Green River
Tolerant and generous. Riders of the overland route have passed in and out of this little old place, nestled in the great berms of a deep basin, continuously for years and I don't believe anybody's ever seen any sign of bad blood between the two communities.
The last time I passed through Green River it lay under a foot of snow and I was aiming the other direction, for salt lake. Plan was to roll over the rockies from there to Denver, and I had spent that day at the other overpass by the cafe, drowsing in the sun against the wall beneath. But later on moving down the road to wait further back and open up a little bottle of krakken I'd picked up. Time to freeze to death in peace.
I remember when the right IM arrived from the east after midnight the moon'd come out and all was peaches in krakken land, out in the snowfields, but for some reason there was something going on with my foot and I had to limp as fast as I could up the drive, over the packed sleet. Very nearly eating shit a number of times, all the way back to the dupes. The harsh cold wrecks your lungs fast in these situations, and after 10 minutes of that it was all I had left to pull myself up into the cab... Oh, wait, now I'm remembering something else... Engines were locked on that train that night, nevermind.. Almost unheard of for UP, and I wound up having to limp all the way back the other way, passing the midsection toward the front before I found a rideable well. And I found it just when the brakes aired, for the second time. That's why I remember being so exhausted and panicked. Snow on the ground, watching for headlights, trying not to slip, numb hands in the wind, strained achilles.
Yeah, that was it. The lining of my steeltoes had worn and the inner plastic was falling apart and rubbing incessantly just below the ankle. That and there was the same sort of thing going on at the toe-end in the other boot and I was having considerable pain in that foot too, off and on. Sturdy footwear is the most important thing to get right for a long trip, especially for winter months. Trouble is with boots you often don't have discomfort until it's far too late to exchange them. Only way to find out which ones are actually worth the money and which aren't is after long bouts of trial and error.
With PJ then, on the first occasion, we arrived sometime in the early evening shortly after sundown. There was a layer of snow on the ground then, too. We head first to launder our shit before the mat closes. The woman and her husband who ran the place are both there and are both a totally legit couple of human beings. While pj's in the shitter, she and I have some small talk and seeing as how I was all right in the head and polite she decides to bring me to the restaurant next door and get us both take-out, without any instigation whatsoever from either of us. I was so dumbfounded and awkward about the favor I didn't know how to be about it..
On the way back through town the nightshift clerk at family dollar brings us out clearance dog food and candy bars. And then, a stretch more down the road, there was this car full of bonnie young gals that stops up next to us in the street and they shell out a fiver each no questions asked. I guess for being so damned sexy ourselves, who knows. Blowing kisses they drive off and I feel like dancing a boogy right after them.
"Penny!" I spray, "Penny, we've gotten to be celebrities!".. "Now Penny, look here, it's been a good run but I don't know if I can take the fame anymore. It upsets my sensibilities, understand? I don't want no mo part in it, you hear me cap?" …
"PENNY PL—"
"HSHHHHH, feckin sharp! Keep it down, christ."
"Let's find some girls, dawgy"
"Don't be such a goddamn rapist and maybe we can"
"Yer the feckin pedophile"
When we finally sack out in the frost bitten air we sleep on bellies gorged with mexican food. The open sky drops cold down onto my face like I'm orbiting out in the vacuum itself, and I think back to that time I'd blacked out one christmas outside at a bus stop and woke up with my cheek planted numbly on the concrete. When your face hurts and you haven't just woken from a deep sleep, you know that it's coming soon. No two ways about that, so long as you're bundled up anyway.
Cheyenne
The plan next day is to grab a denver bound train by my suggestion. And when something that looks an awful lot like it comes in we haven't waited more than an hour and we are enthusiastic, denver it is then! all aboard for denver. I don't know whether the train has been rerouted or the ID itself has a twin, but it was not our train in any case and we found ourselves rolling into cheyanne 24 hours later.
There is a huge delay, hours of mystery waiting on one lone track somewhere in the nowhere between Laramie and Cheyanne. The dawg's mut pissed in their miniwell and he moves back to the dupes at some point, and when I get out to stretch myself for the last time and see him flagging me down from 20 fifties or so back I'm surprised I even notice his little arms waving all that way down at the corner of my eye. Turning towards him squarely I flip him off with both hands high and hard and I scream a big triumphant 'fuck you', and laugh as he throws an arm at me in the 'up yours, then' fashion. All this quiet with nothing to do and I'm starting to feel like a mongrel myself I'm so backed up. It's been weeks since I got freaky with myself, I've been too busy being down and out to get any action or remember to pretend I'm getting some now and then. Hoping PJ doesn't take my middle fingers to heart I grab my shit and mosey on down to the pussy caboose. We don't know why we are waiting so long yet, and 6 hours is cause for concern. PJ switches on the radio and punches in the road frequencies and soon we are able to gain some bearings as we follow the intermittent conversations held between dispatch and crew. The conductors have to stop all the time, for no special reason in places, and I was only just learning this then. But did not feel in any rush about it anyway and welcomed the extra downtime. Mapping out other things and plans unrelated when there was quiet, and remembering people and places I'd been when there wasn't.
Cheyenne.. state capital. For one day it is like any other small town. The market, the bookstore, the world-thirsty locals and their dull conversation, the colorful homebums at the mission, the library. But it's also got an all-pervading old-town look to it. Like any old town anywhere, but without the skyscrapers towering up around it. Like it started out kinda big but never got any bigger, never developed beyond that. We hold one last sidelong conference for denver, reminding ourselves that speer yd is at least 10 miles out, and just like that we are on a couple of grainers in the twilight again, rolling for nebraska.
