Eric Diamond
Six Passengers in Search of a Conductor
"Change in Jamaica for the Babylon line!"
Nervous in New York hurries from the 5:33 out of Penn Station, gets
pushed around, jostles his way
down hard steps through ugly hallways, up mountainous stairs to the next
platform. He eyeballs the empty
black tunnel hole, sniffs for vibrations that foreshadow the impending
thunder burst of his incoming
connecting train, all the while flipchecking his wristwatch, and
casting glances into dark shadows
where thugs, muggers, and gang bangers are likely lurking and measuring
their prey.
At the very same moment, The Action Kid releases the aroma of cinnamon
gum purchased in a station
shop after radaring skin magazines and thereby grabbing some images
for his ride home. Action Kid
presses into the fish farm mass of weary businessmen, high heeled
women, straphangers, and
newspaper folders already angling for prime train-entry real estate.
The pulse and tingle of the city
ignite The Action Kid's neurons. The dirty tiles and naked flourescents whisper to
him, "I am real" , and real is how
he feels.
With a bone rattling shudder and rush, the train explodes as if from
deep space, its wind riffling hair
and cheek flesh of death-defying passengers-to-be fronting the edgy
crowd. Piercing pain of brakes,
sucking vacuum unsealing of doors, unleashes a mad free-for-all of rear
ends seeking burnt-orange
molded plastic, like a maniacal game of musical chairs.
In the instant before the doors mesh tight, Mr. All Right Now jaguars
into the car, content to lean on a
center pole. He grooves on the ads, the whole scene, the train is a
metaphor, man, a chariot, a
slingshot. Mr Now is in the train, but not of it, and everything is
right in his universe.
In and around Nervous, The Action Kid, and Mr. Now, large women nestle shopping
bags between swollen knees,
skinny guys with stained undershirts trip to transistor radios, dudes
with baseball caps reversed on
slick heads shine handsome, and timeless.
Oblivious to such activity is The Scholar. He delicately locates his
bookmark in a tome selected for
this journey. He misses no opportunity to learn, this cattle car his
private academy, senses dimming
while the book-mind field emerges and becomes palpable. Scholar
resigns himself to lost moments
in the underground segment of train ride, thinks deep thoughts, waits
for reading light to return.
In this way, he misses the miniature lights illuminating the rats and
pylons in the dark train tunnel, the
subliminal ascent to terra firma, the thick apartments now, that seem
to narrowly evade collision with
the onrushing train, their
facades screaming into the faces of jaded riders.
Positioned far back in the car, reserved yet awake, is Mr. Repairman
of the Western World. His heart
hangs heavy, soaking in the poverty, the grind, bleeding headlines on
weeklies and newspapers, the
bent necks of businessmen obviously trapped on the hamster wheel, the
tired women catching
needed snooze between two jobs, trying to make ends meet in the cruel
city. What madness, what
meanness, what glorious inevitability, created this world, wonders
Repairman, and what act of service
could ease the burdens of these exiles so far east of Eden?
From the lurching train, each spies washing on clotheslines, ethnic city
dweller neighborhoods,
abandoned cars stripped to the chassis, dirty trees. Nervous, Action
Kid, Mr. Now, Scholar, and
Repairman sway to the click-clack rhythm of the rough smooth Long
Island RailRoad.
Face to the glass, Nervous imagines crimes, wife beatings, punks with
switchblades in the alleys of
mean streets rushing past the window. Action Kid is digging the whole scene .
Mr. Now sees his own
personal India, Istanbul, Mexico City out there, any judgments mean
you are too small for New York
City, man. Scholar is miles away, his book comfort and refuge.
Repairman surreptitiously eavesdrops
on conversation, hungry for stories, and wishes that his seatmate, a
total stranger, would spill his
beans to him, because, after all, a misery shared is halved, and a
triumph shared is doubled.
All thoughts are punctured in turns by incomprehensible barking from
loudspeakers, shouted
mangled versions of "Laurelton" and "Rosedale". From vast experience,
the passengers
back-translate the barking into exit strategies, no problem.
The landscape begins to thin, houses now, some lonely trees,
vest-pocket lawns, Tudor-style gables,
and muted olive-green leaves the size of wide-receiver hands.
Leaning into the door like an Acadian fur trapper braced in a snow
storm, the Ticket Taker navigates
shifting plates between cars, and arrives upright. He sports a blue
topcoat with mottled brass buttons,
blue cap with black brim, puncher at the ready. He issues his
all-business, terse and world-weary
command: "Tickets".
Nervous in New York fingers his sweaty ticket, would like to present
it efficiently, not waste the man’s
time. Action Kid seizes this moment to sidle toward the door down the
other way. He has no ticket. His
game plan is to reach his station before Ticket Taker nails him. This
quickens his feet and excites
little neck hairs. The Scholar extends his ticket with bent elbow,
without removing eyes from page, on
which key passages are underlined in red.
