Continued-From FT's Page

1.

I took part of a poem to work tonight. It had a lot of dust on it from lying on my desk. It's by Yvann Goll. I can see myself showing it to Juba. No, I can't see myself showing it to Juba. He'd want to know why the man wrote about the moon, why anyone would want to write about the moon. Juba's a polish kid from Newark. He looks like a young Eddie Duchin and sounds like the cook at Burger Chef where they just hired a bunch of kids from Rahway. He'll explain anything in the Universe. If you can call something he knows about in the Universe a mystery. He'll explain the mystery. Kills two birds with one stones the Universe, and the Mystery. We tell him he has a I tell him he has a literal mind. The other guys tell him he's a f----up. Same difference. Although I tried to tell him you need a literal mind to survive in the Universe. Then he thinks that is good and that it's different from being a f----up. I say, yes, it is. Despite the fact that the guy is a f----up, I like him. I like Juba. I talk to him all the time. He wants my opinion on things. Although lately I have to keep it short and sweet, cause then I'll be explaining the Universe and the Mystery and I'll end up like Juba. Juba thinks that you

2.

can explain anything. He doesn't know what the word Action is. You can explain action, he says. I say just do it. He says do what? I don't know, maybe it will be a fast night and I can get back home to my crummy apartment in the tropical hills of New Jersey's western border. Why don't you live in Newark,Juba asked the other day. I don't know. Why don't I? I still don't know, but I can guess. Juba, Juba. Two trains to check. It's 3a.m. & Elizabethport,-four hours left. Then we’ll hear from Joe Mags, trainmaster. yidja get it , he’ll say. Didja get all of it? (smiling through his thick glasses) Yeah, Joe, yeah, we got all of it. They said not to call Joe Mags Joey when he asks that question. Nah, Pertovich said one time, Nah don’t do dat. Don’t call mags Joey.

Met my classes today.

23 bright, shiny people in English Composition 101.

1.

I took part of a poem to work tonight. It had a lot of dust on it from lying on my desk. It's by Yvann Goll. I can see myself showing it to Juba. No, I can't see myself showing it to Juba. He'd want to know why the

man wrote about the moon, why anyone would want to write about the moon. I asked him one time, I said Juba, what is a full moon? And he said, a full moon is when it is so big that it is outside its boundaries. What’s a new moon, I said. Juba said, how the hell should I know? maybe it’s like beauty is in the eye of the beholder and everything is new and the guy gets up the next day and everything feels old? I don’t know. So? D’jew like the pics of Lydia? he says. Lydia’s Juba’s sister and she’s 15 and grew up a water baby in the back yard pool. She was in the pool since 4 years old shivering even in July in her one piece bathing suit. My Mom liked blue so Mom got her three blue swim suits.Juba turned toward me. You like this pic he says, taking one out from a fanned deck. Pick one, he says. It’s like he is saying to me when I see it. Is this the one you want?

4

Juba's a Polish kid from Newark. He looks like a young Eddie Duchin and sounds like the cook at Burger Chef where they just hired a bunch of kids from Rahway. He'll explain anything in the Universe. If you can call something he knows about in the Universe a mystery. He'll explain, the mystery. Kills two birds with one stones the Universe, and the Mystery. We tell him he has a I tell him he has a literal mind. The other guys tell him he's a f----up. Same difference. Although I tried to tell him you need a literal mind to survive in the Universe. Then he thinks that is good and that it's different from being a f----up. I say, yes, it is. Despite the fact that the guy is a f----up, I like him. I like Juba. I talk to him all the time. He wants my opinion on things. Although lately I have to keep it short and sweet, cause then I'll be explaining the Universe and the Mystery and I'll end up like Juba. Juba thinks that you can explain anything. He doesn't know what the word Action is. You can explain action,

He says, I say just do it. He says do what? I don't know, maybe it will be a fast night and I can get back home to my crummy apartment in the tropical hills of New Jersey's western border. Why don't you live in Newark, Juba asked the other day. I don't know. Why don't I? I still don't know, but I can guess. Juba, Juba. Two trains to check. it's 3 a. m. & Elizabethport, - four hours left.

5

Met my classes today.

