Snowstuck

By breakfast, we had ascended the high plains north of Mount Shasta and now hurtled straight toward Oregon, blasting along at 80 mph, parting snowy fields like a razor.  The low skies churned gray and dark, but the whiteness reflected the secret sun upward into the dining car. 

As a desert boy, I saw snow every couple of years.  The stuff fell thin and melted fast.  But here the snow was profligate, undulating like a white comforter, softening and muffling the landscape.  The sense of movement, the rich snowy ground, the promise of the peaks ahead and, not to be underrated, the caffeine in the morning coffee, all of this conveyed hope.  Things could be as sad and lonely as this high California prairie, but they still held beauty.  Yes, I told the waiter, more coffee, please.

A light seating in the diner.  Not that many people heading toward Klamath Falls on a Friday in January.  I had a table to myself and could luxuriate, no one watching, in the speed, momentum and onrushing snowy future.  No wife, no girlfriend, solitary days ahead.  And yet there was love.  Oh, why not, I told the waiter, cream and sugar.  Blasting on and on over the rails, the unvarying and inevitable route, the future coming at me with more snow, the Cascade Mountains and, if one had the fortitude, lunch in two hours. 

The train began to slow, the sense of a faint grinding, probably the brakes.  The whitecapped fence posts ceased their blur, I got a good look at a probable ranch house.  That is, a yellow wooden home that might have once belonged to a rancher.  With narrow high windows, two stories, no stucco and, across a highway, rangeland.  Then a lone, snow-laden shed.  A kid on a bicycle.  And as we came to a stop, the outskirts, or inskirts, of a small town.  I laughed aloud at my "inskirts."  Amazing how things could work out, I thought, placing a tip on the table.  The train was halting as breakfast was ending, and now I could hobble, without jolts or fear of falling, toward the next thing. 

Making my way up the narrow dining car passage, I lightly grabbed at table edges, just enough to steady myself, taking care not to pull the tablecloths away.  The electric door whooshed open at the end of the car, and I stepped down into the lounge, made my way along the dark passage behind the bar.  Hurry.  I crutched hard, pouring on the quadriplegic steam.  At any moment, a freight train would rumble by, and we would resume jerking and tilting toward Seattle.  Hurry.

The Parlour Car shown with reflected snow light.  Without movement, without scenes rocking by its greenhouse windows, the car felt more like a cocktail lounge in an airstream trailer.

"Three hours?"  Leaning against the bar, perfectly coiffed, purple cashmere sweater, a woman groaned.

"Afraid so," said the bartender.

She turned and headed for a booth where her husband bent over a map.

"Three hours of what?"  I jammed my crutch against a bracket under the bar.

"Track trouble," said the bartender, rattling a rack of glasses.  "We'll be here awhile."

Kind of fun bellying up to the bar when the bar wasn't bellying itself.  The bartender gave me a what'll-you-have flick of the head.  I asked for an orange juice and made my way to a booth.

Three hours.  No book.  Just a view of a highway slanting from the train past a stucco house, a shed set among bare trees, a sign facing the wrong way.  Three hours.  Across the aisle, in the booth diagonally opposite, the woman sipped her drink and the man rattled his map.  Something hissed.  The man picked up a walkie-talkie, no, a scanner.  The thing was spitting static as the man clamped it to his head.  He put it down and resumed map rattling.

Affluent people out for a train ride, a view.  Easy enough for me to say hello.  I sipped my orange juice and watched.  She was saying something.  Had he remembered?  Yes, he said.  Will they pick up the car?  Sure, he said, they're only in Sunnyvale. 

Silicon Valley types.  BMW drivers.  A guy like this knew guys like this.  People who needed brochures written...even speeches.  High rollers, career builders.  People you networked with.  My ears were open now, picking up every utterance the way a seashell picks up the ocean.

Mmmm, she sighed.  He took to the scanner.  Staticy words rising and falling.  I pretended to stare out the window.

"A crew is coming from Klamath Falls.  Maybe a boom car.  I can't tell."  He stared at the bar.  

"The bartender doesn't know," she whispered.

"He might."

"God, Howard, everyone isn't a trainee."