Mr. Now is meditating. Ticket Taker taps his shoulder, receiving a
half
smile aimed at lightening Ticket Taker's load, but Ticket Taker has seen it all, and
returns mostly the workingman's stolid
mask, with a dash of subtle and wished-for nod of recognition.
Repairman of the Western World is happy to offer up his ticket. He
believes in supporting union labor,
after all, the train and its workers a collective of servants to an
ungrateful city.
Nervous in New York checks out Mr. All Right Now. He’s thinking, "That
kid just doesn't understand the
problems. Anybody can be happy if they ain’t got responsibilities, and
anyways, he’s probably on
something". Mr. Now returns spiritual fire, sending thought-waves
like "Life is a dance, a play, a
cosmic joke, why can’t you just get into it, friend?". On his way down
the aisle, Action Kid tilts his neck
to catch a title on the spine of Scholar’s book. He’s unclear,
though -- could be an "N" for "Nazism" or a
"V" for Vonnegut, maybe Slaughterhouse Five? He’s not about to linger
to figure it out, ‘cause you gotta
keep moving, man.
Repairman, surveying from the rear, wishes only happiness on Nervous
in New York, thinks Action Kid
should be in school, wants Scholar to do maybe a little less school and
play more, hopes Mr. Now will
retain his high spirits when real life sets in, and blesses Ticket
Taker’s poor aching feet. Maybe his
wife, in her housecoat and curlers, will run hot water and Epsom salts
into a baking bowl for a foot
soak later in the night.
The stations of suburbia now -- "Gibson", "Hewlett", "Cedarhurst".
Businessmen square up papers,
rise, brace, and pause, erect, for doors parting, eager children and
brisket dinners waiting, stories
about hard tests and faulty sprinklers to come. Their housemaids stand like monuments on
opposite platforms, carrying tip money back into the arc-lit and dense
city, living whole other lives there
barely imagined or known.
Like trained circus performers, Nervous, Action Kid, Scholar, and Repairman
rise just prior to garbled blurbs
about target stations, double-check with station signs ripping into
view, time exits like ballet dancers
with hermetic unsealing and sealing of electric shushing car doors, and
disgorge into the dusk.
Meanwhile, way, way up front, unseen and unknown by his passengers,
sits the fearless Conductor.
He occupies his ball turret, perched on a cat seat, throttle in hand,
reading colored signals off light
posts, cueing zebra striped railings to rise and fall like swans. He
knows every inch of track by heart,
senses the ocean shoreline running parallel to his train. He mumbles
"Freeport", "Merrick",
"Bellmore", decelerates, accelerates, "Matzoh-Pizza" (a joke, that's
Massapequa), "Massapequa Park".
He spots sylvan lanes, remembers they got good schools out here, scans
platforms for with-it Jewish
girls and hotter Italian ladies, not to mention Latinas, all of whom
make a railway man's time pass
more easily.
The Conductor is humming to himself, like a pop-rock mantra, "Well I
never been to Spain, but I kind
of like the Beatles." This makes no logical sense, but the Conductor
imagines John Lennon saying
it, and this is funny to him. He conjures up Spain now, a dark-haired
Gypsy girl, dancing the flamenco
in stiletto heels, a rose in her teeth, under a blood-red moon .
John Lennon wouldn’t get stuck on this line no how, thinks Conductor.
He’d jump down to Spain,
make the scene, with mucho Sangria, and lie back to trace Lucy in the
Sky amongst the stars over the
Alhambra.
"Copague"and "Lindenhurst" float by, handled by rote practice, getting
lost in the reverie now. The Conductor, as if in a dream, leans on the accelerator, twists the
wheel, feeds her some power, arches
the whole damn Long Island Rail Road train up off the tracks like a
cobra spine, skirts the roof tops of
Babylon, banks to starboard, flies the rocky beach, skims the spray of
whitecaps in the Atlantic, laughs
out loud, and waves to flabbergasted fishermen trawling for catch,
singing down to them "Well, I never been to Spain..."
With the speed of freedom, Atlas unchained, and transatlantic velocity,
the train rushes by the Canary Islands. The Conductor, grinning, deftly lifts microphone to mouth,
and warbles, "This train is bound
for Lisbon, Granada, Sevilla, Malaga, Toledo, and Madrid!"
His heart soars like a basket-throated gull. Meanwhile, his friend,
the Ticket Taker, four cars back,
legs braced for flight, lifts his arms like a bullfighter, clicks his
puncher like a silver castanet, and
speaks his piece with full authority:
"Tickets,please!"
©2006 by Eric Diamond