25 bright, shiny people in English Composition 101

Where's my attitude? I think I'm trying to do

too much. Carson, the tenured dodo bird peeked in the door this week to say hello.I only know three people in this department and I've been around this town five years. Eilers wants a nice tight application of the syllabus, surprisingly meaningful,legislative almost, since they're doing referrals in writing practices to the remedial lab.

It should work out fine. Maybe have 12 people who won't be able to read well or write very much. They'll go back to basic composition or to reading/writing lab and justify the program. Need Juba here to explain the explainable, the unexplainable taking a little longer. They'd love him. How the hell could I rake it off the top if he did come in here. Let's see, Pat mentioned the figures for this year. Out of

1039 freshmen men and women, about 400 are in the basic composition class, at sub-level 11th grade and the rest with other problems or hopefully literate, maybe possibly know how to think.

Went to work, Brills yard, vacation relief for Donny McFaren, midnight. Found moon poem in my locker, covered with mud ,also thermos bottle I left with sour milk-coffee in it. Stopped at the Rt. 22 diner, Amy not working, probably sorry I asked Bette, since I'm coming off here at 7

6

AM and she's a world away. I don't think she knows about me, hasn't noticed me yet. Cleaned off moon poem. Good poem for Sept. Asked to go to Wharton in the high ground around Dover nearer home. Boss said no vacations up that way till December. So here I am at Brills, the cess pool of the industrial world. Read first verse again.

The Moon

'But yet how unrelentingly

You swelled the solitary hearts

Of little dressmakers and blustering pianos’

Sky desires.

How unrelentingly you shed your brightness

Into the darkening and shivering alcoves.

And behind Iron bars of prisoners.

Out of the blazing hell of their hearts

Men cried aloud and came into despair

And tore their "breasts wide open in their madness

And died of it, you had been so beautiful.......

Tried to think of the words while I checked cars for west bound train. Don't miss Juba a bit. Russian guy, Yvann Goll.

7

Donny fishing in Canada with his family. Students pissed a little since they get message this course is up front and that there's work in it. People, have patience. Lotta questions about how the year is gonna go. I give them a run-down, keeping it loose, no questions. They would rather be someplace else. I work at midnight. I tell them about myself. They are politely interested. I think this shit is gonna have to pass soon. I try to remember this is just a job and to not expect anything from these people. The railroad is just a job,- you can't expect any

thing from anyone. That comes down to it. There are no more heroes, no more villains. Maybe no more story.

I think they would be fascinated to hear about the railroad. I check that impulse. They're not fascinated with anything. They have to see it, have to feel it. I try to remember when I was this age. I finish the class with a burst of energy and show I love what I'm doing. The clock shows five minutes. I wind it up. Everyone smiles, and walks out. What did I expect. They have to walk out. Yeah, they have to walk out. My apartment is still 40 miles west up the road, regardless of whether I'm here at the University or at the railroad. Where the hell would you move to with commitments like these. The answer comes out some where in between. I walk out of the University building.

8

People come and go. I go to Joe's. Several people are lined up at the bar, practicing. They are practicing being in the world as something-- as an alcoholic, as a person with place. I have a few, shoot the breeze with someone who tells me he is out of work. I leave. Why don't you move to the town where the University is? I've lived here, I said, lived here three years earlier. That's probably why, the guy says.

In the car, rolling toward Elizabeth, 60 plus, feel free, feel good. I'll jam it in the yard at Brills about 11:15 pm. Thinking about the students. Several names filter through, where they live. Where they are from. We open at 11:30, Brills yard, Newark, near Friedmann's Truck Terminal, where Route 22 bridges over the yard toward the Pulaski Skyway and New York City. Some one comes out of the shack as I pull in. Norman, 5' 6", 220 pounds, quick as a cat, the polish fireplug out of the Wilkes Barre Eastern Pennsylvania Division of the Pennsylvania Railroad,--when it folded he came here. Reads Science Fiction and once in awhile yells from the top of a car something about seeing aliens from outer space. Most of the time though, his mind is on the job with a lot of concentration. Doesn't say much in the shack, comes down on Monday, leaves on Friday, has the week in Jersey City at a railroad flophouse, then Saturday in the clean air of Wilkes Barre, wakes up to birds singing and one of his kids on top of him in bed, lets the older boy mow the lawn, except when the kid breaks the mower. Usually, he says,he

9

spends the day on 'errands for the wife'. Then Sunday and back to Brills in Jersey.

