We first spotted him when we came up the stairs to the second deck. He was hard to miss. We were still in the station in L.A. on a gorgeous sunny morning, all-aboarding the Coast Starlight, which runs almost 1200 miles north to Seattle. Mitch and I would be getting off that evening in Oakland.
It’s a tough little staircase for anyone not completely able-bodied. Narrow and steep, it takes two right turns, and if you’re carrying anything at all, it’s clumsy and awkward. At the top, we saw a tall young man, maybe twenty or so and at least 500 pounds, thick glasses with an elastic strap holding them onto his head, gigantic pale legs bulging out of Bermuda shorts, who’d just climbed that staircase and plopped down in the first space he came to. He was so big he took up both seats. His face was red and glistening and his chest heaved with exertion, mouth hanging open to get more air. He had a goggle-eyed look of excitement, panic, wariness, fascination and bewilderment, and he hugged a tiny portable television close with both arms. Mentally deficient, I registered as we passed by. Traveling alone, sternly warned by whoever put him on the train: Watch out. Don’t let them steal your television.
The Coast Starlight route is mostly a beautiful ride, worthy of the name. You’re out of the city amazingly soon and wending up switchbacks into the hills north of L.A. The part of the ride that’s actually on the coast has an extra dimension of thrill to it because erosion has put the edge so close to the tracks in places that it gives you the illusion that there’s no ground under the train at all. Along about Ventura, you start seeing oil derricks way out there on the blue sea, far enough away so that you could, indeed, as some pro-coastal-oil-drilling politician once remarked, hold up a dime and block it from your vision.
Lunchtime rolled around. First call, said the steward over the P.A. system. Let’s go, we said, before the stampede. No need for the book and dark glasses when you’re part of a pair.
The dining car was mostly empty, and the steward, still setting up his game board, making his first strategic placements, put us by ourselves at the far end of the car, on the ocean side. We sat with our backs to the wall like Wild Bill in the Deadwood Saloon. Someone could still surprise us from the door closest to us, but we had a clear view down the length of the car in the other direction.
The tables populated gradually. Moms, Dads, teens, kids, sportily-dressed senior citizens. Handshakes, introductions, conversation. Where you folks headed to? Oh, that’s a real pretty area. Our son-in-law is stationed up there. That was some game last night. Our daughter just had a baby girl. The train was not particularly crowded that day, so there were still a few spaces left, including at our table, when a looming figure carrying a television filled the door at the other end of the car.
It wasn’t quite like the saloon doors swinging open and the piano stopping and everyone shutting up—but almost. Forks and coffee cups paused. Eyes flicked and averted. The steward looked around, gazed at us for a fraction of a second longer than he looked at other diners. With just a hint of malicious glee that I may very well have been imagining, he raised his hand, signaled, and pointed.
Thighs like tree trunks rubbed together, moving down the narrow aisle between the tables, television riding high, tucked under an arm. Waiters nimbly dodged, children stared and people pulled elbows and feet clear as he walked the entire length of the car. He heaved and squeezed into the seat opposite us, meant to hold two people, and occupied it entirely. He put the television on the table. Sweating and adenoidally mouth-breathing, he looked at us. “Hello,” he said in a high, formal voice. “Hello,” I said, and picked up my menu. A man at a nearby table gave us a pitying smirk.
Mitch was not amused. Without a word, before I could stop him or say anything, he got up and stalked down the aisle toward the steward. To lodge an objection, I was sure. But I, the vastly more experienced laissez-faire philosophical dining-car veteran, felt the thrill of an impending Bokononist adventure (see CAT’S CRADLE by Kurt Vonnegut). I watched my tablemate over the top of my menu. He looked out the window with the focused intensity of a bird dog.
