Wichita

“How many girls have you hurt, Johnny?” Jake asked.

“More than I want to think about,” I told him gruffly.

In many ways I sincerely regretted telling him the stories of Billie Jean and Daphne and Sadie. But they were stories that meant a lot to me. They were defining characteristics of my life. I did not place enjoyment on hurting innocent people. Daphne hadn’t done anything but show her Grandmother she was on the wrong path in life- like so many other teens.

But more than that, there was a future to that story. Eh, perhaps I should leave that for later, because Jake asked me another question. He really asked too many of them.

At this point we were racing towards Jacksonville. We’d be there by the end of the day if Jake kept up this pace. One of the things that makes me different than Jake is that money doesn’t attract me at all. It’s a nice toy to have, but means less to me than the junk it buys me. Not having money has bought me the chance to live without controls, and that’s worth more to me than any money.

He was rushing. I never have to rush. It’s a valuable asset.

But anyway, that personal question...

“You said once you and Rachel had sex. What happened there?”

The anger I had been feeling swelled up. Rachel would always be a sore topic with me. I had her, I wanted her like nothing else, and I lost her. All I had left was a little part of her, hers and mine. And I didn’t like to talk about that, too much, anyway. I was unbelievably angry at myself for what had happened. I had moved on, just barely, but it was raw. Jake was like alcohol being rubbed into it.

“I’d rather not talk about it,” I told him. But thoughts swelled around in my head. I couldn’t control them. It was so long ago. I sat there and silence and though all about it.

I got in to Chicago on the Three Rivers. The Broadway Limited had been discontinued back in 1995, but was replaced by an all coach train intended to carry mail. By the time I was riding in it that day, it had a sleeping car, a barely refurbished Heritage 10-6. By that time most single-level sleepers on the Amtrak system had been given the newer Viewliner sleeping car, which was more modern but shoddily built.

I liked the Heritage sleeper more, but this one was particularly shoddy in its upkeep. I had heard somewhere that the middle of the next year would bring the Heritage Sleeper’s demise due to the lack of a retention-tank toilet. Not only was this the only train in the system to run with a Heritage car, but it was the only one in the system that offered no meals to its sleeper passengers.

Not that there would be much in the way of meals to be offered. The train only ran with a cafe car. The Three Rivers was, first and foremost, a freight train. It carried passengers incidentally. At the time, Amtrak was under a mandate to become “self-sufficient” by 2002. It was an unrealistic mandate, and Amtrak was being run by a total jerkoff political hack named George Warrington.

Warrington decided that the key to making money for Amtrak was running freight, and to hell with the needs of the passengers. So the Three Rivers that day ran with four P40DC locomotives, two coach cars, a snack-coach, a sleeping car, and 26 mail and express cars. Not that there wasn’t demand for more than two coaches ... it was just that Norfolk Southern had placed a limit on train length of 30 cars, and they wanted to fit as many freight cars on there as they could.

Fortunately, Congress saw the light and fired Warrington, replacing him with the more passenger-focused David Gunn. Warrington went on to screwup New Jersey Transit, before having the decency to contract pancreatic cancer and die in 2007.

When in a meeting with the North Jersey Transportation Planning Commission, the arrogant Warrington was asked about off-peak riders. He explained that they were “incidental” to their business. I mean seriously. Not a passenger friendly passenger company boss.

Anyway, I had arrived in Chicago and went over to my post office box. I had plenty of money at the time, and had been heading to Chicago primarily to check that box. I also planned on taking some of the money I had accumulated and put it in my and Rachel’s locker. I had promised various people I would check my box every six months, and so I was doing so.

In the box were various notes from various people, which I would take the time to respond to later. Jenny, Kelly, Cheryl, Samantha, Jimmy, both Johnny’s, Kimmy, and Jason were among the people who wrote me. Also among the correspondence was a note from Rachel.

This one I opened immediately. In it was a note saying she had secured residence in Wichita and would love to see me. She was working for some guy who needed heavy lifting done around a storage facility and was providing limited money and some food and shelter. She enclosed the address. The date was a few weeks before, so I suspected that she was still working there. She had indicated she would write to me if she left, and that she would cross through Chicago shortly there after if that happened.

