Warm Whiskey in a Cold Ditch: Installment #5

Waiting--Grand Junction



My brother and sister were nowhere to be found. "If they're not here when the train leaves," my father said, "I'm stealing your brother's cigars."

We'd each bought a cup of coffee from the store, and we found a seat on one of the long, wooden benches inside the station, benches that seemed more like church pews. A middle-aged woman pecked away at a computer keyboard inside the ticketing office, outside of which was a small chalkboard with the train's departure time written neatly in blue chalk. That we were currently an hour beyond that time seemed to have been forgotten by whoever was in charge of the chalkboard. During what my parents had called my "wandering years" I had spent a bit of time in England, and even that long ago in dozens of train stations, I had never seen a chalkboard.

"You call Mom?" I asked.

My father shook his head. "Not yet. Later tonight, probably."

"You can call her more than once a day, you know. It wouldn't hurt anything."

"No, it probably wouldn't. But it'd surely make her think something's wrong. She was fearful that I'd be lonely without her, that I'd somehow get misplaced."

My parents had been married for forty-five years, a number that astounded me. They were both eighteen when they met, nineteen on their wedding day. My siblings and I arrived not long afterward. "Mom might be glad to hear that you're lonely," I said. "She'd appreciate being missed."

"I'm not a man of surprises," he said as he drank from his flask. A woman sitting across from us, her two toddlers splayed out on the floor at her feet, narrowed her eyes when she saw my father drink. He noticed, too, and just to make sure there was no confusion between them, he drank again.

"I'm going to get a Pepsi from the store, Dad. You want anything?"

"I'm fine. Potato chips, maybe." He reached for his wallet.

"Forget it, Dad. I can afford a bag of potato chips."

My dream about Peggy still lingered wherever it is that dreams rattle around, and I thought of her as I left my father on the bench. He and Peggy had been good friends, and I've always believed he was somewhat hurt when she was gone. My parents had endured an incredible amount of angst raising their children, and since I was the most troublesome, they were relieved when I got married and seemed to be changing things up a bit. Peggy and I had indeed struggled--including floating around Nevada for awhile--and hope was the last thing we gave up on. But we were both realists and knew when to end what needed to end. I always wanted to think that our life together made me more resilient, but in fact it made me little more than weary. "You don't know what weary is," Peggy once told me when I told her how I felt. She was probably right, too.

"They didn't have potato chips," I said when I again sat beside my father. "You want something else?"

"I want to get on the train and be moving," he said. "So, you write anything yet?" He pointed to the Rhodia notebook.

"Haven't opened it," I said.

"Your sister and brother walked through here on their way back to the train. I think I'll join them." He pointed to the chalkboard. "She updated the sign when you were gone. We're not going anywhere for awhile."

I was dismayed to see that our departure time was still an hour away. I wished that my father had left me the flask--some places are suited for drinking, and Grand Junction Amtrak station seemed to fit the bill. Slouching as much as I could without sliding off the bench, I leafed through the notebook. Some of the pages were completely full; others sported drawings or poems. Several poems seemed to have been written by the same hand, and though I've never read much poetry, they were short and easy to read. One, "Surprise," was centered perfectly on the page, with a sketch of a small, landlocked boat named San Antonio at the bottom of the page.

Surprise

Someone should have mentioned how dusk might
linger like this, how daylight and a diminished
horizon can refuse one another as easily as they refuse
the half-moon. Five-hundred feet below, a slack tide
barely pulses toward the line of seaweed strands,
distressed driftwood, diminished legs of crabs.
From this bluff, from this bed of clump grass, only
the single light on a schooner's mast has purpose--
an unnatural beacon any eye would find until finally
even it is directed away, perhaps into the surprise
of strong water, into what becomes of dusk.

Warm Whiskey in a Cold Ditch: Installment #4

Waiting: Grand Junction


When I returned to the train, I found my father still sitting in the observation car. "You want anything from the store?" I asked.

"There's a store?"

"In the station. You want to get out and walk around?"

He didn't seem interested. "Any idea of how much longer we'll be sitting here?"

"From what I hear, could be awhile. Something about the engines not talking to each other."

