“…and a ride to Bellingham,” I added. Then we went on until the Amen at which point he stood up.
“Can you give me a ride?”
“We’re packed full and we never pick up hitchhikers.” And then he walked away.
I felt like hitting him. I thought of doing a speaking in tongues and being possessed by God routine but didn’t have enough energy for anything.
To my surprise, that prayer worked, because a few minutes later he, his wife, and his five-year-old daughter made room for me to get in their car. All I can think is that his wife made him do it.
Hot damn and thank you Jesus!
He called himself a planter and had brought his family from some Baptist church in Texas. They apparently felt that we don’t get enough of a chance to know Jesus in the godless Northwest so they were sending missionaries to save our souls.
He said that if the Arabs and Jews find peace the world would end in 3 ½ years. That helped me understand why so many Christians stay on the side of Israel.
They dropped me off just North of Tacoma at another rest area. My next ride was a middle class white guy driving a nice Lincoln Towncar.
He pulled over and I ran up and got in.
You mind if I drink while I drive?” He asked me, holding up a can of Bud.
“As we don’t crash,” I said, though I was already worried and considering getting out.
“I’m a state senator,” he told me. “ I help make the laws, so I can break ‘em.” He laughed. He told me that he was pretty moderate about his drinking and driving.
“What’s your name?” I asked him. “Maybe I voted for you.”
“Gordon,” he told me. “Call me Gordy.” I was pretty sure I had voted for his opponent. Maybe he was a liar though.
Gordy dropped me off in downtown Seattle near Westlake Center.
I heard chanting and shouting down the street and walked to see what was up. Pro-Palestine protesters were demanding that the violence stop in the Middle East. Banners reading “Stop killing our Children” and “Stop Israeli Violence” flew high. There were about thirty police officers and maybe fifty protesters present. Lots of bystanders looked on. I briefly considered letting them know that the world would end in 3 ½ years if peace came, but figured they wouldn’t care if it did.
Morphine Train
A jar full of morphine tablets on an Amtrak train. That should be fun.
I popped a few in my mouth and as I waited for the train I ate a couple more. I put the rest in my pocket for the train trip. Now I was going to ride the train for 20 hours. I was a drugged out drunk wanna be hobo. This was fun. I crushed up a couple of the morphine in the station bathroom and snorted them through a dollar bill. I didn’t have a $100, or even a $20, or a $5 for that matter. Just $1.But I had the morphine.
Finally, the train arrived and I boarded in a haze of opiate induced fog. The train was late. We were delayed for hours even after the train left and before we entered Oregon the dawn was breaking. As the world became gray the details emerged. A 77 Ford truck buried in snow halfway up its orange and white stripes, a rickety shed, weather-beaten and leaning heavily to one side against a backdrop of the black waters of the Sacramento River and the pine trees springing up from the snow along its banks.
A wooden bridge stretching across the river with a three-inch blanket of white covering it evenly. I sat on the train spaced out of my gourd with no sleep and twenty hours of rail trip ahead of me. I thought how nice it would be to get a blowjob in one of the larger than usual handicapped bathrooms on the train.
The snow had that gritty gray color in the predawn light that stood in stark contrast to the rocks, boulders, and trees while the water added motion in black and white rapids and swirling eddies. The sky, a semitransparent gray wanting to be blue and maintaining a somber gleam for a time at least. At times the tracks curved ahead of us and I would see the engine and cars chasing each other like so many silver bullets from a giant machine gun. The light was refracted from everything to my retina and cornea and then translated into these beautiful gray pictures full of nothing but the absence of color. The red light on the front of the train would sometimes appear on a new outside curve or we would pass a snowed in green cabin with a ladder propped crookedly so that children could climb onto the single story roof and leap into the drifts around the sides.
A white horse in a whiter field and an endless stretching of split rail fences that only end for one-way bridges and then a myriad of tracks being switched. Freights lining up. I always searched for bums but figured it would be real cold for anyone in a box or tanker car.
I needed sleep, instead I took six more morphine tablets. The picture of snow surrounded boxcars dampened my determination to freight hop again, at least for now.
I abandoned my seat and claimed the corner chair in the sightseeing car, hoping a pretty girl would find her way to me. Maybe I would get laid on Amtrak! Nope. An old Russian lady spoke with me then bought me breakfast in the dining car. She told me what an amazing listener I was and I didn’t bother telling her I was floating on morphine clouds. She talked and talked like no one had ever listened to her before. She was much too old for me to think about fucking. Probably close to sixty, but I still considered the possibility. I looked at her pointy breasts. They were big and pointy. I could imagine what the nipples were like. Snow cone cups.
Pines emerged from the snow that littered the shores of the many lakes the train took us past. Catherine, my new Russian friend, was excited about the snow. Like a schoolgirl. I thought to myself that perhaps she would offer me money to fuck her. I would do it. I would probably do it if she just asked me without the money. When had I become such a pervert? Yesterday, I told myself. You became a pervert yesterday. With that, my confusion disappeared and I began to feel whole again.
The train stopped for several hours outside the town of Klamath. Catherine left. Klamath’s brick facade buildings looked as inviting as the tiny tavern with three snow covered pickups in its lonely parking lot. People on the train began to wake up as I wandered back to my seat and I couldn’t help seeing a beautiful girl lying across from me. She sat up and looked over at me. I needed sleep.
I decided to up my dosage taking three more of the tiny morphine tablets. I let them dissolve in my mouth and then took a swallow of coffee. Speedball.
I ate the last four morphine pills a few minutes later. I was enjoying the ethereal feeling from them. I bummed two smokes in Eugene, one for then and one for later. Feeling quite light I got back on the train. The pretty girl was there. She was certainly friendly enough when I got there.
Actually, not friendly enough at all. She was an 18-year-old virgin on her way to Albany to lose her virginity with her boyfriend who went to OSU. Why did she tell me that? I liked that her nose was a little too big and her smile a little too perfect. Inside of ten minutes my hand was on her thigh. She was resting her hand on my bicep in a friendly way. Then it was time for her to get off the train. We were in Albany and I watched in jealousy as she got off the train and jumped into her boyfriend’s arms. Fucker.
My stomach begin doing flip-flops. I curled up into the fetal position on my seat in the coach car and fell asleep as we made our way to Portland. A banging hot teen girl stopped me as I passed her seat and asked if I liked raves. She must have been fifteen. I loved her. She asked me to sit with her.
She loved to dance and she asked me if I wanted to explore the train with her. Her name was Brook and she was fabulous. She asked me to buy her a beer.
We went to the dining car where I bought a whiskey, and she quickly poured half into her Gatorade bottle. She did it without my permission. I swear! The attendant left for a minute and she was stealing things from the cupboards. “It’s not what you take, it’s how you do it.” We made out in the bathroom and then, luckily, we were in Seattle. Where we were both going. Where her parents were waiting for her.