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Despite the early and cold morning, Kelly drove me to the train station to catch the Empire Builder. Loyalty and love were among her greatest qualities. Somehow they were greater- and rarer- than the things her colleagues worshiped her for- incredible intelligence and a knack for instilling knowledge into the world around her.
I was running away from home for a bit, and she felt the need to be there to see me off. It made me feel guilty. My whole family loved me, but she ... loved me more. It had been a strange journey for us; we’d been married almost ten years, lovers for 18, and friends for 25. We’d always been close, and that part has never ended or even wavered. I am a frankly ridiculous man, and she stands resolute beside me.
It was a viciously cold morning, even for Fargo in late October. The temperature itself wasn’t so bad, at about 25°, but the wicked Midwest wind was lashing through, 25 mph sustained winds and 45 mph gusts sending the windchills into the subzero range. We were both dressed for it; but we were warm as we stood by the door waiting for the train to pull in.
Amtrak’s #8 Empire Builder appeared in the distance at around 2:30 AM, a few minutes late. There weren’t a lot of people waiting for the train, and I was the only one who was booked in a sleeper. As the train approached, its ditch lights came on and the horn announced its approach, punctuated by the running bell as it rumbled its way into the station, shaking the entire building as it came.
Ridership and delays on the Empire Builder had certainly calmed down as the fracking boom subsided. The gate dragon let us passengers out of the door fairly quickly, and I left the station as I kissed Kelly goodbye. I had a sense of dread and foreboding, feeling like I was truly doing the wrong thing running away at this time, but I didn’t know any other way.
My car attendant was probably asleep; I was let onboard the Superliner sleeping car by an assistant conductor. The refurbished car had warm wood tones on the walls, blue carpets, and the mild smell I can only think of as “the Amtrak smell.” I got to my room, number 12 in the downstairs of the car. It was already set up for sleeping, with the seats being made into a lower bed, starched white sheets showing, a plastic wrapped blue mod-acrylic blanket on the foot of the bed if I were to see fit to need it.
I pulled down the upper berth, threw my backpack on it, and slammed it back shut. I shut the curtain, took off my clothes, and then shut the sliding door- the foot space from the open door was essential for changing. I was emotionally exhausted, so I lay on my side facing the now-opened window curtain, draped the blue blanket over me, rested my head on the two thin-but-acceptable pillows, and watched the North Dakota night for a few minutes outside my window, before falling into a deep slumber.
I had some troubling dreams. Dreams about losing my family, losing Kelly. About being alone, penniless, bored, in pain, and tired in the middle of nowhere. I woke up in my dream, and seated on the foot of my little bed was Rachel, dressed in the sleeveless bright blue Hawaiian Muumuu with green, yellow, red, and pink flowers, the one she wore back from the beach in San Diego after surfing. Her face looked the same as the way it did the last time I saw her alive; her features a pastiche of oversized Semitic-ness, her skin a bit wrinkled and lined, her hair almost white.
The dress was not very revealing, as muumuus seldom are, but I could remember that body in the bikini she wore under it. A smell filled my dream; the scent she had after a long day of baking and surfing in the California sun. She was smiling her crooked toothed grin, but it slowly drained, and she looked at me with a seldom seen expression: one of considerable sadness.
“Johnny, are yuh lookin’ fawh your dad, or are yuh back tuh lookin’ fawh me, or what?” She asked quietly, “I ain’t out here fawh yuh tuh find. Yuh got me so fahr? I’m here-” she touched my heart “and I’m dere no mattuh where yuh go, I promise yuh.”
“Oh Rachel,” I said, and hugged her warm body, crying, “I love Kelly, and I love my kids, and my family. I mean like you wouldn’t believe. I’m not looking for you, I know where you are. I just need- oh, hell, I can’t kid you. I’m looking for the fun we used to have.”
“Yuh’re too old fawh dat now, Johnny,” she said, “Even if I was still alive, dat ship would have sailed long ago. Right? I’d be sixty-one now, Johnny. Ya’ dig? Sixty-one! Okay? I’d be close tuh social security, if I evuh paid any fuckin’ tawkses.”
