Pulling through Marysville, you can see the sign on the Dairy Queen that says “GET YOUR ICE CREAM CAKE HERE”. It hovers in the air like the ghost of a good idea, the kind of good idea that melts in the sun in about seventy seconds, leaving behind a sticky pool of corn syrup and hydrogenated vegetable oil and barely enough fudgy filling to make an overpriced cake worthwhile.
Aboard the train. Rocking, swaying.
Marysville slides by the window. Asphalt, concrete curb forms, fast
food joints. “Get your ice cream cake here”. That's all it seems
to offer, a junk food destination.
The best difference between travelling
by train and travelling the freeway is the occasional forested byway,
the odd river delta that doesn't blur by in a six-lane haze. For
every missing lane, an afforded opportunity to play name-that-river,
what's-that-weed. Spot an eagle, spot a rotting pier. Once the thrill
of the train was being exposed to the probability of meeting a
stranger. Strangers don't abound like they used to. Now they're all
just people, and you don't like people nearly as much as you like
strangers.
You've travelled this corridor enough
to have seen made visible the new value of old buildings. The wrong
side of the tracks need apply no longer. You can testify to the
shift; every granary become a microbrewery, every warehouse become a
furniture loft. You want to cite more examples, but a decent
travelogue's no list; it's a calling out at best. It could be a
conversation. It could be a revelation, but there's so little to
reveal, of yourself, to yourself, anyway. Of others, it's different.
You listen to half the phone conversation of those seated nearby, to
their own particular methods of unravelling a story.
The woman (lady, you want to call her)
behind you, for example. Accidentally stuck on the train while
depositing her teenaged daughter, she has to call another child to
come pick her up. She's a master of suspense. “Hi”, she says.
“Are you home...Well, where are you?...Well, I'm sorry to interrupt
your morning...I'm on the train...Well, I was dropping off Tina with
her luggage...Yeah, she's going to Angela's...Well, when the train
started going with me still on it....Yeah, yeah!...They're gonna let
me off at Edmonds...Yes. So you can come and pick me up?...Well, in
about twenty minutes...Yup. Uh huh (&&etc.)”. So perfect,
her story arc crests a little with each sentence fragment, couching
her appeal for an inconvenient ride so charmingly by investing the
other party in the outcome of her story. I don't even think her
method is conscious, although surely it must once upon a time have
been. She's professionally dressed, you imagine her a masterful
negotiator, a superb navigator of small favours. You will be
disappointed to see the conclusion of her story when she disembarks
shortly.
You, though, you'll stay on the train,
and where will your narrative bring you? You started on the train,
your story entered with you still aboard the train, and it'll step
off the train at Edmonds as well, with the lady in the pantsuit,
leaving you gazing out the window at invasive weeds, eagles' nests,
refurbished roadhouses, the Dairy Queens and the Burger Kings...