We have three Joes on our crew; in a poker game, someone is always saying What you got, I got three Joes. Harry gets left out. He's the engineer for the drill. Don't ruffle Harry's feathers. He's liable to pull the air in the cab and blow off your hat. One joe's got 34 years in. He wouldn't know what the hell to do if he couldn't come to work.

Class today. Bright, energetic, cooperative, they were all there. Later, went down the Memorial Parkway in a good mood, cut off a couple of cars to make the George Street Exit. Pretty nasty for a 318 station wagon. Feel like coffee

and B.S.Stopped at the student center, Douglass. Place empty except for some violin student practicing in the anterior lobby by several porticoed columns.

She, dressed in long sleeve white satin, probably makes her play better. TV room going full blast, soaps are on. Girl in there in curlers. Downstairs in the snack bar, some tub rats, and a couple of Art Students. That world seems pretty far away right now. Ran into a couple of girls from the art

10

department one is in Art History and the other, I don't know. She's from Conn. and her family wanted her to come here for Art. Lots of time on their hands, lookin' beautiful.Topic of conversation was about gettin' high now or waiting till until later. Interested in keeping up appearances, they leave.

Guy stopped me at a light in Rahway on Route one. Somehow the guy got in.

Looked me right in the eyes. I felt like saying get the hell out of my car, man.

Talked a mile and a half a minute. I didn't ask him where he lived. He said he was

going to cop. Wanted to teach me the brothers handshake while doing 65 plus up Rt.22.

I watch his hand, the wheel and the road, doing it. He gets out at the underpass in

Elizabeth.Loose,crazy,good times,Brills Yard, 10:30 pm crackin' in the yard.

11

looking for a little life, came to the wrong place. 10 minutes out of the car, I have

a handful of black dust like a pitcher on the mound. No ball, though, no catcher and no game.

The 1562, Jersey Central Roster Rn-6564 , a short-hood converted Baldwin scuttles past the shack. This is the 1562's 700th year of service, or the 1O0th. The cab with the gray center console chipped and scratched by steel toed boots divides the cabin. The Navy style sub seat ventilated by quarter-sized holes looking into three coats of paint on the deck beneath. The cab large enough for four crewmen. The lift rail by the platform where you get on is missing three coats of paint. On the front deck, the railings’ been buffed by a thousand hands, by the soft inside part of the arm, bluish, black.

Blue,black, yellow, yeah, (Shaeffer said something about it)told me, last week at E-port out on 19, while Tommy got set to re-rail a derailed hoppercar. It was pitch dark. He ..told me with his elbow in my stomach.

Shaeffer turned and said I should thank him, turned as the RF jammed to a stop at his feet. Getting my

12

wind back, I said why, then I could see. I was standing between him and the engine coming up to

the switch. If the railing hit my arm even at 5 miles an hour, it would have broken it.

Instead,I got out of wind. Denny said I ought to thank him, since the engine jammed from 15 miles an hour to nothin' in as much time. Thanks, Tommy, I said. Ok kid.

Phone call at 2 am. I call Dale. He's up, we talk for 10 minutes. Norman comes in, coffee's on. It's three AM and we're about to wrap it up. Have to stretch the job someway and Joe is around Norman's back looking at drill tickets spread on the table-

a different kind of solitaire. Slow night. 7 AM is coming.

Students getting into being freshmen.Several with colds and flu. Less flashy dress. Some talk about having jobs somewhere. Several coming up after class with an empty look in their eyes. Probably see me as a 6 ft meal ticket. They talk at me. Work experience would teach them to talk to

13

people. Sent three people to lab. Made lab sound really delicious. Five of the people in here probably haven't read a book in ten years. But what have they read. We do a survey. They say some porn

books, adventure books, Playboy, -read the fiction? Nah, look at the pictures. Some fiction good though, one guy pops up after a short, embarrassing silence. Don't work tonight.

No plans, right now Maybe leave here and sleep a little,and get back on my book tonight, maybe call Fiona.

Back to Brills. The Yard Is full of cars to be separated, the cab of the Baldwin red, like the palm of a hand through a flashlight. The Feeder track wine-colored from the sodium lights under the Turnpike bridge toward the Battery and beyond, - the Ocean.

