Chapter 3: Freaked-out, Insecure, Neurotic, and Emotional

October 4th, 1995, 9:22 AM CT, Mile 654, 20 miles north of Malvern, AR

Sharon Roberts was rushing to get her kids, Jessica and William, to school. They were going to be late, and she put her foot even closer to the rubber matted floor and grabbed at the four-on-the-tree manual transmission lever for a downshift. This mainly caused the ancient Checker Marathon she had inherited from her father to growl in protest, although it did slightly improve the car’s speed. It was a 1962 model with a Perkins diesel engine, and it did not enjoy being rushed. Or even moved with vague alacrity, really.

Certainly, it was an ancient car, but the Checker’s manufacturer, Checker Motor Company of Kalamazoo, Michigan, still were able to provide parts for it, even though car manufacturing had ended 13 years ago. She had met the current owner, David Markin, once, and he promised her that if she ever needed anything for the car, she need but ask. There were towns that still used the car in active taxi service, and the last one was built just 13 years before. It was a big, safe, solid car, and it never gave her an ounce of trouble. She particularly liked how she could do all kinds of repairs on it, many which didn’t even require Checker-specific parts.

The hardest thing to find parts for was actually the Perkins Diesel engine. Fortunately for her, and anyone else who happened to have the rare diesel option, parts weren’t usually required. They ran and ran and ran. With over 460k miles on the engine, it ran exactly the same as the day the car was new: crankily. It was slow, cantankerous, and gave the driver a hand massage right through the steering wheel and gear lever. The whole car shook mightily even when warm; worse when it was cold. It was part of what gave the faithful beast its lovable personality; she loved the car on an anthropomorphic level.

What’s more, it fit all five of her kids in the back seat, and left room for two more people to comfortably fit up front. She didn’t remember when it was brand new, but her dad had bought it only a few months before she was born. It was the only car she had ever known, and she wouldn’t give it up for the world. She even gave it a name- it was Chex, and she loved it enough to divorce her husband for attempting to (unsuccessfully) dent the thick metal with a bat when he was angry at her during one of their nasty fights.

Chex was a solid beast, built to run for decades on the cratered New York streets in taxi service. In the hands of her conservative and gentle father in his job as a salesman, it was never even breaking a sweat. Even the largely original seats showed no significant wear. She felt safe in Chex; it gave her a warm feeling of familiarity and security she had been lacking in her life since she left home to start a family.

They started to approach a local rail crossing and she saw a train in the corner of her eye. Based on its distance, she figured she could easily beat it, and pressed the pedal the rest of the way to the floor. As before, even more racket came out of the hood, and little acceleration to show for it- the 3.8 liter four-cylinder Perkins was built for huge mileages and a long life, not for speed. 88bhp was not enough power to provide speed in the leviathan of a car, although the 210 lb-ft of torque kept the car moving.

“Jesus mom! What are you doing!?“ screamed Jessica, a look of abject horror on her face.

Sharon looked again at the train and was shocked at how far it had closed in the short time. She ripped her foot off the gas, slammed it onto the brake, using the other foot to facilitate a double downshift. As soon as she was done with that, she jammed the parking brake on, knowing that a traditional stop wouldn’t work here, and then twisted the wheel all the way to one side; it took a ton of effort, as the steering was not power assisted.

She pumped the brakes as fast as she could, but she knew that there was nothing that she could do in terms of control now; the huge car was straining to stay on its wheels as it slid sideways. Silently, she prayed to god and begged Chex to not let her down, and protect her like the car had done so many times before. As if it was listening, the car skidded hard to the left in a protest of screaming drum brakes and burning rubber, but it resolutely resolved to remain upright.

The car came to rest just inches from the rail crossing, tire smoke billowing from the wheels and the thick black lines that trailed them. The train had turned on its ditch lights and was already making the ground around the tracks rumble. Its caterwauling horn admonished her for the near miss as it hurtled past her, gleaming stainless steel in the hot Arkansas sun; the engineer had been cursing her, and had just barely avoided to jam the brake lever into emergancy when he realized it was going to be a very near miss.

No wonder it was moving so fast, she thought as she hyperventilated from the near death experience, it was a passenger train. They really should slow those things down!

She stared out the window at it as it screamed by. The wind buffeting shook even this heavy and large car angrily, as it rocked on its beefy commercial grade springs, and she felt that if her kids were to stick their hands out the window, they could almost touch the thundering train. And then it was gone, its trailing lights and the MHC’s EOT device blinking as it went.

She opened the door of the car and got out. She reached her hand out and patted the car’s heavy gauge steel fender. Almost- but not quite- silently, she whispered: “Thank you, dear Chex. I knew you would never let me down.”

In her chest, her heart betrayed the thought, beating louder than the train’s pair of 16 cylinder prime movers.

October 4th, 1995, 10:22 AM EST, Amtrak Station, Jacksonville, FL

Mitchell Bates was irritated. He had promised that he would be home for his son’s birthday, and he was not looking forward to the phone call he had to make to his wife telling her it wasn’t going to happen. The train had been held in Jacksonville for over 12 hours now, and he was hearing that the train wouldn’t be moving until Hurricane Opal left the Pensacola area. He was thinking about asking the conductor if he could go in the station and make a call to his wife.

