Around the World in 80 Trains

by Monisha Rajesh

  On the sixth morning, the rain stopped. As though the clouds had suddenly realised they had somewhere else to be, they dispersed, leaving an uplifting patch of blue. But it was a blue that we could only enjoy from the train window, as the Sunset Limited pulled out from New Orleans Union and began the journey along the country’s southernmost route to Los Angeles.

  ‘Fuck you.’

  ‘Fuck you.’

  ‘I’m serious man, turn around.’

  ‘Turn yourself around.’

  ‘Fuck you man, if I wanted my legs squashed I’d get your mama to sit on my lap.’

  An altercation within the first three minutes of a two-day journey didn’t bode well. Two passengers at the front of our carriage were arguing about legroom, and while I was dying to see how it panned out – stopping to search for nothing in my backpack – Jem nudged me down the aisle towards our seats. His sides were hurting and he wanted to sit down.

  Formerly a Southern Pacific Railway service dating back to 1894, the Sunset Limited was taken over by Amtrak in 1971. Once a Pullman train comprising sleeper cars only, it was the oldest named train in service and one of the most coveted by American retirees and ‘foamers’, drawn to the vastness of its reach – spanning Louisiana, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California. ‘Foamer’ is a snide term coined by railroad staff for obsessive rail fans who get so excited about engines, gauge, hydraulics, mileage, dates and times, that they foam at the mouth. When it comes to measuring rail enthusiasm, I am nowhere near foamer levels, having absolutely no interest in anything mechanical or technical. I am positively a ‘daisy picker’ by comparison – the nickname for those more interested in the scenery, and usually to be found getting in the way of foamers photographing the brake rigging.

  The argument at the front of our carriage had escalated into an exchange of insults about each other’s family members, so we took our books and slipped off to the sightseer lounge, arriving just as the train began to thump across the frighteningly narrow Huey P. Long Bridge. Below, the Mississippi curled and enveloped the land in a hug, revealing why New Orleans was known as the Crescent City. A burly veteran was sitting in a window seat and strumming Simon & Garfunkel on his guitar, to the annoyance of an elderly lady who was knitting, peering over her pince-nez, oblivious to the view beyond her nose. Taking the opportunity, Jem and I settled into two window seats before the door burst open and four gum-smacking girls came giggling into the car and sat behind Knitting Nora, who rolled up her wool and left. Unable to disembark at the towns along the way, the next best way to tour the Louisiana bayous and swamps was from behind the glass. Granted a whistle-stop tour of sugarcane plantations and fields of corn, we passed streets named Railroad Avenue, and Bonnie, before rolling alongside trailer parks with ponies tethered to the fence. The glacial pace at which we were moving brought each inch into focus, if only for a second or two. The innards of these small towns and districts were hardly visited by tourists, certainly not open to dissection and examination in this way, and I felt privileged to be able to look upon the striped awning of the local bakery, a festive red bow left on a picket fence since Christmas, and an old gardener pruning a rose bush.

  After Lafayette, the first diners swayed through to the lunch car and the smell of garlic drifted through the door. Reluctant to spend all our money on mediocre meals, I went downstairs to the cafe to see what was on offer. More a tuck shop than a cafe, it was staffed by one attendant who was sitting at a table playing cards with an off-duty colleague. He didn’t look up. Standing at the counter, I glanced over at him every few seconds, then raised my eyebrows, wishing I had the balls to tell him to get up and do his job. Eventually he sighed, laid down his cards, and sauntered around the counter.

  ‘What can I get you?’

  Ordering an Angus cheeseburger, I waited for him to sniff, unwrap the burger with deliberate torpidity, then toss it into the microwave, all the while chatting over my head. An eternity passed as he sat back down and resumed his game. When the microwave pinged, he waited a few moments before heaving himself up and casting his friend a look of annoyance. As he dropped the burger into a cardboard carton, he nudged a tip box and shot me a challenging look. Suppressing every instinct to throw the burger at his head, I put $7.25 on the counter – the price of the burger – then after a pause, flicked another dollar bill into the box, disappointed by my own weakness. Fortunately, the burger was so good I’d eaten half of it by the time I’d sat down next to Jem, who, typically, had not wanted anything before and now wanted a bite.

