Waiting for a Train
A couple of days ago when
the first heavy snows hit Chicago I was waiting for the last Metra
train to
take me back downtown from my cousin’s. It was about eleven-thirty and
it was
one of those nights when the world, blanketed by a thick layer of snow,
seems
incredibly dark and remote. One of those nights where you no longer
feel
humanity teeming all around you.
I was
standing on the platform which instead of being raised like the
ones I’m used to was just an old-fashioned strip of concrete between
the
tracks. Nearby was the skeleton of a little shelter under construction,
but
hidden under the snow like that it could have just as easily been a
ruin. The surrounding
plain was unmarred by footsteps and it looked like the remains of some
large animal
that had frozen to death there beside the tracks a long time ago.
There were
probably about eight inches of snow on the ground and the
powdery stuff was blowing every which way in thick flurries as I stood
smoking a
cigarette and staring down the tracks into the distance. My sense was
of being
outside the flow of time, and together with the fuzzy layer of snow
covering Chicago
this put me into a contemplative mood. Suddenly I thought of my old
friend
Dion, who killed himself about eight years ago by jumping in front of a
train
in Rotterdam.
When the
police told Dion’s
drug buddy and roommate Sander, the first thing that came to his mind
was the
need to find the place where it happened. He went down to the train
tracks a
mile or so from their apartment and started walking along the
embankment.
After some
distance he came across a pile of cigarette butts. There were
about ten or fifteen of them and they were arranged so that they
couldn’t have been
thrown from a passing train. The butts bore the logo of a Hungarian
brand that
only the two of them smoked and Sander realized that Dion must have
waited in
that spot watching trains go by for an hour or so before stepping in
front of a
locomotive.
Sander’s
girlfriend Eva and I had been sleeping together and he and I were
not on speaking terms so I didn’t find out until after the funeral.
Apparently
it was a fine affair, but funerals have always seemed rather morbid to
me
anyway and the more of them you’ve missed the less point there seems in
going
to the next.
I stood
smoking and
watching the snow slowly erase the trail of footsteps I had left behind
along
the tracks, thinking about the past. I lit up another cigarette and
waited there
for a while until the piercing headlights and throaty horn of my train
in the
distance cut through the dark.
After thirty
seconds or so the icicle-encrusted train screeched to a halt
in front of me in a storm of noise and snow. The doors opened and I
climbed out
of the dark into the brightly lit car full of late-night travelers. I
stomped
the snow off my boots and found a place to sit down. When I was seated
I put on
my headphones and looked out the window, but my own reflection was the
only
thing I could see.
-Jake.