It’s early October with a foreign black haze of August heat billowing out of the basin, rustling stiff and reddened leaves. Last week,the fumes were really rank,the refinery letting out smoke and chemicals at night about 2 am. Thinking about going

14

to Sparkey J’s in Newark, - Art Blakey there,with local tenor man Dave Schnitter from the Oranges. Schnitter is dynamite. Almost as good as Charlie

Parker, sometimes. Juba could probably explain the whole thing. Should take Fiona but she probably

couldn’t get away.Last month the Pru building moved on its foundation from the blow-out they had there. Place was full. Micky Lokker on piano

called himself the Musical Director. Bill Hartmann snickered through his trumpet, Blakey just sat by the drums, looked down, then up again and smiled some enormous warmth. Thought about Lokker and Schnitter playing, about Schnitter doing Yoga exercises, while I close a box-car door with a crowbar.

Saw Fiona today, really terrific. As usual, she left.

She could have stayed over. I want to get along with her,

especially after the way she comes on. In all the time I've

known her and she's been here, she's never stayed over. What

the hell would I do with her and three boys and their

house. He's been gone about three months. Status Quo the

last few months. Neither one of us can get off it. Thought

15

About carla Jackson, a student in my class while i was with fiona. Though about the way she smelled fresh and cool, her face slightly blushed,while she talked to me the other day, more closeness in that than there is now inside Fiona and clutching her to me. I think it is because Carla doesn’t project any carnality. And i want her to.Later, tried to think about next month. Voice said, why are you thinking about next month. I don't know. Still feel lost. Some good days teaching. They seem to be learning something.

Midnight. Brills, clear night, moon out and full. No smoke as such. Still warm from last week, even though leaves have turned. Kinsey comes back from a yard check, bleeding air from cars, walking the checker's side, marking 65 in-bound Penns in a note book. He begins talking about the different compositions of iron mined in the Pineys and Bear Mountain for cannonballs during the Civil War--concretions picked out of the clear cedar water near Basto and the other & coming out of the earth up

7.

'around what is now Bear Mountain their upstate cannonballs he claimed, held together for accuracy, a helluva lot better than the stuff out of the bogs near of Basto forge super-heated, ladled out into waxed wooden molds. How many was killed from the respective development of both balls, no one knows, he says. He is drowned out by the engine's shuffle past the lead, and he rolls his eyes. We agree to stop talking.

16

Kinsey is 6'4" tall and weighs 250 pounds, and shadows Jerry, freight conductor, Charon to the smoking river of Industries. Mohawk-featured Jersey City father of five, a flight cap over his eyebrows,carrier-deck style.He swings off the deck and passes the Baldwin, feet together, arms outstretched, his hands holding the freight tickets. He does not say Ha, Toro. There has been no fiesta, no crowd, no cape, no bandoleers, no soft satin slippers here for at least 1000 years, or since Tuesday. All Jerry knows of places comes from National Geographic magazine pictures. The first bite of Penns leaves the basin to travel the life line toward the bay and back, the drill from Track six to twenty-six, long lattices of steel .Jerry and Joe hang in the birth canal of 1562 and bring out five tank cars for a switch to the Chemical Coast track. Jerry cuts them off at speed. Norman, the brakeman, rides each one down the steel lattice, cranking ,the hand brake, letting them run a little so they'll couple with a hot crunch in the stinking yellow air a half mile away. Coming back to the shack, he says the tank cars are like five brides in an attic, looking at wedding pictures. They sit silently in pairs, have no front or back. He says soon I will have to walk the track, checking the train, closing doors, looking at brakes, maybe hammer a running gear, and mark in a notebook numbers,

17

numbers, that no one on daytrick will ever look at. Like a tin horn forger from Oklahoma land rush days. I look back down the right-of-way at the brides. On roller bearings in the fog at night, running down the long easy grade,they come up on you like bad debts.

Fiona tells me she can't go out with me or be with me even at the house. Jim came up for a visit and found out Ted left her and the kids three weeks ago. Jim is in Washington now and he told her he always loved her. They slept together. She wants Jim.

This is a complete surprise but I can see it now as she talks. We couldn't go out around here because Ted might pop in where we are, etc. etc. I need a shock. I wish she would say' and you are not going anywhere with two or three jobs.' But she didn't. I would have missed it, preferring to hear the rest,maybe every detail. We go to town and drive past the campus near the building where I teach. The building is dark. Did I expect it not to be? She keeps on talking. I'm hurt, but I think we ought to go to Jimmy's in N. B. and think it over and have a drink We go. She is honest about all this and struggling. I say O.K. She's relieved and presses my hand.

