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.
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