Where is for folks
who got someplace to be.
— Finn
I saw an old movie about a kid whose parents died and the whole town rallied together to adopt him. Aww, that's sweet.
When my mom died, I became Tonawa's hot potato.
Every conversation I had felt strained until it ended, at which point whoever I was talking to would smile and slowly back away. I could almost hear the voice in their head shout, "NOT IT!"
The closest thing I had to a relative was Walter, who wasn't a relative at all and hadn't been seen in months.
I was seventeen. On my own.
Everybody knew, but nobody wanted to ask anything, because they feared my answer might include some form of, "So can I stay with you?"
Fucking cowards. I didn't need 'em.
I couch surfed. I got by.
I worked. I scavenged.
I was homeless, but it was fine. More or less, though usually less.
That's when I started catching freights out of Tonawa. I just needed to see something else. I needed to prove to myself I could go, and it didn't matter where.
Catching freights means what it sounds like. Hopping on trains and hiding among the freight for a free ride.
Finding a train was easy. Train tracks cut through the center of town.
Anything headed west went to Gary. Anything eastbound went to South Bend, but that was too far away to quickly go and get back, so I went west.
Riding the rails felt like freedom. As long as it wasn't too cold, the trip could be almost... romantic. Just me and my thoughts, with the sound of metal meeting metal on the rails.
Actually, it was filthy, and the noise was enough to drown out my loudest thoughts, which is why I loved it.
I wasn't alone on my first trip to Gary though. It was a sunny Sunday afternoon when I climbed the ladder of a Norfolk Southern grainer and tucked myself into the little corner at the end, I came face to face with a drifter who was already there.
"Oh, shit!"
"Well, look at you," he said, as if he was amused by the audacity of my presence in a spot he'd already claimed. There was barely enough room for two to sit.
"Okay, man. How's this gonna go? Are we gonna fight? Or are we gonna eat Fig Newtons?" The absurdity of the options made him laugh, but I needed to know if the laugh was sinister, so I tried again. "No kiddin', man. Respect a bitch who brings snacks."
"Respect," he said, with a bigger laugh and a smile that meant we were cool.
Friends are better than enemies, and everybody loves snacks.
Drifters aren't bad people. They're just wandering because they can. Sure, they'll take advantage of you if you let 'em, but so will anybody else, right?
This guy looked like an old man, but I'm guessing he just lived hard. Not the hopeless kind of hard I grew up with in Tonawa. More like the kind where disaster might be straight ahead, but you go in face first because it is your choice to do so.
He told me his name was Finn, "Like the book, by Twain." He could probably tell I was skeptical, because he said, "Out here, I'm free t'be anybody I want. Ain't it a blessing to be what you want to be and go as you please. That's freedom."
I told him I was going to Gary and asked where he was headed.
"Where is for folks who got someplace to be. I'm just headin' that way," he said, pointing west.
"...because?"
"Because I got enough of bein' where I was."
I respected that.
When he asked why I was going to Gary, I wanted to be clever and say, "Because I got enough of bein' where I was," but the truth is, I didn't know.
I said I was going to Gary, because it's what's next, after Tonawa.
"Valpo's next. Gary's still a ways off," he said, as he reached for his book, which looked like it'd seen better days.
"I never read Huckleberry Finn. Is it any good?"
"It is," he said, "but it's not for readin'," and he flipped open the cover to show the pages had been hollowed out. There was a pack of cigarettes and a deck of cards stashed inside. We played Gin Rummy while the train rumbled on. I let him win because it felt like the right thing to do.
Catching trains out of Tonawa wasn't hard. If there was traffic somewhere along the line, the train had to slow down. Hop on. Ride out. Easy peasy, as long as you don't get spotted. But getting off a train is something else. It's like getting out of a fire. As Finn explained, "Ya gotta do it with finesse."
Instead of stop, drop, and roll... it's drop, roll, and stop.
It was great to hear Finn say "finesse." I figured he liked the word because it went with his name, especially the way he said it. He slurred it with intention and hit both syllables hard, as if each was its own sentence, while bringing his arms close to his sides and wobbling like he was pretending to roll. Then he jerked his head high with a triumphant toothy grin and said, "Ain't nothin' to it."
Ain't Nothin' To It should be the motto for Gary, Indiana.
I went there to prove I could get out of Tonawa, but as I breathed in the stale air that smelled like diesel fumes, wet concrete, and indignation, I thought the only thing I'd found was a bigger way of being poor, not that I minded. I was good at being poor.
Near the train tracks, there were warehouses with peeling paint, graffiti tags, and broken windows. Chain-link fences topped with barbed wire ran along cracked sidewalks.
A couple blocks away, various signs of life started to pop up. An old bar. A Chinese restaurant. A horrendous municipal building, and more parking lots than could possibly be required.
Beyond that? There was a city, somewhere, though I didn't have time to explore it on this first trip.
What I saw didn't look like much, but it was something, which is a lot to somebody who's got nothing. And as I stared into the distance, I couldn't help wondering if the stale Gary air might smell like possibilities.
Maybe even freedom.
An hour later, I was on the rails again, headed back ho... Er, back to Tonawa.
Editor's Note:
The official motto for Gary, Indiana is, "We Are Doing Great Things." The city's population has declined by roughly 12,600 since 2012, when the motto was introduced.