“They were the best days of my life,” I replied, sniffing the nape of her neck.
“Mine too,” she said, “Yuh made my life wawhth livin’, as much or mawh than I helped yuh, I promise yuh. Let me axe yuh somethin’, though. Do yuh really wanna be away from Kelly right now, or what? Yuh’re so lucky tuh have a girl willin’ tuh share yuh wit’ my ghost.”
“I know that, damnit,” I said, “I just need some time to clear my head.”
“Clear your head, den,” she kissed me on the forehead, “But clear it quickly, okay? Den yuh go hurry home tuh our family. Okay? Yuh’re too old fawh dis shit, it ain’t right no mawh. Go back tuh bed, my love. Okay? Don’t wawhry, I’ll be here when its your time. Yuh with me?”
She disappeared from the dream and the room. She was totally right, of course. Kelly knew she shared me with her ghost. I tried not to let it be like that, but I couldn’t help it. I knew that she wanted me to promise that I’d return to my family as soon as I got my mess in order. I promised.
I woke up with a start as the engineer screwed up his braking job and the train jolted to a slack-smashing stop in St. Cloud, Minnesota. I knew freight engineers who couldn’t screw up their slack that bad if they were half drunk and 90% asleep. Ridiculous. I looked at my Vostok and saw the time was about 8:30 in the morning, placing us over three hours behind. I wondered what happened over night to cause this delay.
I pulled my shorts and shirt on while I was laying down, and then opened my door, and walked down the hall to the stairs, climbed them to the second floor of the car, and walked to the dining car; it was a long walk, as I was in the Portland sleeper. The car was crowded, and I got sat with three people. Two of them were a couple who looked like they didn’t have enough wakefulness to even think of talking, and the third had her head buried in her iPhone.
Riding the train wasn’t like what it used to be. Its hard to meet people when said people think it is perfectly polite to share a meal table with three other people and not even say good morning to them, let alone strike up a conversation. The eastern trains had just lost their full-service menus, but the Empire Builder had not been affected yet. I ordered the cheese omelet, with potatoes, chicken apple sausages, and a crescent roll. It wasn’t bad.
I got up after breakfast, and walked to the Sightseer Lounge. I sat at an empty booth, and wallowed in self pity, over Rachel, my dad, missing my family, and the increasingly unpleasant world in which I lived. I could live with Trump and Brexit and political infighting, with climate change, and naive political candidates like Bernie Sanders. I could live with people being stupid; they had always been stupid. But what happened to people getting along and wanting to learn about people from other walks of life? There was no way to fix any of it without people being willing to talk.
I took out a deck of cards and started dealing myself a hand of solitaire. I played a few hands with myself, before getting bored, just as we pulled in to St. Paul Union Station. I ruminated on my life a bit more, but didn’t really get anywhere with it.
It has been ten years practically since I was last aimlessly traveling on my own; the last time I took a solo trip was to Reno to try to pound some sense into Jenny’s head about what to do with our son. I didn’t think I’d be feeling the way I felt now. I didn’t feel like I was on vacation; I wasn’t relaxing; I wasn’t comfortable. I’ve been on vacation before; with all the people in the family and business, it wasn’t that hard to get away for a little bit.
But this was different. I was on my own; I was leaving everyone else to take care of my jobs. I was leaving Kelly to take care of our kids without my help. I was leaving my family to mourn the death of their grandfather/great grandfather/living companion/father-in-law to go deal with my own demons. I felt ... somewhat inadequate.
Rachel was right; I was off in search of the life we had with each other. But I was 34 then; about Kelly’s age. She was polite about it, but the reality of her comparative physical youth was frankly stark. She could run faster, move easier, jump higher, and play with our kids way better than I could. I was in good physical shape for 52, but I was 52. I doubt I could jump on or off a freight train like I used to.
It would be like me wanting to recapture my fun playing baseball or tennis as a kid. It was sort of the same concept. Besides, Rachel and I had already been slowing down a little bit by the end. The likelihood was one of the reasons that lunatic got the better of her was the fact that she wasn’t quite a spring chicken anymore. I’m not saying that I am infirm now, or she was infirm then, or anything like that. But the distance between 29 and 42 is not a short one.