He strode to the bar, ordered a beer and muttered something about a boom car.  Sorry, said the bartender.  Howard slid back into the booth.  Told you, she said, he's no trainee.

Better not act like I'm in training when we talk.  Which we would, just give me a few minutes.  I'd think of something.  Feign ignorance about the delay, ask a question or two about trains, and he'd be off. 

When you had a wife who looked that good at that age, had people who came and picked up your car...life was less about back strain, more about status. 

"The bartender might be interested in track repair.  Does that make him 'trainy.'?"

"Howard, you want to play Lionel, play it.  Leave me out of it."

"Leave you at home, you mean."

She whispered something.  He glared, put the scanner back to his ear.  More staticy voices.  He strained to look out the window.  She folded her arms.  Silence.  The sun seemed to have changed angles.  Time, 40 minutes or so, passed.  Now and then I glanced their way.  She faced the window, while he stared at the map.  He looked up, and she regarded the aisle.  They would probably welcome an outsider.  Innocent diversion with a crippled guy.  Have a seat, won't you?  I would ask, what's a boom car...a BMW bought in the boom...a beamer for boomers?

This made me laugh out loud.  The man stared at me.  I spread my arm across the table to show I was in control, tossed my head lightly to suggest a casual air.  I smiled back.  The man looked away.  Probably thought I was demented.  Never mind.  Triangulate.  Talk to the woman, slide in next to her, then get to know him.  What do you do?  What do I do?

A boom car.  Must be one of those flatcars with a crane.  The man longed to see it do what?  Lift up its long straight thing and go boom.  Maybe that was the thing about these two.  His long straight thing rarely lifted itself.  No boom. 

Squeezing into their booth would be visibly awkward, so much effort expended, that I'd need to cover with a joke or two.  Folks, I could use a boom car myself to get out of this booth.  If this looks like a noisome, arthritic maneuver...it is.  I'm just swiveling my legs into the aisle, first one, then the other.  Leaning forward, getting over my center of gravity pushing up with the good arm...whoops, awfully tight between bench and table.  Howard, could you give me a hoist?   

I know you techie guys aren't easy with the touchy-feely....  Tell you what, Howard, if you grab here, under the arm...rather than the arm itself...then lift.  Great, that was excellent, Howard...and note that we are on first name terms...splendid.  So why don't the two of us go outside and assist the track repair crew?  Howard couldn't help laughing...thereby bonding.  Well, see you later.  Oh, here's my card.

First, a solo run-through of the get-out-of-the-booth thing.  I slid my good leg into the aisle, grabbed the bad one, or tried to.  The paralyzed foot was wedged.  I bent low to look.  The table leg was in the way.  Now, a matter of twisting the paralyzed ankle, encased in its plastic brace, into place.  Better slide back around, reach under the table, position the foot-in-plastic, and try again.  I grabbed the ankle, twisted the toes forward, pulled...but couldn't quite get the shoe around the table leg.  This was becoming embarrassing.  I was losing patience, and soon, my temper.

Seated at the end of the bench, turned toward the aisle, with one foot in the aisle...spacing out, focusing in...I stared at the empty booth opposite.  The woman down the aisle rose, strode past me to the bar.  My face went crimson. 

I was sitting there like a dork, in one of those odd poses of cripples in nursing homes or panhandling on the street...askew, facing the wrong way, looking at the wrong things.  While the able-bodied strode past, taking care not to step on your foot.  The woman passed by with another drink.  She thought mine was typical cripple behavior, sideways sitting and table staring.  Her ice clinked in its glass.  The world continued.  I was slightly wedged, horror growing at the scene...cripple in his oddity, people moving by.  Leave the funny man alone.  That's what cripples do.  Sometimes they want money, sometimes not, but they always do their sideways sitting-and-staring thing...while we do ours.

Only that morning, making my way from bedroom to stairway, I had glimpsed, under the closed curtains of a compartment, two sallow legs.  Pajama bottoms, old blue veined feet emerging, someone talking.  An old woman's voice.  She was going to get him breakfast.  Be right back.  He would remain in his old pajamas and his blue feet, in the compartment.  He would be there all the way to Seattle.  Forgotten and diminished, the natural cripple order of things...while horrified people like me noticed and passed by.  Too bad for him.  Good thing I could climb the stairs.  To bad I was now stuck in the aisle like a minor gargoyle...or Rumpelstiltskin's assistant...or just some wheelchair guy who sat in a park all day watching people eat lunch.

