On the Local

ON SATURDAY afternoon, when no one has to go anywhere on the railroad--when there is no business in the city, and long after its lures have drawn away the curious and the lonely--the short, decaying line manages to provide a local train which, over the course of a few lazy hours, accomplishes little in the way of real transportation. "The Graveyard Special" picks its way deliberately from village to hamlet to an occasional town, stopping along its journey at each of three or four cemeteries which follow the railroad up the valley, to the mild surprise of the few honest travellers who are actually headed for the better things at the end of the line, and who are accustomed only to the bustling stops of the important week-day trains. For the most part, the Saturday afternoon local carries widows, mothers, daughters, and a husband or two on their weekly visits to those who pressed on impatiently, or to those who simply knew better.

Unable now or unwilling to drive, the passengers have gratefully returned to the trains of their youth. Indeed, they are very probably riding on just those trains of years past. Bankrupt as long as anyone can remember, the little railroad has stuck with the same tired equipment since before the war--the Great War of 1914. Dusty, stiff and drowsy, without being really decrepit, the cars have achieved a measure of dignity by way of their advanced age. Their color is a practical sooty shade of black, for there is no nonsense on this line. The slow Saturday local is a properly somber--although by no means morbid--institution.

There are times when a station platform can be a scene of a ghostly silent apprehension. A young man, pressed for time, stands waiting only half-impatiently for an imminent train to appear from nowhere, to overthrow the quiet in a naked display of irresistibly hypnotic mechanical power, for there is the hint of terror that lies, unacknowledged, beneath the hard calm. On a cold winter morning when the train wrapped in its own escaping steam comes charging out of a light snow, the piercing headlight on the locomotive drills a hole through the pit of his stomach. The machine becomes just a machine only when the conductor swings out onto the platform and sets down his squat footstool before the open door.

There are other times, however, and other trains--the Saturday afternoon graveyard local is one of them--when the atmosphere is completely amiable. The passengers, silent friends by way of their common purpose, are content in their expectations of a rather pleasant day in the country. The sun always shines on this particular train--because if it rains no one will ride it but those honest travellers, exasperated with the endless stops in the middle of nowhere--and its familiarity and its jovial make-up of just two cars hooked together behind an engine remove any subtly menacing aspects in its arrival. The frequency of its stops prevents it from building up any sort of speed at all, so it always coasts gently around the curve and into the station with only a little braking.

Leaning precariously off the bottom step of the second car, the conductor grabs his stool and then steps nonchalantly onto the platform before the train has even stopped. He walks casually along with it until the wheels are still and then, as the brakes release with an exhausted sigh, he guides the passengers into his train. "Watch your step. Smoker to your left. Watch your step, please. Smoker to your left."

AN ELDERLY woman, dressed without color, painstakingly makes her way up to the vestibule, turns right and, once through the door, picks out the best seat still empty in the old day coach. The smoothest ride is found in the middle of the heavy steel car, farthest from the wheels, and the old woman, choosing the proper spot--on the shady side of the train--pushes over the faded green plush-covered back of one of the benches so she won't have to ride facing backwards, and sits down next to the window. She turns with a sigh to the yellowish brown once black shade. Someone has pulled it all the way down, but the spring is broken and she can't get it to go up again. Throughout the car, the shades are at assorted angles and heights, having become, over the years, one after another, frozen; each at some particular--undistinguished--moment.

The walls of the car are painted in an off-white, off-green, near yellow sort of color. At each end are smiling ads for Camel cigarettes and Wrigley's chewing gum--faded now to pinks and grays and largely ignored. Down the length of the car the center of the ceiling is raised about half a foot for ventilation, the classic railroad roof having served its purpose for decades without the benefit of modern electrical equipment. Sprouting from the ceiling are small Victorian wrought iron lighting fixtures with glass globes that are suspiciously reminiscent of natural gas. These uniform, immobile, fanciful imitations of vegetation are matched in every leg on every seat--these seats which have always stood patiently on their proper spot, with only their backs flopping back and forth as the direction of the train changes, the creases in the soft worn plush having disappeared under the dust and sweat of sixty or seventy years, the black wooden hand rests on the aisle gleaming from the oily hands of generations of riders. Above these mostly empty seats is the sturdy frame luggage rack that holds nothing now but a wreath of flowers.

The train has started with a jerk and the few passengers have settled down for their short ride through the quiet valley to the remembrances of all that they have lost. The conductor slams the vestibule door shut and enters the car, hardly noticing as he steps past it the democratic "Toilet," which no one with a sense of decency or smell has dared to enter for twenty years at least. The train picks up its familiar rhythm and the tassled cord on the emergency brake begins its macabre little dance in its discrete, untouched corner of the car. Repeating yet again his never-varying ritual, the conductor walks slowly down the aisle, jingling his change and gently, softly intoning, "Tickets...tickets..."