Ottawa

Or that’s what I had been planning to do. It had struck me again, as it has a million times before. I bolted for the door. I was terrified. How would it turn out? Would they fight? Would they hate me? What if I settled down? What if I had to be a parent to my children? What if I became ... trapped?

It was craziness. I was already to a distinct extent a parent to most of my children. I visited Kelly and Cheryl frequently. I spent most holidays there. I probably spent an average of a month and a half a year there. I was tied to them; they were my family. But I guess I have the option to just disappear into oblivion if I wanted to; at any time; at any moment.

I could and I couldn’t. My heart was tied to them. It was like the small business owner who enjoys the knowledge he can tell any customer he wants to go fuck themselves and not get fired. He can’t really; it would be bad for business. But you maintain the illusion of freedom of being able to do that. But that illusion is a powerful one.

I ran out the door, my father calling after me, a sad, broken, and lonely man. I had taken everything from him. Here I was doing it again.

But it wasn’t as if I had control of my legs. I really didn’t. All of me, on some level, wanted to stop, turn around, and go back. To end this. But something stopped me. For me this wasn’t over. This was far from over.

My feet had wings. I ran so fast I could hear the wind whistling past my ears.

I ran down Dennis Ave, and then stopped. I skidded down the river bank to sit on the shore. I curled up in a semi-fetal position, my arms wrapped around my knees, and stared into the rushing water in front of me.

I was crying. I couldn’t face anything. Hobos are strong? Bullshit.

I’m weak. So god damned weak. It doesn’t take strength to deal with the problems of others’ creation, really. You can fix it, and laugh at their mistakes or misfortunes.

Fixing problems of your own creation, though, that’s a different story entirely.

I couldn’t bring myself to clean up a mess I had left myself in. A mess I started years ago, and just kept making worse. Children- half a dozen or more, many of which have never met each other. Lovers, women I’ve loved, scattered around the country like buckshot. Women I’d hurt. People I’d killed. A love who meant the world to me who died. Died because I hadn’t been there to protect her. Because I couldn’t bring myself to accept just how much she meant to me. Because we couldn’t. Because I had ran away, yet again.

It is a perpetual mystery how I managed to live this long. I’m not sure its a good thing that I had. I don’t mean other people trying to hurt me. It is a mystery I hadn’t killed myself yet, and put myself out of my own misery. Out of so many other people’s misery. Out of the misery of people I had yet to meet.

Yet here I sit, on a river bank. Of a river I had grown up playing in. The Canisteo River. Of my childhood. A childhood I had thrown away.

I remember happy times here. I remember long walks with Suzie. We were loners in our own little world. We’d walk and talk. Long long walks. Play games. Chase each other. Play fight with each other. It was happy times. Her smile, her green eyes, her long red hair. Tickling. Making each other scream with pleasure and delight. I remembered the time she slipped and fell in and we had to be dressed down by Frank. Then I got to be dressed down by my mother when I got home.

I had a wonderful childhood here. But that was then. Now I am a mess, casting misery where ever I go.

Not to say that there hadn’t been happiness.

There had been times of happiness. The time with Jenny before she announced her pregnancy, for instance. Or all the time I spent with Cheryl and her- our- children. Or that time I spent with Kelly in Oklahoma- it had been awkward at first, but ... we took my shattered world and created an entire new one together.

Happiness had visited me. And then left me. I never seemed to be able to hold on to it for very long. I run from it. I think, perhaps, it scares me. I don’t really deserve it.

The longest period of happiness, or periods, had always been with Rachel. We were often together for months at a time. It was always filled with laughter, love, and love making. Joy and happiness. We only separated almost on a fear that if we spent too much time together it would stop working.

But that was over. And the only thing I had left of her was something I couldn’t carry with me. Our son. I had done the best I could by him; I gave him to Cheryl.

Still, I thought back to a time when Rachel and I, well, we tried to pretend we were normal human beings and we took a vacation together, the first time we were together in Toronto. We decided to go to Ottawa...

We stood in the Great Hall of Toronto Union Station. She put her arm around me and snuggled close. It felt nice. I felt happy.

The weirdest part of the relationship I had with Rachel was the difference between how she was with the rest of the world, versus the way she was with me. She felt the world was her playground. She felt the other people in her world were like her little playthings. She was brutal, she could be mean as a snake.

When someone in her vicinity indicated that they were less than worthy people, if she felt like it she would mess them up good. She would cheat them, steal from them, trick them. Hurt them. She didn’t hurt good people, but the rest of them? Fair game. I mean I’m not far off of her, I could be just as nasty if someone hurt me or someone I loved. But she’d be that way when someone hurt someone she didn’t even know.