18

I feel a hundred years old. I take her home. The next day I teach my ass off, at least I think that's what that was. Someone says Hooray, I laugh. I'm gonna get out of this yet.

I teach my ass off again today. After class I ask this girl Carla if she will walk around campus with me while I deliver art exhibition notices then we can sit down by over-look and maybe go for a few drinks. She's open to it. I talk while I run stuff around, delivering. She thinks this is neat. Suddenly stuff starts pouring out of me, negative stuff, like, gee, hope my car starts tonight, geez, looks like rain, and I'm dead. She says. she has to catch a bus. I'm glad, because in another 15 minutes she would have heard about the whole thing. She was there, the whole time, waiting for something real, and I was delivering art exhibition notices to places on campus. Her mind seemed uncluttered and unscarred. Maybe I was the man her daddy told her to watch out for.

I decide to separate teaching from teaching. How to do that. Sounds like a zen parable. I think about bringing Juba in and it hits me. I have to be Juba to survive here. I think about quitting at the end of the term. Lincoln Carter III has been here as a graduate student for seven years. Cheap labor. He's taught two sections every semester.

19

I think about the way this girl smelled to me.

like tearing out my hair. Maybe I'll call Al tonight at Brills and talk a little. I-want to shut my eyes and walk through a building, feeling my way around. I want to where I am.

Brills, the last week for Donny, then to Bayside, the Chemical Coast. 10 PM, quarter moon. Early, since this girl Amy didn't feel like talking tonight at the 22 diner. Weird chick. I'm tired already. No word of Fiona, exams corrected for both sections, with comments on each copy. That should help them a little.

Kinsey's niece, 14 years old, stands by the shack.

Against the cars, she is like a rabbit sitting in a canyon. Fragile, pale, with strong, clear eyes, she is the survival of love. She does not smile. She wants to know how tall I am. I tell her I am like a rabbit sitting in a canyon. Over weight, pale, with clear tired eyes, the moon pries open my mouth. I am afraid to love and afraid not to. I am fearful to talk, and fearful not to. I am afraid to live and afraid not to. She asks me if I have a bicycle. Hers is ice blue with thin wheels,chrome hand brake, silver horn and helper-pedals with blocks.

20

She says she rides fast and stops quick and can see the whole street with her light. She laughs. She picks up a stone and throws it in the dust. Then she looks at me intently. An arm emerges from the trailer.

It's Kinsey's and in his hand the computer cards for all trains North,South and Westbound. His hand is laughing, but that's because when Kinsey laughs--- and that's rarely---it comes out all over. There's a green rubber band around the ones marked for tonight. They're matched and sorted for waybill identification. Even the computer cards are laughing. He steps out into the darkness of the porch quietly.

Nov. 10

Students relaxing a little, a lot of baggage under eyes,BS sessions in the dorm. Some are maturing, I guess. Gill wants to write about Kent State, says Michener's book tells it all. Even down to motivations for the killing. He watches me. He has an idea about something else. I feel like saying, what do you think really happened there. But I don't. I just tell him to check the New York Times. Probably never heard of Ramparts or Mother Jones although that would be all the way left,or Liberation Front News. Tit for tat.

21

I'm still seeing Carla; she just falls out all over. Always immaculately dressed, dewey eyed. If she's getting it, she's assimilating the experience,anexpert at backward masking, or eating it up,-no changes in her. Maybe she's got it separated from all the ways she came up. . I'm curious. Fiona back, that's why I'm curious--back for how long. Still confused about being here, but at least this chick can tell I've been getting it. Work tonight, Donny phoned in, another week in Canada, may not come back at all, I suppose. Nah, he'll be back, maybe just to get away from his wife and kids.

Brills, 11 o'clock. Norman lost weight, they're calling him skinny. There's. an inch of scum in the bottom of the water fountain. The outside spigot still works. Colder now. Smoke goes straight up and out to the Bay. Kinsey, feet apart, head cocked, arms folded, talks to me about a weekend trip to Belvedere, New Jersey, and about the wooden banisters in an old house there,--made out of black walnut. He says, Black Walnut, waiting for my attention. I am staring right at him. He smiles as if he has discovered a fishing lure snarled in a tree over a roaring stream. I say, I don't get it. He hollers, Black Walnut! You can't find it anymore. It's practically extinct. There was 10 different kinds of wood in that house, he says. Ten different kinds. He shakes his head and walks away.

