, plant my feet on the bottom rung and platform, and say thanks, just in case.

I study my options. Even the best of which suck, what with the wind whipping in and all. I take a chance, climb the ladder, scramble on top, and take a moment to rest on my stomach. Then I crouch low to keep my center steady and make my way to the rear of the car. Scramble down the ladder, and find a little piece of heaven.

Why they put these big ol’ holes in the backs of hopper cars, I couldn’t tell ya, but when the boxcars got shut tight, these became the hobo’s next Howard Johnson. About four foot around and going in maybe five feet, a ‘bo can get out of the wind, rain, snow, relatively sheltered, no chance of getting locked in like in a boxcar and stranded in a railyard to be found months later. And there, right above it, a simple X, scratched in the paint. Another sign from my friend. “Safe to stay. OK.” I shove my guitar in. Enter. Pull out my blanket, and sleep.

The morning sun is streaming in when I wake up. The roar still going and steady. I pull myself out of the hole and see flat grass plains stretching in every direction without so much as a hill to interrupt them. With one leg wrapped around the ladder, I let out a golden spray to greet the day. Much relieved, I look back expecting to see the mountains, but there aren’t any. So we’re heading west. That’s going to take some time. I crawl back in the hole, but just before I do, something catches my eye. That X. Gone. Like it was never there. Instead, there are the three parallel and diagonal lines. Like in the other car. Except they have two horizontal lines running through them. Not a good sign. Not at all. “Crime committed here, not safe” is what they say.

I don’t see as I have much choice right now, so I go to enter, but as I do, I hear the strings of my guitar, and some deep voice echoes from the darkness, fighting, and winning, against the roar of rail and wind.

“Pawn you my watch, pawn you my chain,

Pawn you my gold diamond ring!

If this train runs me right, I’ll be home tomorrow night.

I’m 900 miles from my home, and I hate to hear that lonesome whistle blow.”

WHOOOOOOOOOOOOoooooooOOOOT!

Train whistle blasts, nearly making me jump right off the platform.

“Goddamn! What the hell?”

I reach down in my boot and quick as axel grease pull out my knife and enter the hole, ready for whatever dumb bum decided to strum my goddamned guitar!

But nothing.

The hole is empty.

The guitar case sits where I left it. My blanket beside it.

I rush in and pop the case open. Besides the stench of my overdue laundry, nothing is out of place. I get a chill. A deep fear. The kind that sends the brain scrambling and blood pounding as with nothing to fight, flight kicks in. I grab the case and blanket and scramble out onto the platform. I back away from the hole. Not taking my eyes off the dark like something’s coming from the nothing in there.

Still holding the knife, blade out to the nothing, I take a glance at the next car back, then quick back to the hole. Then it registers.

“What the hell?”

I look back to make sure what I saw is right. Sure enough, there it is. A caboose.

“A caboose?”

I’m struggling. I try to remember how many cars I saw behind the hopper. I got it in my mind that there was a whole string, but when I remember, it seemed like they stretched back to the horizon, and that don’t make any sense. But one car? And a red caboose at that? They haven’t used those regular since the 1980s. And this ain’t one of those. This is the classic wood model, like they used in the early 1900s. There’s smoke coming out of the stack, which means a crew’s in there. Shit. I could go forward, but if this is the caboose, they sure as hell have seen me by now. How could I have missed them? This makes no sense.

Then I see it.

Atop the transom. Over the door. Painted in fresh white paint against the red.

A circle with an arrow coming off of it, pointing down to the door. If the arrow went through the circle, that’d be a bad sign. This is a good one. Just means “this way.” And next to it. More scratched in then painted, a sign that truly raised my spirits. A small square with a diagonal line coming off it like a handle. That is a sign of good fortune. That sign means, “alcohol in this town.”

I pack my blanket back in the case, sling it on my back, reach for the ladder and cross the couplings.

I cross the railing, and turn the knob to the door. I do not sheath my knife.

“Hello? Anyone in here? I don’t mean no trouble, and I ain’t here to rob ya.” The bunks are open and empty on either side of the entryway. No crew in there. There’s a corridor between them, a small room with a privy to the right. In the back is a larger space with a stove, table, maybe a bunk or two. If I’m gonna get jumped, it’ll be at the end of the corridor.

I smell coffee and bacon. My stomach grumbles. Looking down through the dusty light, I see a small man sitting at the table. Black woolen coat. Hoghead railroad hat. White shirt, short collar, with a vest. Watch chain dangled to the vest pocket. He’s got his hands wrapped around a mug of coffee. He looks up and smiles.

“You sleep OK?”

“Uh, sure, yeah. I suppose. Hey, you tell them fellas behind that wall that they better just come out and show themselves. I got more than a knife, and it goes through wood.”

The man laughs. “If you had more than a knife, you’d have it out by now. Don’t worry. No one back here but me and you. Matter of fact, no one here on this train but me and you.”

I don’t buy it.