She took great Schadenfreude in dealing with people she thought were bad. She scared me a little at first. I thought she would turn on me eventually. I’m not a great person. We both existed on the fringes of the world, looking in and laughing.

But with me she was very affectionate. She was soft and sweet and caring. Our magnetism for each other had always been strong. Her being close to me, holding me, it was like catnip. This was early in our lives together. I didn’t know why a girl so beautiful, so ... exceptional ... loved me. But she did.

Toronto Union Station, as I mentioned previously, was a monumental edifice in marble and granite. It was perhaps one of the most beautiful train stations of what was left. Much like a smaller version of New York Penn, it was a site, and a sight, to behold.

We had saved up enough money to take a little weekend vacation. We decided to go to Ottawa to see the national capital of Canada. It was an interesting city, and having seen the capital of the US already, it seemed like it would be an interesting place to visit. We liked playing tourist. It was weird going from Hobo Tourist mode to Real Tourist mode, but it was kind of fun.

There was some really cool stuff there. The Canadian War Museum was there, as was the Parliament building, the Ridieu Canal, the Air and Space museum, the National Gallery of Canada, the Notre Dame Bascilica, and of course Ridieu Hall. It was a tourist focused city, I think. We wanted to see it, anyway.

We booked ahead in the Canadian National Hotel, a famous edifice known as the Chateau Laurier. In our natural tendency to spend money to enjoy ourselves, booked a huge 810 square foot room called an Executive Suite, and planned to eat dinner in Wilfrid’s Restaurant, one of the best restaurants in the city.

The train we were taking was an early morning intercity without name. It was bloody expensive, and in our usual way, we went first class, which was referred to as VIA1. It was either first class, or the cheapest class. We never really went in between.

Our train was called and we walked out to the platform, and there stood the train. Aluminum cars painted in garish blue and yellow VIA Rail livery, they had an odd hexagonal shape. We climbed the stairs into the car, to take in the garish brown colors inside of it. It was not what I was used to when I thought of first class.

First class coaches on Amtrak had two-and-one seating with more then generous legroom. This was two-and-two seating, and the legroom was not nearly as generous. Still, the train was spotlessly clean, and we settled into our seats, which were comfortable.

The train left Toronto at the scheduled time, 9:25, and proceeded out of the station. The scenery around Toronto was nothing to write home about, and I won’t write home about it, either. It was a cityscape, like a great many other cityscapes. Graffiti and people disgracing the world in which they lived in.

Hobos use a form of hieroglyphics to communicate with each other. But we put them in inconspicuous places. Other than that, we try to leave the world we live in as clean as it was when we found it- if not cleaner. I have always found it quite disgraceful that people muck up the world with their detritus and their expressions of protest. The truth is the world is not interested in your pathetic little opinion; you have extreme temerity in thinking it is- it’s just an eyesore. Truly.

We were served drinks by the attendant, as was included in the first class fare, which I was quickly coming to the conclusion that it was a total rip-off. Still, much of the fun of train travel is your companion, and mine was wonderful. We were here together because Rachel had saved my life. Had it not been for her, I probably would not have made it after Suzie botched up our meeting. She had saved me in so many ways. Her companionship, even in silence, made life better.

We quickly shot past Guildwood, Ontario, a wealthy neighborhood on the outer edge of Toronto. We saw some huge homes that looked old and mostly beautiful. The train was running at a 100 mph clip, the fastest train in Canada. It was an impressive velocity, and the world moved by us in a whisk of color and blurs. The life of the hobo is not usually fast; it is plodding and gentle. This was fun.

I put my arm around her, and she snuggled into me. It was a soft and warm embrace, and almost automatic. I kissed the top of her head. She smiled. That huge smile of hers. I loved her then, I love her now, and I loved her the night I asked her to marry me.

I can’t believe it took me so long to realize what I had. I can’t believe it took me so long to bring up the courage to keep her close to me. I can’t believe I lost her before I could tell her exactly what I wanted from us.

She wasn’t anyone’s classic ideal of beauty, but she was my ideal. Her strong independent drive stood in contrast to her warm feelings for me. It was something she never quite managed to show anybody else. I’m not sure why- maybe it was because for so many years I was willing to love her, and make love to her, knowing it would never consummate itself with sex.

Her oversized features, her tall willowy lankiness, her extraordinary coordination and speed. I could pick her out of a crowd at a hundred yards. Every time I saw her it made me happy. She was special. God why do I spend so much time trying to explain this?

In her eyes were the strong fire of a free spirit. Sometimes we’d get into fights, and she’d be right in there with her own punches. She worked hard. She was hard as nails, and twice as fast. She could be mean like a snake. And then, and then ... in my arms she melted, full of love, full of desire to be loved, just like anyone else. And more than anyone I’d ever met, before or since, she was full, to the brim, with Joie de Virve.