22

From the southern-most tip of the basin, Jerry, the conductor,clears the engineer across the lead switch for a mile toward the Bay until three Missouri-Pacific box cars cross the lead. He waves his arm like a man on a hill trying to signal someone in a valley. The string stops. He calls the string down the hump and cuts the three MP's down 21. Loaded with potassium cyanide for the Chemical Coast, they sit down 21 till 2 AM, stinking in the heavy air like the smell of rotting squash, the odor of burning skin. It happens fast,-- back and forth across the lead switch, like cutting carrots on a wooden board,---dog food, cardboard, newsprint, Benzene, naphtha, oil, chlorine, electronic parts, portable radios, rubber belts, canned soup, flour, wheat and copper scrap. The booming of the cars in the distance, down 21,26,28,14, like steel fire doors closing at the bottom of apartment air shafts, the sound of lives coming to a close

in the city.

Home, 8:00 AM, first slight flurry of snow on the way up. Fell asleep at the wheel, tired, thinking about Fiona, doped off, went off the road.

23

Saw Pat today. Her heart is broken. How the hell can I get it together with her over a few months and then it drops, totally dead. Why do I think she's phoney. She's a thing of beauty, sexuality, and self-control. I must be rankling at the self-control, and the dignity. Still don't feel good. I badgered her into getting me this job. 2:45 meeting with the go-between to George, Department head. He'll be in 501 waiting for fifteen minutes to see if anyone shows up to share evaluations on the first 6 weeks. I walk in. He's on his way out, the go-between says. An amateur magician, he says he's got to go home and practice. I say, what about the meeting. No one came.But I had some questions.

I think about who I'd ask. Can't for some reason, ask Pat. Why? don't know why; I'd rather wing it. Work tonight, Brills, then a few days off for Washington and going around galleries.

.

Nov. 15

Brills yard, 2 AM, cold, rain slacking off. Wreck on Rt. 22 coming in. Will look for someone to ride to work with next week. No one goes to E-port from out western Jersey way, on day trick, maybe nights. Everything shut down, break,-coffee's on. Place looks like the palm of a hand, a hand with a flashlight under it, red shining through.

24

Inside, the cups clatter on the table, the door is empty, Norman is missing. He does not miss coffee. We decide if he doesn't come in five minutes, we'll go and look for him. We get up to look. I take the long lead to the Bay and beyond the Ocean. I don't think I'll have to walk that far. Over the ocean, clouds billow and loaf like excelsior on the lawn of an empty house. In the darkness lit by my lamp along the sides of the cars, I push the photograph of you forward into the night, high on my leg, pressed against others in my pocket. You are walking with me. The shadows of broken cardboard bury themselves in the dirt. Bits of trash blow around fence posts. Ahead, a string of cars lie in the darkness. I turn to go back. There is no possible connection between this place and you. There is every possible connection. In the shack, Norman is sitting with the trainmaster, drinking coffee. He says, where have you guys been. We say, looking for you. There are no bulls around tonight and you don't carry anything. He says, I don't need anything. We take a longer break than usual.

E-Port, Karlanofsky, the Russian, bellows. Where the hell you been? There's an inch of new snow on the ground. Working the west end shack, three trains to hose up and close doors on, check rigging. He says, we go to Chicks on break. Chicks, for Karlanofsky. is two

25

double shots and a handful of bay scallops, and three beers in 10 minutes. For me its a handful of bay scallops. it's one beer--not to be polite, but just one beer. He tells me about his first car he had, how he got it when he was 19 years old, and how long it lasted. He started the story across the rails in the shack, found the middle of it at Chick's door one block away, and told the rest of it back across the rails near the shack door. Ten minutes, that's fast, I laugh at him. He runs all the time. You'll learn, he says.

Class short today. Gave 'em a thing in class--write from a photograph, what do you see there. what could be happening. What do you think is happening. What about the photograph itself. What does it do, any purpose in the way the photograph was taken.