I went back to my room and sat in more solitude. There is more comfort in real solitude then the solitude of a full car that can’t be bothered to socialize with the other people in it, anyway. I realized I was a bit stinky, and I went down the hall to shower in the little onboard shower. I hadn’t showered on a train in a little while; I forgot that it was a little on the difficult side to shower while being bounced around.
By the time I got back to my roomette, it was fairly late in the day; the view out the window could only have been the Wisconsin Dells. We had gained a bit of time back, but were still a bit over three hours down; I was hoping I didn’t miss my connection with the City of New Orleans. I let myself recline in my seat and close my eyes. I wasn’t enjoying this the way I used to. I missed having my family with me.
Whether it was trying to get Lenny to behave- he was a bit rambunctious - or trying to make sure that young Rachel and Josh weren’t risking having a child of problematic co-sanguinity before Rachel even became of age, they kept me occupied on family trips. They filled my life with ... stuff. Action. When I was away from my family, I was running a business. It was hard work, sure. I know, all of America likes having time off.
But the truth is, I never had time off. I just had different types of work. Raising my kids, running my store, or working with my family on the farm. The weird thing was ... I liked that. Now I wasn’t relaxing. I wasn’t ‘taking a load off’. I wasn’t really resting. I was just goddamned bored. And lonely.
My nap passed the time well, though. I didn’t really dream or think of much while I was napping, I just woke up a while later and saw the familiar trackage running past Edgebrook- meaning we were just a few miles from Chicago Union Station. I looked at my watch; it was 7:37. Making my connection was not a sure thing, although it was still possible. I told my car attendant that I was connecting to the City of New Orleans; he told me to be standing by the door as we approached Union Station. I knew Amtrak would put me up for the night if I missed my train, but I didn’t want to chance it.
When we pulled in to the station, the car attendant told me what track the train was on, and I booked off the train, and made the connection, with about three minutes to spare. The sleeper on this train was not refurbished, and was not in great shape. Amtrak had just revamped dining car service on their “eastern trains” which happened to oddly include the City of New Orleans. It had been a downgrade for many of them, but for the City it had actually been an upgrade.
I went into the Cross Country Cafe and was presented with a choice of several meals; I selected the “Creole Shrimp and Andouille.” It was served with some vegetables atop a yellow rice, a side salad, and a roll, on a tray. I was sure it was pre-plated, and I suspect Brozee would have had some very choice words about it. It was edible, but just by a little bit. It was Amtrak’s new “Contemporary” choice dining, I guess designed to emulate the garbage younger people consider food. I missed the old food, but it was included in the price for my room. I also enjoyed a complimentary split of Cabernet.
The truth is I wasn’t the man I used to be. I was not really prepared to ride coach anymore, let alone freight trains. This meal was presented without community seating- again, cast as an upgrade over the old way of doing things. Except I used to like community seating; it was hard to estimate how much of the fun I had riding Amtrak when I was younger came from the people I met in dining cars. Like Brozee, actually. But times were changing, and to pretend the train should be some kind of time capsule was frankly ridiculous.
I thought about lounging in the lounge car, or the dining car which was sort of supposed to serve as a kind of lounge, but my heart wasn’t in it. I just went back to my room, rang for the car attendant, and asked for my bed to be put down. I was a weary traveler, and I just wanted to go to bed.
The car attendant was a touch less polite then some; but he did the job I asked of him. I was under the impression that this train had a New Orleans-based crew, so the slight lack of politeness surprised me. I’d expect it out of Chicagoans, but not Orleanians. In any case, I was too worn out to put a great deal of thought into the problem, and I lay down to bed and just plain fell asleep.
I had another dream that night, but it was an unusual one. Most of my dreams feature my living family, my mother, my father, Rachel, and sometimes Susan and Jenny. None of these were featured this time. I was walking around a poorly defined and geographically inaccurate variation of the French Quarter. Sometimes it looked more like downtown Los Angeles, sometimes clearly like the French Quarter, as if it was threatening to turn from its beautiful self into the depressing awfulness of Los Angeles.
