Where is for folks
who got somewhere
to be.
— The Hand On The Book
When I was little, I saw an episode of an old TV show where a kid's 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 he hadn't been seen in a long time.
I was seventeen. And on my own.
Everybody knew, but nobody wanted to ask anything, because they feared my answer would 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. Didn't matter where.
Catching a freight means what it sounds like. Hopping on a freight train to catch a free ride.
Finding a train was easy. Train tracks cut through the center of town.
Anything westbound went to Gary. Anything eastbound went to South Bend, but that was too far away for me to go and get back in a day, 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, but the noise was loud enough to drown out my loudest thoughts. That's the part I loved.
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 porch at the end. That's what they call it, but it's not really a porch. It's more like a little metal cubbyhole at the end of a car that carries stuff like corn or wheat, and it has just enough room to sit, out of the wind.
When I climbed in, I came face to face with a drifter who was already there.
"Oh, shit!"
"Well, ain't you somethin'," he said, as if he was amused by the audacity of my presence.
"Okay, man. How's this gonna go? There isn't enough space for a proper fight, so, how about we just eat Fig Newtons instead?" The absurdity of my proposal 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 he shot me 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," he said, as he ran a hand along a beat-up copy of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. He could probably tell I was skeptical, because he said, "Name don't matter though. I'm free to be what I choose, and so's you. Ain't it a blessin' to be what y'wanna be and go as y'please."
I told him I was going to Gary and asked where he was headed.
"Where is for folks who got somewhere to be. I'm just headin' that way," he said, pointing west.
"...because?"
"Because I had enough of bein' where I was."
"I respect that."
"Why're you goin' to Gary?"
I wanted to be clever and say, "Because I had enough of bein' where I was," which was true, but the honest answer was I didn't know.
I told him I was going to Gary, because it was next, after Tonawa.
"Valpo's next," he said. "Gary's still a ways off."
I asked him about his book. The way he was holding it made it look important. "I never read that. 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. Inside it, there was a pack of cigarettes and a harmonica. He played a couple songs as the train rumbled on. I pretended to enjoy them so he'd enjoy my company. And I kept him talking so he'd teach me what I needed to know.
Catching a train out of Tonawa wasn't hard. If there was traffic along the line, the train had to slow down. I hopped on and rode out. Easy peasy ish. But I didn't know how to get off a train yet. Finn said, "Just remember, train's in control, not you. Don't fight it. When you jump, hit the ground runnin'. Roll if you fall. It ain't hard, but ya gotta do it with finesse."
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.
My goal was to prove I could get out of Tonawa, but when I got to Gary, as I breathed in the stale air that smelled like diesel fumes, wet concrete, and indignation, the only thing I saw was a bigger way of being poor. Not that I minded. I was good at being poor, and bigger meant better.
Near the train tracks, everything was rough. 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, signs of life started to pop up. An old bar. A Chinese restaurant. An ugly municipal building, and more parking lots than could possibly be required.
Beyond that? There was a city, though I didn't have time to explore it on my first trip.
What I saw didn't look like much, but it was something, and that's a lot when you've got nothing. The sky was gray and the city was too, but when I looked down, I spotted a little speck of color. It was a dandelion, growing through one of the cracks in the sidewalk. I watched it sway and dance in the breeze, and I reminded myself that dandelions don't need a garden. We choose where we bloom.
And in that moment, as I stared into the distance, the stale Gary air started to smell like possibilities.
Maybe even freedom.
An hour later, I was on another train, headed back ho... Er, back to Tonawa.
Editor's Note:
The official motto for Gary, Indiana is "We Are Doing Great Things." The motto was introduced in 2012. The city's population has declined by roughly 12,600 since then.