"Here."  The bartender appeared.  He grabbed the wrong arm.  I showed him the correct one.  He pulled.  My foot...I'd forgotten...hooked on the table leg.  The bartender bent down, twisted the foot into the aisle, then lifted me into standing position. 

"Thanks.  Some trouble with external rotation on my right lower extremity."  I didn't want to appear retarded.

The crutch.  I had angrily flung it out of my way in the midst of ankle grabbing.  Now it was across the booth, leaning against the window, too far to reach.  I turned to the bartender.  He was gone.  I waited, one hand on the table, one leg holding my weight.  Bottles rattled in the storage area behind the bar.  I could yell, but that would call attention.  It was unthinkable to sit down and get stuck again, necessitating another rescue...certain proof that I was retarded.  My leg was beginning to shake.  I grabbed the booth back and hobbled toward the couple.

"Excuse me." 

The man...Howard...looked up.  He put down his scanner.  I told him about the crutch.  He frowned and narrowed his brows.  Let me show you, I said. 

I lurched up the aisle.  There was the crutch. 

"Normally I place it on the floor.  Just wasn't thinking."  I smiled at him, all nonchalance, casually glancing about the car.  "Thank you very much."

"Sure.  No problem."  He headed for the scanner.

The crutch.  It was now on the floor under the booth.  He had placed it there, in his literal minded way.  Bending over was dangerous, sitting down again was madness. Yet hadn't I gotten myself out of the booth in the diner, only an hour ago?  The secret?  Sliding in, bad leg first.  Which meant sitting on the booth's opposite side, sliding the good leg under the booth and kicking the crutch my way.  A small ping from my bladder.  Oh my god.  Yet hardly a surprise in the wake of coffee.  Still no sign of the bartender. 

I had no choice.  Scanner clamped to his ear, a rapt Howard was writing something on a napkin.  No choice.

"Excuse me."

He kept transcribing.  I pressed on with a sorry-to-bother-you-again intro.  It will just take a second, I said.  My wife can help you, he said, not looking up.  She forced a smile.  My bladder gave another urine-swelling jab.  Weak sphincter muscles, Yellow River ready to burst down my trousers....

"Can you grab my crutch?"

Her eyes widened.  Had it sounded like "crotch?"

"My aluminum cane."

She turned to her husband.  He waved absently, shooing her up the aisle, all the while writing with the intensity of a cryptographer. 

"Sorry."  I did a sort of quadriplegic mince, bending slightly in that bladder-clamping way.  She followed me, suspicious or puzzled, I couldn't say.  At the booth she stared blankly.

"Right there on the floor," I said, a nasty edge creeping into my voice.

She considered this matter of bending down.  Would I stare at her butt? 

"Please," I said, bladder tightening like a fist.

She bent, grabbed the crutch, handed it to me.  "My God," she said, eyeing it before I felt it, the rivulet, visibly yellow and smelling faintly of coffee, hosing just below my zipper.

I couldn't even manage a "thanks."  Crutch on arm, I set off lurching through the lounge.  I moved with the blank-eyed bewilderment of a child who has been slugged on the playground.  Never mind the elderly couple in the armchairs.  Yes, they would see the dark stain down my trousers.  Hit the electric door switch plate, keep going.  There were trousers in my suitcase.  Dry, folded, and ready.  As for these trousers, I could rinse them in the sink, get them washed at my brother's house.  Everything back to normal. 

Later this afternoon, trousers dry, urine-spurting moment forgotten, I would appear for wine hour in the lounge.  Just as an actor who's had bad reviews turns up for the next performance.  I would go on. 

Hitting the door switch for the last sleeping car, my foot-trapped reverie in the booth seemed an indulgence.  So what, if a leg gets stuck under a table?  Get angry, get up, get going.  Get real.  I had bigger neuromuscular fish to fry.  Even if the Starlight wasn't moving, I was.