I was hungry, but I could see no restaurants, despite this being the French Quarter. I sometimes was walking past the street scene that lead up to Ambrosine’s- or Antoine’s, or Tujague’s, or the long-gone original Brennan’s- but the restaurants wouldn’t be there. One was a Burger King, another a McDonald’s, a third a Ruby Tuesday. I walked into a restaurant that looked largely like the Po’Boy shop I ate in all those years ago, and I of course ordered a Po’Boy- but when I got it, it was that amazingly flavorless sandwich known as the McDonald’s Double Quarter Pounder.
I marched out of there refusing to pay for it, and ran down the street in search of another restaurant. I came across Ambrosine’s, looking just like the day I first went there. That was unrealistic, because even though I had not been back in a while (since Katrina, actually), it must have been remodeled after Katrina. As I was about to run inside, the front window closed and everything was locked. Then I heard the sound of a New Orlean’s style funeral procession, and watched as it slowly marched its way past the restaurant. The casket was glass, and inside it was Brozee.
I woke up, my heart pounding like a jackhammer. She’d be 56; no reason for her to be dead, I told myself strongly. I hadn’t been inside the restaurant in probably 20 or 25 years. She wasn’t the slimmest woman, but she had been in good shape. She loved her life. She was living her dreams. She even had a son; he had been six or seven last time I had been to her restaurant, and she doted on him- at least when he wasn’t already being harnessed into Kitchen duty. I had come in with Rachel; one of the waiters told us as we were leaving that dinner was on the house- but don’t come back.
Anyway, once I was awake and fully aware of the world around me, I was shocked at how much light was coming in from the window curtains. I opened them to see that it was broad daylight, and the sun was well up in the sky. I lifted my watch up, and looked at it. I shook it, assuming it must have stopped overnight or something. But it was ticking strongly, and it said it was almost noon.
I threw on my clothes, and left the room, and walked over to the car attendants room, but he wasn’t there. I walked forward to the Cross Country Cafe dining car, but I didn’t see an attendant. The dining car served as the sleeper lounge now, but none of the passengers looked amenable to talking. I walked through to the Sightseer Lounge, and found the conductor had taken a table.
“Excuse me, Conductor,” I said, “But I think my watch stopped. Do you have the time?”
“Don’t you have a cell phone?”
“No, sir.”
“It is 11:58 in the morning,” he said, “You really should get a cell phone.”
“I don’t believe in them,” I replied, “They can track you with a cell phone. I guess my watch didn’t stop.” Well, it was off by two minutes, but close enough, I usually set it fast to make sure I don’t run late.
I went back into the Cross Country Cafe. They started serving lunch, which was the same menu as dinner the night before. I ordered the Chicken Fettuccine, which was sort of like Chicken Alfredo, in the way that it was also sort of like food. But not quite. I ate it because I was hungry after having not had breakfast; I heard from passenger discussion that the breakfast I had missed was not much to miss.
Around the time I was done inserting the so-called food into my stomach, we came to a stop at Hammond, Louisiana, about 6 minutes early. We departed exactly on time, which suggested we would pull into New Orleans in about 50 minutes- or almost 30 minutes early. I went back to my room, which had not yet been reset for day use, and pulled down my bag. I wasn’t feeling particularly good, to be honest. My dream had shaken me up something awful.
When we pulled into New Orleans, I quickly detrained with my backpack, and hurried out to the beginning of the street car line that now ran from the station on Layola Avenue, one block down Canal, and then along Rampart St., now called the Rampart-St.Claude line. I got off on Conti and Rampart, and walked from there towards where I knew the restaurant to be. My dream had given me a shock.
I had long suspected that the reason I had been sent away from the restaurant was that I had brought Rachel. In 1988, not long after meeting Rachel, I went back down to New Orleans and had a few week long relationship with Brozee. It had gotten quite sexual, and she had fallen in love with me. She started hinting very strongly that I should propose to her, and that had scared me away from there. Even then I think I was fighting my feelings for Rachel; I think the real reason people couldn’t tie me down is that I was already emotionally tied to her.
