Now what?

The pants. He took the slacks from the satchel and held them up to the window. They were so thin at the seat the light shone through. And completely wrinkled—Dacron or not—smeared with damp earth, smelling of roots, rocks, rat turds and badger dung. Unsuitable for the occasion. He would have to wear what he was wearing, the little boy blue jeans with the peekaboo crotch. He stuffed the slacks into a garbage can, thought for a moment, pulled the blue bandana from his hip pocket and lined the inside of the Levi’s crotch. The effect was curious but would pass. He put on a fresh white shirt, his finest, and snapped shut the pearly buttons one by one. Looking himself over in the mirror, forcing a grin, tilting his head first right then left, he found little to admire but hoped that little would suffice. He took his spare bandana, a red one, from the satchel and knotted it loosely about his throat. Nice. But it seemed an affectation—with the clean shirt, the lean jeans, the high-heeled pointy-toe boots on his feet, he looked too much like a duderanch cowboy. Perhaps she preferred the urban existential type, the subbohemian verité, a touch of defiant squalor from the student ghetto. Retrieve the Dacron slacks once more?

No! Enough of the waffling. Train’s a-coming, boy. Henry joined the crowd outside on the loading docks and watched the train come around the bend uptrack, headlight glaring, power units puffing smoke. A trickle of sweat crept down his ribs. The engines grumbled past, champing steel, smelling of burning oil and hot iron, air brakes hissing. The tall bilevel blue-and-silver passenger cars glided along the platform, slowed, stopped. The conductor’s assistant in his brass buttons and suit of navy blue swung down from the gangway holding the steel step-box in hand.

Henry looked for Claire’s rosy face, bright eyes, golden head of hair but the tinted windows allowed no positive identification. He saw a few hands waving and waved his own in return. He watched as the first passenger descended the steps—a blue-haired lady in a print dress, followed by a pinkcheeked gentleman wearing a Panama hat. Two little boys in suits got off and rushed into the arms of a waiting mother. Three more elderly couples descended, then a pretty girl with red hair; Henry envied the young man who stepped quickly forward to hug, kiss and take her away—but she was nothing, a drab and a dormouse compared to his Claire, his Honeydew, his radiant ripe and unplucked Mellon.

He waited. He watched. But no one else came out. The conductor was already attending to the tickets of five passengers about to board. Moments later the engine whistled once, twice, thrice, the heavy wheels began to turn. Next stop Thompson Springs, Utah. The Amtrak rumbled off, rattled away and dwindled out of sight, airhorns wailing through the valley….

Slowly, carefully, Henry sat down on a bench, his bag between his feet. He was alone on the platform. He licked his dry lips, felt the shocked slow thumping of his heart. Something like a paralyzing drug spread through his nervous system. He felt dazed, cold, hollow. He felt empty and useless and worthless. He stared at the vacant tracks of the railway, at the trees of the park along the river, at the spas and hotels on the other side and saw nothing. Nothing at all.