“This thing so old that you can’t signal the engineer with anything more than a lantern? If you had, we’d of stopped by now.”

“There’s no engineer,” says the man. “At least not one that’ll stop this train.”

The man stands up. I walk down the corridor, slam the privy door open, find no one, jump into the room, and sure enough, no one. Just him.

He walks slowly over to the stove. Grabs a plate and mug from the bracket on the wall. Fills the mug from the pot on the stove and hands it to me. Then fills up the plate with bacon and bread which he pours some of the grease on. Then he sits down and motions for me to do the same opposite him. I slowly sit, and he pulls a small brown bottle from his coat and he pours some into my mug then his.

“That’ll take the chill off,” and he smiles.

I sit down, put some bacon on the bread and take a bite. Best damn thing I’ve ever tasted in my life. I blow over the top of the coffee then take a sip and feel my body tingle with the dual pleasure of caffeine and alcohol.

I put the knife away in my boot. “Thanks.”

He replies. “Don’t mention it.”

“So, is this new railroad policy?” I ask, feeling oddly at ease.

“Don’t know who’s policy it is,” he replies, “but it’s mine.”

We sit in silence as I finish the meal. Not sure how many cups of coffee I’ve had as he keeps filling the mug before it gets empty. When I’m done, he scrapes the plate, washes and wipes it from a jug of water, then pulls out a pack of Camels. Hands me one. Lights his. Throws me the matches, and places the pack on the table.

“I take it you play,” he says, pointing to my case, still on my back.

“Yeah, a bit. Will play for my meal if you think that’s fair.”

He nods, and I pull out the Gibson, tune up, then match the rhythm of the rails with my thumb on the bass strings, picking out the melody with my index and middle.

“This train I ride on is a hundred coaches long.

Each one’s a headin’ to your door!

If this train runs me right, I’ll be home tomorrow night

I’m 900 miles from my home, and I hate to hear that lonesome whistle blow.”

Sure enough, that whistle blasts out WHOOOOOOOoooooooOOOT! But that ain’t no airhorn. I know that sound.

“That’s steam!” I say.

“Yep,” he says. “Steam is the confluence of humanity and nature. The life of water against the consumption of fire. Ain’t no truer union. Venus and Mars, piped and regulated….till it blows up, of course.” With this he laughs.

Then he looks at me, and straight faced asks, “you want to see the locomotive?”

My jaw drops. I’m a hobo. Illegally riding the rails as I’ve always done. And he’s gonna give me a tour? Not exactly what I’m used to when dealing with company men.

“Sure,” I reply.

He gets up and starts heading to the back door of the caboose. I see it. Right above the door. Didn’t notice it before, but there it is. A crudely drawn boxy locomotive. I know this one too.

“Good place to catch a train.”

He’s at the door, then turns as if confused as to why I’m not up there with him.

“Well then, follow me,” he says.

I get up, follow, and he opens the door.

It just doesn’t make sense. This is the caboose. The end of the train. But sure enough, right there, is the steam locomotive. Coal piled high, cab in front, thick stack atop, bellowing black. The sky has turned gray, a slate blanket of low clouds without differentiation. I look behind us, at least, what I think is behind us, and see a trail of cars stretching past the horizon, if that is a horizon.

I look forward and see he’s already on the ladder. Climbing up and over. I pull my case onto my back and follow him over the pile, down the side.

A hundred brass levers, handles, wheels and gauges. Bright red fire roaring in her belly. I land in the cab, and put my face out the glassless window. The grass plains roar by in a blur, indistinct, almost irrelevant. And there, on the horizon, is a break of orange below the cloud line. The setting sun hovers right midtrack, casting the rails into slivers that look straight out of a blacksmith's forge.

“You heard of neutrinos?” the man asks, strangely clear despite the rush of the engine.

“Can’t say as I have.”

“Knew this scientist fella. Said these things run right through everything. Right through us, the planet, everything. Can’t see them. Can’t catch them. Don’t know where they come from. Don’t know where they go.”

“Am I dead? Am I a ghost?” I ask.

“What’s death? What’s a ghost?” he replies. “Nah, maybe you are dead, but you ain’t you. And if a ghost is you, you ain’t that either. You see, we pass through, but we don’t pass through without touching. What you are was, is, and will be. What we are will be, is and was. Somewhere, in someplace that someone called earth, there’s a train. And on that train is a railroad man drinking coffee and eating bacon and a hobo who caught a westbound. You and I both know what that means.”

Yeah, I know what that means.

After a long time, just watching that glorious sun hover over the rails, he pulls out his bottle, takes a swig, and hands it to me.

“You know what?” he says, “I think I’ll call you Jack. That alright by you?”

I smile and take a swig, then hand it back. “Alright by me.”

“Hey, Jack,” he says with a devilish grin. “How ‘bout you pull on that whistle!”

WHOOOOOOOOOOOOoooooooooooOOOOOOOOOT!