Entry 6
By Steven Paul Lansky
©2005 All Rights Reserved

"Wailing Wheels"

The wailing of the steel wheels along the edge of the tracks kept me attentive to the curving path over the Ohio River. The first hour moved by slowly, just as the train was slow leaving the city on the northern bank. At dawn we reached Maysville, Kentucky cruising along next to Route 8 between the narrow highway and the wide muddy. School children disembarked at Maysville obviously part of a tour. Their chatter was warm, they took flash pictures, and the teachers and parents with them grinned as all were well behaved.

"Smokey Mountains"

The passenger cars were comfortable with wide upholstered seats, good lighting to read by, and an observation car; its windows curved above the pastel colored, cushioned, rotating chairs to allow a view of trees and sky, as well as the farm buildings along the way. The sky grew gray and the rain fell as the train passed coal cars filled and waiting to go to the cities of the north and east. The muted colors of the green trees with their dark trunks, the golden and green fields, the earthy water, the glow that seemed best under a light rain and a grayblue sky in the earliest morning; these were the shimmering farms of rural Northern Kentucky. Barely in the South, the river had a soothing powerful presence as grandfather wisdom surfaced in my mind in little sayings that I wish I had written down. Cincinnati behind, a great adventure begun, I began to meet some of my traveling companions.

There was an architect in the observation car who worked in Covington . He was something of a cyclist as well. We talked about carpentry and construction. His presence was good and mellow and we seemed to be politically OK. The only black people I saw were workers on the train. The architect’s name was John, and he had deep-set brown eyes, shaggy brown hair and a full mustache. He was interested in my plan to go to the New Yorker Festival in Manhattan. He was headed for Baltimore for a holiday with family. He traveled alone.

When the call on the overhead PA system came for breakfast I was hungry and eager. In the dining car the Amtrak family served and the rule was four to a table, no matter the size of your party. So, I met and mingled with a man who worked on mainframes using UNIX accompanied by his wife and their traveling companion. The man was fifty-three, balding and conservative, he wore a golf shirt and when I saw his feet after the meal he confirmed my suspicion that he had tassels on his shoes. I told him the only joke I knew about UNIX. “If you type into a UNIX prompt ‘I’m thinking about getting a divorce,’ the computer will reply, ‘Too many arguments.’” I got a bit of a laugh from this threesome. Breakfast was tasty, and wholesome (I had fruit and cereal.) as the train clicked along towards West Virginia.

The man’s wife and their traveling companion blended into the background such that they nearly disappeared. I thought about H.G. Well’s novel, The Invisible Man, and how invisibility was a result of solubility. As they became saturated with liquid (like a piece of paper soaked in oil becomes translucent) they appeared to be part of the interior of the train. Likely interiors and upholstery, bulkheads, and floor tiles were their natural surroundings, a kind of habitat for them that exempted them from any individuality allowing them to be virtually non-existent to all but the keenest observers. I was privileged to have the ability to observe all of this, but as I let my imagination flow freely I wanted to comment to the threesome on the twosome’s humble lack of individuality. I wanted to say, “Existence is a struggle and unless you put your shoulder to the wheel of identity, you may never be counted.” As I grew more in my sense of self, I failed to foresee the need to keep my head down which was coming my way faster with each click of the large train’s wheels.

I was still pondering the fate of Kung Fu Sam back in Cincinnati who had been arrested so keenly two days before I left. Cincinnati was in turmoil now. There had been articles in the local press stating that Federal Investigators were on the scene checking up on our police force for the deaths of black citizens at their hands. There had been race riots, or civil unrest (depending on the rhetoric of choice.) Boarding the train there had been a number of black families who chattered loudly and with a distinct dialect as the minutes had passed during ticketing. But after departure, I didn’t see these three groups of five or so individuals. It was as if they were on a different train.

After breakfast, I returned to my seat and watched out the window. I read a little of The New Yorker Magazine, my excitement growing for the city. There was a story by Salman Rushdie that reminded me of myself, and I felt oddly represented, stolen from, and paranoid, all at once. I wore the Panama hat and the white clothes he described. Strange feelings of a strong kinship rose in my chest. By lunchtime I was brimming with confidence. Concluding I had made the right decision by getting out of Cincinnati, I was headed for the center of all centers where I would be recognized at last. Maybe I would be able to meet an editor and talk about the publication of my poem, Gogol’s Ear. Surely it would not be for lack of my effort. I would no longer disappear into the slush pile of poems that rolled over the transom through the rejecter and back into the U.S. Postal Service bag in the S.A.S.E. Lunch was announced as the train began to roll into deep hill country along the New River.

In the dining car I was seated across from a short woman with curly blondish hair piled haphazard on the top of her head. When she ventured a reluctant grin of introduction she revealed a badly capped incisor. She had a southern accent and seemed to me, weakly bred. Her husband had a shock of white hair, a flinty look to his eye, a bold jaw, was tall and displayed a paunchy gut under a navy golf shirt. I asked him what he did and he promptly replied, “Retired from the air force.”