I saw no evidence of her recent presence in our locker, either, so I looked at the time, and went over to the Amtrak ticket window. At the time, Amtrak was offering a Thruway ticket to Wichita via taking the Southwest Chief to Kansas City, Missouri, and then taking a (what appeared to be) Greyhound bus to Wichita en-route to Oklahoma city where it would then provide connection to the Heartland Flyer.

I bought a ticket for those connections. Of course, it was only about noon now, which gave me three hours before I needed to board the Southwest Chief. I used that time to go through the letters, and formulate replies to them. The collections of friends and family I had built up over the years after I left home was a source of pleasure for me.

Most of the replies weren’t long, especially to my North Dakota family. Mostly they were either of the, “I’m fine and alive” variety or of the, “Sure, I’ll come to see you!” variety. I put them all into the post box with stamps, and went into the dumpy coach lobby to prepare to board the train.

Sooner than I was expecting, they called boarding on the train and I boarded and sat in an unrefurbished Superliner coach that smelled of mildew. Another wonderful tribute to Warrington’s misguided management priorities. Worn out and dirty equipment was becoming the norm across the country. I was honestly worried about what would happen if Amtrak were to be shut down, as Congress was threatening to do.

Anyway, the train was not particularly full and I had a seat all to myself. It gave me time to think about life and similar things. All in all my life was enjoyable, but I was beginning to think it somewhat empty. I had been traveling for 16 years by that point, and I was 33 years old. I had children all over the place by then, sure, most of which I didn’t know.

I had my family in North Dakota. They were in many ways an anchor to reality. I was there with such regular frequency, I even had a permanent room in that rambling mess Cheryl called a house. Cheryl had so many kids by now.

Samantha and Jason had married, unofficially, last year. Jason had been 22; Samantha 20. They had a very loving relationship, and had developed feelings for each other. They been had off in their little world together at the farm, and had both decided to bring the farming land back into operation when Jason turned 17; with all the work they did together, their love changed. Cheryl gave up a couple of years ago and let them share the relationship that had developed together with the rest of the family.

Cheryl had learned a lesson and has been more careful about her other kids. But she was a well of love, and had always been. She couldn’t keep them apart; it was too far from her personality to do something like that. Their wedding had been a time of great joy. Jared was born between them a few months ago, and Cheryl had plans to build a separate house in the complex for them to live.

One of the few bits of luck with Kelly’s feelings was that she was so fixated on me, she was not interested in Jimmy- at least that way.

Besides Jason and Samantha, Kimmy was getting involved in the farm. Jimmy was a bookworm and was talking about college. Cheryl had another daughter in 1989, Sally, now 11, who was emotionally the closest to her mother; she was fathered by a guy I met only briefly before Cheryl sent him packing. Johnny Mahoney, our son, was nine and was turning out to be extraordinary in ability to use computers; Cheryl had reluctantly had a satellite internet system installed just for him. Megan, whose father I never met, was a cute little kid.

Cheryl and I had an incredible amount of unprotected sex a while ago. She had a bun in the oven I was convinced was mine. She had told me when I was there recently, that this was her last time. She was getting a bit worn out. Samantha was likely not done, either. She already had nine kids running around her house. She was 43 already. She’d be on social security when this latest kid was ready to leave the house.

I had no doubt that she would be instrumentally involved in raising her first grandkid, and all the rest of them, though. That was Cheryl all over.

Over the past 13 years that I had known Rachel as a companion I had come to be deeply in love with her. Once again this time I had been sorta kinda maybe thinking of settling down with her. Or maybe getting married but not settling down. We were both hobos. Maybe we could hobo together forever. The relationship I had with her was very different and special from the ones I had with others.

At around 6:30 I went into the diner and had a mediocre meal of some rather fatty steak, excessively overpriced. By 8:00 I was in the lounge, and I was quite admittedly drinking too much. Other people were avoiding me. I was in one of those drunks that comes from being lost. I didn’t know where to go or what to do or how to ask a girl to marry me.

I wanted to formalize what Rachel and me had. I was sick of pretending that I really ever wanted to be apart from her. I don’t know how she felt about me, with regards to that. She was scared I’d run from her for good, I guess. That is a suspicion I had. I knew I was the only man she was involved with. I was right messed up when it came to her at this point.

At 10:00 I sort of fell off the train as it pulled into Kansas City on time. Amazingly, Burlington Northern Santa Fe had to be the only railroad who treated Amtrak to on-time performance. I guess to its managers, this was still the Super Chief and had to get through. It was nice to be on a train that wasn’t being whacked with the mallets of freight operators pissed off that Amtrak got to compete with them with faster trains paying lower trackage fees.