From the results, I must have sounded like a parrot. They were really agitated. Most of them gave a straight ahead, couldn't be wrong detached view. No effort. Weird. If I had said, use your imagination, someone would have died from apoplexy. Need Juba up here to explain away everything in the Universe--only safe way. He says he's getting married next week. Big wedding. Wants Joe Pietrovich to give him away. Joe's the car foreman on day trick. Joe says, I'd like very much to give him away.

26

E-port, nights, unseasonably warm, clear, full moon. Joe Pachetti over from Brills in the company car, trainmaster at Brills. I ask him, have you seen my poem, he pretends he doesn't hear.

I say, the one about the Moon. Whhhaaa? He slaps me on the back, oh sorry, cigar in hand, yeah, some moon tonight, got to be careful. We go in the shack on west end. The trains are being made up in the tower. The 3-11 trick has all the stuff from the south Chemical drilled out and placed for make-up. My back hurts. The tower calls. Mags says send Gale out to close a door on 11, nobody could get it closed on 3-11. I walk over thirty sets of tracks. It's still warm and the drill sits scuttling on a siding, nobody inside, the interior of the Baldwin red like the palm of a hand over a flashlight at night, blue smoke pulling toward the Bay. I see the box up the line, a Bangor & Aroostook potato car, 45 feet long, with cushionaire couplers on each end. The potatoes are in boxes but there's a broken box wedged inside, down under a pile of twenty or thirty. I load them to the side, crawl down in and pull the smashed potatoes out of the door track. I look over and

see six boxes sitting too close to the door frame on the open side. I rearrange everything and start to jump out to close

,

27

the door, catching my heel. I stick the bar in the door and wedge. It moves a half-inch. No chalk, mark it with spit and ash from the ground in the light.I try again with the sledge and the crowbar. It moves three inches. I mark it with spit and dust. I hit it a few more times and the door slides shut. I lock it and walk back, thinking of the moon poem. I find I can't remember the words. When I get back to the shack, I look for a book with poems in it. The Russian asks me if I got it. I say I did.

He says, well, then call Joe Mags and tell him. Ok after I finish reading this. The Russian grabs the phone hello Mags, it's done, ok baby, Bobby got it.

Monday. I call in sick. Re-railed three wrecks in Bayway Sat. nite with Tommy Marshall and Kolbasi, the Senator. He always asks me for money for his campaign. He asks me with his eyes. He wants to make it this time. He thinks about making it every waking moment, his watery blue eyes a million miles away, about making Senator. Went with him in the truck past Singer Factory down on the river, and he went after the 'ni----s' to line up their vote. He drives down there in his Cadillac when he is off work. No one can surpass him at re-railing. No one can surpass Marshall. That week I learned. Home today. Don't feel like I am alive. Don't even know where I am, except I'm home on the hill below the Fire Station, looking out over the east west line

28

to Pennsylvania, where it winds through the hill town. No one around except a few women in houses up the road. No one home next door. Old man Nagi works in the graveyard at Museconetcong Church, walks by, practically blind, going up the hill carrying a sack lunch.

He eats out and lives with the blinds down. Feel like

,

calling Fiona but I know better. Have to work on my

station wagon outside by next week, before it falls apart. Classes tomorrow at the University. Some papers due, most of the other stuff gone through and comments made.

Dec. 5th

Went to Joe's, drank all night, came back home, went to bed today. Stayed at Cramer's on the couch rather than make it all the way back. Cramer talked about Schnitter and how far out he was. Cramer knows him. I told Cramer after awhile, I need to get the hell out of all the stuff I was doing. He talked to me. I talked to him. I slept some.

29

Vacation for the university a few days away. Wanted to take this one girl out to Sparky J's in Newark, blow her mind, so sweet, has all the answers, but it's not for me to teach her that way, although I'd like to. A lot of people let me slide as I was comin' up. So they wouldn't make a fool out of me. So I'd better pass. Looked at the chapter on Persuasion in the make up syllabus. Good stuff. Don't know if they can hack it in compositional terms, maybe a speech would be better. Move chapter back ‘til after Christmas. Work tonight, or tomorrow night? Check.