“What rank?” I asked.

“Major,” he said.

“Were you in Vietnam?” I asked.

“Three tours,” he said with matter-of-fact pride.

“Ever read Catch 22?” I asked.

“Uh-huh.”

“Major Major?”

He was silent for a moment. I went on, “I bet you were a major fuck-up.” I’m not sure what prompted me to just attack him verbally and test his mettle but it happened so fast, I just watched myself go to work.

“I don’t have to take that from you,” he said. “Either you’re mighty weird or you’re on drugs.”

“I’m twelve years straight and sober, a Chemical Dependency Counselor, but I am one of the weirdest people you’ll ever meet. Want to buy some drugs?”

“Get away from us you weirdo,” and to his wife, “come on honey, we don’t have to put up with this,” as they began to move to another table. At first he leaned toward me, appearing to want to get in my face, but he saw how much bigger I was. Size does matter, and he was clearly embarrassed, but managing to save face.

“I have Naproxen Sodium for sale,” and to his wife, I said, “I can refer you to a dental surgeon who can help with that tooth.”

She whistled, “I never,” under her breath and they were gone to another table. I sighed with relief. I felt instinctively that I had offended the right person. He was tough, and I had been harder, keener, evener, and funnier. A younger fellow entered the dining car a few minutes later and sat across from me. He had shoulder length hair, shaved close on the sides and in back, with a Walkman playing music and was reading a hardback novel. We talked a little. The novel was a gift from his girlfriend who flipped burgers at Burger King. It was a sort of heavy metal romance novel. He let me flip through it. The guy missed his girl already. I ate a veggie burger and he ate a steak.

After lunch I sat in the observation car through a series of incredible vistas along the New River. The New River is one of the few rivers in North America that flows south to north. We saw Hawk’s Nest, some flooded areas, a remarkable bridge, and rolled up and down some great mountain rails into Charleston, West Virginia.

I got off the train in the mountains with my racing bicycle. The rain had stopped, but would start again before my day ended. The road quickly became narrow and steep. Mud run-off, visible effluvia cascaded along the gutter spilling brown water and pea gravel across the road. My tires were thin with little tread. I slowed down so much from the grade that I began to lose balance and wobble wide sweeping curves across the roadway. Turning to stay out of the muddy streaming puddles became impossible, and I was barely making progress up the hill. The rear wheel swept out from under me as I ripped my left foot free of the clip on pedal and caught myself on the slippery roadway. The plastic cleat of my shoe slid and I was on my ass. Unscraped, out of breath but wet and muddy, I regrouped quickly. I had started on too steep a path. Head down I took a long drink from my water bottle. I turned and went the other direction. The road snaked up and down. Soon I crossed railroad tracks and paced along through a quiet neighborhood. Then I came to a wider road. A crossroads. I took it. Soon I was pedaling among speeding trucks. Grateful that I had worn my helmet and carried two bottles, I settled into steady pedaling up and down long grades. I could hear the whine then roar of logging trucks when they came from behind. As they passed gritty water streamed over me. My greatest fear was that a truck would come from in front as a logging truck came to pass from behind. I might be forced onto the gravel shoulder. I smelled the diesel, the pines, the wet roadway, and my own body.

As I entered the outskirts of a city I came upon John, the Italian on the green machine. I pulled up on him as it began to pour rain again. He was more upright than I was, and he was spinning slowly, pedaling in pain. I didn’t know his name, or that he was Italian, except that’s the way it was in the dream, and here on the train I knew him as “John the architect who was a few years older than me.” I took a healthy draw from my water bottle, chewing on grit as I closed it, pushing with my front teeth.

A bike race. Three main competitors coming into Charleston , West Virginia , from the mountains. Final stage of a big American race. John and I came upon the cocky young Indian, his head shaved on the sides. He rode on the Cannondale with the oversize tubing. We pulled right up to him and kept working together. I had had lunch with him on the train. Three together, one young cocky Indian, one me, and third an Italian older lightweight. John and I left the Indian quickly. He was spent. I knew I couldn’t win the race. The oldest wins after the young dropped. The oldest bridges on the flat and then pulls away in the rain. But we are virtually together, and emotionally it helps to watch him pedal a little faster. Wait. We haven’t come to the finish. We pedal through a set of traffic lights past islands separating lanes and John is confused about the course. He slows to look back. I sweep past him to the roar of the imaginary crowd in the imaginary victory in the imaginary bike race.

I wake up to tears streaming down my cheeks; and I don’t dry them, but weep openly for several minutes. I remove my glasses and watch out the window in blurred rain. The Amtrak train was pulling into the station at Charleston, West Virginia.

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