  ‘God, that’s delicious,’ he said. ‘Can you get me one?’

  ‘I’ve just been down there.’

  ‘I know,’ he stretched, then winced. ‘My side still hurts, and anyway it’s nice and sunny up here and I’m cosy.’

  Counting up some cash, I went back downstairs to where the attendant was now on his phone watching a YouTube video of a man with a pellet gun being arrested in an Applebee’s, then shot in the restaurant’s toilet. He stuck his tongue into his cheek, then swaggered round the counter and gazed at me.

  ‘And what can I get you now?’

  ‘Another cheeseburger.’

  My single dollar had pissed him off. Working as a waitress throughout my four years at university, I too had suffered the indignity of the minimum wage, and was in favour of tipping if the service was above and beyond the call of duty. I’d scrubbed stale beer at 3 a.m., been slapped on the backside, polished cutlery until my fingers stung, and endured all horror of customers – with no expectation of a tip. But a quick calculation suggested that I had just given this man a 13 per cent bonus for using a microwave, and he was expecting another. In the 1960s, Eric Newby had written about tipping, or more specifically, about who not to tip: ‘Anyone in hotels or restaurants where a service charge is added to the bill, unless some member of the staff has rendered you an extraordinary service, such as carrying you upstairs and putting you to bed the right way up or cutting up your dinner for you if you have your arm in plaster.’ The offending cheeseburger was plopped onto another piece of cardboard and shoved towards me, as was the tip box. There was no doubt that I had been rendered an extraordinary service, but for rather more different reasons from those Newby had described. Looking at the box, I paid for my burger, then fixing the attendant with a look of defiance, I picked up the burger and stomped upstairs, making a mental note to send Jem the next time either of us wanted food.

  After a dreadful night’s sleep, Jem and I were seated side by side in the dining car opposite Michael and Erin, who could have been father and daughter were it not for the way Michael kept glancing at Erin’s dove tattoo as it winked from over her bra. Michael had the nondescript features of an All-American sitcom dad, and was travelling to his daughter’s wedding in Irvine, California. I recognised Erin from our evening stop at Houston, where she had cornered me to ask where she could buy a ticket for ‘LA or wherever’. The vagueness of her question suggested that not a lot of thought had gone into her travel plans, confirmed by the tiny knapsack now sitting on her lap. Jem was convinced she’d killed someone and was on the run. Erin was wearing a black Slipknot hoodie and had long black hair with purple streaks, and a tongue stud that she kept rubbing along her teeth.

  ‘So, you’re British?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes. How about you? Are you from Houston?’

  ‘I’m from New York, but I moved to Houston two months ago to get away from everyone I know.’

  ‘What’s it like?’ Jem asked, stepping on my foot as if to prove his theory.

  ‘Oh, I hate it, I’m going to move back. Have you ever been on the Thames? And do Kate and whatshisname actually live in Buckingham Palace?’

  ‘No, they live in Kensington Palace.’

  ‘Is Henry VIII from where you’re from?’

  ‘I used to go to school in Hampton, which is where he lived,’ Jem said, ‘at Hampton Court Palace.’

  ‘He had eight wives, right?’ Erin asked, stirring three packets of sugar i
nto her coffee, then reaching for mine.

  ‘Six,’ I said.

  ‘And did he kill them all?’

  ‘No, a good way to remember is divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, survived. It’s about the only thing I remember from A-level history.’

  ‘I love that show, The Tudors. I’m obsessed. We don’t have history in the States. I mean, we’re like, 200 years old, we don’t have anything, so we just pick off other people’s.’

  The Texas scrubland rolled by. Lonely cacti prickled the landscape, but the emptiness was terrifying. There were no roads, no homes, no signs of human life, and I wondered if anyone had ever walked this ground or if it existed for the sole benefit of train travellers to gaze at and muse over.

  ‘It looks like Breaking Bad country,’ I remarked to Erin.

  ‘What’s Breaking Bad?’