"They must be related," he said. "You want a drink?" He handed me his silver flask, something I hadn't seen in years. He used to carry with him whenever we went on family vacations that involved extensive time in the car. He always swore that he never drank while driving, but in the middle of the night once somewhere between Chicago and Michigan I watched from the backseat as he glanced over at my sleeping mother and pressed the flask to his lips. He must have assumed that I was also asleep, but I was never sure if I shut my eyes before he looked into the rearview mirror to see if anyone was watching.

"Is it Scotch?" I asked.

"Yep. Where are your sister and brother?"

I sealed the flask and handed it back to him. "Probably still inside."

"They should've brought their spouses along for the ride."

I laughed. "You didn't bring yours."

"Your mother's been through this enough times." He reached over to the seat beside him. "Look what I found." He handed me a Rhodia notebook, its orange cover smudged with dirt and what looked like strawberry jam.

"Where's this come from?"

"Chicago, from what I can tell."

"You know what I mean. You find it just lying here?"

"A couple seats over. It was there all night, and when nobody picked it up this morning, I started looking through it. It's some kind of travel journal."

The notebook paper was smooth and bright, something a person might use a good pen on. Many of the pages were full, while others had only a short paragraph or even a long sentence. On the inside front cover was a note: "Started by Ophelia in Chicago as a random collection of random thoughts written by random people. Write something here, then pass it on or leave it in a place where someone other than the Amtrak people will find it and throw it away."

"I've been trying to think of something to write," my father said as I turned the pages. "I've been staring out this window trying to come up with an idea. If your mother were here, she'd have every page filled out by now. She loves this kind of thing."

Ophelia started like this:

Once again I have left home, though this time I actually bought a round-trip ticket. I also left a note for my parents telling them that I am fine, that I will call when I get a chance, and that they have nothing to worry about. I had planned to write something on every page here, but I thought it might be more interesting to have other people write things, too. If you have this in your hands, find a pen or pencil and write what you want to write. If all of the pages are filled, please mail the notebook to the Post Office box written below. I will be glad to reimburse you for postage if you tell me where to send the money.

Ophelia's handwriting was beautiful.

"I've read most of it," my father said. "There's some good stuff there, but there's a lot of crap, too. You should write something."

"I don't have a lot to say," I told him. "Maybe Margie."

"You could say that we're never going to get the hell out of Grand Junction, and that we ended up burying your aunt and uncle here." He sipped again from the flask. "You think that's her real name?"

"Who?" I asked.

"Ophelia. You ever know anyone by that name?"

"Nope," I said.

"Neither have I, and I've heard a lot of names. Maybe she liked Shakespeare, or maybe she was just crazy." He stared up at the ceiling for a few seconds, then looked at his hands. "' I hope all will be well. We must be patient: but I cannot choose but weep, to think they should lay him in the cold ground. My brother shall know of it: and so I thank you for your good counsel. Come, my coach! Good night, ladies; good night, sweet ladies; good night, good night.'"

"That's Shakespeare, right?"

"One of the few quotes I remember. From Hamlet. Ophelia."

I closed the notebook. "You want this back?"

"Not especially. Unless I think of something to write." He stood up. "Let's get off this train for a bit before we go crazy, too."

Warm Whiskey in a Cold Ditch: Installment #3

Continued from before

Steven and Margie thought for many years that I was lost. Sometimes I was but not in the way they feared. I was simply less settled than they were, less comfortable with consistency and predictability. I had always admired their respective even keels, but I also thought they should tip to port every now and then.

Peggy, my first wife, told me I never settled down even when I did. We got married young and got divorced when we weren’t much older, and though we were mostly poor and somewhat itinerant during our time together, I’ve never been able to say that we weren’t happy. I still dream of her, and the dreams are a mixture of fact and, well, dream.

Heat (mostly a dream)

“Christ, it’s hot,” Peggy says in a voice that is smooth and soft. She’s lying on her back beside me, and we’re both naked on the queen-sized bed; a damp white towel is stretched across her narrow hips. Her brown hair moves a bit in the tiny currents of warm air that the small fan moves through our apartment bedroom. There is no breeze outside—leaves on the tall, aging eucalyptus trees outside our window do not move at all. We are barely into June, and it has been hot like this for nearly two weeks. Central California’s summer has started early and threatens to be long.

