Frisco

Let me say this. In my humble opinion, Hollywood has done a terrible job of accurately portraying the difficulty involved in the act of train hopping. And I have the road rash to prove it. B******s. 

Growing up watching old Turner classic movies could never have prepared my for the roar and the flash of a train speeding by. The first train to pass by me that night was no 15 mile-an-hour Hollywood train. As I jogged up the steep gravel embankment leading up to the rails it roared past me, buffeting me with hot arid wind and nearly forcing me to lose my footing.

In that moment I found myself longing for the days when trains trundled everywhere slowly, and not just through rail yards--and for the days when rail-bumming wasn’t so much illegal as just frowned upon. I smiled to myself, then began to plot my second approach. 

The thing about a town as small as ours is that there is no train “schedule,” they roll through whenever they happen to and no one questions it. The downside of this is that after nearly 40 minutes in a crouch, waiting for a train, my legs were sore and stiff, so that when I first heard the train thundering towards me I barely had time to stand before launching myself, full pelt up the slope.

I cleared it in six quick steps, lunging for a handrail, the edge of a door, anything really. I felt a moment of elation as my fingers met a surface, before my body twisted haphazardly, wrenching my grip loose. Seconds later my cheek kissed the dirt. For one terrifying second I lay there--the corroded iron  wheels within inches of my face--before gravity carried me safely away into the ditch.

I coughed, an unsteady grin on my face, before bursting out laughing. “Lee Marvin eat your heart out,” I muttered, half heartedly picking some of the gravel from my palms and the side of my face. It was beginning to look like it was me versus the open road and I wasn’t about to lose. 

On the slope above me the same train was still roaring past, the steam whistle blowing far ahead of me, seeming to laugh at my failure. I’ve never been one quick to anger, but there was something in that whistle that just lit a fire beneath me. I swung my pack onto a single shoulder and hurled myself against the slope. I bolted in a curved line, aiming just ahead of an open cart I had spotted coming up fast. This time I cleared the slope in four steps. I launched myself on the fifth, feeling something tear and a sudden wetness spread in my boot. 

I knew that the gash on my toe had reopened, but as I took flight it simply ceased to matter, and I felt no pain. This time my hands knew exactly what to reach for, my right hand meeting its mark on a cool metal handle and grasping it tight. As soon as I felt that I swung my pack with all the force I could muster into the boxcar, hoping that it would weigh enough to carry me in after it. 

I hit the floor again, this time on the beaten wood floor of the boxcar. I crashed down hard before tumbling across the floor into the steel wall on the other side. It hurt like hell, but just like my toe, it didn’t matter. I had made it, I was in a freight car headed off into the wild blue yonder.

It had been my dream for so long, to run away and leave nothing behind. To travel, and write, and see more of the world than a couple Podunk s**t hole towns. And I was going to write a novel, the next great American novel. I was finally going to make my dream come true, and this was my first step. 

I sat up, dusting myself off, as the dull ache of my injuries began to overrule the rush of my success. My hands, face, and foot burned with a low orange heat and I felt the wet tackiness of blood--like varnish drying-- on each. I was bruised and battered, frankly I hurt like hell. But I was on the train. I could always clean myself up later, the cuts would heal, but in the here and now, I was sitting in a boxcar eastward bound. I scooted myself over towards the door, noting the sharp pain in my rump with each shift. 

As I gazed out that door I saw the stars rocketing by in the hazy deep blue sky, the red edge of the morning sun barely cutting along the horizon. I knew that those stars were still and dead a thousand light years away, I couldn't help but feel like they were alive, all flying across the night for me. Just for a moment.

So as the sun rose, I contented myself to watch it from the doorway, my pack behind me and my shoulder braced against the wall. You know something, it was beautiful, and it’s the first and only time I saw it that way. The vague shimmer of the dust in the air, the silver and gold grasses in the changing light. It was almost something worth missing, but with the open road ahead of me and dreams of far off places, I left with no regrets or second thoughts. I simply watched all that I had ever known fade into the distance, as the sun overtook the horizon and melted all the silver from the world, painting the sky in brilliant reds, pinks and oranges.   

It was under those red skies and the early morning heat that the train gently rocked me to sleep, sprawled across the floor, my rucksack beneath my cut up cheek and the train whistle far, far ahead of me.

                                    _________________________________

I awoke to midday heat and the clattering of the tracks. My whole body was immersed in a dull aching sensation that washed over me with each bump of the track. I peeled my cheek from the floor, spots growing in my eyes, and sat back against the wall. I poked at my cheek, feeling a few deep cuts, but attributing most of the pain to bruising. My hands were another story. The palms were badly torn, caked with dried blood and imbedded with gravel. I didn’t bother looking at my foot. 