  ‘It’s an American show about a chemistry teacher with cancer who makes money cooking meth.’

  ‘I like Shameless. It reminds me of my family. Can I get some more coffee?’

  ‘What’s Shameless?’ Michael cut in.

  ‘It’s about this white trash, trailer park family,’ Erin replied.

  ‘Where are you from?’ I asked.

  ‘Staten Island. Go ahead, judge me.’

  ‘I’ve never been.’

  ‘It’s not for tourists,’ Erin brightened. ‘Anyways, when I get to LA I think I’m going to drive to Joshua Tree. I don’t know where my friend is, I think it’s Joshua Tree. And then I’m going to go to the Dash store.’

  ‘What’s the Dash store?’ Michael asked.

  ‘The Kardashians have a store there. I like the Kardashians, I watch them on TV. Keeping Up with the Kardashians and Shameless.’

  Having lost the best part of half an hour covering Erin’s television preferences, we turned to Michael, curious about his story. For a journey of this length, it was unusual for someone middle-aged, middle class, single – and apparently of sound mind – to be travelling by train when flying was cheaper and two days faster.

  ‘Oh, I hate flying, I won’t do it. It’s too stressful – the check-in, security, waiting for baggage. This is so much more relaxing. And, you know, I get to chat to pretty girls,’ he shrugged, with an admirable lack of shame.

  ‘I’m taking it ’cos it’s cheap,’ Erin replied. ‘That’s it.’

  Michael laughed and stretched an arm across the back of their seats. ‘I’m not too good at picking up pretty girls any more. When I was in my twenties I used to take the bus a lot, and when I got on I’d hover before getting my ticket and look around for the prettiest girl. I’d then go over to her and say: “You can take a chance on me, or you could wait and take a chance on a 300lb fat guy.” And they’d look out the window and then say “Okay!” I mean, I didn’t want to sit next to a 300lb fat guy either and it would work every time.’

  The creepiness was remarkable, but I had to give Michael his dues for being open about his predatory agenda, which had done little to deter Erin, whose hand kept brushing his knee. Leaving them to their burgeoning romance, we finished breakfast and returned to our seats to find that someone else had suffered a worse night’s sleep. Behind us, a man wearing an overcoat, trainers, and no socks, was kneeling up on the floor in front of his chair, sleeping face down in his pillow – or he’d collapsed and died in the night and no one had noticed. On reflection, jakeys and fuck-ups was not a bad call at all, and so far most people drawn to the Amtrak trains were unhinged to varying degrees, but there was still time, and three more trains to go, before making any firm judgements.

  As the train rattled and banged along a nasty bit of track, Jem clutched his side, his face twisted in pain. Lifting up his T-shirt I found a series of speckles around his rib cage that looked no worse than a rash.

  ‘Maybe you’ve got a bit of ringworm.’

  ‘What?!’

  ‘You might have picked it up from Patrick and Karma’s kitten in New Orleans.’

  ‘I didn’t touch the kitten, you know I’m allergic to cats. Anyway, it doesn’t itch, it hurts.’

  Dropping the T-shirt, I assured Jem that his rash would go away, and went back to staring at the desert. Squatting on burnished hillsides was an abundance of prickly-pear cacti with flat pads like table-tennis bats, rimmed with red flowers. A single eagle soared overhead, and the occasional pick-up threw up dust in the distance. A copy of Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian lay in my lap, the bookmark where I had parked it the night before. Delays were for reading, but while we were on the move it was impossible to stay focused when there were so many conversations on which to eavesdrop. And it took just one sneeze or a glance into a bag of crisps to miss black-tailed jackrabbits springing into holes, and ground squirrels springing out of them.

  Sleep crept up on us, and we woke to find the train had stopped at El Paso and passengers charging to the doors. Panicked, we leapt to the window and saw that a line had formed on the platform, leading to a lady wearing a checked shirt and a baseball cap. Next to her were two ice coolers packed with foil-wrapped burritos that she was touting for two bucks apiece. Burrito Lady was an icon of the Sunset Limited’s route. Joining the queue, we managed to scoop up two of the last hot beef and bean burritos, standing in line behind staff from the dining car who knew better than to eat their own wares. Boarding the train again, we noticed a number of security guards with dogs wandering the platform. Barbed wire looped along the station netting, and as the train set off along the Mexican border, a border patrol car raced alongside checking that no stowaways had slipped under the train or clung to the sides.

