Two Steps East: Catching the train...

It's been a while since I've posted one of these. Call it slice-of-life fiction. Call it CEE reality. Call it a short read, but also know that if you seek a home to post fiction, short stories or the like, feel free to get in touch. I'll take a look, and we just may finally get back to the contest.

Catching the Train

by Preston smith

So you wanna hear a story?

From today, I mean.

I could tell you about how the pipe burst upstairs this afternoon; how it flooded two bedrooms and the bath with scalding water and how the landlord came running in and got stuck half upside down behind the water tank on the bottom floor. How we’re lucky we still have our dogs...

How we were lucky to be home. How otherwise two beagles would have been scalded, boiled alive. How the pump would have run dry and the house caught fire.

How we don’t have any idea why the pipe burst or why it poured out liters upon liters of boiling water. How if this had happened at night...

WE COULD HAVE ALL BEEN KILLED!

You can almost see the headlines...

American-born Polish detective...

Boiled alive. Burnt to a crisp. With his family.

And his dogs...

Obviously, THE PERFECT CRIME.

Could tell you that one, but...

Naw.

Or maybe I could tell you about how on the way into Warsaw I spied an old man toting a banjo. And how we traded picking tips and how he told me about a guy named Bulas just out of town, a luthier who is now sought by bluegrass pickers the world over.

Erm... Cool guy, but no to that one too..

Because...

Believe it or not...

There are days when it's like...

Or maybe not like...

But when truly...

Unbelievably...

You've fallen back in time.

So imagine, bud, there I am, standing on the platform at the Warsaw East Station, freezing because the trains are all over the place (again) and--just like back in the '90s--a young, semi-hoodlum saunters over loaded down with sports bags and one of those old pink, white and blue outdoor market, semi-plastic bag-suitcase, cube things.

'Scoot over, Friend,' he says. (But I'm already hearing 'Pal.')
Then he claps me on the back. 'Trains all f@#$ed up.'
And I think 'when in Rome," and repeat: 'Yep, trains all f@@ed up.'
I get a Clint Eastwood squint for saying this, which is when my new pal says: 'Trains always f*&3ed up.'
'That's right. Pretty much always f@#45ed up.'
Another nod. We are more than communicating. We are two males. Bonding. Then he gives me a tip.
'You have to watch the ebb and flow,' he says.
This catches me off guard--I honestly have no idea where he's going with this.
'Of the people, he says. "You can't trust the train schedule (which is absolutely true) or the signs, which is when he points to the electronic, neon blue--and completely erroneous—times and repeats (again with a Clint Eastwood squint):

"You have to watch the ebb and flow."

And then, right then, right in that very moment and just as he has made his point, through some form of still unknown (to me at least) Polish telepathy the ebb and flow begins-- literally everyone, and I mean EVERY SINGLE SOUL on the train "peron" without rhyme or reason just up and bolts for the stairwell.

"That's it!" he shouts. ’THE EBB AND FLOW—THAT’S F$#@ING IT!’

I glance at the electronic train schedule, and nothing has changed, but he shouts at me as if I am a child, as if I am a complete cretin, as if we were in an old black-and-white 50's movie, as if...

Yes, let the camaraderie begin.

'Get a move on, pal! You wanna sit here all night?'

And I think: ’NO, I DO NOT WANT TO SIT HERE ALL NIGHT!’

So I grab my laptop, my gig bag of guitar pedals. He can't manage his three sports bags of who knows what plus the pink, white and blue, semi-plastic, bag-suitcase, whatever-the-hell those things are really called so I grab one handle and we run together just like people used to do in the 90s. Only the problem is that I really did do this in the 90s and he's about 30 years younger than me and faster and pumping one arm and his legs and getting ahead so that we are kind of turning into an arc doing down the stairs.

And I'm actually thinking logically, seeing this coming, knowing that when you are mutually carring one of those old pink, white and blue outdoor market, semi-plastic bag-suitcase, cube things you have to hit the stairs even and in step.

