The Forever Train: Chapter 1

[i]White raiment draped over the arm of a carven chair,
Of ivory on which the Golden-Eyed mistress
Of fortune sat, commander of men’s wishes
Her brazen wristlets catching the fire and sending it back,
Into her eyes, the source of the tiny room’s Heat,
And she smiled so wickedly, knowing that she
Was both the healer and the tigress,
The claws and the gentle caress

Knowing that she played a game of ruinous chess,
With men’s evening hours when the mind is stolen,
Into her Realm, or leaves, with unheard footsteps,
To creep into her garden and sit beside her,
Beside the River Kebir, knowing that she is
The mother and the daughter of human thought[/i]


         This is where the tracks lead.
         There’s no way to deny it, as you stand on the edge of the old railroad platform and examine the rusted iron rails beneath your feet. If the tracks have a destination, than it is here, to The City, that they inevitably lead.
         But The City is only the destination, the end, the fine. Some ten million years ago a Neanderthal’s bare feet stepped onto the tracks and this is where he ended up. But if there is an end, there must be a beginning, somewhere on the other side of the tracks; if there is a destination here at The City, there must also be a starting point in the damp recesses of the troglodyte’s den.
         You heft your bags over your shoulder and shift your weight from one leg to the other. You’ve been standing here since three in the morning, pressed in a vice of thick, sweating bodies. You watch as the sooty grey faces vanish into the doorways of the trains; as loved ones wave goodbye and voices crack with emotion.
For some, the train is liberation; for others, it is extinction.
To leave The City can be nothing less. The traveller who would depart from here would lay down his humanity at the gates of the rail station, and step off on an iron trail that would lead him back through the corridors of evolution to the cold embrace of the primordial sea.
Her embrace.
The Golden-Eyed One.
You’ve been wondering about these people for months now; wondering why they’d stripped themselves of the factory-overall skin they’d become so accustomed to and gone off, naked of their civilities, into the railcars that would inevitably speed them away from all that they had sought – over generations, centuries, aeons – to become.   
Your grandfather used to be a locomotive engineer.
He would often come home, covered in grime, and flop down on the couch, lamenting the failure of the railroad and cursing the people of The City for abandoning the old steam engines and leaving the railroad platform desolate.
         You wish he could see the platform now. In the last three months alone the crowds here have swelled faster than the trains have been able to accomodate. No one speaks as they stand on the platform, but an abstract understanding passes between those who wait in the guise of a weary glance, a knowing nod, or a well-placed cough.
No one knows the specific reasons why anyone else is standing on the platform, but an unspoken conversation is murmured among the crowd in sighs and snorts and coffee-flavored yawns; you’re all here for the same reason – you’re all here to escape back to the troglodyte’s cave. 
         And that’s the part you like: the idea of total abandonement, the idea of waving the finger at the punch-clock world and doing something wholly unplanned and unreasoned by human minds.
         “When you leave The City, you’re going nowhere.” Your best friend warns you. “You’ll wind up starving to death and then you’ll become a thief and die in jail. Here everyone works. Here everyone is fed. Here there are no thieves.”
         But that’s just the problem with The City. The thieves have been put out of business, their trade monopolized by The Corporation. Everyone works because they have no choice but to work; the freedom to starve has been torn to shreds and hung as an austere banner from the windows of The City’s workhouses. And fed? Well, yes, of course everyone is fed; they won’t even give you the dignity of an empty stomach, because an unfed worker is a weak worker. As long as the stomach growls he will be unable to apply himself to his work; with lip service he will serve his employer, but his body will be wholly devoted to another master that lives in his stomach. They feed you just as a farmer feeds his sheep and cows: they feed you only because it is an investment.
         “There are birds outside of the city.” You say to your friend.
The last bird dropped out of the sky four years before you were born, but you’ve seen drawings of these winged creatures in your grandfather’s notebook.
“And running water you can drink by the handful. No, no, not from a sink. And….”
         You lean in close, whisper:
         “And you-know-who is  out there.”
