I am leaving Jax.

Taking CJ’s advice, I’m going north a ways, to Savannah, Georgia, where he says there is a shelter that is perfect for me – no alkies or druggies allowed (they check), you don’t have to fight for a bed every night, and they actually find you a job, not just point you in the direction of places jobs might be if anyone was hiring, which it always turns out they aren’t.

If there is room there, I will stay in Savannah for the next 6 months. If not…I don’t know.

Pittsburgh, PA

I leave New Hampshire at 3am, arrive at South Station at 5am, having been treated to nearly 2 hrs of The Beverly Hillbillies on tape during the bus ride. It’s still dark and I quickly discover I’m at the wrong South Station. There are two, you see. It takes me a full half hour to find the right one, kitty-corner across the street a block away. I have a coffee and a muffin that falls apart as soon as I touch it from the only place open at that hour. More of it ends up on the table than in my stomach.

I’m still hungry.

The train comes, I board, it leaves. I can’t sleep even though I’m already exhausted. I doze, half believing I’m still in NH and dreaming the clicketty-clack of the train wheels. The sun comes up over the Rhode Island marshes outside my window. The channels that run through them have sides so straight and even that they look man-made, as if some giant Japanese gardener had carefully crafted them with a hoe for effect. Tired as I am, I manage to summon up enough energy to appreciate their beauty before collapsing against the window, bleary and fudged.

There’s a stopover in NYC for an hour. I stumble through Penn Station looking for an exit. I want a smoke, not having had a cigarette in more than 3 hrs. I finally find the escalator that leads to the street doors. It’s warm for December, but I expected that despite the snow I left behind. My jacket is warm, my two PG Wodehouse novels secure in a large pocket. I take deep drags, forcing the smoke way down into my lungs. It wakes me up.

It also feels good.

When I get back to board the train I discover that both books are gone. Either someone stole them from my pocket without my noticing or else they fell out, probably when I staggered up the escalator. I prefer not to believe I’m so tired I didn’t notice someone with his hand in my pocket (and besides, what kind of 21st century pickpocket would steal books?), so instead I opt for the escalator explanation. It doesn’t matter which it is, anyway. The train is pulling out. The books are gone forever. I didn’t bring any more.

I can barely keep my eyes open but still I can’t sleep. Maybe it’s the lack of legroom, maybe it’s the harsh sunlight. Or maybe it’s because the train is moving. Back in the day, I could sleep anywhere, any time, on practically anything. Now I can feel the movement of the train beneath me, feel the shake, the roll from side-to-side. I can’t block out the creaking or the rattling or the rhythmic thump-thump as we go over the ties.

I think maybe food will help me either sleep or wake up enough to enjoy the trip. I go back to the dining car, which just opened. I have a hot dog, a small bag of chips, and a can of soda. That light, tiny meal costs $15.

It is the last time I eat on the train.

At least the food wakes me up. Either that or I’m asleep and having a very vivid dream about being awake.

Outside the window, an endless farm country. Barns, cows, miles and miles of empty fields (it’s too early for planting). It is what they call – for a reason, it turns out – “rolling” country. It rolls like a series of ocean waves frozen in time or by a still camera. After a couple of hours I think the train must be going in circles because we’ve passed the same barn about twenty times. But it’s not the same barn, of course. It’s twenty different barns that all look alike and all seem to have been put on the same chunk of land relative to the railroad tracks so I’m always seeing them from the same angle in a never-ending loop.

Behind me, in the dining car, the conductor and the guy who runs the snack bar play cards. The conductor is a big guy. His tight clothes make him look like he has just lately, maybe in the last hour since we left, got swollen from the bite of some enormous mega-mosquito. He puffs out, squishy and insubstantial given his size. He’s pretty young, too. Thirty, maybe. The snack bar guy is a lot older, lean and hard, a city bumpkin through and through, the kind who knows where all the games are hiding in which hotels and who’s got the best stable of girls if you’re looking for that kind of thing and where you can get a pint at 4am. He is polite in that brittle, “Don’t think this means anything, kid” way of born-and-bred New Yorkers.

Eventually the farms give way to the western suburbs. Pittsburgh is getting closer – or we are getting closer to Pittsburgh. I’ve lost the sensation of movement altogether. I still haven’t slept and the fudge has turned thick. It is as if I’m walking, breathing cake batter. Ginger snap, from the tang of it. Nothing is real, or if it is, I can’t prove it. Images of houses slide by, but are they real houses or dream houses or just pictures of houses? Am I living in a Power Point slide show?

The train stops a half-hour out of Pittsburgh. I’ve had nothing to eat in 6 hrs and haven’t smoked in 5. I groan. I’m not the only one.

We wait.

For nearly 45 minutes we wait. Finally the conductor (a new one - a woman with a large waist and exploding hair) explains that we have to wait for freight trains to go into Pittsburgh ahead of us.

Freight trains? A passenger train is waiting for freight trains?

I’m stunned. Back in my ancient train-traveling days that was unheard of. Passenger trains always went ahead of the freights. Always.

But in the money-grubbing present day, freight is worth more than people so freight goes first. It is a perversion of the real order of importance, a deliberate twisting. “You are worth less than a crate of Pop-Tarts,” the trains say. “You will wait. The Pop-Tarts must go through!”

For some reason I am angry. Seething. Gary, to my surprise, is waiting to pick me up. I’ve never been so glad to see a stranger in my life.