My forehead was beaded with sweat, lending a vicious sting to the cuts on my face, and my mouth was cotton ball dry. I dug through my bag, pulling out an old gray t-shirt, and a pencil before untying my water jug from the bag. 

There are a million and one things you can do with a pencil, in twelve years of formal education, my time was invested in honing just one. I consider this one of the primary failings of modern education. I unscrewed the cap to the jug, shoving a corner of the t-shirt in before upending it. 

With the soaked edge of the shirt I wiped my brow, then set to work carefully wiping away the dried blood on my hands and face. When I had smudged away the majority of the blood, staining the gray shirt a rusty hue, I set the cloth aside and picked up the pencil.

Christ, I wished I had something to drink and steady my nerves. The thing about having a father whose chosen method to kill his sorrows was drowning, is that the back of his closet was well stocked for those days when he couldn’t make it to the Silver Dollar. I couldn’t tell you when I first started sneaking drinks, to kill the pain when books just weren’t enough. I wish that I had grabbed a bottle before I left. Hindsight is 20/20 right?

Teeth gritted, I lowered the pencil towards the first dark stain of gravel in my left hand, sliding the pencil under the loose flap of skin. If I could’ve done it with my eyes closed, I would’ve. I did well removing the gravel in one hand, unfortunately my left hand isn’t exactly possessed with surgeon-like accuracy. 

There was fresh blood, but I avoided lodging any graphite in the wounds, and with the gravel out, my chances of infection were much lower. I poured some more water, straight from the bottle this time, onto my hands. Then I decided to cut my losses, tearing the rusty gray shirt into rough bandages for my palms and stowing the scrap material in my bag again, before taking a sweet, cold swig of water.

Having sorted myself out, I took the opportunity to look around the boxcar, not finding much more than some crates, an empty pack of American Spirits, and several small piles of rat feces. It couldn’t have been more than about 1:45, although I hadn’t brought and sort of timepiece with me. 

I had the feeling that over the next few days I would rack up quite a long list of shoulda-woulda-coulda-didn’t items. I had time to kill, so I jotted a small list in the front of one of my old notebooks; whiskey, watch. I blinked at the sleep in my eyes and tried to suck the sour taste from my mouth; coffee, toothbrush. 

I sighed heavily, how long had I planned that night? Running away. You would’ve thought I’d have at least bothered to pack beforehand. I laid my head down on my “pillow” once again. It was the middle of the day and there was a long way left to San Francisco, where I’d need to stop if I intended on finding another train heading east.

I dozed off easily in the oppressive heat, sweat soaking my shirt and my dreams filled with hellish flames. The next time I was awakened, it was by the scent of salt in the air. I had finally reached the coast. The air was much cooler here, and I took advantage of it, stripping off my drenched shirt and sitting in the doorway to the boxcar, legs dangling. 

I knew that I couldn’t follow this train to the end of the line, for all my Hallmark fueled romanticism I knew this was illegal, and there was no way in hell I was getting caught. As the train roared along the bridge to the little island paradise of outcasts I watched the city grow larger and larger ahead of me. 

Drawing my legs back into the boxcar I swung my pack up onto my back, tightening the straps and stretching my knees. Then I stood in the door of the cart waiting, simply waiting. The city grew more and more massive as I traveled on rail towards it. I had never seen buildings to rival the titans that began to loom over me. It was so nearly unreal that I almost lost track of what I had been watching for. Two, maybe three hundred feet ahead, where the bridge met surface streets, it widened. Possibly just enough for me to make the jump safely. That is, if my hunch was right.

The wheels chugged beneath me, cold steel on cold steel. I leaned precariously over the edge of the car, counting seconds off to myself, hoping. I backed up a step, nearly two, and hurled myself from the cart.

Looking back, I’ve questioned myself so many times. Was this. What? Hope, naivety, desperation. I took that leap with less hesitation than an executioner flipping the switch on a death row prisoner. It was a terrifying, exhilarating leap. It seemed to last hours,  day, not seconds. I could already hear the crunch of my own bones, taste my own blood. 

My back ribs smacked hard against the concrete, all the air leaving my lungs. My head laid just over a foot from the rails, the train now trundling along at less than twenty miles per hour. “Just my f*****g luck,” I wheezed, “twice in one day, it might be time to reconsider cars.”

I dusted myself off, I had a train to find. For tonight though, it was just me and Frisco in all her wonder.