Brills, yard loaded, no extra help. Job won't need to be stretched to make it last tonight. 2 AM. take a breather, back in from closing doors and changing brake shoes. Coffee. Will make the drill and four boxes loaded with newsprint for the Star Ledger. Over the twenty-nine bridges. Over the high line from Jersey City to Newark, through a moon-scape littered with diamonds of broken glass and burned stations. The boxes stretch out as the RF- pulls out into the night, leaving the black desert behind; a valve in the cab bleeds off air. Abandoned brick stations glitter in the Baldwin’s headlight. Bridge number 12, over an unknown street in Newark.

30

Bridge 1 over a street, 14 over a street and 15,16, 17--40 minutes--I can walk faster than we move. At the 20th bridge we stop. Jerry takes coffee orders, slips off the deck ladder and disappears behind a station, over a bank and down to the street. A bottle breaks somewhere on the platform. Norman steps out on the deck and peers into the blackness. The headlight forms a line up the track. He enters the cab; I am sitting in his seat--the fireman's seat. He says, Gale, how the hell did you ever get mixed up with the railroad. I laugh and say, I don't know. He says he has five more years to go and he'll be out at 35 years. I say, I have three years in. No one seems to hear me. Air goes off in the cab and the radio crackles. The engineer turns the knob until it clicks. No one will want us tonight.

Jerry's back. As usual he has my coffee with three spoons of sugar instead of no sugar. Everyone in New Jersey drinks his coffee with three spoons of sugar and a half a pint of cream.It is called light and sweet. When I order coffee in a diner, I order it dark. They bring it to me black. I say, I meant just a little cream. If I had wanted it black, I'd say coffee black. As if having pride in ownership, a few waitresses remember me and say, here's your coffee dark, their eyes flashing. It's the little class things that count, I say to myself.

31

Jerry laughs. He says he hasn't had that much attention in years. I say there's no difference in this world between the circumstances of a death in time and coffee dark. Both receive equal attention. He laughs again. He says, look outside.

I look outside. I don't see anything. He leans out of the cab and points the footprints in the ashes beside the line. We keep moving. Here, he says, within ten square miles of the Battery, first it was the immigrants moving west,--look at the footprints there, he insists. Then it was the whole army moving East for World War I ,World War II. Whose footprints are those there, he says, in darkness pointing back toward the cars. Nothing bothers us now, he says, nothing.

At four AM we run the crest of a grade over the last bridge, dropping sand under the drive wheels. Even in the fierceness of pushing, the engine scuttles like a king crab. In the center of the bridge below us, Newark Station spreads across both sides of the line. At the end of the east-west line, the Newark Star Ledger building climbs out of the darkness. Into half-light.

32

The name J V Kenny spreads across the expanse in faded

letters, ten feet high. Elizabeth leans into Newark. The Cubans on second street in Elizabethport are opening their shops.

I think about the fog from the estuary breaking over the dome of Gorney Mortuary back in Bayway, watch it rolling down to Bayway Refinery to thicken up in the heat of the stacks. I stand on the engine platform and wait for Norman to fly the boxes down the fawn track. He lets them fly to within twenty feet of the bumper, then wheels the handbrake to it's tightest while they grind to a halt. He looks like a gnat on an elephant's ass.

It's his moment of glory, like Willig, a man I told him about. The guy Willig, climbing the World Trade Center with a bunch of home made crampons. He comes aboard while the drill chugs back over the Eastern Corridor lined out below the bridge. He reminds me how close he came once then tells me about the time he missed the wheel on the last grip around, coming down the fawn and the boxes made the bumper, clouds of black ash flew up, slithered across the vacant lot and went into the back of Mr. Donut along with the boxes, twinkling in the dawn light--newsprint, donuts, coffee, plastic ware dogfood, and people scattered across Broad Street--almost. He slaps me on the back. Coulda happened he says.

33

Back over the bridge, settled in the cab, first signs of daylight appear over the Bay.No one talks over the twenty nine bridges past the yard of dispersal, a fancy name for the material and equipment scrap yard, the Central Jersey's burial ground.

6 AM in the shack.. Jerry says he's got some rocks to buy for his son, so he is going to the rock show at the Garden today, maybe pick up rare quartz or schist, taconite. I don't know what my kid has he says. Joe says he's waiting for payday after the holiday shuffle. Norman says the hell with pay day, C'mon, seven o'clock--sitting hunched over coffee,cracking his knuckles, trying to bully the kid inside him, the one with the candle in his hand. The kid stands there in his night shirt, yawning through his fist, the tire cradled in one arm, the small voice saying time

to retire.