First Ride

Houston, TX —

It was my first ride in an open boxcar, a short hop from Jackson, Tennessee to Corinth, Mississippi.

I’ve watched the world go by from most of the different modes of transport. Bikes. Boats. Planes. Cars. Passenger trains. Buses. Watching the world go by from the open picture window of a boxcar’s doorway is different. It is at once both intimate with and removed from the outside world. It’s a really weird feeling. A big paradox.

Maybe it was that the night had a moon bright enough to cast shadows, or maybe it was our middling speed of 40 miles an hour, or the fact that you could fall out at any moment, but the world from the gaping mouth of that car looked fake, like a painted backdrop—but it was also always reminding you that it was real. People moving in the light cast by a Christmas tree. The tiny rectangular glare of a television. Cars speeding alongside the tracks, maybe or maybe not realizing that it feels like we’re racing.

Then there’s the wind and the cold and the noise. The noise. The roar made by railclatter echoing around the hollow space of the empty boxcar, dull due to its persistence and acute due to its volume, is deafening at first but turns into overwhelming background noise enough that it’s possible to sleep. Which is exactly what Stretch did while I sat and watched.

There’s another thing: everything out there passes in the time of an awkward eyelock with a beautiful stranger (longer than a blink, shorter than you’d like), so there’s no time to reconcile the push-pull of this weird clash.

At railroad crossings, where cars sit and wait patiently, this glancing interval is sometimes a really good thing.

There you are, happy and full of wonderment, watching the Mississippi countryside roll by all peaceful when suddenly you are pasted to the wall, arms akimbo, a look of horror on your face, a fat human target that’s mostly salad-plate eyes, by the headlights of waiting cars. You feel as inconspicuous as (I’m sure there’s some pithy Southern saying I could employ here if I knew it)—just really inconspicuous. Like it’s impossible that they didn’t see you. Then you think about how little attention you pay to passing railcars and think maybe they didn’t. Then you really hope they didn’t or that if they did they don’t call the cops on their cellphone.

Because on top of all of this, what you’re doing is not really “legal,” per se.

It’s a thrill and a pretty intoxicating feeling.

Eventually I got tired and cold and so I lay out my slim foam sleeping pad, put by head on my pack and fell asleep until Corinth, Mississippi, where I disembarked to catch the train back to Jackson, Tennessee. Stretch and I said our goodbyes for now, I thanked him, and went on my way.