I was right. The connecting bus was a Greyhound. It was one of those beat up MCI coaches that really looked like it was five years overdue for a needed scrapping, let alone retirement, from what was supposed to be the premier bus operator. Greyhound’s takeover of National Trailways really destroyed the desire to be competitive on national routes. I remember when Greyhound was actually a nice riding experience, way back when I started out. This bus woulda been a little bit old then, I suppose.

I sat next to some slutty blonde chick who was wearing a tiny bit here, and not much anywhere else. Back in Hornell, when I left home, wearing something like this would get you arrested. Nowadays it seemed like this was what the less respectable teenagers wore to school. I sound like an old man, I guess. Back in my day indeed.

Luckily, she seemed to think I was just a fat, disgusting, middle aged old fart. So she wasn’t interested in hitting on me. I don’t know why she thought I was disgusting. She told me I smelled. I showered on the Three Rivers, however. She was most rude. It was, in general, a most unpleasant ride. I know being poor and being on a crowded Greyhound bus could make one cranky, but she was pushing it, quite frankly.

About two hours into it, I told her to shut her mouth or I would shut it for her.

“What are you going to do, Gramps?” she asked me.

Gramps? Dear god. I was 33! I admit I had a beard and my skin was a bit craggy from all the years I spent in the sun, but Gramps was pushing it. I was still a bit under the influence so my patience were not quite what they should have been.

“Well, how about I give you a choice?” I growled at her, “I can either use a roll of duct tape to tape your mouth shut, or I can knock you unconscious, or I could break all of your teeth. Or you can just plain shut up. The choice is entirely yours.”

One thing not up for dispute was that my balled fist would be not substantially smaller than the little twits head. I think she saw the logic of picking the final option presented to her. She remained silent from that point forward, which was a blessing you could not possibly understand. Super calloused fragile lips hexed by halitosis.

The bus arrived in Wichita at about three in the morning. I was tired and aggravated, because I still had to have that skank sitting next to me over the entire period. I found an alley near the bus station, found an alcove between two dumpsters, and went to sleep. It was a coolish night for the time of the year and I slept quite well. I’m sure my hangover didn’t hurt with the sleeping either.

I was woken up the next day around noon by some garbage me- er, excuse me, refuse collection engineers, who were emptying the dumpsters. They were a little startled by my presence, but they were kind enough to wake me up instead of just grabbing the two dumpsters from besides me.

I ate lunch in a local diner. The food was not bad, but it wasn’t fantastic either. The coffee was surprisingly good, though, for the midwest. I usually anticipated abominable coffee in the midwest so that was a pleasant surprise. I walked my way over to the storage facility, making it around 7:30 at night.

The entrance was closed off by a gate, and the entire complex was fenced. Barbed wire fencing. Very welcoming. Not that she expected to see me or anything. I guess a storage facility of that type is a sufficient theft risk to warrant the fencing. But man, is it a pain in the ass to climb such a fence.

I walked around the complex until I heard her voice, pleading with some guy over not touching her. That was not like her. I suspected that she was planning on getting him on a rope-a-dope. If there was one thing Rachel knew how to do, it was take care of herself. Still, I didn’t want to take chances it was like three strong guys ganging up on her.

I kicked in the door to the caretakers apartment, and saw the guy who was drunk as living hell, attempting to convince her to get undressed. He was a not a large guy, and I suspect she could have handled him. In any case, I proceeded to pick the sonovabitch up by his collar and looked at him.

“Be missing,” I told him coldly.

“Get the fuck off of my property,” he told me self-importantly, “You have no right to break into priv-” he stopped abruptly as I hurled him against a wall.

As a general concept, it is a bad idea to argue with someone who has you picked up by the neck. Especially when he looks angry. I would have thought that was common sense. But the guy stank of alcohol, and was probably not not thinking clearly. Also he looked like the kind of guy for whom sense was a relatively uncommon thing even when sober.

“What a jerk. Are you ok, lady?” I asked.

“Who ar- JOHNNY!” Rachel suddenly screamed and tackled me.

We got into a long, and unusually romantic, embrace.

I hadn’t seen her in a while. Too long, really. Almost a year. Ok, ok. I loved her. I loved her very deeply. We were two of a kind, really.