“I was in D.C. I watched it, or rather felt it, hit the Pentagon. I felt the boom, the ground shaking, the big mushroom and then the plume of smoke. Suddenly everyone was in the street. Traffic stopped everywhere. The whole city stunned. I was outside the Willard Hotel, a couple of blocks from the White House.”
“Pretty scary, I bet.”
“Yeah, unreal. Strangers all stopped to talk to each other. We heard that more planes were headed to D.C. to blow up the White House and the Capitol. Then I heard it coming.”
“What?”
“Jet engines coming in full bore. I looked over toward the White House and the guy next to me. They were coming in to blow up the President. We all started to hunker down. I said to the guy next to me, ‘Shit, watch this.’”
He took off his watch, holding it in his open hand like a wounded butterfly, like it had been traumatized by the same experience he was describing. He massaged his wrist nervously.
“We were all crouching, some on their hands and knees, helpless, hearing it coming. Then it came, right flat overhead maybe two hundred feet, twin F-16s roaring over us wing to wing. They topped right over the White House, like they were saying, ‘This is ours and we are ready!’ The sound crushed all of us. I think I ended up curled up like a baby.”
“Then what?”
“I went to a packed outdoor restaurant with a TV wheeled out front and watched the towers fall. The traffic was jammed. I just wanted to get out of there. So did everybody else. There were a thousand people trying to get into a single Hertz office. Fools waving their Gold Cards — it was a joke! Cell phones were jammed. So I left my bag and briefcase in a conference room. I never went back. I walked to a highway that had some traffic moving. A guy in a convertible signaled for me to get in. I ran and hopped in as he was moving along. He said hang on and we cut traffic, onto the median, on the side lanes, heading, it turned out for Barksdale, Maryland. He took me to his house, we got on the computer and snagged the last reservation on a west-bound Amtrak leaving in six hours. It had been turned around before getting to D.C. He got through to his wife and kids by landline. We had beers and leftover fried chicken and he drove me thirty miles to the little train station. I got on. And I never got off.”
“You mean you
“I’ve been living on Amtrak ever since then. The first three days after I got on, I slept on the floor. I bought this little polyester blanket — you know, with the official blue Amtrak logo. This one here.” He held up a worn and travel-stained once-white blanket, limp with use, its edges frayed, folded carefully like an heirloom quilt.
“I slept on the floor, like I said, ‘cause there weren’t any seats. We all gathered in the bar car the next night. Maybe a hundred, two hundred people. Told our stories. Shared news. Got raucously drunk, sang songs, you know. Felt the kinship of disaster.
“So, when I got to Denver, I just kept going. Never even called in to my job. Then on to Portland, then Seattle, then back across to Minneapolis, then south to New Orleans. I had a long leash on my credit card, so I just kept on buying tickets. Until a ticket agent clued me into the MegaPass. Unlimited travel, one annual fee. I picked up bits and pieces of life in the railroad stations or a few blocks surrounding them. Toiletries, clothes, stuff to write letters with, books … It’s simple.”
“You’re still afraid?”
“It’s … deeper than that. I just can’t really get off. I scuttle to those stores to get things, then come running back. Literally, running. I’m safe here I guess. Sort of hiding while moving. Funny, I travel hundreds of miles every day …”
He left the sentence unfinished, his voice trailing away as he turned to the window. She noticed his watch. The sweep hand didn’t move.
Around dawn she awoke briefly and watched the gray world relentlessly trip by her window. She wondered how the man across the aisle felt. They were all strangers here, thrown into this long, shunting tube of aluminum, speeding on wheels of steel. She was grateful that, at some point, she would get off the train.
The next day, Cadence felt the change, the long, slow descent into the Mississippi drainage. They passed the continental cleavage, and she felt the easy strings of the West loosen and the verdant tugs of the East take hold. She was coming to pick up a trail, even if it turned out to be a cold and fruitless one. The fact of going and standing on the trail itself was enough for now. It was doing
And what was this train ride, this meandering stumble in the dark? She recalled the odd phrase used by the stranger at her doorstep three days ago.
Her thoughts ran to Ara.
Then she paused.
Cadence pulled out her sketchpad and pencils. She remembered a line from one of her instructors. Our artists’ conceit is that, ultimately, nothing is real unless it can be rendered — described, named, painted, photographed,
A muse was flitting about, ready to land on her shoulder, whispering a sketched composition with pounding horses and the waning moon that was a clock running on Ara’s fate.
She sketched for an hour and dozed and looked out the window. The countryside rolled along, telephone lines arcing from pole to pole, looping the land together like big stitches. Fields with crop rows whipped by, hypnotizing her to sleep. She awakened to the first reds and yellows of fall, flashing by in the boughs of trees. As darkness again settled in, she sped past decaying bridges thickened with vines that seemed to harbor small, leering faces beneath. For the next few miles, a gauzy, grey twilight hugged the world and was punctuated by a series of bonfires that burned merry hell in open trackside fields. They belched up smoke and flame, as if they were signals for some invading night army. To Cadence they were especially disturbing because they were wild and untended and uncontrolled.
Four years she had spent at Colorado State, pledged Tri-Delts, did the events scene, went out with football players, and never once went to the big pregame bonfires. She would get sick just thinking about it. She turned away from the window and nestled and closed her eyes to dream of more pleasant things.
She awoke to the sound of thunder and angry spanks of sheet rain punishing the train window. She looked around. It was still night. Her heart was pounding. Somewhere, somehow, the change she at once coveted and feared was coming closer. Drum beats rumbled in her mind and mixed with the noises of moving steel and wind.
She put her face to the window and cupped her hands around her eyes. She peered out into the flickering nightmare of a Class V thunderstorm. Lightning rippled across the sky and gave substance to the silvery veils of rain. Passing pools of water glinted in the flashes and watched her like the eyes of passing strangers. Then, as a core of ragged bolts created a kind of flickering openness to all the unpeopled night, she passed a country crossroads where five cloaked horsemen circled inward in council, their mounts pluming nostril smoke and strange blue light. One rose in the stirrups and pointed a finger at her, his outstretched arm moving, keeping dead aim on her as she sped past.
Then, as if it never existed, the scene passed.
She abruptly pushed back from the window. Just black glass now, complete with smeary hand and nose smudges on it. She stared at her reflection.
There would be no more sleep this night.
The train outraced the storm, streaking toward a new dawn of breaking purple and yellow light. After awhile, she heard the clink of rails followed by a highball wail mimicking those tones of sadness and regret.
She listened and heard a wheel-click, suddenly tripping into that rare short-rail click-clack, click-clack for a minute or two.
She was approaching something that had been kept from her. Maybe it was just some factoid about the Tolkien documents; maybe it was another puzzle-piece about Ara. She hoped it was some truth about her family.
