Everybody stared. The train windows cut picture postcards out of the remains. No one hurried as a stretcher covered in a yellow plastic sheet was loaded into the ambulance. Heavy doors heaved shut and the flashing lights abruptly stopped smearing the cabin in warning shades of orange. Everybody cringed a little at the crunching sound of the train crawling over the tracks. Wondering out loud why someone would take a risk like that, Mari wanted to think perhaps they’d been in a rush and had made a last ditch attempt to cross the tracks. It all seemed like a terrible waste. She leaned forward for a closer look.
The train had stopped abruptly on the tracks just outside of San Juan Capistrano. Thick glass windows fattened the heat that pushed itself into the all the small spaces, swelling the air and muffling sounds. The cafeteria area was busy, a queue snaking around the laminated tables and spreading out into the delta of the napkins, sugar and single servings of condiments. People already feeling impatient were buying coffee and convenience food, urging the train forward with caffeine and sugar. The speakers crackled an announcement into the thick air. Delays, Inconvenience, Apologies. (Dead air). Delays, Inconvenience, Apologies. A shock wave radiated out sending tremors through the train into mobile phones. Delays, Inconvenience, Inconvenience.
Mari had shyly asked for a bottle of water. She couldn’t actually leave the downstairs cabin marked with a multitude of signs reinforcing that the area was “Reserved for Passengers with a Disability”. While she appreciated the gesture, being the only passenger with a disability had meant she was travelling alone while everyone else sat upstairs in ‘ordinary’. As the temperature rose and the train did the inverse of what it is that trains do, she had sat and waited, wondering if anyone ‘ordinary’ would materialise feet first down the stairway. Waiting had been a recurrent theme of her day. Taking the Blue Line trolley from San Ysidro to San Diego at 9am, she’d sat near the polished wooden benches surrounded by the tiled walls of San Diego station and waited. Without assistance it had taken her so long to get off the trolley and into the train station that she’d missed the earlier service, so there was nothing else to do but watch and wait and not fall asleep or she might have her bag stolen, again.
The long clawed hands clapped as the doors of the 12pm Northbound Pacific Surfliner hissed shut. San Diego to Los Angeles, onwards to Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo, terminating at Paso Robles. Service departing not quite on the hour or every hour, but close enough. The entire trip stretches out to approximately eight and a half hours, unless it’s the 796 service and it gets held up by the Coast Starlight from Seattle. Passengers of the 775 had made the awkward trek to the platform, suitcase wheels skittering on concrete and dropping into the slots and gaps. They climbed the stairs, filled the forward facing seats first and folded their bodies into various angles of repose. A convergence of stories had funnelled into the carriage’s metal tubs, congealing on the vinyl seats and seeping out of the baggage racks. There was small talk, politeness and close proximity.
The Pacific Surfliner is configured as a Push-Pull locomotive. With no convenient facility to ‘turn around’, the Push-Pull configuration means the train is always pushed towards the Los Angeles hub, and pulled towards the ends of the line. The 775 waddled out of the Santa Fe station before settling into a steady mechanical hum. San Diego Old Town barely blinked, having seen it all before. The city crumbled away as Solana Beach spread out to the west, while tucked into the streets somewhere east of the tracks lay Fidel’s, dividing the locals in a never ending quarrel with next door neighbour Tony’s Jacal over the best burritos. From the tracks there was little evidence that Oceanside hosts both an active nude beach and the Pendleton military base. Mari watched the body surfers wade waist deep into that California Dreaming water and wondered what it would be like to move like that. She sat in her chair locked into position facing the stairs, listened to the repeated announcements about the dining cart, and thought about how she hadn’t eaten since early that morning.
Feeling too much like an inconvenience in a house full of people sharing a bathroom, she regularly found herself backing into a corner and tightening her hand around the blue stone pendant wrapped in wire hanging from a leather strap around her neck. She’d hold it close and wish and wish and wish. Mari had moved to the border town of San Ysidro from Van Nuys about a year ago. It had been strange at first but she was used to San Ysidro now. There was a mall where you could go and look at clothes and guys, watch movies and go to the food court and wait for something to happen. Something always happened, if you waited long enough. It was pretty fun going online and chatting to boys, boys who couldn’t see her, boys who didn’t know. She confessed she’d sent a few of them photos of ‘ordinary’ girls, just to ‘mess with them’. Then there was the local mechanic that fixed her often faulty wheelchair, he was kinda cute. Sometimes at night she’d ask Jesus what to do.
Grumbles rippled through the upstairs cabins. This halting of the train’s trajectory, this abrupt addition of nouns anathema to the active, progressive language of travelling and the getting, going, being somewhere other than right here grated the passengers. The sheer stillness was a chafing affront to progress. Nobody noticed the sortie of sand coloured geckos in the new shade of the stopped train or the heavy black coagulation of hunch backed crows. Everyone was too keenly tuned to the slurred speech of clocks and watches. When a uniformed conductor emerged from the No Entry door he began his pilgrimage from the front cabin to the last, his information becoming a chant offered in exchange for the loud buzzing of impatience. There’s been a delay. We apologise for any inconvenience this may cause. There’s been a delay. We apologise for any inconvenience caused.
The crackle of the speakers. The pausing expectantly.
There’s been an accident. (Dead air). We have to wait here. (Dead air). Until it is safe to proceed. (Dead air).
Sound swelled and rose in pitch and frequency. A wave crashed against the cold metal door. AnAccident!WhatKind?HowLong?Accident!It’sBeenSoLongAlready!DidSomebody… Passengers spoke aloud to everyone and anyone, then reached for their phones, translating the news into so many finger clicks. Suddenly co-conspirators in an awful secret, passengers leant across aisles and whispered to each other. DoYouThink?DoYouThink?Probably. A thrill rippled through the cabin and eddied in swirls around ankles and hands suddenly drawn close to bodies. Downstairs, Mari waited and listened to the second announcement from the disembodied voice explaining that both the South bound and North bound services had been delayed for an unspecified duration.
Before the shower of glass and the awful twisted metal, before the screeching of brakes and the stunned silence, On Friday April 9, a little after 11am, 49 year old Leif Anderson parked his silver Toyota Rav 4 at the intersection of Avenida Aeropuerto at San Juan Capistrano and waited. Witnesses at the scene stated that Anderson accelerated into the path of the oncoming South bound Pacific Surfliner. The train collided with the SUV and dragged the vehicle 800 feet south before it was able to come to a stop. It took close to two hours for Anderson’s body to be cut from the wreckage. Police at the scene were still labelling it as a ‘traffic accident’.
First she saw a pair of black leather shoes, and eventually a pair of legs. Then a torso and arms, and eventually, a complete train conductor emerged from ‘ordinary’ class and came downstairs to check on Mari. He asked if she was ok. Mari wanted to know about the accident. The conductor glanced around the cabin, settled on the arm rest of an adjacent seat and simply said ‘Suicide’. Mari didn’t say anything, and just looked up at him. He explained that it happened fairly often. That there was every possibility that it wasn’t a traffic accident at all, and that the driver had waited for the train and driven in front of it. Driven in front of it knowing the train couldn’t stop in time, probably also knowing the train driver would have to watch as the car and the life inside it were destroyed.
Mari’s fingers wrapped around the stone pendant. She wondered out loud again what would make someone do something like that. She sighed, reached into her pocket for her mobile phone, rang her sister in Van Nuys and said she was so sorry she had kept her waiting.