         You whisper even though it is no longer a secret. Your friend has seen the posters, plastered all over the grey plaster walls of the old railstation. They have been there for weeks now: stained yellow pages taped happenstance to the wall, a picture of a young woman with golden eyes, the scrawled words Come Away. You’ve asked around The City, trying to find out where the posters came from and who the golden-eyed one is supposed to be, but no one can tell you. No one knows how the posters got there; The City just woke up one morning and there they were, taped in alleyways and left on the windshields of cars; glued to bathroom mirrors and dangling from the tall masts of streetlights like the conquering flags of a foreign nation. No knows exactly what the words Come Away portend, but there is a general, vague feeling in the air that the words are an invitation. It was the week after the appearance of the posters that the train depot, long dormant, was flooded with men and women in heavy coats, lugging dirty, patched bags and dragging along dirty, patched children in rags. In just one week, The City lost hundreds of workers. The Mayor, infuriated, ordered that the posters be torn down, but it was too late – the spell of that golden-eyed, ivory faced enchantress had already seduced The City.
         And they were leaving.
         Leaving debts unpaid and children unfed; leaving projects unfinished and old ties undone. They were leaving this, the goal of mankind, to begin again – to begin again in the cave of a troglodyte, in the cave of a savage seductress with golden eyes. 
         You glance down at your watch: 5:20 am. The peroxide sunlight of a grey morning begins to filter through the smoke-filled sky. You rub your unshaven chin, letting the bristles slide across your fingers. Beside you, a heavyset man coughs and spits on the platform. His low-hanging jowels are covered with a patchy black beard, like a walrus.
         “Almost time.” You hear him mutter. “Damn’d if it ain’t soon enough.”
         In the distance, you hear the clarion call of a train’s whistle; a high, airy whistle like air blown through a child’s lips. You hear the train’s wheels clicking over the tracks, counting them off one by one. It has been counting the tracks from the very beginning; 1 click,  2 clicks, 3 clicks… 30 clicks…. 100 clicks…. Five thousand clicks…. A million. The screech of metal as the engineer engages the breaks and the rusted old engine groans over the last stretch of tracks. For a moment you are lost in a cloud of hot steam and then you see it: a gallant little engine with a parade of passenger cars in tow, the morning sun gleaming from its iron side, casting pale rays through the steam that pours from the engine’s smokestack. Admittedly, it is not a pretty thing to look at; there’s rust-a-plenty and oil drips like a thick rain from the engine’s underbelly. But you aren’t troubled by the dented tincan exterior of the locomotive; every wound it has endured tells you that it has come a long way, that it has endured with patience a journey from the very beginning of things. Sure, The City can roll off dozens of shiny automobiles or jet planes or even traincars, but their waxed exteriors just scream that they’re mechanical children with no experience. This steamtrain is an old grandfather of machines, full of stories and hard-bought wisdom.
         “Wait’d eight hours.” The stout man at your elbow barks. “About time!”
         The Engineer steps down from his seat of command and appears at the door of the engine, wiping his brow with a plaid kerchief.
         “All aboard!” He shouts. “All aboard! 5:30 tickets, All aboard!”
         “That’s me!” The walrusman roars, waving his ticket in the air. “Get aside, you there! That’s me, I say! 5:30!”
         He shoves his way through the crowd, pitching bodies aside as he leaps – with surprising grace for a man his size – from the platform and lands on the metal stepladder extended from the train’s side. He shoves his ticket in the face of the Ticketmaster, turns to wave a mocking farewell to those left behind, and vanishes into the train.
         “Who else?” The Ticketmaster yells to the crowd. “Who else will come aboard the 5:30 train?”
         The crowds shift and several people move forward to present their tickets and board the train. There are sighs of “finally” and resolute mutters of “well, this is it” as the crowds press into the train. The whistle toots and a small ring of steam puffs up from the smokestack, like smoke blown from an old man’s pipe.
         “Time for departure!” Bellows the Engineer.   
         “Who else?” The Ticketmaster barks, scanning the crowd with his sharp black eyes. “Last chance before departure!”
         You unfold your ticket and look at it: 6:00 a.m
         Another half hour before forever begins.
         Seeing the ticket in your hand, the Ticketmaster motions for you to come aboard. You shake your head and it feels like a hundred pound weight on your tired neck.
         “Then good riddance to you! Another minute in this place and I think I’d die!” The Ticketmaster shouts, and the train rears up on its hind legs and bounds off after the rising sun, spitting steam and vapors into your face.
