Hippie Chick

Maybe it was the Jameson. Maybe it was the mischievous spark in her eye. Maybe the combination of the two was just enough to impair my decision-making faculties that night. Either way I couldn’t stop wondering what she was scratching in that little black notebook with the stub of a pencil that had been chewed beyond recognition on one end. It was definitely the Jameson that gave me the courage to ask her about it. Hippie chicks weren’t normally my thing, but she was something else. I sauntered over with my wing man in tow, true military style. I hadn’t been back from my last deployment for long and it was good to be back stateside, where I was fairly confident she’d at least speak english.

I asked what she was writing. She winked and answered that if she told me, she’d have to kill me. Her nose did this funny thing when she smiled and I could think of worse ways to die. I bought her a drink, and then another. She skipped most of the usual small talk, avoiding the question about the notebook, which was safely tucked under her whiskey glass by now.

“Have you ever done it on a moving train?” She leaned over the table and whispered slowly, like she was afraid God might hear. I probably looked at her like she was crazy, but her nose did that thing again and I answered that I hadn’t - yet. Then she told me if I wanted to come with her, she had to pick up something, and she’d split it with me. Just didn’t want to go alone, she said. I’d had enough by now to know that I didn’t want her to go alone either.

The tracks weren’t far from the bar. At some point I am sure I must have questioned the legality, if not sanity, of climbing around on the shipping containers that were lined up ready to go on the track, but I don’t remember that part. I just remember her laugh as we scaled the ladder to the top of a car. It was dark, but the moon that night was enough to give her light to scribble something else in that notebook as we sat there, her legs hanging over the side of the car. I don’t remember when the train started to move, I just remember that her lips tasted like Jameson. The wind blowing across my skin and the warmth of her underneath me as we sped out of Spokane made me feel more alive than I had felt since my second deployment. She laughed in exhilaration and I couldn’t tell if I was hanging on to her or the moving train car more tightly as we rolled out of city limits.

It must have been almost an hour before I began to realize how far we were getting from town, on top of a freight train, bearing south, I thought. I watched her tie her long dreds up into a big knot as I weighed our options for getting off the train without dying. The gravel below the tracks was flying by a little too fast for a safe landing, by my calculations. Just as I was about to suggest we make our way toward the front of the train to turn ourselves in, the train came to a gradual stop. It was the middle of nowhere on the Palouse, rolling hills of wheat fields with an occasional island of tall Ponderosas dotting the landscape. No train stops out here. I saw flash lights up toward the engine and knew we’d been spotted.

Getting off the car was a bit more of a tangle than I remember the climb up had been, especially in a hurry, but we made it. My jeans were torn to shreds and covered with grease where they had caught on the ladder, but she seemed to just trickle down to the ground, quiet and easy like water. She took off toward an island of trees in the darkness, with barely a look over her shoulder, but her notebook open to a very specific page, which she kept referencing by moonlight. I followed her, feeling just about as spry as somebody can after a few too many whiskeys in the middle of the night in strange terrain. I think she was headed northwest, back the way we had traveled, but on a definite trail to somewhere. The flashlights faded behind us as we made it into the tree island and popped out the other side onto a road. Without hesitation she turned left and headed off. I followed. Not like I had anything better to do. I heard the train start up in the distance behind us, and the creaking and screeching took me back to the being up on top of the car, the wind picking up around us and her breath quickening to my touch, along with my heart rate. One for the highlight reels for sure.

We hit a dirt road that crossed the highway and she noted the name of the road, gave me a silent look, doing that nose thing that spoke volumes, and I nodded in reply. We took the dirt road for awhile before a little building appeared, the kind that kids sit in to wait for school busses out in the middle of nowhere. She popped inside and rustled around for a minute and came out of the shelter dragging a dark duffle bag. She plopped it at my feet and unzipped it. It could have been a dead body or a pile of gold for all I knew, but most likely it was the rest of her tie-dyed wardrobe and maybe some extra pencils. She drew back the lid and looked at me again.

“I told you.” she said, tucking the notebook into the back pocket of her faded 501s with finality. “You get half.” It was bundles of hundred dollar bills. Stacks of them.

I had a million questions, but based on experience, knew she didn’t seem like the type that would answer them. She began shoving cash in the sling bag she’d been wearing all night and then handed the duffle bag to me.

“Here’s yours. Don’t worry, it’s legal. I don’t need it all.”

I shook my head at her and took the bag, slinging it across my shoulders. We made our way back to the road, where a dark Suburban pulled up alongside us. The driver was a clean cut guy in a freshly ironed button down shirt. He eyed my torn up jeans and asked us if we’d by any chance been hanging out on any trains that night. We responded in the negative and said that sounded pretty dangerous. He asked what we were doing on foot out in the boondocks. We said we’d been at a farm party nearby and it got too crazy for us. He hesitated a moment before he told us to stay safe and headed off into the midnight darkness. After a bit of walking, an old Chevy truck slowed down. The driver said he was headed back to Spokane if we needed a lift. I didn’t question why he’d pick up strangers in ripped and dirty jeans in the middle of the night in the middle of nowhere - he seemed to fit the bill for the type of guy that would just do that. I hopped in, but the girl held back. She said she was headed the other way.

I don’t know why I didn’t argue, but at the time, it made sense to me.

I woke up the next day in my own bed with torn jeans, a duffle bag and $20,000 in cash. The little black notebook was stuffed inside the bag. The things she wrote - well, if I told you, I’d have to kill you. I’ve got a new relationship these days with Jameson, and with trains, but the highlight reel from that night still makes me feel alive, and I can’t say I have any regrets. Sometimes I wonder where she is and whether she still does that thing with her nose when she smiles. I’ll bet she does.