RIDING “THE OCEAN” — by Jim Daniels
We tumbled into a taxi to take us from Quebec City to Charny to connect with “The Ocean,” our overnight train to Halifax. A young woman was kissing her lover outside the open car door, soaked by rain—goodbye my love, goodbye my love—then let go of his hand and landed beside me, three across the back seat, the cabby stubbing out his cigarette, mumbling goodbye my love to others lined up in wet night glare outside the bus station.
My wife and I, soaked too from our mad dash, wolfed down wet sandwiches as the cab pulled onto the hissing road onto a bridge over the river. The woman spotted an improbable rainbow arcing in sun-flash, and the cabbie said we’re all lucky, and we agreed, chummy in the way of strangers marooned in paradise.
In Charny, we gathered, with others going overnight to Halifax, outside a tiny shack beside the tracks. TV blared in the stuffy station with one toilet and a line. The rainbow-spotter, a veteran of the trip—goodbye my loves and the melancholy sway of night trains—led us out to the tracks where cool air soothed with anticipation of movement.
We sat together on a bike rack, my wife and I following whatever genie or magician or mime who might lead us to a sweet marooning together, our children grown and full of not needing, detached like train cars heading elsewhere.
Our train late, but still the sky did not fade, daylight lingering like we lingered, as if we had nowhere to go. Lights in small rooms in small houses across the tracks blinked on like lit playing cards. We held hands in shy silence. The woman sat on her suitcase and read a paperback.
More evacuees from the hot breath of the TV room gathered: a grandmother, her daughter, son-in-law, and two grandchildren close in age, just like our two. Grandma was taking the kids home for a visit to Halifax. The son-in-law wanted to abandon them. The daughter insisted on seeing them off. The granddaughter teased her brother about a drawing he had made. She carried a violin case with the uncertainty of a ventriloquist.
Floodlights dripped onto the rail yard, diffused in heavy prairie darkness. Stars reigned free in fresh skies. Everyone seemed a little shy except one loud man on his cell phone broadcasting, I’m waiting for the train, to everyone he called and everyone waiting until we realized the volume came from his amplified brain. Nobody shushed him. Even the yardman took his hand and told him where to wait, part of a still life for peaceful waiting at the tiny Charny station, and even when two freight trains fooled us into getting ready to board, only to pass us by, we just laughed at our foolishness.
Two old women—twins, or at least sisters—amused by every single thing in the quiet buzzing of our shared nowhere. How many of us had stood outside in one place at midnight for this long? Our strange choir stood as if waiting for God to arrive, but without excitement or anxiety. The calm acceptance of faith, though some of us did not believe.
My wife and I shared mushy berries from a plastic bag and drank from a thermos of tea. The son-in-law finally joined us on the long empty bike rack to watch his children like a favorite movie. I’m waiting for the train amplified over the distance.
The woman from the cab smiled, offered me a cigarette. I wanted to take one, but I just smiled, shook my head. My wife dozed against my shoulder. Lights across the tracks were blinking off so darkness could take us fully in its arms.
I looked to the sky and did not search for dark rainbows or bright constellations. The light from the train, our train, emerged glowing toward us, and we stirred.
The old twins sighed in unison, then laughed in unison. We were traveling light with one shared bag. Sleep should always arrive by train. Did Norman Rockwell ever meet Edward Hopper at a train station in Canada?
Tumbling inside our tiny cabin, we shed our still-damp clothes and warmed ourselves with the sway of rails, the lullaby of shooting stars. Just two fish among many others, swimming to the ocean.
Jim Daniels’ latest book, The Luck of the Fall, fiction, was published by Michigan State University Press in July. Recent poetry collections include The Human Engine at Dawn, Wolfson Press, Gun/Shy, Wayne State University Press, and Comment Card, Carnegie Mellon University Press. His first book of nonfiction, The Abridged Book of Water, is forthcoming from Cornerstone Press. A native of Detroit, he currently lives in Pittsburgh and teaches in the Alma College low-residency MFA program.
Artwork by James Keul