South

Train rides have always been odious affairs, there is no getting around it. I used to like to watch the countryside dissolve into itself, but the older I get the whole business becomes too dizzying. Greens bleed into blues and dry into browns too quickly for me to get a hold of myself. Then there is the issue of my reflection hovering over the whole affair, changing color with the trees and fields and flowers. It was all very romantic when I was young-- making worlds and people out of my own face-- but now I prefer to look inside the cabin for my entertainment.

I don’t remember that day very well, but I think that somewhere, I was coming a bit apart. I remember the train ride though, I remember that perfectly. I remember that the sky was too bright and the weather obscenely cheery. Everyone on the platform was in a good mood because of the good weather, which struck me as unseemly, given the circumstances. Given my circumstances. As the train began to move, I turned my head away from the window and found it pointed towards a young man, younger than me at least. He was unkempt and unshaven and kept smiling, not to anyone in particular. I think that’s what caught my attention, the silent joke he seemed to share with the window and the floor and the empty seat across from him. The lines of his face seemed like they had been drawn by someone in a hurry, but not in an unpleasant way. Not at all. I rather liked his crooked smile, it was what Carey would have called ‘a man in the moon sort of grin.’ But Carey was like that, quick to bouts of fancy.

I felt my attention turn to the black little notebook that I kept in my jacket pocket. I never left the house without it in those days, afraid that I would see little bits of myself and not be able to draw them down. It was filled with sketches of little alleyways and gnarled trees and, occasionally, a face. I wanted to put this smiling face down in my notebook, but I felt that it would be wrong, like I had stolen something-- like I had let myself in on a private joke. Not that I think the man would have minded, he seemed to be the sort to go along with any script given to him. I wondered what he would have done, if the roles had been reversed. If he had been sitting in my seat in grey slacks with a hateful little check inside the pocket. He probably would not think the check was so hateful. He would probably be on a different train, a train going south. He struck me as the kind of man who would like to go south and spend sepia colored days in the warm arms of sepia colored women. I could see him sidling about sniffing out sweat and drink and little courtyards full of roses. He seemed the sort, he seemed like Carey. This too, like the singing sun and the twittering birds, seemed like an affront. How quick the world was to repeat itself, to keep turning the record. I looked pointedly away, offended. There was a mother and child a few seats over that were putting on an interesting show. The mother was trying to read some very stern looking pages from a very stern looking manilla folder, and her child was trying to get her attention. He first began by making a little theater of his face. Sorrow. Fear. Joy so exhaltant it was plastic. Smiling fury. When that didn’t work, he bit her arm and my little show ended in some very harsh words and real embarrassment blooming on his apple cheeks. I looked back to the man. I couldn’t help myself. His crooked smile had abandoned his lips, but his eyes were still alight with it. He was twirling a pen in his hand and looking out the window at the muddled and bleeding colors, he seemed to be enjoying himself. I felt a sudden and disquieting urge to leave my seat and sit next to him. To introduce myself, to ask him his name. The urge didn’t stop there. The urge asked that I take the check that had so upset my day and give it to him. To ask him what he would do with the twenty thousand dollars that were left over after a life. To see excitement and confusion run into each other on his face, to see what he would have done. But I think I already know what he would have done. I could tell by that jester smile of his. That check would look so light in his hands, so much lighter than it had felt in my pocket. It would have fluttered in his fingers as he jumped to the platform at the next station. It would have crinkled and smudged as he bounded to another train. It would have sent him south.