Kevin Kling's Holiday Inn (12 page)

“Like a Texan.”

Bob laughs with another guy who has no business listening in.

With Bob, the more abstract the theory, the more laden with great and complex notions, the less likely it will find safe harbor on his shores. Time and time again, life’s little revelations are dashed on his frontal reef of stubbornness and unwillingness to learn.

Bob, face devoid of expression—further proving my point—says, “My beer is empty. You about finished?”

If I choose to continue, I can close my eyes and hear perfectly good concepts hit his forehead, then plop onto on the floor, dead. It’s a waste of time. I might as well be talking about the photosynthetic properties of chloroform.

“Chlorophyll.”

“What?”

“It’s chlorophyll, not chloroform.”

“Was I talking out loud?”

“Yeah.”

“Anyway, my point is, you won’t admit it.”

“Admit what?”

“That I might be more of an expert than you in a given field that we both know nothing about. Like this seafood dinner. You don’t know anything about seafood. Heavens and earth, man, your idea of sushi is a thawed Mrs. Paul’s. And you’ll never admit I’m right and there’s nothing you can do that will prove me otherwise.”

So that night we find ourselves standing in a boxcar screaming out of the St. Paul freight yards at seventy-five miles an hour, on our way to Seattle, Washington, for a seafood dinner. Me, Easy Bob, and my big mouth. Easy Bob has lodged the door open with a two-by-four board, because if the door slides shut, we’re automatically locked in. “If that happens,” Bob says, “chances are, the car won’t be opened for another three weeks, and I figure a lot of unpleasantness could happen by the time the authorities find our bodies.”

I can just see it. “Well, Sarge, wherever they were going, it must’ve been in a hurry, they didn’t pack warm clothes or nothing. And lookee here, apparently the little one was trying to hurt the bigger one, just before they gave out.”

I would give anything, if I owned anything, to sit down, but I can’t because the boxcar is bouncing furiously and if I relax, in any way, shape, or form, it is likely I’ll bounce right out the open door. I’m tired and angry, not so much at Bob, but because a couple of years ago some pals of mine helped lay this track, and at the time we all shared a laugh at the lackluster job they were doing and how much they were being paid. Now I hate them, and the memory of their laughter mixes with the rhythms and screeches of the boxcar. My legs absorb the erratic jarring. I don’t know how much longer I can remain standing. Easy Bob looks like a puppet whose operator has nodded off, leaving him to dance helplessly on a slapboard. I want to call him a name but I’m afraid if I try, the next thing I’ll say is my lunch. There must be a way to make this stop, a logic to the situation, a key that will turn this predicament off. I conclude the boxcar is trying to shake something out of us, a secret, or an object, and once the boxcar, or the spirit of the boxcar, has this thing, or thought, it will leave us alone. I empty my pockets. Nope. Then my head. I begin making confessions to God, apologies to the animal kingdom, all the while my lips mouthing the words, “Oh please, oh please.”

At this moment, the romance of the rails overtakes me. Not that things get better. I simply realize that at some point or another almost all romance goes through a time like this. Finally, the legs give out, and I curl up in the corner. This could ultimately mean unconsciously bouncing out of the boxcar and into the ever-mounting lore of stupid things people do after a couple of frosty ones at the Terminal Bar, but I don’t care, I don’t care, and I pray if that happens I don’t wake up at the last moment.

Then, as terrified and pain-racked as I am, the sandman takes over, and I’m in the Land of Nod, where at a safe distance I witness visions of a seafood dinner dancing furiously in the mosh pit of my slamming head.

Less than a day out of St. Paul, our boxcar is uncoupled from the rest of the train. We sleep through it. When we awake, we find we are in a train yard in Breckenridge, Minnesota. Bob says, “Don’t worry, another one will be along any minute.” It’s three days before another train comes through. It doesn’t even stop, just slows down. Bob says, “We have to catch it.”

Even I know this is stupid. More than one Jack London or Bret Harte story features a one-legged hobo, once good-hearted but now ruin’t and bitter by the cards he’s been dealt where wheels meet rail. But after three days sitting in the Breckenridge train yard, I can see him hopping along right next to us: “Get me outta here!”

Bob and I run beside that moving train for at least a mile, seeking out a good car and a chance to leap up and in. The height of the leap is especially tricky because the floor of the boxcar sits just above the shoulders. All of a sudden, Bob yells, “Look … cardboard!”

