Train

He was on a train.

Third seat from the front door of the compartment, left side. Alone.

Across the aisle, a man peered dreamily out his window, sipping water from a cup and fingering a cigar in his hand. In front of Jeremy, a different man in a suit had his face hidden behind a Chicago newspaper. “CANCELS ASSESSMENT AGAINST MRS. KENNEDY” read the headline. Jeremy couldn’t see the rest of the story.

A woman had just walked through the compartment door, clutching a purse and looking fearful. Now she stepped carefully forward. The train bumped around incessantly, moving people this way and that, threatening to knock them out of their seats completely. The woman made a loud noise as she fell into an open one. Her face reddened and she looked determinedly at the back of the seat in front of her, not wanting to show her embarrassment to the world.

Jeremy turned his head slowly as the train jolted him around in his seat. There was a thin layer of dust on the outside of his window, blurring his view of the countryside. Pastures with grazing cattle rolled by. He had never been further north than St. Louis before, but there was nothing unfamiliar about this place.

He fingered his rapidly disappearing spare change in his pocket. That scared him — the notion of an empty pocket.

Nothing left but lint and sand. Nothing to do, nowhere else to go.

Just emptiness.

He sighed and closed his eyes. They were brown when open—not light or dark, just brown. Plain, like the dirt. His hair was straight and a very light brown, almost a dirty blonde. The dust made it look darker.

He had left Dardanelle five days previously on foot, walking and walking along deserted highways and busy towns where no one knew his face. Twice, someone let him ride in a car. The last one took him all the way to Salona. There, he caught his train for New York.

Now the iron horse rolled bumpily but steadily forward over its tracks.

He hoped it would lead him somewhere good. Somewhere where he needed to be, where things would be okay. So he wouldn’t have to worry about empty pockets every again.