Somewhere in there, the train stops at a crossing, and we watch as an ambulance pulls up. They take somebody off the train. Ed gets serious as we peer out the windows, sucking our drinks and chain-smoking.
"Maybe someone had a heart attack," he says, lighting up. "Or maybe it's just emphysema!!"
The last train out of Phoenix slowly starts up again, minus one passenger.
I scratch my head, and Ed says, "Keep that scratching back there, don't come near me!! HAW HAW HAW Goddammmnnn!!!" Everybody cracks up. The lady from South Africa makes a drink run. Time means nothing.
Around three in the morning, time began to mean something again.
The bar has long closed; Ed bid me, college and South Africa goodnight; I, too, felt it was bedtime. It's a strange thing, wending your way down aisle after aisle, carload after carload of sleeping humans traveling at 75 miles per hour. Everybody is in every position a body can manage in an Amtrak seat, those little pillows they give you wedged in all sorts of crevices. Feet stick out, little kids are curled up with their thumbs in their mouths and their butts in the air, parents cradle babies and boyfriends cradle girlfriends, everybody is innocent.
And here's me thinking all this, trying not to fall over and still count the right amount of cars I walk through 'til I should go downstairs to my own nest. I make it, and there is Peggy, wide awake with a portable video game glaring orange light into her face. Even though she's got an earplug in, you can still hear a needling little synthesized melody play every time she scores.
And this is quite often.
And this is quite annoying.
"Hey, Peggy, what're ya playing?"
She just looks at me, face kind of glazed over, wicked little grin.
But we are not alone; there is a couple across from me fully covered by blankets, dead asleep. My little pillow is on the floor, so I join it down there, pop a couple melatonins, and insulate myself with a blanket that I normally use as a tee shirt.
I know I slept, because I woke up.
About an hour later, in fact, when the male half of the allegedly sleeping couple said:
"Hey, lady--how about turning that thing off?"
Peggy, still gilding the coach with her video sounds, ignored him.
"Look, lady, I asked you nice," came the voice. In a thick Jersey accent. "Now shut that fuckin' thing off before I come over there and stuff it down yer fuckin' throat!"
I lay there looking straight ahead at some trash on the floor in front of my face.
"You just try it!" screamed Peggy. "You weren't considerate of me when you got on this afternoon! I'll do whatever I want!"
Now the girlfriend joined in, equally Jersey.
"Listen, you old bitch! Turn that thing off so we can get some goddamn sleep!"
Then Peggy, undaunted, went off with a round of '40s slang of the "You and what army!!?" "Sez who!" variety.
I closed my eyes again as L.A. rushed at us, drifting back to sleep by the needling, synthesized sounds of a video serenade.
I came to as the sun began to rise into the smog of Los Angeles. The last drink-soaked, cigarette-smoked, floor-sleeping, nine-hour-screaming-match voyage of the Sunset Limited out of Phoenix, Arizona, was gliding to a halt at Union Station. End of the line, as they say. The Jersey couple were getting up, still whispering and grumbling about the lady who once drove Herbert Hoover in her Yellow cab. I rose, glanced down at Peggy, who was sitting there with her video game. She smiled at me like a righteous warrior and nodded almost imperceptibly.
I got off the train and began to wander down the platform among the other zombies preparing to disappear into Los Angeles. This would never happen again.
--Gilstrap
