Dear Me Letter: Orient Express

Dear Me,

I’ve loved trains since my first trip to Paducah, Kentuck from Little Rock with my folks and sister Jeannie in the early forties. Carol wasn’t born yet. The smell of the diesel, the sound of the steam, of the engine and the swaying clickity-clack soothing through the night were magnified as most first experiences are at that age. And it was fun watching the countryside racing the day by. The black conductors in their flat-topped black hats clicking holes in tickets as we rolled toward the next town were probably used to being stared at by kids.

One of the  best parts was the dining car: linen white tablecloths and napkins, china (or close to it)and silverware, pewter creamers, glasses made of glass and the Black polite waiters dressed as white as their teeth.

Now is now and is different on the trains I ride where you’re fed plastic on plastic with paper pull-out napkins, except this one, The Orient Express. There is a sensation of plush as we rush at an acceptable speed from Paris. And only an hour ago there was another sensation, one of a different kind of rush: the rush of fear that seems to slam invisible iron bars around one’s body and soul, surrounding them with a dark clammy dampness known only by paralyzing fear. (It’s odd how one occurrence can grab one from a free calm daydreaming state of mind into closed walls of terror where your attention rivets to the cause of this, then disburses, seeking any way out. It’s draining.)

I had the window seat in our compartment, my friend the opposite seat facing me. The older gentleman on my left was napping, as appeared to be the boy from India with a basket in his lap next to my friend.

 I turned my eyes from the calming mountains outside to greet a sensation of someone looking at me. At the halfway turn of my head a thought, “I don’t want to see this” sped the same pace as my eyes, then locked. Still latched at the top, small sinister brown eyes like magnets held mine from a sliding door at the bottom half of the basket. Icy fear numbed my lax cheeks and locking jaws. “A cobra!” I thought the worst.

No speech or motion seemed possible. With frozen-zippered lips I grunted a gutteral sound to my friend to pull her from her book. She looked up, puzzled by my stony expression, then followed my eyes to the bottom part of the basket. “What is it now,” obviously thinking this was another one of my practical jokes. After I pushed out another more desperate grunt and bulged my eyeballs nearly far enough out to touch her, she moved her handbag, saw the eyes and whispered with a reprimanding grin, “Annie, it’s only a baby badger!” She reached over and closed the door it had maneuvered open. The boy kept napping and we kept his secret. And secured the basket door.

My adrenals went back to be roused another time and I went back to the window wondering what Agatha Christie would have done with this.