ON the RAILS

by Leigh Lundin

Not knowing if I’d have an article when I arrived at Bouchercon, I wrote the following article on the train.

I have a love-hate thing about trains. I write this on my way to Bouchercon, the conference for mystery readers and writers. I considered planes, trains, and automobiles, but air travel has declined for a long, long time until it’s become onerous.

Driving didn’t appeal, so once again, I climbed aboard Amtrak.

The best I can say about Amtrak is they’re doing their utmost to help airlines survive. Customer service, pricing, and scheduling conspire to bring public transportation down to a common denominator. That may change; I understand Congress is finally voting Amtrak an increase to phase out cars thirty and forty years old.

Pricing. Winter Park, Florida to Orlando is thirty four dollars plus tax. For $34, you could take a taxi, buy lunch, and end up in some place useful in Orlando and have change left over. Take the train, and you end up near the wharves, if Orlando had any wharves. It’s so remote, most in Orlando couldn’t tell you where the station is.

As I mentioned in a previous column, loud television is mandatory in Amtrak waiting rooms, adjusted to be both obnoxious and incomprehensible.

In Europe, trains are civilized transportation. You board, you dine, you might nap, and you disembark. You might even do it at 200+ mph. If you’re backpacking across Europe, there are showers and youth hostels.

In America, you still find our wild West heritage, hardly distinguishable from our stage coach days. You lurch and bump along, you eat (not dine), and you try desperately to sleep. All that’s missing are shady gamblers, Indians, and train robbers.

Only a few years ago, you could be assured of a double seat on long, overnight journeys like mine, where you could stretch out, perchance to sleep. These days on Amtrak, a guy assigns your seat in such way to frustrate the maximum number of people.

I asked for a window seat, although that doesn’t necessarily guarantee a window. However, newer cars have sockets for laptops and I can wedge myself in next to a bulkhead so I can nap. Being a big guy, it keeps my elbows and long legs out of the aisle.

The attendant promises he’ll "take care of me" since it’s a long journey and tells me to remind him later.

Naturally, they put me in the aisle seat paired with the next largest guy on the train, Tom Bartell from Winter Park. Tom is the Casey Kasem of rail journeys. As we pass through towns, he fills in pauses with, "Tom Petty grew up on Gainsville and two members of the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band are from Winter Haven. Jim Morrison of the Doors is from Melbourne and Ronnie van Zant from Lynyrd Skynyrd, named after their high school principal."

A girl boards in Daytona. She has fur Sherpa boots and a tan near-fringe top, giving her a frontier look. She carries granola, a retro pink Diskman and a hundred bootleg CDs. She has a serious hippie thing going for her and after a few minutes conversation, it turns out she’s the daughter of hippies, conceived during Woodstock.

My friend Thrush needs a bed-warmer, and I could picture them together, but she’s on a Sadie Hawkins quest, going after a guy she’s had her eye on for years. She explains she’s been patient, waiting for him to discover her worth, and now she’s on a mission to bag her man. In my assessment, she can do it.

I want to plug in my laptop and I ask the attendant about a window seat. There’s forty or so empty window seats, but he stalls me and suggests the club car.

In the club car, two women play solitaire and a third diapers a baby on a table top. I saw this woman diapering a baby twenty minutes ago and my laptop doesn’t want to sit on a baby-changing table.

I put away the computer and opt for dinner. Dinner is chewy trout and liquid tannin they amusingly call tea. The waitress is nice enough to bring apple juice.

Traveling back through the club car, the same woman is diapering a baby. I begin to wonder if it’s the same baby or if she has a baby diapering business going on. Like the mail trains of yore, people toss their babies on and two stops later they’re dispatched, swabbed and swathed. Clearly, I’m getting punchy.

I asked the attendant about a window seat. He puts me off. He’s been giving away window seats all though Florida and Georgia, but not one for me. What’s up with his attitude?

He dims the lights. I grow sleepy. Near the back are dozens of empty seats. The big guy next to me puts his elbow in my chest. He’s snoring and happy. At two in the morning, I pick a pair of empty seats, curl my oversized frame in half, and doze off.

Thirty minutes later, people shake me awake. We’re in Charleston, South Carolina and they tell me the attendant has assigned them the seats.

I confront the attendant who tells me he’s now given away all the seats. "All right," he says. "There’s an empty seat next to where you originally sat."

The hippie chick is in it, reading. She glares at me. "You asked him to move me."

I protested I didn’t. The attendant realizes the window seat on the opposite side is unoccupied except for luggage. He instructs me to take it but the woman who owns the luggage tells him no, she’s claiming the seat. To prove it, she shifts the luggage over, occupies it herself, and stares him down.

The attendant tells me, "It’s your seat, now. You move her."

Right. I’m going to do that. Not on your life.

The hippie chick in her purloined seat is still irritated at me, but I have to have some place to sit, if not to rest. The attendant says, "Y’all work it out. I’m going off duty to sleep," rubbing salt in the wound.

The hippie chick glares at me. "You asked him to move me."

"I did not."

She grumbles but says, "All right, you might as well sit down."

She offers me chocolate. I accept.

She says, "You asked him to move me."

I wedge two pillows into the gap between the seat edge and the window and doze off.

The pillows pop through the crack, jolting me awake.

I shift around, trying to ease my spine. The hippie chick is backed against me. She’s warm.

The footrest is a misnomer. I twist one foot through it and stick the other foot under the seat diagonally before of me. I manage to doze.

The train stops in the middle of nowhere. The hippie chick’s knee is across my lap and my hand’s on her thigh. I carefully remove my hand. She stirs and I mutter, "Sorry."

She mumbles, "’snoproblem."

The lady who barricaded her seat with luggage glares at me as if I’m going to toss her overboard.

"You have kids," I say.

She looks surprised. "How did you know?"

I want to say, "I’m a crime writer; I know these things." Instead, I say, "The way you stared down the attendant was the way a mother would do it."

The hippie chick awakes. "You told him to move me."

"Did not."

She offers me granola and buys me juice from the snack bar. "Did too."

"Did not."

She looks back where the big guy is snoring. "You don’t have to return to your original seat. I don’t mind."

She feeds me a raisin from the granola. It’s intimate. I start writing this travelogue as she chats with the woman across the aisle.

When they giggle, I glance up. "What?"

They won’t tell me.

I try to write and they continue giggling.

"All right," I say in mock exasperation. "What did you say?"

She curls around with her mouth close to my ear. "I suppose you’re going to make me tell you."

"Yes."

"Well, I said you are cute, and umm …"

The train rumbles past a crossing gate.

"And, um, what?"

"Nothing."

"Uh-huh."

She continues looking at me. She says, "I’m on a mission. There’s this guy I’m after."

"I know."

"But if I weren’t …"

"I know."

She has a radiant smile.

Some guy north of Baltimore is going to have an interesting week.