  ‘I have stage four cancer.’ Ernie tapped the oxygen cylinder by his side, which was wired into his nose. Staring at the Arizona sunset, his bony hands in his lap, Ernie gave a little laugh. ‘I can’t fly no more, not with the pressure on my lungs.’ He paused for a few minutes, pointing at the mountains wearing scarves of cloud. ‘But why would I want to when I can sit here with a beer and watch something this beautiful.’ The sightseer car was crammed with passengers who had gathered to witness the phenomenon of an Arizona sunset. Two foamers had set up video-recording equipment and were narrating the plums and purples that streaked the skies, and Erin was now crying on Michael about her ex-boyfriend. Sunsets had a strange way of gathering travellers in a way they didn’t at home. No one stopped cooking dinner or switched off EastEnders to watch the sun set, and yet when abroad, the entire day hinged on the six or seven minutes it took for an everyday occurrence. Sunsets were an experience, a few moments of movement and impermanence that by their very nature were impossible to catch and contain – much like train journeys – yet it didn’t stop people from trying, their iPhones pressed up against the glass.

  Ernie was eighty-two years old and lived in Tucson, our next stop, however the train was already two hours behind schedule and he and his wife would only reach home around midnight.

  ‘We’ve always wanted to take this train, but when you have something on your doorstep, you never do until it’s too late. There is so much to see in this country, and most of us never bother to look at it.’

  ‘Have you travelled a lot outside the US?’ I asked, untangling Ernie’s wires from my foot, wary of tripping over and killing him off.

  ‘Oh, I’ve fought in almost every war you can think of. Did a lot of travelling that way. But I’m glad that I’ve had the chance to ride this train, and with my wife. Not a lot of folks can say that.’ Ernie turned to us, his dentures holding up his smile. ‘You folks would be welcome to come and stay with us in Tucson. We would love to have you and show you round our ranch.’

  ‘Likewise. If you ever come to London, you should get in touch,’ Jem said.

  ‘You’re too kind.’ Ernie raised his beer. ‘But I won’t live to see the end of this month.’

  Jem had shingles. The rash had erupted into a belt of blisters around his chest, which explained the nerve pain whenever the train had passed over uneven ground. Through the magic of Facetime, my mother,
a GP, had examined the vesicles and made the diagnosis, sending us a link to the course of antivirals he needed to take. Secondary to dying in a derailment, our next greatest fear had been falling ill in the US, and we were now sitting in the waiting room of a private clinic in downtown LA, about to experience the degradation of American healthcare. To Jem’s annoyance, the walls were covered in posters for shingles vaccinations featuring wrinkled hands and Zimmer frames.

  ‘Why have I got a geriatric affliction?’ he whispered.

  ‘It’s not geriatric, anyone can get it.’

  ‘Anyone over sixty-five.’

  The door opened and we were called in to see the doctor. Grecian and bronzed with an abundance of wax in his curls, the doctor was wearing theatre scrubs beneath his open coat. The only surgery he was likely to perform was removing a splinter from a toddler in what was a glorified walk-in centre. Jem perched on the couch while I hovered in the corner. Lifting up Jem’s T-shirt, the doctor took a casual glance at his rash.

  ‘Does it itch?’

  ‘No, it hurts. It tingles.’

  ‘I can give you a cream.’

  For what was set to cost at least $400 for three minutes of his time, I was determined to get our money’s worth and spoke up from my corner.

  ‘My mum was concerned that he might have shingles and suggested that we get a course of antivirals.’

  ‘Oh yeah? And what does Mom do?’

  ‘She’s a GP.’

  ‘Well, we specialise in this country. We don’t do general medicine.’

  ‘That’s fine, but she suggested we keep a course of antivirals just in case it turns out to be shingles and we have no access to a doctor.’

  ‘You can come back if it’s shingles, which I don’t think this is.’