It didn’t matter what happened, generally. She just enjoyed it. Life’s rich pageant, as she called it, contained many things. She liked watching it all. Laughing with the good. Laughing at the bad. Attacking and destroying the bad if she had the fancy. Smirking as two nasty people destroyed each other.

It was as if the only place she stopped moving was when she was in my arms. My arms- nobody else’s. I didn’t know all this, then. But I found it out as we got to know each other. It meant the world to me that somebody loved me this much, that I was as special to her as she was to me.

As we cuddled, the train pulled into the old but plain station of Oshawa, Ontario. Oshawa is a minor city of around 150k, really a suburban city of Toronto. It was the “driving force” of Canada, in that it held the largest manufacturing plant, a major General Motors plant. It also has a small history in horse racing. Generally speaking, it is an extremely boring town. I mean I assume it is, most auto factory towns are.

As the train got underway, I could feel an emotion in Rachel. That was one of the things we quickly gathered from each other. We learned to feel each other’s feelings. We didn’t even need to be looking at each other. It was weird but we got used to it.

“Johnny?” she asked, a unusually plaintive tone in her voice.

“Yeah, Rachel?” I responded softly.

“I tink I love yuh, okay?” she said.

“I think I love you, too,” I replied.

She kissed my cheek softly, and I smiled.

I wasn’t sure, then. But now I know. I know. I am more sure that I love Rachel then I am of any other concept in the world.

We were lost in our own companionship as the train rocketed along. The scenery was mesmerizing as we moved. It was pretty. It was boring. It was all part of looking at more of the world.

We blasted past Port Hope, a very old town first settled by United Empire Loyalists in 1793, and was actually originally called Toronto(!) before being acquiring its current name in 1817. The name change was a result of a desire for more British settlers as a result of the Anglo-American War of 1812. It was a beautiful town notable for its largely original downtown architecture.

Next we pulled into the nearby town of Coburg. I heard it had some historic buildings or some such, and it did. It was named in 1817 for Prince Leopold Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld, who later became the king of Belgium, in honor of his marriage to Princess Charlotte Augusta of Wales. Canada is still a part of the Commonwealth of Nations, still has a Governor appointed with the advice and consent of the Queen, and still recognizes Queen Elizabeth as their Sovereign head of state. In practice, the connection is more honorary than practical, but Britains influence in Canada remains extremely significant.

As we pulled out of Coburg, lunch was served. It was well presented, but reminded me a bit of airline food in its general nature. It was largely prepared in the same manner, actually. Still, it wasn’t bad food.

Rachel got a Ginger Soy Salmon Brochette, served with Jasmine rice, sautéed mushrooms, corn, broccoli, and red peppers. I had the Grilled Madagascar Peppercorn Chicken Breast, with egg fettuccini, broccoli, and baby carrots. They came with a Swiss and feta appetizer. The lunch was not as great as the list of foods presented might imply, but it was solidly edible.

As we were eating, the train shot past Trenton Junction, Belleville, and Napannee. I won’t bore you with them. Soon, though, we were pulling in to Kingston, Ontario. Kingston is located where the St. Laurence river exits Lake Ontario, and thus used to be economically important. At one point, it was even the capital of Canada. Kingston, as with every Kingstons throughout the world practically, was named for the King of England- as in Kings Town.

We sat there for four minutes while they changed crew, an efficiency of operations our Amtrak seems to rarely be capable of, and then we were off again, charging along the fastest track in Canada at over 100 mph. And snuggling some more as we looked out the window at the rapidly passing scenery. This was a fun train ride, through territory neither of us had been through. I’ve ridden such beautiful routes as the California Zephyr so many times that the scenery is normalized. This wasn’t.

Sooner than you might think, we pulled into Ottawa. Ottawa is the capital city of Canada. This was our intended destination, so we each grabbed our backpacks and detrained.

Ottawa’s train station was ... gee, ugly isn’t a strong enough word. Hideous? Disgusting? Nausea inducing? I mean, dear god, it ranks up there with New York City’s Port Authority Bus Terminal. It got architectural awards, when it was built. It makes me want to cry. I wonder if the award was for “most impressive eyesore”, cuz my eyes were sore as all fuck. The epitome of 70’s brutalist architecture.

As such, I concentrated my eyes on Rachel as we hailed a taxi to take us to the Chateau Laurier. The taxi driver, who was operating a clapped out Ford LTD, drove like a maniac. Not the LTD Crown Victoria- the smaller Fox-based one. He drove it more like it was its platform mate, the Mustang- racing the other cars around the stations circle, turning left onto Tremblay Road, and zooming off.