“It’ll get cooler,” I tell her as I listen to the monotonous hum of the fan. “The weatherman I listened to this morning says that temperatures could drop by as much as fifteen degrees by tomorrow night.”

“That doesn’t help much today, does it?” Her voice is hardly above a whisper. She talks like that—cynical but quiet—when she’s tired of something.

“I suppose not,” I say, “but at least there’s some hope.”

“We have to get a bigger fan.” She looks at me sternly, talking a bit louder as if I were defying her or something. ”That one is worthless.”

“How can we manage that? We can barely afford gas for the truck, and you want a bigger fan? It doesn’t stay this hot for very long. Maybe only a few more days, then it will get better.” I want to tell her that I am not the cause of the heat, that I cannot be blamed.

I turn the pillow over, feeling for a cool spot with the side of my unshaven face. The linen sheet has been covering my feet, and I kick it off the bed. Air pushed by the fan works its way up from my ankles and across my heavy thighs, then to my chest; there it seems to stop.

“We shouldn’t make love on days when it’s this hot,” Peggy tells me, her eyes blinking quickly, her voice back to its near-whisper. “I work up too much of a sweat and it takes me hours to cool down again.” She traces my forearm lightly with long fingernails that she painted a light blue just this morning.

I find myself listening to the late afternoon traffic on the street running in front of our apartment building. Occasional diesels pass, working through their gears far down the street where the hill starts. The trucks strain by our apartment. For a moment the noise and the heat and the oddly sweet smell of diesel fumes combine, and I tense and hold my breath in an effort to shut them all out, to forget about the jobs we’ve lost and the compression I feel in this small apartment.

“Sears might have fans on sale this weekend,” I finally say. “We could charge it, I guess. And it isn’t as if we’d be buying a luxury, or anything. It would be something we really do need.” In Nevada, life was not just heat like this but the desolation of towns like Fallon and Winnemucca and Battle Mountain—outposts in the endless Nevada desert. And it was bad water pumps on the truck and Peggy’s pneumonia and always that slight imbalance of bad luck over good choices. Peggy made change for gamblers in a dozen casinos, and I emptied ashtrays and swept floors in nearly as many. Then the small casinos laid people off, and the large ones didn’t hire. For the five weeks we were In Winnemucca, nearly every day was full of dust and wind. My eyes dried out so much I couldn’t see well enough to drive at night.

“You said yourself we couldn’t afford a new fan,” Peggy says to the ceiling as much as to me. “And you’re probably right. If we can’t afford it, we shouldn’t use the charge card.” She has rested her fingers on the soft flesh above my elbow, pressing down just enough so I can feel my pulse against her touch.

“But we should do something. Maybe we can find one cheap at a garage sale.”

“And add to our wonderful collection of household goods,” she says wearily, her eyes closed now. She presses her full lips together tightly when she stops talking.

Nearly everything we have owned—and sometimes sold—seems to have come from a garage sale or a flea market: the bed we sleep on, the Hotpoint refrigerator, the small black-and-white TV. I think it must be hard on Peggy, having to live with used furniture. But I’m not rich and we’ve both learned to make do for most of our lives. It is the pattern our parents and grandparents followed, and I’ve often wondered how a person goes about getting blessed with wealth.

“Remember Illinois?” Peggy asks loudly, catching me by surprise. Her eyes dance beneath her eyelids like they do when she dreams at night, as though she’s watching something moving back and forth across some invisible landscape. “Remember how much we hated the cold winters? All that snow. God, what I’d give to be back there now up to my neck in a snowdrift. So cold. I don’t think I’d even wear a coat.” She runs her hands up her chest to her neck and throat, then rests them just beneath her earlobes.

“We could move back,” I tell her instinctively, seeing that she is happy with the thought. I move my arm closer to her, so the back of my hand is against the curve of her thinning waist. “If I could find a job. Maybe you could find something, too. I don’t know….” We grew up in northern Illinois, but it was thirty years of those dismal winters that drove west in the first place. We’d both thought that dealing blackjack would be a good way to earn a living, even if we had to work nights or in a small town for awhile.

