This train ain't bound for glory, this train (Part Four)

CONTINUED FROM:


This train ain't bound for glory, this train (Part One)
This train ain't bound for glory, this train (Part Two)
This train ain't bound for glory, this train (Part Three)


Although the box car was as dark as it could be, small slits of light shone through around the edges of the door. I stumbled to my feet and slid the door open to a blinding mid-day sun. It was dead silent. As my eyes adjusted I knew it had to be South Texas, a meager landscape of sagebrush, dust and bare, dead trees. I jumped down from the car and marched around and was shocked beyond belief. We were on a side rail off the main tracks in the middle of nowhere and the rest of the train was gone. Only one box car stood on this side rail, our car, and we were completely and utterly alone. That goddamned engineer had lied. He'd abandoned us in the desert after all. 


Charlie, Nick and Jack stuck their heads out and uttered a collective, "Oh fuck!" They jumped down and dashed around the box car, frantic for any sign of life. In the distance we saw a small concrete structure with a few pickup trucks scattered around it. The tension lessened a bit. A least we weren't a hundred miles from a road or food or water. I volunteered to check it out immediately, hoping to get there before the bail jumper, the boot sniffer, or the crazy man got there first and spoiled our chances of making good first impression. I had only seven dollars left, I was over 1,300 miles from home, and I was too focused on surviving to be scared. 


I plowed through the weeds and the brush and made it to the building which turned out to be a small Texas diner with a eight to ten dust-caked trucks parked in a gravel lot out front. It wasn't much to get excited over, cinder blocks with a red neon open sign in the window, but I had never been more pleased to happen upon a crappy little dive in my life. I could see from outside through the window that it was a cramped little place with a counter and stools and fewer than a dozen tables. It was packed, and I finally started feeling scared. This wasn't the kind of place where I expected a warm welcome.

I walked into a room filled with smoke and a rumble of voices arising from men in Wranglers, cowboy hats and boots. Every head turned at once and the place fell quiet in an instant. I had been a spectacle at the Safeway in Indio, but I had gone downhill further since. Covered in dirt and with wild, tangled hair, I have never wanted to just turn tail and run any more at any time in my life than then. But I had no choice, and threaded my way through the tables and the cowboys to the counter. What could these people possibly be thinking? None of it could be good.


I sat down on a stool at the counter, and when I sheepishly raised my eyes in utter shame to look at the waitress she said, "How can I help you son?" There was an immense tenderness and earnestness in her voice and her eyes. She was old and wrinkled and had that bluish gray hair that many older women seemed to covet back then. At that moment, the gratitude I felt, the pure grace I felt through her acceptance, pierced me. I barely noticed when the rumble of voices resumed, for she and I had become the only people in a world that now paid us no mind. 


"I'm stuck in a box car a half mile from here and I was wondering if you knew anything about the trains," I confessed. "Oh hon', don't trouble yourself. A train comes around every few hours to pick up those cars they've left behind. Can I get you something, dear?" How could she even think of treating me like this? How could she act like I wasn't everything no one wanted their child to become? "I don't have much money, I guess I ought to go," I said. "You don't have to leave hon'. Order anything you want and leave a little change on the counter, just enough to make it look good," she whispered. "You got an hour or two anyway," she said. Then she smiled. Never in my life had I expected something like this. I felt ashamed for judging her and everyone else in this diner so quickly. When you don't know what people are like and you're afraid, you fill in the blanks with your anguish and end up assuming the worst. Maybe the world wasn't as bad as I thought it was. Maybe I was just stewing in the contents of my own sour feelings and thoughts. I had a burger, a fry, and a Coke and left her fifty cents. She winked as I got up to leave. If the whole world were made of simple little waitresses in crappy Texas diners, this world would be pure magic.


On the way back to the box car, as I trudged through the brush and the dust and the weeds, I saw something glitter on the ground. I bent down to find a small brass bell, no larger than my thumb, and on it was inscribed the word, "Hello." I shook my head in wonder. I had just been saved by a person, and now thin air was pitching in too? For a moment I entertained the notion that maybe there was a god, or that somehow the universe acted as if there were. I pocketed that bell, and carried it with me for three or four years, until I took out my key chain one day and it was gone. I guess it was someone else's turn to feel blessed and amazed. 


TO BE CONTINUED