Commuters

It is barely dawn when I board the commuter train. I hold my place in line as I step from the steel platform into the steel passenger car. I settle into my favorite seat and watch from the window as the sun dimly illuminates the horizon. The dawn is gray. My overcoat, and the overcoats of the other passengers are gray. We wait to travel a gray line to our offices with gray desks, gray carpeting and gray duties. The train vibrates into motion. I yawn.  

I ride the train like a cradle. It reverberates beneath me and gently rocks me in its sway. The conductor with the kind face takes my fare with a sad, pleasant smile. I want to buy him whisky. I want to ask him questions. I want him to tell me his story. But maybe it is better this way; that I don’t know his life; that we remain strangers. Anyway it is too early in the day and we both have far too many hours of labor left in us to entertain liquor-laced tales. 

I drift off, rocked to sleep on an iron sea. My eyelids fall heavy, closing out passing brick walls and cement castles. I hope when they open again it will be to the sight of rolling green hills. We all hum along in silence. We are all alone together. 

From behind closed eyes I picture the humble face of the kind conductor, the way it must have looked still soft with youth. It grows younger in my mind and turns upward toward his father, and his father’s father before him. The young conductor listens with intensity to his ancestors as they divulge to him the secrets of manhood. The boy leans close to dine on each precious, delicious word, but the language is foreign to my somnambulant ears. The boy ages again. Lines form around his mouth. Knowledge and experience sink his eyes and they grow dark and tired. He blinks with exaggeration and is again recognizable to me as the conductor. 

I awake from my dream to the unmistakable sound of change. It is jingling in a pocket and in my ears.  I smell the disenchanted young man, unwashed and unsure. He is barely more than a boy, but the weight of his life has drawn on him, has etched its scars on his face. He shuffles past the place where I rest my head. I stretch my neck. He is tarnished and faded. Oil plasters his hair in waxy cowlicks. Sleep has rebelled against him. It has left him yellow and thin, except for the twin places where insomnia has stamped its signature bruises under his eyes. He takes the seat in front of me. 

I examine his profile when the sage man softly addresses him. 

“Tickets?”

The young man directs his words at the conductor, but his gaze is fixed on another place and time. 

“The woman on the phone said you’d accept coins.”

It is the only sentence the young man offers, but with it he acknowledges his breach in etiquette. He has simultaneously harnessed himself in the dismal yolk of egregious assumption and divinely absolved himself of guilt and shame.

The conductor nods and waits with quiet dignity. If he is annoyed, if he is hurt, insulted, offended or grieved, he does not show it. If he is impatient, he does not show it. In his expression I recognize the solitude that belonged to his father and to his father’s father before that. The expression is learned and it is practiced. It has been handed through generations, a clandestine gift. The man wears it dutifully. 

The young man begins to count. Sporadic, sharp breaths indicate he is whispering numbers. I cannot hear more than the sibilance of his breathing over the rattling train, but I don’t need to.  He is a stale traveler, stagnant and lost. On his existence he holds a precarious grip. It is slipping. He has mustered what little of himself remains to engage. He has taken a stand by boarding our vessel at the earliest of hours. He is moving away from the city to go somewhere. His mask of weary determination betrays him. This will be his last attempt. After today there will be no more chances for him. He is calm in his acceptance, but his presence here assures us he will fight. 

I glance through the tinted window to my right and consider for a moment how many chances I may have left. I peer over a manmade quarry. Men dug here once, for limestone and for quartz. Now it yawns exhausted. The gulch grows wild prairie grasses in crevices carved in the rock by rain. We all glide gracefully to a stop, communally taking for granted the engineering concentration expressed to prevent us from being thrown to the floor from our seats. Another day. Another stop.  I am comforted by the thought of disembarking here; that I could spend my day in the viridian canyon without taking to my desk, without calling home; that absolutely no one would know where to find me; that I can afford at least one more chance. A grinding ache settles in my lungs as we pull away, floating down vibrating rails that draw a literal line connecting me to my underwhelming responsibility. 

The wayfarer is still counting. The conductor waits. The holy potential of escape is fading behind me. I am still watching. Tension floats between them. They do not look at one another. They do not look at me. I observe both uninterrupted. The counting draws down like an unwinding clock. The boy cranes his arm and offers up his fare in a fist. The man cups his hands together patiently, forming a well to catch the falling pennies. 

They twinkle, 500 copper stars, a micro meteor shower. They glitter and they glint. They sparkle and they shine. They cascade in bronze drops and ring like charity bells. We all hold our breath; the boy the curator, the man the redeemer, and I the interloper. In an instant the shower is over. All is quiet, and the boy lowers his head. 

I fix my gaze entirely on the man now. He is still, barely moving, but for the swaying and blinking. He is a statue in a fountain in a park in a city square collecting wishes in his hands for a modest toll until he turns to look at me. I am caught, but I do not turn away. I hold the man’s stare and offer my own silent wish of redemption for broken souls.  With precise deliberation, the gentle conductor turns slowly back to his passenger and lowers his hands. The young man stares but says nothing. He has been asleep. He looks at the conductor for the first time, now confused. 

“Here,” says the man, “you keep these.”

The boy takes his pennies, but there is no repeating the miraculous spectacle. Glory is spontaneous. When his hands are free, the conductor reaches into his pocket and produces a ticket. He tosses it into the jackpot, folding his hand. 

As he walks back down the center aisle, he passes me with the same sad, pleasant eyes. I smile and he starts to smile too, just a little. Then he shrugs and walks away.