Then I’m no longer thinking just logically, but suddenly Biblically (as do not be unequally yoked), which when I get my feet crossed up, fall onto the pink, white and (no, I'm not going to repeat it), so that I tumble forward onto his back, which brings us both crashing down onto a Paul Bunyan type with a monstrous backpack, who curses and flails as he pitches forward onto his face and we roll on top of him and then over him and the lot of us smack sprawling onto the concrete at the bottom of the stairs.

And I see that (yes, I am going to repeat it now) the old pink, white and blue outdoor market, semi-plastic bag-suitcase, cube thing has come halfway open. There are socks on the ground. A pair of blue jeans and a boxing glove.

And I realize my new pal is just like me! And the boxing glove is about to get away!

But have no fear, KOLEGO! This is the Polish time warp! The two of us, no the THREE of us—no, the ENTIRE EBB AND FLOW have now been thrust into classic, Turner movie mode so that among the ebb (or is it the flow) the BROTHERHOOD of us help each other up, call each other names and Pal and Friend and then chase the flow (or the ebbs) down the tunnel for the next peron. We then scramble halfway up these stairs, but the ebb (or is it the flow?) has already reversed course and is coming back down and pushing us back.

'PEOPLE!' cries a stranger (and I realize that now at least 50 or 60 of us are firmly caught in that 1990s (or 1950s) time warp, as we all take up the call (to each other, I guess) of: 'NEXT PERON! NEXT PERON!'

As a mob we spill and froth forward into the tunnel. Nobody is really sure if there is another train, but yes, I, NUMBER ONE PAL OF ALL EBB AND FLOW, race forward to see our train suddenly listed mysteriously on an absolutely illogical peron, which means I shout an absolutely illogical command in Polish that no veteran of trains and pociags should believe, but to no one’s surprise (for in the old movies the camaradaeies is dear) we rush down the tunnel, up onto the track and I realize that I’ve lost the boxer and Paul Bunyan, although I have a bumble bee colored 16-oz. glove over the fist of my hand.

It’s not my glove, and I absolutely cannot leave the Brotherhood of the Tumble behind, so I step aside as the now TREMENDOUS EBB AND FLOW rages past, watch how both youth and geriatrics leap onto the soon-to-be departing train.

Which means...

No time to lose. I lung forward, stick my foot into the door. A conductor appears one inch in front of my face and shouts:

’EH YOU! YOU CAN’T HOLD UP A WHOLE TRAIN!’

And I’m trying to explain, trying to tell him why I’ve got my foot in the door, why I’ve got a big, bumble-bee boxing glove on one hand when suddenly I hear a shout:

’PEACE, OLD MAN! THAT’S MY PAL YOU’RE TALKING TO!’

And the boxer with the old pink, white and blue outdoor market, semi-plastic bag-suitcase, cube thing comes rollicking up, followed by a disheveled Paul Bunyan type who threatens to smash us all if we don’t get the F@@@# out of the F#$@ing way.

Whew.

So now I know you are going to ask just what was the point. What was the theme, the moral?

And I could tell you about how that was the second PAL in just one day. How Paul Bunyan pulled out beers (on the train!) and how nobody said a word as he passed them around. How the ticket lady had her hair done up in a bandana like a 50’s pinup girl and how we all talked boxing (even the ticket lady) and how we argued over the big (but not so big) Canelo fight tomorrow night.

And maybe even I could tell you how we shook hands and back slapped and how we both knew the same towns and maybe even the same people back east.

Or maybe I could go still deeper. Maybe I could bumble or mumble that no man is an island; that time is a continuum; or that it is a circle; that the banjo is the Devil’s instrument; that once you begin Foggy Mountain Breakdown, you simply, absolutely...

Cannot stop.

But no, I’m not going to tell you any of that. I’m just going to say that sometimes the message, the moral does not matter a whit. That when it really comes down to it I’m right where I always was, where I probably ought to be...

That I’m glad for the time warp.

Thankful (to God in Heaven) that I still have my family...

That  I still have my dogs...

And that...

When it all comes down to it...

That was just an evening in my life.

No more, no less.

The story of how I caught my train.

 

Photo by Preston Smith, all rights reserved. Short copyright Preston Smith, all rights reserved.