I said, “What?’

He says again, “Cardboard!”

A big sheet of cardboard, perhaps from a refrigerator box, is just up ahead in the ditch. Bob says, “We need that.”

“What?’

He says, “You’ll thank me later—cardboard on the rails is worth its weight in gold.”

We each take an end of the cardboard. Now we’re running at breakneck speed, packs on our backs, next to a moving train, trying to shove this giant piece of cardboard into a boxcar. It goes up and in and Bob right behind it, like he’d drafted off of it. It was an amazingly beautiful maneuver, a Fosbury floppish hurdle that even the Russian judges would’ve awarded a 10.

Now it’s my turn. I throw my pack in the car. I can’t believe how heavy it feels, every step the straps have been cutting into my shoulders. It’s a relief to toss it to Bob.

Then I jump … poorly.

My upper half makes it into the car, my lower half dangles below, legs kicking, dancing on stones and rail and ties. One slip and I’m sliced in two. Bob grabs my shirt and pulls me in, where I immediately start crying and laughing at the same time. I am now allowed to feel the fear of what we just did. Blubbering spit and snot, trying to form sentences with only consonants, hiccupping, tears making estuaries in my filthy diesel-black cheeks. It’s the only time on our whole trip I want to go home.

I’m scared.

Bob is laughing. He goes over to my pack, opens it, and pulls out three huge bricks. “When you were asleep in Breckenridge I put these in your pack.” He’s laughing as hard as I am crying. “You should’ve seen yourself trying to catch this train!” He’s now laughing so hard he’s stumbling, arms out like John Wayne in
Sands of Iwo Jima.

“I felt so bad watching you run, I almost told you.”

I wanted to kill Bob. But part of the reason I don’t, no,
all
of the reason, is—that was a good one. I wish I’d thought of it. I have to laugh. It’s that or homicide.

We then screw these large eyebolts into the sides of the boxcar, one on either side of the door, and stretch out our hammocks so we can watch the world go by. This is how we will ride for thousands of miles, watching America out of a boxcar. The rhythm is what takes you; it eases out every care in the world.

Bob starts laughing again. “God, I’m glad that’s over,” he says, as the train picks up steam, heading for Fargo, North Dakota.

Train deux, Mayday, Mayday

By morning the train is gently switching through the freight yards of Fargo. I wake up, alive, feeling pain in every muscle of my body. We’re moving at a leisurely thirty-five miles an hour. I take a deep breath. My kidneys, sensing the all-clear, crawl back down from my shoulder blades. I then experience the adage, “Once you pee out of a boxcar you’re hooked on the rails for life.” It’s true.

Fargo is rolling past. A billboard in town declares, “Welcome to North Dakota, Mountain Removal Project Complete.” Bob is leaning against the door, his silhouette framing the portal, stooped in the question mark of a seasoned ’bo. I stand in the doorway opposite him and squint into the horizon. It’s going to be a beautiful hot summer day. I look over at my companion.

He turns to me and says, “Uh-oh.”

I say, “What do you mean ‘Uh-oh,’ Bob?”

He says, “Uh-oh, we’re on an outside track.”

I notice we are on the far right track of a series of eight or nine tracks.

Bob says, “The way I figure it, outside tracks go north or east, so that means we’re headed for Grand Forks.”

“We don’t want to go to Grand Forks, we want to go to Minot.”

“I know.”

I’m about to say, “Well, what are you going to do about it now, Bob?” when I see my backpack fly out the boxcar door. It hits the ground and explodes. I see all my things flying through the air, my underwear, my shirts, my martini olives … another brick.

Then Bob’s pack is flying through the air. His pack hits the ground. His pack explodes. And I’m kind of looking to see what Bob brought along when I see Bob outside the door. He’s flying through the air.

And I think, “Oh, man, if I see Bob hit the ground and the same thing happens to Bob as happened to my pack, I’ll never jump.”

I turn into the dark boxcar and by the time I turn back Bob is gone. I turn away again. “Oh God, oh God.”

I close my eyes and leap.

