“All my good stories are told to me
by the characters. I don’t write my
stories. They write me.”
— Ray Bradbury
We
got to the train station before the indoor waiting room opened, which left me standing
in the frigid air with three grandparently people who commiserated about the
weather’s recent and sudden twist into winter.
“Was
that your boyfriend?” the man with a trim white beard asked me.
“My
husband.”
He
smiled and nodded, as though drawing conclusions.
Once
we were inside, people began to arrive steadily, most in pairs, and a few small
families. I watched an Amish husband and
wife arrive with a babe in arms who had her own very tiny, very stiff black
bonnet covering her round head. Another
father in shorts was following his son, about two, on an exploratory venture
through the station. They paused longest
to watch the workers removing enormous panes of glass from the windows at the
far end of the room.
“That’s
not going to keep it very warm,” the man across from me groused to the world at
large. When one of the workers came to
inspect the windows nearest to us, the man asked if these were also being taken
out.
“Yup. Putting in double panes all across the room.”
“Shoulda
done it last week,” grumbled the malcontent across the way.
A
tall, white-haired woman entered with her daughter and spent several hesitant
minutes looking toward the bearded man and his wife.
“I
am supposed to know you, aren’t I?”
she said to them finally.
“Yes,
you are,” said the wife.
The
white-haired woman was visibly racking her brain. “I know
I know you, just let me think . . . “
When
she had gone, her daughter sat down and began a conversation with the
couple. “Her memory is getting worse and
worse,” she confided to them. “It’s hard
to see her like this, and I can’t stay with her for very long at a time.”
I
just caught a few words that passed between an adventurous-looking man and
woman, but it was enough to convince me that they were from the other side of
the pond – England, by the sound of it.
I never got a chance to talk to them.
Meanwhile, a gentleman with a hat like the ones my grandpa used to wear
took the seat beside me and promptly buried his nose in a newspaper. We had been sitting side by side for upwards
of twenty minutes when he turned toward me suddenly.
“How’s
school?”
I
told him I’d graduated in May.
“You
have a job?”
I
said I didn’t.
“Well,
I can understand the trouble you might have finding one.” And then he was back to the paper, and not
another word passed between us.
The
train rolled into the Ottumwa station exactly an hour late. The variety show that had been waiting inside
assembled on the platform, all shivering and wrapped up, except for the man who
commented with incredulity on my mittens, claimed that he was perfectly
comfortable in his shorts. The wife of
the bearded man whispered indignation on my behalf.
When
I boarded I was seated across the aisle from the forgetful woman’s daughter,
who slept for the bulk of the journey.
The little girl named Carmen who was sitting several rows back was more
restless. Her young parents passed her
back and forth between them, sometimes letting her walk up and down the
aisle. Her father, who kept a long,
entirely intact cigarette stashed behind his ear, stopped briefly at the seats
in front of me.
“How
old is she?” the Amish husband asked Carmen’s father.
“She
just turned one. And how old is yours?” He indicated the bonneted baby.
“Ten
months.”
“What’s
her name?”
“Pollyanna.”
Pollyanna
was a much happier child than her older counterpart. I heard nothing but laughter and cheerful
babbling from her for all of the five hours our train was in transit.
They were all headed
for the same stop as I was, it turned out.
Chicago was the end of the line, and every one of these characters left
the train in the dimly lit tunnel of Union Station. As I walked toward the building to meet my
cousin and her fiancé, the indoor taxi service passed me, and the wife of the
bearded man gave me a friendly wave from the backseat.
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