Train Tract 0204 (Part One)

In shade I sit and watch.

The sun initiates segregation.

Seekers of warmth, women mostly, migrate to the east side of the train, while those of us who do not mind cool air gravitate left. The sun has risen to an annoying position, and I raise my hand to shade my eyes.

She sits across the aisle, one row forward. First, I am aware of her voice, an inappropriate vocalization that suggests desire beyond a motel wall. It is distant, an unintelligible whisper and brool, struggling through the falsetto barrier and fluttering near high C. I accept that my chamber of concentration has been breached for the remainder of the journey. She wears a black polyester dress that exposes one beige-white, puckered calf. The sun flashes behind the transluscent outline of her gray head, its brittle hair crackling in death.

When we stop at Palmyra Station, a transit police officer boards the train. She spies the officer. Raising her voice for our benefit, she asks, “Can we get some heat on this train?” The officer is well out of range of her unseemly plea. “I’m just speaking my mind,” she mumbles, presumably responding to the tut-tutting of an unseen companion. She states her plea twice more, and I resist the urge to wrap my fingers around her throat, choking back that voice, its lustful perversion a shimmering jewel tangled in sinews and blood and molluscan secretions. I turn away.

At that moment, there is some commotion in the front of the train as the door of the driver’s compartment is flung open. The driver rushes past us. He disappears through the back door.

I make my move.

When I stand, her upper body whirls in my direction and stops suddenly as if she is tethered to her companion. Apparently unable to raise her chin, she gazes at me with cow eyes lodged in a paste of aging flesh. The moment passes in less than a second, and I move away from her forever. Focusing every resource on reaching the empty driver’s compartment, I wonder why no one else has thought of this. Stepping inside, I close the door. I anticipate the reaction, perhaps the crash of door against my skull, burly arms cradling my head and pulling me back to the passengers and beyond. But the officer seems to have left the car, and the passengers stare through their windows and laps and shoes. The train is mine.

I reach under the seat and remove a large, rounded key. It fits neatly into the ignition, and I fire up the deisel engine. My right hand rests on a lever, which I pull toward my belly. Just like that, we’re off. For a while, I am happy to be ambling forward, but soon, I reach for a sort of half-wheel. I turn hard to port, and we veer off the track, steel wheels cracking through asphalt, an ice boat in the arctic. I see the shock of it on faces in the mirror. But as we glide down a side street, passengers adjust and are complacent once more.

Train Tract 0204 (Part Two)