We were in the second of two coach cars. Ahead was the viewing car with the café underneath, ahead of that the dining car and ahead of that the sleeper car.

I spoke the least. But I was judged by my mostly younger co-passengers to be the person who would know the answers to such mysteries as:

“Where did dis big-ass lake come from?”

“Whaz up wit dat fucked up mountain—some Lord of Da Rings shit!”

“What is all dey weird-ass birds?”

“It all brown all da sudden—but da air don’t smell like shit no more!”

“Oh, dis shid is cold—a nigga ‘bout ta freeze is big ass off up in dis mountain bitch!”

“Is dey killin’ dis shid—deese trees all lille en fucked up and twisted?”

“Any body got a can opener for dis Stella Art shit—it a nice bottle but a nigga would like ta ged dis cap off—what, dey glue dis shid?”

It turned out, I not only had the answers to these cryptic mysteries, but had a bottle opener too!

I was declared O. G.: Original Gangster.

Before me sat Heavy Frez, an Octoroon with some Latino admixture who heavily ebonicised his diction and was, in my view, a coward. He had “done some time for some stupid shit,” “shanked a muva fuca,” lived in the shadow of his two older brothers, one of whom played college football for money in Montana, and “whose name is actually Fat Pete, he dat much fatta den me.” Heavy Frez has pain issues from a spinal tap as a boy to address meningitis, smokes enormous amounts of pot and vape and cigarettes and eats any pills he can get his hands on. He packed an entire handbag with pop tarts, candy bars, Little Debbie snacks and gummy bears and offered them freely in trade for people who would get him a beer or soda or coffee at the café car, which only accepted credit and debit and he “just eva rolled wit cash en paypall.”

Heavy Frez was fleeing Fresno, as ‘”every nigga I know took his stimulus money and got a gun. Now I know three females done been shot in three months and I’m moving up wit my Auntie in Seattle.” No mask.

…

L. A. Beat, sits across the aisle from me. He is, at 25, the same age as Heavy Frez. Rather than act African American like the pale Heavy Frez, he speaks standard English and looks African American. He travels with a guitar and large woman’s carry-on, has a very pretty white sugar mommy in L.A. who face times with him so she can be certain he is not travelling with another woman. He is afraid of the train, and is headed to Portland to “record some beats” for a Hip Hop associate and to “hook up with a side chick.” Mask.

Old Man sits in front of L.A. Beat and across from Heavy Fez, who he has lent his C-Pap machine, his pain pills and his CBD Oil to. Old man is perhaps 70 and “used to be bi-polar, saw all kinds of people coming for me until I got straight with my medicine.” He got stabbed once and claimed it didn’t hurt near as much as getting shot. Other than that, he pretty much serves as a drug dispensary for the young folks in their constant state of pain and anguish.” Inconsistent mask use.

In front of Old Man sits I Like Black Guys. She is a mudshark and is a fat thirty-year-old redhead who desperately wants to be used by either Heavy Fez or L.A Beat and speaks empty-headed at any opportunity. She seems to have a fear of older men of pale complexion and laughs readily at anything her two heroes say in a humorous vein. Inconsistent mask use.

In front of Heavy Frez and across from I Like Black Guys, sit Joy and John. Joy never stops bitching at John, who agreed to take her on this vacation from Phoenix to Seattle. When they get drunk he keeps asking her to be quiet and shut up and she keeps reminding him that he has been found to be insane in a court of law, that she is nice enough not to call on him, and that the cops, if he starts beating her again like he used to, will take her side. When we passed through those 21 tunnels in the high mountain pass, John reminded her that there were no cops within 50 miles and would she please “shut the fuck up” and she did. John is pretty lean and looks like he could still throw this bitch from the train at 60 years. Inconsistent mask use.

These people sit against the front of the car and past them is the way into the viewing car.

Behind L.A. Beats is an empty seat.

The seat behind me is filled with the spreading amplitude of L.A. Muff, a light skinned African American feminist lesbian who hates me for breathing and particularly for me stepping aside so she could get off the train in Portland and not miss her connection, glaring at me and saying, “I’d rather miss my train den step in front of a white man.” She is taking the northern railroad to relocate to Minneapolis. Mask.

Behind L.A. Muff is a tattooed, bald, Latino who is very masculine and respectful of men and women. Heavy Fez and L.A. Beat are terrified of him. Mask.

Behind the bald man is a supper pretty Latina named Nancy, who has a one-year-old baby girl with long brown hair, who flirts with me and whips her hair around to get into her mother’s face and laughs. Like the other young mother on the train, a pretty brunette of perhaps 25, she does not wear a mask, nor does her baby.

A masked black mother and her child, a man masked with a bandana, a masked Asian man and two older ladies traveling separately, one an ugly Latina and the other a pink-haired freak bitch from Portland who keeps trying to blow L.A. Beat [much to his horror] and does not wear a mask and has a meltdown and misses her stop in Salem, complete the car passengers.

When the man sits his vehicle on the tracks and gets greased—type unknown as we only smelled the plastic and saw the scraps—everyone but me, the tattooed Latino and the bandana-masked paleface, had to go look at the scene and spout their commentary.

Heavy Fez, opined, “Look where we are, Cows all doing the same thing, eatin’ grass, sheep, real actual sheep. Who lives out here [he looks at me and Old Man] and who does themselves wrong with opiates so much? Jus; sayin’.”

Even L.A. Muff felt bad for the greased white man.

When we offloaded I was first waiting as the train rumbled into the ass end of Portland and second, was the mysterious brown haired man with the bandana:

35

5’10

175

Worn out military ruck sack with an aluminum bat for a left hand overdraw on his left shoulder and a sheath knife for a front right draw-stab.

He checked out my solid metal combat cane, leaned on the siding in a most relaxed slouch and nodded to me with some respect. This dude would have wiped me out in a fight and I sensed he had come here with a violent purpose.

He stepped off the train behind me and was soon walking well past me at 6 MPH to my 4, directly to the homeless camp across the square from the train station, the first busy train station I had seen since January.