I don’t know why I had started exploring a relationship with Brozee; it might have been the first in a line of floundering movements to try and convince myself the cock-and-bull story I told Rachel about not wanting to be tied to her had some basis in truth. Anyway, I came back to the restaurant alone a few times after I ran, and Brozee and I were ... civil and friendly, but also a touch on the frosty side. I suspected bringing the woman I was more in love with than I could admit to myself was the last straw.
I turned on to Dauphine street and walked towards the restaurant. The color was blue-grey now, and the letters were black and in a more modern font, and applied rather then carved. But there it was- “Ambrosine’s”. My nose picked up the scent of that incredible chicken and andouille gumbo, the soup of the gods. One of the best things I had ever tasted in my life, anywhere, at any price.
I walked into the restaurant; there was a host standing at a pavilion, and he smiled at me.
“Can I help y’all, sir?”
“I’d like to speak to Ambrosine,” I told him, “She might not want to see me, but it’s important. Tell her it’s Johnny, from the train.”
The expression on the man’s face was a bit troubled.
“Hold on a moment, sir,” the host said, and walked towards the kitchen.
He leaned into the kitchen, and I could just make out him say, “Mr. LaRogue” into the door. A huge, light-coffee skinned man with a notable black curly beard, and tightly curled short-Afro hair came out of the kitchen. My mouth dropped open. He was too young to be her husband, he was almost my size, and the shape of his face was ... no, it couldn’t be.
It was her son, certainly. But he looked like me in a few ways, not absolutely distinctly. He also looked to be about 30 years old, which ... no. It couldn’t be. It could not be.
“Hello,” he said, only the faintest of New Orleans accent, “I’m Jean-Louis, Ambrosine was my mother. Are you the Johnny she met on the train in 1985?”
Jean-Louis? I knew her father’s name was Lew, because that’s what a friend in the kitchen called him when he was mentioned. Jean-Louis. Zhon-Looey. John Louis. No, it can’t be.
“Uh, yes, er, Jean-Lou-” and then I froze again. Was his mother? Was? “W-was?”
“Excuse me?”
“Was your mother,” I said hoarsely, and starting to tear, “You said was.”
“Yes,” he said, “She passed a few years ago, unfortunately. I run the restaurant the same way, though. She was incredible with food.”
“No,” I said, “Incredible is too light a word for her gift. I- I can- I can’t believe she’s gone.”
“Are you, or are you not, Johnny,” he asked, being very distinct, “The hobo my mother met on the City of New Orleans in 1985, I repeat myself.”
“Yes,” I said, “I am that Johnny.”
“Excuse me,” he replied, and went back to the kitchen for a moment, and then came back out again, “Please come with me.”
He walked out the front of the restaurant and to the door up to the apartment above. I walked up the stairs with him. There was one door at the top of the stairs.
“There used to be two doors here,” I said mindlessly.
“Yes,” he said, “When I got married, we combined the two apartments. You’ve been up here before?”
“Yes,” I said, “A long time ago.”
As he opened the door, I could see there was practically nothing left of the old apartment, except for the bedroom that Brozee and I had spent many a happy night, long ago. I couldn’t hold it anymore. I fell onto a couch in the living room and started crying. At one time my feeling’s for Brozee had been extremely strong.
She was a friend, a partner, eventually a lover. Rachel had been my soulmate, I think she still is. Kelly is amazing, and I love her dearly. We have an extremely close relationship. I suspect nine out of ten relationships in marriage don’t come out half as good as mine and Kelly’s. Rachel had been ... she had been one in a billion, hell, one in five billion.
Mad as a hatter, strong as an ox, mean as a snake, and she made the Venus De Milo look ugly. At least to me. And her voice, her accent, was like the finest of Schubert and Beethoven rolled into one perfect symphony. When she first kissed me, bells rang, lights flashed, music played. Our minds were practically melded. My relationship with Kelly is amazing, but what I had with Rachel was the stuff of fairy tales.
Becky
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