But now we’re in this place, far from the peaceful suburbs we think we’d like, and I don’t know if I want to pack up and move everything back the two-thousand miles after just starting to learn about California. The work here is not always wonderful, but it is available. What if we go back and can’t get jobs or find a decent place to live? I’ve had enough of living in the back of a pickup truck like we did for nearly three months after crossing to the west side of the Mississippi and having the truck simply lie dead until we raised enough money for a rebuilt transmission. Any romance or sense of adventure in that sort of thing wears off quite quickly.

“Remember how the ice would cover the entire front porch of that house we rented?” Peggy continues. She traces her hands now across her belly. "And how we used to skate where the schoolyard flooded and froze?” Her fingers dance lightly on her narrow ribs. “I haven’t skated in so many years, and I used to be pretty good.”

“Let’s move, then,” I say. “I really wouldn’t mind. It would be hard until we found jobs, but we could make it, couldn’t we?”

“If we wanted to, we could make it. We could stay with my sister for a week or so until something turns up.” She lays her arms at her sides, so her fingernails are once more on my own arm.

“If it stays this hot much longer, I think we should move,” I tell her. I watch a glistening bead of sweat travel from between her breasts down to just above her navel, where the fringed edge of the towel is. I want to doze in the heat, but I force my eyes open.

“But if it’s not too hot, things aren’t so bad here. Just not Winnemucca or Reno again. Or Battle Mountain. Nothing in Nevada.” She wets the corners of her mouth with the delicate tip of her tongue.

“Maybe it will cool down, and then you’ll feel better. And maybe we can find a way to get a bigger fan. Things usually work out for us if we wait long enough. Things usually turn out okay."

“We’ll wait a week,” she says. “Okay? One more week. Then we’ll see how things are going and decide what we should do.” She tosses the towel to the floor. She brings her knees up toward her chest, then lays them flat again on the mattress, flexing her long, soft legs. My arm is sore where she has rubbed her fingernails harder and kneaded them into my browned skin. “Make love to me,” she says suddenly, her eyes wide open as she cradles my face between her palms. "I don’t care how hot it is. Make love to me again.” She shuts her eyes and grasps the laminated headboard. Her entire body shines with perspiration.

I roll onto my side and kiss her, and she puts her arms around my neck, pulling me closer. I open my eyes and look at the sweat that dots her face and between the hairs on her scalp, where the skin shows through. The fan drones on and on with a hum that seems to have gotten louder, louder than even the parade of diesels groaning by. When the fan turns toward the bed I feel warm air against my back, and I see that Peggy’s hair doesn’t move with the breeze anymore, that I’m blocking it out.

I kiss her harder, and she kisses me back.

Warm Whiskey in a Cold Ditch: Installment #2

Waiting: Grand Junction, CO


For good or bad, we were delayed in Grand Junction. “Something about the computer,” the conductor said. “The engines aren’t communicating with each other. Don’t go far.”

Where would we go? Uncle Frank and Aunt Harriet were in no hurry, and though I could no longer see my father’s face through the window of the observation car, I didn’t think he was in a hurry, either. Margie found me leaning against a wall and asked if I wanted one of the apples she had bought. I took it, polished it against my shirt, and took a bite.

“You and Steven must’ve copied that from Dad,” Margie said.

I considered my toothmarks in the apple. “Probably.”

“You staying out here?” The wind had picked up, and Margie pulled her arms to her chest.

“Getting kind of crazy sitting on that train,” I said. “How’s Dad?”

Margie shrugged. “Kind of like you—tired of the train. A couple of candy-ass men.”

Dad had spent thirty-five years as a plumber in suburban Chicago. Steven and I grew up as plumber’s helpers, but neither of us loved the trade in a way to make a living at it, though we were happy enough spending summers in high school taking our father’s money when the jobs were big enough. Steven went straight to college in Boston after graduation, and he has been happy enough in a white-collar world. Margie went on to become some type of brain doctor, and from what she says, she’s been quite successful. I went on to become a little bit of everything—not especially successful, but not especially unhappy, either.