By the middle of the morning, the vapour I had seen between the cars had frozen. Each small passageway smoked like a deep freeze, with complicated crusts of frost covering it, and solid bubbles of ice, and new vapour pouring from cracks in the rubber seal. It was pretty, this snow and ice, and no less pretty outside; but it was also a nuisance. It was now past eleven and we had not yet reached Cleveland. Where was Cleveland? And I was not the only one who was perplexed. Up and down the train, passengers were buttonholing conductors and saying, 'Hey, what happened to Cleveland? You said we were supposed to be there by now. What's the story?' And yet Cleveland might have been right outside the window, buried under all that snow.
My conductor was leaning against a frosted window. I wanted to ask him what happened to Cleveland, but before I could speak he said, 'I'm looking for my switchman.'
'Anything wrong?'
'Oh, no. It's just that every time we go by here, he throws a snowball at me.'
'By the way, where's Cleveland?'
'Way off. Didn't you know we're running four hours late? Frozen switch back in Erie held us up.'
'I have to catch a train at four-thirty in Chicago.'
'You'll never make it.'
'Beautiful,' I said, and started away.
'Don't worry. I'll wire ahead in Elkhart. When we get to Chicago we'll just dump the whole thing in Amtrak's lap. They'll put you up at the Holiday Inn. You'll be in good shape.'
'But I won't be in Texas.'
'You leave this to me, sir.' He touched the visor of his cap. 'Ever see snow like this? God, it's terrible.' He looked out of the window again and sighed. 'Can't imagine what happened to that switchman. Probably got frostbite.'
It was hours before we got to Cleveland and, as with most delays, the slowness of our arrival created a sense of anti-climax: I felt I had already given it all the thought it deserved. Now the snow only bored me, and the houses depressed me- they were tiny bungalows not much bigger than the cars parked beside them. The greatest joke was that Cleveland, which had been smothered by the previous week's snowstorm, which had broadcast news items about survival techniques at home (intelligence — welcome, one would have thought, to Arctic explorers — about sleeping bags, body heat, keeping your condominium warm in an emergency, cooking on Sterno stoves and the like) — this city, which was frozen solid under drifts of snow, had to cheer it a long story in the Cleveland Plain Dealer about the monstrous inefficiency of the Russians in snow removal. The Russians! Under the headline MOSCOW SNOW DIG-OUT CROWN TARNISHED, with its Moscow dateline, the story began, 'This city's once-renowned snow removal capabilities have been drastically diminished this winter by a combination of bureaucratic blunders and unexpectedly heavy snowfalls.' It continued in the same gloating vein: 'The problem is apparently not a lack of special equipment. . Residents are complaining bitterly this winter about the sad state of the streets. . Still, heavy December snows and inadequate parking regulations seem a poor excuse for streets that are still clogged several weeks later.'
It was Mid-West smugness. In order to boast in Ohio you have to mention the Russians. Even better, a mention of Siberia which, as a matter of fact, Ohio in winter greatly resembles. I read that news item in Cleveland. I read the entire Plain Dealer in Cleveland. In Cleveland we were delayed nearly two hours. When I asked the conductor the reason he said it was the snow; and the track had been buckled by ice.
'It's a real bad winter.'
I told him that in Siberia the trains run on time. But it was a cheap crack. I would choose Cleveland over Irkutsk any day, even though — this was obvious — Cleveland was colder.
I went to the Club Car and had a morning pick-me-up and read The Wild Palms. Then I had another pick-me-up, and another. I considered a fourth, ordered it, but decided to nurse it. If I had many more of these pick-me-ups I'd be under the table.
'What are you reading?'
It was a plump freckled-faced fiftyish lady sipping a can of sugar-free tonic.
I showed her the title.
She said, 'I've heard of it. Any good?'
'It has its moments.' Then I laughed. But it wasn't anything to do with Faulkner. Once, on an Amtrak train not far from here, I had had a book which no one had queried; and yet it had aroused considerable interest. It was the biography of the writer of horror tales, H.P. Lovecraft, and the title Lovecraft had led my fellow passengers to believe that throughout a two-day trip I had had my nose in a book about sexual technique.
She was from Flagstaff, she said, and 'Whereabouts you from?'
'Boston.'
'Really?' She was interested. She said, 'Will you say something for me? Say G-o-d.'
'God.'
She clapped her hands delightedly. She was, despite her plumpness, very small, with a broad flat face. Her teeth were crooked, slanting in a uniform way, as if they had been filed. I was baffled by the pleasure I had given her in saying the word.
'Gawd,' she said, mimicking me.
'What do you say?'
'I say gahd.'
'I'm sure He understands.'
'I love to hear you say it. I was on this train a week ago, going east. We were delayed by the snow, but it was fantastic. They put us up at the Holiday Inn!'
'I hope they don't do that to us.'
'Don't say that.'
'I've got nothing against the Holiday Inn,' I said. 'It's just that I have a train to catch.'
'Everybody does. I bet I'm going further than you — Flagstaff, remember?' She took another sip of her tonic and said, 'In the end it took us days — days — to get from Chicago to New York. There was snow everywhere! There was a boy on the train. He was from Boston. He was on the seat beside me.' She smiled — a kind of demure leer: 'We slept together.'
'That was lucky.'
'I know what you're thinking, but it wasn't like that. He was on his side and I was on my side. But' — she went pious — 'we slept together. What a time that was. I don't drink, but he drank enough for the both of us. Did I tell you he was twenty-seven years old? From Boston. And all through the night he said to me, "Gawd, you're beautiful." and he kissed me I don't know how many times, "Gawd, you're beautiful." '
'This was at the Holiday Inn?'
'On the train. One of the nights,' she said. 'The Chair Car. It was very, very important to me.'
I said it sounded like a very sweet experience and tried to imagine it, the drunken youth pawing this plump freckly woman while the Chair Car (smelling, as it always did at night, of old socks and stale sandwiches) snored.
'Not just sweet. It was very important. I needed it just then. That's why I was going East.'
'To meet this fellow?'
'No, no,' she said peevishly. 'My mother died.'
'I'm sorry.'
'I got word of it in Flagstaff and caught the train. Then we got held up in Chicago, if you call the Holiday Inn being held up! I met Jack round about Toledo — right about here, if this is Toledo.' She looked out the window. ' "Gawd, you're beautiful." It really cheered me up. It came between so much.'