He was particularly pissed that the train wasn’t expected to even start moving before 9 AM tomorrow. Some of the passengers were upset, and they were busting his chops, but most of those had taken Amtrak’s offer of alternative transportation. It was just the time issue. But he had been told that due to the extra time, he’d be getting overtime for the first extra day and doubletime for anything beyond that. So he was being compensated. It was not much of a consolation to his son, whom he was breaking a promise to, nor his wife, who he had swore to he would be home for the party.

He had made his irritation known to his boss, the Chief of On Board Service, and the chief seemed less than interested. After all, this was the life one signs up for when they decide to work for long distance rail service. Trains get delayed and things like this happen. It is one of the reasons that sleeping car attendants get both a very solid wage, and tips, plus all the benefits of working for Amtrak, with railroad retirement on top of it.

“There’s something else, though,” Bates told his boss, “I’m sensing something dark. Death maybe. Something really bad is going to happen because of this delay. I can feel it in my soul, man. This ain’t gonna be a good trip, no sir.”

“Oh come on, we’re being delayed to prevent something bad from happening, how is this going to cause it? Get you head together, Mitch. Its just a delay, and we all gonna make a lotta extra money because of it.”

Bates shrugged. His boss wasn’t going to believe him. He not only felt that something bad was going to happen. He had this feeling that he was going to die on this train. He tried to shrug it off. But it kept haunting him. He wasn’t one given to these kinds of feelings. He wears usually a straight shooter, not a superstitious man. But he couldn’t shake the feeling in his soul that his time was near, and it was making him feel awful. He hoped he would be able to get home to see his son, even if it was after the kid’s birthday.

He knew it was probably silliness- and double-time is a thing one should not pass up. He’d make it up to his son easily enough ... The extra money he’d get from the double-time would go a long way to paying for giving him a computer, which his son had always wanted but he couldn’t afford to give him. He had been looking at a Macintosh Performa 6230CD, and with a 15” monitor, it would be about half paid for just with the double time. He could get his kid a Macintosh; the best consumer computer on the market, just like what he used in school.

October 4th, 1995, 10:08 AM CT, Amtrak Station, Arkadelphia, AR

The train was briefly stopped, and the four kids were still chattering away in the booth they had snagged, the one right next to the upstairs bar in the old lounge car. They sat among the backdrop of 70s Formica colors and shag carpet, brightly lit by the windows and skylights. They sat there gaily, and everybody but Josh noticed that Akilah was giving him the eyes. He didn’t notice that she noticed him doing the same thing easily. It was almost funny for Jill and George to watch. Akilah was frustrated though.

He is so clueless, but he really seems like my type. So smart, so nice, so sweet... Akilah thought.

She wondered what her parents would think if she was to have a Jewish friend. They’d probably blow their tops, and that would really be putting it lightly. They would assume he wanted something out of her, and would just be using her and anyway she shouldn’t be interested in the people who destroyed her country. Or killed her brother. That’s how her parents thought, whether she liked it or not.

She hated that last part. The person that killed her brother was her brother, period, end of discussion. The Israelis, who she disliked the tactics of, did not kill him. They did not ask him to go into their country and blow himself up, with a suicide bomb, in a crowd of people, most or all of whom were probably basically innocent individuals who, like her, just wanted to see an end to this nonsense. No, he and the local band of self-righteous fools did. That was one of the many reasons she decided to go to school in America. To get away from all the childish hatred. It was so counterproductive!

The pointless hatred drove her nuts. She could see that Josh had reservations about her. She suspected, however, that they were similar to the reservations she had about him. That is, that his parents wouldn’t accept her for what she was, and would see her only as a Palestinian- and not as a person. That was possibly true; that is the way hatred works. In order to truly hate another person, you have to dehumanize them. But something told her that if they were to get some chance by themselves, she would get a chance to talk it over with him. But she was afraid.

She had never really had a relationship with a boy before. Her parents had prevented her from really even making much in the way of male friends. The ones they introduced her to were of the kind that thought women were not the equal of men, and that was not the way she wanted life to be. Maybe she was rebellious. Maybe she was breaking from tradition. Maybe she wasn’t the best daughter. But she was a bright girl, she could do more with her life, and she was bound to prove it. She lied her head off to her parents about chastity and coming back when she was done getting a degree, and she had meant none of it.

She got the distinct impression that the couple they had met were fully aware of all the things going on behind the scenes. They just seemed like they would notice that kind of stuff. They seemed both very observant and self amused. They also seemed to be able to communicate with each other visually, without words. That reminded her that she wanted to ask about and talk about George’s relationship with Jill- but she didn’t want to do it so publicly. She had a feeling they were being very careful to try and keep the whole thing a secret and it would be wrong and perhaps even dangerous for her to expose what she figured she saw.

They almost seemed like the kind of loving couple she wished she could be part of one day. They seemed happy just to be in each other’s company. They were either best friends or lovers. It had to be one or the other, this kind of relationship didn’t come with casual friendship.

She had learned a lot about them over the course of the table’s conversation. George’s heritage had him working on rails, that was almost a given, given how much of a ... railfreak? Seemed like a mild way to put it! But yeah. She had thought George was very intelligent, but didn’t seem to care much about education. He very much seemed to be his own person, with his own thoughts and ideas. A very independent thinker. An iconoclast, for sure, a man who lived life on his own terms; a very expensive way to live.