A friend and I have an ongoing argument on the definition of happiness. She contends that it is the absence of fear and pain, a steady feeling of safety and comfort, whereas I believe it is a fleeting moment of euphoria, a swift reward, a goal rarely achieved by reaching or merit. This essential difference between her and me has directed the very different courses of our lives. For example, while she is at home asleep, safe in her bed, I’m out in the colors flying through the air at thirty-five miles an hour, and I’m never going to land.

And then I feel my pants split.

Then my knee split.

Then my head hit.

Then my knee. And my head and my knee and my head and I start to roll and it reminds me of when I was little and used to take my brother to the Laundromat and put him in the dryer and drop in a quarter. After a while I’d begin to wonder when his quarter was going to run out, but now I wonder when my quarter is going to run out. I keep rolling over and over, and just as I’m getting used to it I stop. As I drag myself to a standing position, I run a quick inventory: my knee is bleeding and my head hurts something awful. Other than that, good. I notice Easy Bob, limping in the ditch, putting his stuff back into his pack. I start putting my stuff back into my pack, and that’s when I look up as the train stops.

Train … three … Mayday, Mayday, Mayday

In Montana we run into trouble. Times three.

First, we meet up with two guys headed for the Rainbow Gathering, an event held each year at a different national park. Thousands of hippies and counterculture folk connect in a festival of peace and understanding. It’s like a Dead concert without the Dead.

These two guys are about our age and explain they’re from Chicago, headed for the festival in Idaho. We travel with them for a couple days, sharing our food because that’s what you do. They seem okay. A bit lost in space and time. I’ve known a fair number of hippies—I think I even was one for a while. It’s not an easy lifestyle to maintain. Even the most noble intentions have a way of turning in on themselves, and poverty and controversy are better in theory than in practice.

The twosome explain they had a late start and actually were just barely going to catch the tail end of the festival. They had been informed these Rainbow Gatherings were utopias, teeming with Good Samaritans who had places to live, mellow wine, and righteous herb. Upon arriving at the Gathering, according to the plan, they would make friends and start on a new life. A life that included free food and a place to live, maybe a yurt. I ask what they plan to do for money and one of the men says no problem, he has brought some poems to sell if things get tight.

The next morning we awake to find one of the men, not the one with the poems, is in a fit of rage. He stands outside the boxcar door with a large rock in his hand. The rock is so heavy he has to set it down every so often to swing his arms. He’s not practiced in rageful gestures, and his movement doesn’t time out with his words very well, so he looks more like he’s trying to shake chewing gum off of his fingers. His rage simply doesn’t match his colorful attire, but he is bigger than either Bob or me and in this condition could actually hurt someone. He announces that he is leaving and we are to give him the rest of our food and money. We tell them we don’t have much of either. I try to explain that the money is earmarked for a seafood dinner, but this doesn’t seem to win him over to our side. I learn seafood is “murder” and to a grouper, I am “Hitler.”

Finally Bob decides it’s enough.

Bob is like that brother you fight with your whole life, but when the world turns on you, there he is, and you know you are safe. Mostly because if he does to the world what he’s already done to you, the world doesn’t have a chance.

The guy picks up the big rock and comes at Bob. I wait on the far side of the boxcar. I figure since we can’t see his buddy, he’s looking to ambush us from behind. I have a piece of wood to bop him when he peeks in the back of the boxcar. In the meantime I try to glimpse over and see how Bob is doing with his battle. The two square off, and then Bob says, “Wait.” I’m surprised—the guy
does
wait. Bob reaches into his mouth, pulls out his teeth, gently sets them on the boxcar floor, and says, “That was close.”

I’ve played rugby with Bob for years. There’s a shelf by the door of the clubhouse just for teeth. Now I recognize those choppers, passed them dozens of times. I didn’t know they were Bob’s.

Bob smiles, kind of like a clam. “Okay, let’s do it.”

Now the guy realizes two things.
Bob has done this kind of thing before,
and
Bob is probably better at this than I am.

The guy drops the rock, slumps to the ground, and starts crying. He explains his buddy had run off in the night with what was left of their money, the poems, and the dope.

Bob feels bad, but he points out that the guy didn’t think through his reaction very well. The guy apologizes and says he barely knew the other guy, never knew him when he wasn’t high. Only when the righteous weed was getting low did he start to worry about what kind of person he was traveling with. He’s right—you really don’t know somebody if they’re high all the time, and what’s worse, they’re usually smoking for a very good reason.