I arrived at the train station with time to spare today, which is rare. The first indication that something was off was a yellow light glowing by the tracks a little south of the station. Had that always been there? It looked like a traffic light, so maybe it was usually green and I was only noticing it because it was different today? I stood on the platform for a few minutes, waiting for 12:05 and hoping the train wouldn’t be late since I had to get to class.
As I waited, the speakers on the station building suddenly began speaking in a computer-generated voice: “Trains are operating with extensive delays due to train 322 striking a pedestrian on the tracks. Trains 326 and 330 have been cancelled. Train 338 will be the next operational train.” I pulled out my phone to check the schedule since I could never remember the train numbers and only thought of them by the times they stopped at the station nearest my house. Trains 326 and 330 were the 9:05 and 10:05 trains. 338 was the 12:05 train. What had happened to the 11:05 train? It didn’t really matter since I was taking the 12:05 train and it was apparently up and running. It might be a few minutes delayed, just to be sure everything was cleared up, but that would be fine.
As the minutes ambled by, I started running some calculations in my head. “The train ride to campus takes 40 minutes. It’s a 15-minute walk from the train station to my building. The class starts at 2:00. As long as the train comes before 1:00, I should be fine.” I glanced at my phone again. 12:15. If it reached 12:50, I would send an email to the professor letting her know I might be late. But it wouldn’t come to that. This train had to come significantly before the 1:05 train, otherwise wouldn’t they cancel it and just announce that the 1:05 train was next?
After another bit of time, I walked into the station building where there were some seats. There was one woman in the building waiting for the train, but she soon walked out the door, crossed the tracks, and vanished down the street. I pulled out my laptop and resolved to do some reading in the few minutes before the train arrived.
A little after 12:30, my wife texted me something random and I responded, then added a brief message about how I was still waiting at the train station and why the trains were delayed. “Did the person die?” she sent. I considered the question for half a second. “Of course they died,” I thought, “getting hit by a train is basically a death sentence and I’m sure they wouldn’t cancel 3 hours of trains just because someone twisted an ankle.” “I don’t know for sure, but probably,” I wrote back. The announcement played again: “Trains are operating with extensive delays due to train 322 striking a pedestrian on the tracks. Trains 326 and 330 have been cancelled. Train 338 will be the next operational train.”
12:45 had now passed and it was nearing the time to email my instructor. I had been at the train station for nearly an hour and could feel the frustration starting to constrict my insides. Why were they announcing that the 12:05 train was operational when it was at least 40 minutes behind schedule? What kind of fool was it who had run out in front of an oncoming train?
Just then I heard the tell-tale ringing of the bells warning that a train was coming. The lights by the track were flashing, so I stuffed my laptop into my backpack and hurried out the station door on to the platform. I glanced north and was startled to see no train coming. I swiveled my head around to see a train rushing up from the south. It blew through the station without stopping or slowing down—the second-strangest train occurrence of the day—and I stepped back into the building. False alarm.
I sat down and tried to dial up my internal heat so I could boil in my frustration some more, but the movement outside and back in had jarred loose a memory that now unfolded itself completely. It was a story that I had heard from both my father and his mother. My own great-great-great-grandfather had been killed after being struck by a streetcar in Salt Lake City.
He was an old man and tripped on the platform as the streetcar was approaching, fell on the tracks, struggled to get up, then was hit by the arriving car as people on the platform watched. My great-great-grandmother travelled some distance with her three daughters to attend her father’s funeral. The few days that they were gone gave her husband a chance to carry out his plans: by the time they returned home, he had sold all their possessions, including the house, to pay off gambling and alcohol debts and disappeared. My great-great-grandmother, now very alone, entered full-time work to have money to keep herself and her children alive. This is the story of how my great-grandmother grew up in an orphanage.
The physical and social distance between myself and the person who died on the tracks that morning disappeared. An unbearable tragedy had occurred on the train tracks that was likely the result of and prelude to other tragedies. In our bizarre modern world, the only real means afforded me of relating to that suffering was waiting for the train—however long it took—in a way that honored (or at least respected) that pain. I sent a quick message to my professor and resumed waiting.
When the south-bound train finally pulled into the station (only an hour and ten minutes late) I climbed aboard with a strange feeling, a feeling that fills me again as I write this. It is at once painful, unifying, unnerving, sacred, human.