North Platte
8 hours later, four or five in the am. We set up to bail at the first clearance light, the yd itself not being a friendly one, so big and chaotic... And it's 10 miles to town from there. I've got thoughts on the brain all night long this time, on the ride over, and didn't sleep hardly but an hour. So on the march into town I witness all the nuances and shades of approaching dawn overhead, time-lapsed in half a step to the rhythm of my right foot and I see stars where there are none and hear birds where there are none and see flashes of light where there probably weren't any either on this delirious nonstop 3 hour death waltz for mcdonalds.
The rest of the morning I get pretty grouchy and try not to make any hard remarks but inevitably make a few and the dawg gets butthurdt. Can't be helped.. Im a dick when I don't get my rest. Crazy, too. But its my own fault if I didn't sleep and the dawg doesn't deserve my sour smells. For whatever reason PJ decides not to spange and we don't make any bills either sitting at the walmart and after a quick bite to eat we do the skeleton dance all over again back to the yard.
There was this woman in her 30's somewhere on the way there and she looks like Jennifer Connelly. I am haunted by this woman everywhere I go. Women that look just like her, and we always notice eachother. Always locking eyes. Always smiling. Gazing from behind a microphone, pregnant at the intersection, braving the downpoor in a strange new city.. I've no idea what it is or why they always look so distinctively similar. But here she was again. This woman sees us poking around a neighboring church for an outlet to shave my head with after finding a free box on a car port with a pair of old clippers in it. She invites us over to her lawn, baby on a hip, and offers us water. We explain what we're doing and she laughs and disappears into the house. A couple minutes later shes back with an extension cord trailing behind her, baby on the hip, "I'd forgot where I'd left it" she explains, and pj sets to work on my skull. But the cut takes longer than it should because the clippers might as well be made out of plastic they're so dull. As to be expected. Jennifer notices and brings out her own clippers, laughing. "That'll never do, please just use mine".
The whole time I'm kind of bewitched. As I am every time I see her. My throat thickened and my veins opened but when the work was done and it was time to go I couldn't for the life of me think of what to say or how to say it other than a nod and thanks. But goddamn if I didn't want to just get down with you right there on your lawn and bury my face in you. In front of your kids, in front of my dawg, in front of everyone in the world I wouldn't've noticed. Did I know you from somewhere? But it doesn't make any difference does it.
"Jane"
"Yessm"
"That woman's single"
"With kids"
"I still wanna marry her"
"Why dontcha then, hot shot"
"She's way out of my league, Jane. Still just a boy to her"
"Some other time then, huh"
"Maybe"
We have a ball the next few hours finding the outbound tracks in the biggest departure yard of the us of a… It's a wonder we didn't have any cops show up on the spot since it was cuffs for Ron after they'd spotted him from a camera right around the west bridge once, before his head injury I think, running like hell into the yard. Some said it was because he was running like he'd stolen something. But it was chaotic all the same for us jumping all those strings and hiding from all the workers in broad daylight, with extra scrotums full of groceries hangin haphazard like off our shoulders. At one point we scramble up into a full sized gondola, containers banging and flat switching all around, Jane handing over the pooch from atop the knuckle itself gets his grocery bag hung up on something and damn near slips down between when another truck came rumbling passed. Fuck!
"this bag you gave me is bad luck"
"oh?"
He jumps in to safety and immediately starts emptying his shopping bag into the remainder of his pack, "It's baaad fuckin ju ju, man. Imma leave it here, unless you want it".
"If it's bad luck for you it might not be a whole lot better for me, friend. Better leave it then."
Grainers again for us, and we barely have time to make a run for it as the fred is coming up just about as soon as we spot the damn thing, through the holes in the lip of our gondola, some 15-20 tracks over. But it's a clear shot and we catch it running full sail, each dragging himself up into his V porch, breathless, and he w/ his dog.
How in all the lands of shit scum and cuss he carries on like that, dragging the pooch along in tight situations week after week, I wouldn't even want to try. Holy smokes, batman. Don't know how much I invest in luck personally, but neither do I suppose I would if I lived that way myself, day in day out, batshit like a bat out of hell. So here it is, or there it was another dusk, settling in over us and it's curtains and we're off on another night train, and sleep I did. Slept hard. 10 hours to Missouri. And 10 days out of the west.
"this bag you gave me is bad luck"
"oh?"
He jumps in to safety and immediately starts emptying his shopping bag into the remainder of his pack, "It's baaad fuckin ju ju, man. Imma leave it here, unless you want it".
"If it's bad luck for you it might not be a whole lot better for me, friend. Better leave it then."
Grainers again for us, and we barely have time to make a run for it as the fred is coming up just about as soon as we spot the damn thing, through the holes in the lip of our gondola, some 15-20 tracks over. But it's a clear shot and we catch it running full sail, each dragging himself up into his V porch, breathless, and he w/ his dog.
How in all the lands of shit scum and cuss he carries on like that, dragging the pooch along in tight situations week after week, I wouldn't even want to try. Holy smokes, batman. Don't know how much I invest in luck personally, but neither do I suppose I would if I lived that way myself, day in day out, batshit like a bat out of hell. So here it is, or there it was another dusk, settling in over us and it's curtains and we're off on another night train, and sleep I did. Slept hard. 10 hours to Missouri. And 10 days out of the west.