         The minutes creep slowly by. An ice-wind lashes at your face, tugging at your coat and pulling it out behind you like a bat’s wings. Grey clouds are looming in the east and it will be another cold day in the The City, another day of slush and grime and the streets will be wearing white one moment and brown mud the next. The ticket trembles in your frozen hand. In the distance, the factory bell whistles, a travesty of the freeroaming whistle of a train. As the wind smacks you again, a part of you wants to turn and flee the platform, to turn and run back down the ice-encrusted streets, to the factory and the warmth of the great steel smelter. You wonder where the wind comes from, if it blows up from beyond the horizon, if the wide world you’ve dreamt of is as cold as the wind that comes from it, if the train is bound for winter’s den.
         You turn to the poster and study Her face. It is a cold face, like hard ivory, and the bemused pink lips hint at neither a smile nor a frown. Her eyes, like tiny suns squeezed into her head, are equally indecipherable. Does she look at you and laugh? Does she call you away to a place of endless ice?
         You speak to the poster and ask for her name. That crooked half smile, half frown offers no reply, but to say: Come Away. Come Away and find out for yourself.
         A shrill whistle in the distance; not the happy whistle of the last train, but a labored, wheezing sigh. A tired old train comes into view, gasping for breath as it reaches the top of the hill and descends upon the platform. It’s exterior is mostly an unpainted, gunmetal grey, but the tarnished brass fixtures on its engine tell you that this was once an elegant passenger train that suffered many years of disuse. There are brass lanterns dangling precariously from poles above the train’s doors, and a faded brass relief on the engine’s snout that seems to depict an angel with a burning coal where his heart should be. The train rasps its way into the station and comes to a grinding, limping halt. If the 5:30 train had been a grandfather, than this must be the dashing old aristocrat washed up; the broke blueblood who insists on wearing his ornate waistcoat and gold watch-chain under his rumpled, stained old jacket.
         The Engineer pokes his head out the engine window. He’s a grizzled, bearded old man with matted gray hair plastered low on his brow. He wears a dented conductor’s cap and grey-striped overalls stained all over with black grime. His thick red nose, which shines like a ripe cherry in the morning sun, paints a sharp contrast to his colorless cheeks. You wonder if he has passed the night with a bottle in his hand.
         “6:00 o’clock!” He thunders in a voice that matches the train’s groaning engine. “6:00 o’clock, not 6:01; what’re ya waiting for? All aboard!”
         Unfolding your ticket, you mount the steps to the passenger cabin. Only a handful of people come up behind you.          Suddenly the engine door swings open, and the Conductor slips down onto the platform. He takes a few steps towards you and you see that his right leg drags behind him like a hunk of frozen meat. Without a word, he extends his long, skinny arm and opens his hand towards you, expecting your ticket. You hastily unfold it and place it in his hand, and your fingers brush against his palm and find that it is rough and cold and worn.
         “Hrmph.” He mutters. “Another one leaving the city, eh?   
         You look around at the relatively empty traincar and your earlier thoughts about a bygone elegance are confirmed. A stench of long-extinguished cigars and spilled champagne fills the air. The carpet that lines the car must have been beautiful once, with intricate patterns of red weave winding around images of fruit-trees and flowing streams; but now its colors are dull and whole sections of carpet have been worn away, leaving bare spots through which the wooden floor shows. Straight rows of benches run around the perimeter of the cabin. You run your hand along the back of one of the benches, stirring up a cloud of dust. The smooth, dark wood is carved with elegant letters that spell out the words: “Chase Your Desire.” You don’t have much time to ponder over the words; the small crowd that has come aboard is pushing past you, vying for the seats nearest the windows. In the process, you get shoved over to a benchseat that runs lengthwise along the wall of the car.
         A kick in the pants, and the train starts off. With a strained whistle, the train jolts, shudders like a cat in heat, and starts off down the tracks. At first, the clattering of the wheels over the tracks is unsteady and erratic, but gradually you begin to hear a pattern develop, a steady music of wheels and iron and wood working in harmony to shuttle you off to….
         Where?
         Your stomach wrenches and you double over with your hands folded around you like a last hug goodbye because now its all over and you’ve left yourself behind and the  grimey soul in grey overalls on the platform is so far behind now that you’re sure you’ll never see him again.