The Cardinal

I stared out of the train window at the green blur of trees rushing past, squinting against the glare of sun on the streaked windowpane. The window frame was cool to the touch and I leaned against it, grateful for the sense of stillness it provided. The continual onslaught of foliage, mountains, and the occasional railside town provoked excitement in some of the other passengers. I eyed them with a degree of suspiciousness, wary—not as much of strange travelers—but of the idea that someone might be glad or even looking forward to our collective exile from civilization.

Through the crack between the drab upholstered seat and the window, a little girl of about six or seven sat with her nose pressed against the glass. The child’s pigtails swung as she bounced in her seat. Her wide eyes were set comically into her broad pink kewpie-doll face that swiveled upon her neck. My lip twitched in amusement as the girl poked at the glass with a stubby finger, counting the cows that lounged languidly in a muddy field as we passed.

“One cows…two cows…three cows”

A faint crackle from the intercom interrupted with the news that soon, the Cardinal would be passing through the New River Gorge and that passengers aboard would glimpse a real treat of West Virginian wilderness.

“Welcome to West Virginia”, the conductor said proudly, “Wild and wonderful”.

This sentiment caused a wave of excitement to ripple throughout the car as the conductor had intended. The other passengers dropped their travel magazines and pulled themselves away from their near completed sodoku puzzles to gaze out the windows at the countryside that, albeit pretty with its rolling hills and babbling streams, was very much like the eight hour stretch of land that had preceded it.

Although still appreciative of the cool glass against my cheek, I did not share the joy of my pigtailed compatriot who jabbed now with conviction at passing telephone poles.

“Four…five…six…”

I chewed my lip while considering my options, a method of thinking I’d picked up from a supervisor I had worked with the previous summer. It had been a habit of hers that I was determined to pick up. I had hoped that somehow her strong leadership qualities and knack for always making the right decision in a time of stress might be transferred to me if I could learn to show myself properly to others—deep in thought, chewing the corner of my lip in quiet determination.

Did people stow away in the train’s baggage car these days?

I imagined myself a depression-era starlet with rhimel-lined eyes, standing alongside a steaming engine, turning out my empty pocketbook for a gruff, mustached conductor who issued barks of disappointment in flowery subtitles on alternating motion-picture frames. “But sir,” my mouth mimed pathetically, “I am but a penniless college-graduate, sent to live with my father in the wake of this hopeless economy. You cannot cast me out on the tracks.”

Or was hiding myself, my oversized red suitcase, black duffel, attaché, and purse in the lavatory until we reached Chicago, where I could purchase a ticket for the next plane home a more viable option?

I straddled the train’s toilet, my back pressed against a sign bearing instructions for what to do in case of impact, my arms straining to protect myself and my precarious pile of luggage from feeces smeared walls as the train lurched around roller coaster tracks with growing intensity. With a gut-wrenching click, the lavatory door opened. The face of the portly mustached train conductor poked around the frame, narrowing his eyes at the sight of a petite twenty-something year old woman now struggling to remove one high heel shoe from the sputtering, flushing toilet.

My mind flickered and switched to a courtroom scene with myself standing before the imposing conductor, clothed in judges robes and a long powdered wig. A nervous twittering from the jury and spectators rang throughout the marbled courtroom as the judge banged his gavel against the bench in an attempt to regain order. I shifted in my patent-leather pumps, scratching the back of my ankle against the heel before returned it to my shoe. With baited breath, I clasped my hands modestly against my tweed suit and raised my eyes to meet his.

“And what, may I ask,” growled the judge, flecks of saliva catching in his moustache, “was your reason for not getting off at your scheduled destination?”

I paused, took a breath, and answered him in a calm, cool tone.

“Explosive diarrhea, sir.” I answered.

It is the perfect excuse. No one questions it.


I did not stay on my train past my destination. I comforted myself with the thought that, should anyone call me back to the land of the living, I could always find a way to fly home. The fifteen hours it had taken just to reach Huntington, West Virginia, had been more than enough traveling for one day. Perched on the edge of my seat, my distractions packed prematurely, I ground my teeth as the car now crawled through low-rent districts, scrap yards, and blocks of defunct commercial storefronts.

Safe in the knowledge that I would soon be departing, I looked around the train car, noticing for the first time the dingy gray seats with rainbow stripes, the flickering overhead lights, and the sea foam green carpet worn thin around the foot wells.

Most of the other passengers seemed to be either sleeping or attempting to read in the strobe light, but a man of considerable size sitting across the aisle sat on the edge of his seat too, scrutinizing me with his steady blue gaze.

The man wore a starched white collared shirt that ballooned from his neck into a silver belt buckle cast with the over sized head of a steer. Across his khaki knees he had draped a brown paper napkin beneath a cardboard lunch tray. He stirred a coke absentmindedly with a bloated, ringed finger and I saw myself through his eyes.

The woman sitting across from him was a small but athletically built, pretty sort of girl in her early twenties, unsuitably dressed for travel in a pair of tight dark jeans, sport coat, and strappy sandals. Her almond brown eyes reflected curiosity mixed with fear. She adjusted and readjusted her chocolate brown ponytail, brushing a tangle of bangs that fell about her forehead in the kind of disarray kids these days spent far too much money, time, and energy to achieve. The girl seemed to be traveling with far too much luggage than was manageable for one person and she had a nervous habit of biting the lower right corner of her lips.

The couple behind me returned from the dining car with overflowing cardboard trays, clutching the backs of isle seats to steady themselves. The woman flung herself into the seat next to the window with an audible huff and complained that the dining car’s prices had been far too costly for the chips, cookies, and soggy Italian submarine sandwiches they’d gotten.

“Lord, Ah near damn broke now.”

“See Ah told you, you shoulda signed up for social security,” her companion suggested, “It pays a whole lot more and you jus’ walk out there to your box an’ go git it.”

The linen gentleman had stopped his visual interrogation of my person and belongings to take a bite of his submarine as the couple behind me continued to discuss how to receive more benefits from the federal government that did not involve yet another nine months of bloated feet. The sandwich squelched unpleasantly as he bit into it and it spat a slice of tomato into his lunch box with a plop.

“Did you get on in New York?” the man drawled.

He continued to chew his sandwich and dabbed at the corners of his mouth with his paper napkin.

“I-I’m sorry. Did I what?” I stammered, severing my gaze from the bit of onion on his chin in the realization that this question had been addressed to me.

“Ah said…Did you get on in New York?” He asked again, more slowly this time, as if speaking to a dimwitted child.

“Y-yes. Actually yes. I did.”

The man took another bite of his sandwich before commenting as he shook his head slightly, “I could tell by the looks of ya’. Yer not from ‘round here.”

Affronted by this appraisal, I pressed my lips together and returned to look out the window as the train came to a halt.

Monstrous weeds poked cracks through the sidewalk that emerged through the dark like vault lines and fast-food containers that littered the gutters in the street. Some of the shop’s papered windows on either side of the train station had been graffitied by the more creative inhabitants of the city, while others bore the standard “For Sale” sign. All of them were shabby, unloved, and unwanted in their disuse.

Welcome to West Virginia, wild and wonderful.