Train Station (Tales from the Travelin' Man)

Freehaven. Salem. Maple Grove. Rock Island. Rochester. The names read like a train schedule, and that's mainly what they were, but not a direct, purposeful line that would run from point A to point B on a map, but a random, meandering criss crossing of places and days that had turned into two weeks. In fact, if it had appeared on a map, the journey would have seemed pointless, directionless. It was a good thing journeys couldn't be measured sometimes by how far you traveled, David thought.

It had been two weeks since Logansport, David mused. Two weeks, fourteen days, three hundred thirty-six hours . . .

He could break it down further, into minutes, and seconds, and even measurably smaller pieces, but that wasn't the point. His whole way of life had changed, his way of thinking. The people he'd met, the things he'd seen, and none of that could be measured in the time it took. He felt somehow closer to something that had seemed miles apart before. A weary sigh escaped him and sagged his shoulders; the things he'd left behind, the people he'd been so intimately connected to: Sarah, Robert, Cameron, Miles. He was walking away from them; he couldn't help feeling a little guilty.

Two days out of Logansport he'd realized he'd left the charger to his cell phone behind. He could pick up another, but thought maybe he was better off without it. No one had called, and he supposed he should get used to the silence. Hmm, silence. That was definitely something to get used to. It wasn't the silence around him, there was plenty of noise, between cars roaring by on the highway and horns honking in gridlock traffic in the bigger cities and airline jets roaring overhead. Even the smaller towns had their noise: children waiting for the bus on cold November mornings, the train passing through the middle of town at night, music pouring out of the bars and bells tolling from churches. No, the silence was coming from somewhere else, inside. His thoughts, his head, a large gaping emptiness where schedules and conversation had been, or the distraction of a TV running in the next room or a phone call to break up an hour's drive home. And if all that failed, music--cds or radio.

He couldn't rely on those distractions anymore, and as the miles passed underneath him, it became his constant companion. At first there was a loud ringing in his ears and a pounding headache, as if his ears and brain were going through detox, getting used to less stimulation. It threatened to tear him apart at first, demons breaking through the gap, threataning to run him into madness, over the bridge, off the cliff, restless and screaming. And then, just as it had built to an unbearable crescendo . . .

Nothing.

Peace. Stillness. The sound of his own breathing and a clarity. He felt as if he were standing at the edge of the sea at dawn, his feet firmly planted in wet sand, hearing the gulls, smelling the cool salty air in his lungs and on his lips, feeling the water pour like ice over his feet, around his ankles, and then back out again. And what surfaced to his consciousness, like the flotsam and jetsam from the sea, were fragments, bits of memory: pieces of conversation, a song, holding hands, the smell of perfume, an argument, reading a book, sitting on deadwood as the sun beat down and the wind blew through Shannon's hair. They were fragments, nothing more, but maybe if he picked up enough of the shards and bits there would be something whole emerge, something complete. Some kind of recognition or pattern would emerge, and the things he'd forgotten would be brought back, only sharper and with more clarity than he'd remembered. The pieces would be made whole, and maybe (he hoped) a part of himself would be made whole as well.

The stories also emerged. There was Rose, a 300 pound black woman in her forties, sitting across the table, dabbing her eyes with a tissue as she related a time when she was in high school that four girls had called her over to their van, then pulled her inside and repeatedly raped her. She hadn't told her mom; she probably wouldn't have believed it. And Linda, working dispatch, the night the call came into central over the radio. At the stakeout shots had been fired. The man and his wife had stayed inside, and met the knocking on the door with a shotgun. Her husband was in that stakeout. Someone had been hit, someone had shot someone else. A man was dead. No other details were in yet, but they'd let her know as soon as they had something. She twists the wedding band on her finger. Someone dead last month, another down tonight. How long could she keep doing this?

Enough.

David scratched the two week stubble that had nearly become a beard. Shaving was out, but he still grabbed a shower when he could at a truck stop, or a Motel 6, just to feel human again and get the grit of the road off him and sleeping on benches and in coach and cheap hotels. He checked his pockets. He still had plenty of money and even more to draw on from an online bank if he needed it. No, money wasn't an issue, he could live like this for year without running dry. He felt like a leaf blowing on the wind, a hollowness whistling through his insides.

There was something out there, elusive yes, but he was on its trail, a pattern he hoped, between the man behind Krogers asking for money, the grim tension behind the eyes of the newscasters on the tvs broadcast at the truckstops, the vendors shaking their heads at the gas station, the subdued voices of children in restaurants, the changing weather patterns and the flights of birds. Something was different. He didn't know what but he had to know.

At the same time, there was the growing sense that he was being hunted. He caught himself looking over his shoulder more this last week, almost habitual, and he couldn't remember when it had begun. It was catching up, the secret thing he feared, and he wondered in silent resignation when (not if) it would find him.

He pictured how it would happen. He'd be too slow, spend too muc time in one place and let the dust settle, lured into a false sense of security and with the belief that maybe what had been after him would have given up the pursuit. He'd be walking down the middle of Main Street in some sleepy town when he'd round a corner and there it'd be, staring him dead in the face, hackles raised, claws ready, looming large. And it'd have him. There'd be nothing he could do, nowhere he could run that it wouldn't have already anticipated, and he'd be left, shaken like a ragdoll before it was all over.

In the distance the sound of the approaching train could be heard, still far off. Most stations were automated these days. This one was not. He liked the way it felt, the way it smelled, like rubber and old leather. He stepped up to the counter and met the gaze of a middle aged, graying man looking out from behind a glass window.
"How far does this line go?" David asked.
"Depends. Where you coming from? Where you wanna go?"
David reached down into his left pocket and pulled out a $20 and some change and slid it on the counter between himself and the ticketmaster.
"Today," David said with a wry grin, "we'll let fate decide."