Amtrak Nightmare Part II

In Part II – The Nightmare Continues

When last we left the nightmare train, the Loudmouth from Grocery Row had gone to get something to eat. The silence was unbelievable, spoiled only by the thought that he would return. Unless, by some stroke of luck, he took a wrong turn and walked out the door as the train sped through the South.

No such luck. Before long, he returned. I glanced to the side and saw that the woman who was sitting next to him had fallen into a coma. Her head lolled like that of a doll abandoned by a thoughtless child. The Grocer stopped to look at her before he sat down and noticed that she was unresponsive.

“Oh, goin’ to sleep on me, huh?” His voice cut the silence like a dum-dum bullet through plate glass.

She, of course, could not or would not respond. Instead she continued dead possum routine.

The Grocer sat and tried for about a millisecond to contemplate the back of the seat in front of him. Nope, being alone with himself wasn’t an option. Instead he pulled out his cell phone, in a train car filled with people trying to get as much sleep as they could squeezed and squashed in their egg-carton seats. And he begins a series of calls to what must have been his wife and then co-workers. There were worries about aisles with carrots and cabbages. Concern over milk cartons and orange juice. Who was taking a vacation and how would they work out the schedule. Did that delivery of green peppers really get dumped all over Main Street? Was the supermarket owner really banging the check-out girls? And, yes, honey, the train arrives at 9 AM!

That was a piece of news I almost didn’t believe. He was actually going to leave the train. In just a few hours. There would be silence for the rest of the eight or nine hours to Ft. Lauderdale. I would only believe it when I saw him leave.

At some point, he began to get no answer to calls he was placing. At least some of his friends were smart.

Then he fell asleep. His head rolled back and forth, his mouth open as if inviting whatever flying creatures there were buzzing about the train.

And then it began.

The Grocer snored. Not a gentle, low buzzing that signified contented sleep. No, this man snored like a pig in shit. Happily, loudly, as if gulping and grinding the air to get every last bit of sustenance from it. As if the air were a dishrag to be wrung out and shredded.

Reading became impossible. I turned out the lights and tried to sleep – using earplugs and lots of fortitude. Sleep did not come, at least not full, rejuvenating, reinvigorating sleep. Fits and starts was more like it.

But the good thing was that as we stopped here and there in little Southern towns and dots on the map, I was able to see some Christmas sights. Like the one town that had a huge Christmas tree and light display around a building next to the station. The tree was brilliant with white lights, everything was silent and still. The red brick building seemed clean and neat and almost like a movie set. I stared at it a long time and realized that snoring or no, it was a sight that made me feel good. And, to my surprise, even the snoring ceased.

But the best part of the Nightmare Train was yet to come.

The Grocer left the train. All was silence and discomfort. The seats were still small, the train car still suffocating, but at leas there was peace.

The hours dragged by. There was no sign of the conductor or anyone else from Amtrak officialdom. The train made its stops. The public address system was not functional except for occasional muffled static. But no words, no announcements.

We all had to guess at the stations and use clocks and schedules to figure out where we were and when our stops would come.

Finally the man we’d encountered at the beginning of the trip showed up in the car. This was the harried looking guy with hollow eyes and the hair which had gone through electro-shock therapy and looked it. The self-same man who seemed never to know what was going on or what he was supposed to do.

But he was all there was. So I got his attention and asked exactly what time we’d be arriving in Ft. Lauderdale.

“Train will arrive at 6:35 PM,” he said with exactitude.

I glanced at my cell phone clock and saw that we had an hour or so. Jason and I decided that we’d get our bags down about half an hour before arrival.

So Six o’clock came and we the train made a stop. No one announced it, the PA system didn’t even crackle into it’s half-life state. There was no clear sign what station it was but a few people got on and a few people got off.

We were getting our bags down when at 6:11 PM, the train stopped again. This time it appeared that we were ion the middle of a highway. One older woman, sitting farther up the aisle said so everyone could hear her, “Why are we stopped in the middle of a highway? What is this?”

Jason looked out the window and sad, “This must be a stop.” I said it couldn’t be. He said, “There are people getting on with a lot of baggage.”

Somehow that sparked something in my mind. Some tiny distant claxon began to sound. I got up from my seat and began to look around. I wanted to ask someone what stop this was but there was no one. Then, I felt the tug of the train as it began to pull out of the station.

I saw the station sign: Ft. Lauderdale!

I was panicked and furious. No one had come to remind us. No one had said that the station was too small for the train. The PA system never made a sound. We’d been left high and dry.

In an instant my anger overtook me and I ran through the cars in search of Mr. Electroshock Hair. I found him two cars back in an empty car – one which he’d conveniently not seated anyone. But he was busy checking out the seats.
“We just pulled out of Ft. Lauderdale. You didn’t tell us it was coming up. You said 6:35,” I snapped. I was loud, stern and angry. “What do we do now?”

“You can get off at Hollywood. The next stop?”

“But why didn’t you tell us the stop was coming up?”

“I did. I came into the car and told everyone. I told you, you were gonna hafta walk up two cars to get out.”
“No you didn’t.”
He shrugged. As if to say ‘I don’t give a good goddamn.”

I ran back to our car. Jason and I got the bags down and then I questioned several other passengers. I asked them if anyone had been in the car to announce the Ft. Lauderdale station. All of them said no.

When Mr. Electroshock Hair ambled into our car, I brought him face to face with the other passengers and asked them to tell him that he had not alerted us to the station stop. At first no one would repeat what they’d told me, as if this guy was some authority figure they had to fear. And that only served to increase my anger.

“Tell him!” I snarled. “Tell him what you told me. Tell him he didn’t come into this car.”

Momentary silence. Then I snapped again, “Tell him!”

And they did.

He just shrugged again, not giving a rat’s ass for his dereliction of duty.

At that point, exhausted and disgusted, I just wanted to get out of the train. Jason and I took our bags and hurried up two cars to get out at the Hollywood station.

Fifty dollars, a constantly whining cab driver, and a short ride later we were in glorious Ft. Lauderdale.

I wanted to kiss the ground. But I figured, germs I didn’t need.