Out of Order (14 page)

In the four years that he took his classes, Jason learned a lot from Mr. Switzer.

He was thinking about the things he didn’t learn from Mrs. Maxwell when he saw the police out of the corner of his eye.

All three were dressed in starched khaki uniforms, spit-shined shoes and gleaming belts. Their brass buttons glowed in the fluorescent light. Two were tall and thin, their arms swinging free in their stiff short sleeves, like clackers in a church bell, the shorter man—still taller than Jason—walking just ahead. Their waist bands dipped an inch on the right, pulled down by heavy holstered revolvers. They didn’t twirl their billy clubs by leather straps or slap them into their open palm, using them instead as an extension of their arm, pushing open the station doors and prodding sleeping beggars out of their way, the official version of a ten-foot pole.

They moved with an easy grace—the last train was still a half an hour away and they could take their time, no one was going anywhere. They started with a small group of blond Rastafarians from Sweden who knew the drill. They stood when the policemen spoke, they smiled as clubs poked into bedrolls, turned torn pockets inside out and even helped spill open tattered backpacks. They didn’t complain when a Walkman dropped from a bag and shattered in half. If they were hiding something it was small and not worth the officers’ time and they gathered up their ratty possessions as the police moved down the line.

Rachel was still sitting, her back against an iron support. She had seen enough to understand what was going on and Jason watched as she turned back to face the tracks, her elbows on her knees, her hands hanging loose above her feet.

The Japanese girls giggled nervously as the policemen asked them questions, their embarrassed blushes misinterpreted as exotic flirtations. There was a great deal of smiling and head bobbing and
ahcha
head swaying, but other than glancing at their passports while pretending they weren’t looking down their baggy tee shirts, the police left them alone.

Sprawled out next to a chai vendor’s stove, two guys, college-aged, glared up at the police who stood over them. Jason didn’t hear what the one said but the other laughed and he saw the officer’s jaw tighten, the billy club coming around fast and sharp and catching the laughing student on the knee. He yelped and rolled back, his friend standing halfway up before a second club rapped on his wrist and he fell back down hard. The one clutching his knee was shouting in English, a heavy Teutonic accent adding the attitude, when the smallest officer stepped forward and set the tip of his club on the man’s stomach, leaning on it as he explained the situation in a low, calm voice. Whether it was the words or the club or something else Jason couldn’t see, the man was soon nodding and, flat on his back, dumping the contents of his pack onto the concrete by his head. The officer waited, still leaning, as his partners shifted through the pile with their clubs, and, finding nothing, tipping his hat as they walked away.

Rachel had tilted her head back, the bill of her Blue Jays cap pointing into the night sky. She curled her lower lip between her teeth and he watched as her shoulders rose and fell in jerky bursts.

After their chat with the two young Germans, the three policemen regrouped for a moment at the edge of the platform, the tallest knocking a discarded clay chai cup off the platform to break on the tracks three feet below. For a moment Jason thought that they would turn away and wander down to the far end of the track where dark shadows waited on dark benches, but they turned back to scan the crowd for the usual suspects. The shortest, silver tabs on his epaulets denoting his rank, rocked back on his heels, sniffed the humid night air and stepped towards the woman in the baseball hat who sat crying against an iron column.

They were four feet away when the singing started.

“Jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle all the way…”

He was off key, off beat and his voice was cracking, but Jason was loud enough to attract the attention of every person at the open-air station.

“…oh what fun it is to ride a something horse open sleigh, HEY!”

The police officers, like everyone but the crying girl, stared at the singing man, the tallest bringing a hand up to conceal a bright, white smile. The officer in charge smiled too, but they hadn’t moved towards him, still towering above the crying girl.

Jason looked at the police, drew in a deep breath that came out as a desperate sigh, held imaginary reins in his hands and broke into a prancing gallop.

“Dashing through the snow, in something something sleigh, over the hills we go, laughing all the way, ha, ha, ha….”

It was the laughing that got the police moving. They walked over slowly, billy clubs now behind their backs, surrounding him. Jason stopped singing but held tight on his reins. “Oh, hello,” he said, with a polite, I’m-not-dangerous smile.

“What are you doing?” the officer in charge said, his partners looking away to keep from laughing.

Jason raised his eyebrows, the answer obvious. “I’m taking a sleigh ride,” he said, and held up his hands to show the invisible reins.

The officer nodded. “Where are you from?”

Jason was tempted to say something about over the river and through the woods but he sensed that he’d already gone far enough. “The U.S. I’m an American.”

The officer nodded again. “American,” he said to the taller men, as if that explained everything. “Is that your bag?” He pointed with his club.

“
Ahcha
,” Jason said, and gave his head a slight bob.

“Pick it up. You will come with us,” the officer said. “And leave your horse here.”

Chapter Seventeen

Despite the impressive brass nameplate on the door, the stationmaster’s office was small and cardboard boxes filled with old station logs and office supplies lined the walls. The two taller guards stood with their backs to the closed door, their billy clubs held diagonally across their chests, the shorter man motioning to a chair against the wall as he stepped behind the room’s only desk and took a seat.

For five minutes no one said a word as the officer flipped through Jason’s passport, the sound of the turning pages slow and deliberate. By the door, one of the policemen sneezed and rubbed the end of his nose with the back of his hand that held the black club. Jason tried to think of what he would do if they started beating him, realizing then that he could do nothing at all. The officer set the passport on the desk, and said something to the tallest policeman, who took Jason’s backpack, placed it on the desk and began the inspection, starting with a long, critical look at the bright pink Hello Kitty shoulder strap with its trendy Japanese cartoon cat logo.

The first thing the policeman pulled out was a handful of Rachel’s underwear.

“A souvenir,” Jason said, forcing himself to smile as the man held up a wispy red thong. The police officers exchanged glances before conversing in Hindi, the meaning evident in their disgusted tone. He was waiting for them to pull a bra from the backpack when he remembered that Rachel seldom wore one.

They went through the pack, pocket by pocket, pouring the shampoo down the floor drain in the center of the room, breaking open his disposable camera, squeezing toothpaste into the wastepaper basket. There was no malicious bullying, no leering grins, just a quiet efficiency that Jason found frightening. They unfurled all six yards of the red sari, the two taller men holding up sections and examining the silver embroidery with its circuit board pattern, tugging on the button, holding the fabric up to their nose, the smell of the cologne still strong, the officer first looking at the sari then at Jason, then back at the sari, saying nothing.

He knew it was coming but he still flinched when the officer told him to undress. They turned his clothes inside out, yanked the padded instep from his Nikes and removed the laces. He stood naked, not knowing where to put his hands, shaking even though it was hot in the windowless room, and listened as the Matsayagandha Express pulled into the station.

The man behind the desk picked up Jason’s green rail pass and printed ticket from the pile of papers he had built next to a pair of Rachel’s jeans.

“You have a ticket for this train.” It wasn’t a question but Jason still said yes. The man said something to the others, which made them laugh, but he kept the same flat, cryptic look.

“Do you always sing in public?”

“No sir, th-this was the first time I ever did anything like that,” Jason stammered and he realized as he said it that it was the truth.

The officer looked back at the pile of papers and thumbed through his passport for the tenth time. “I have one last question for you, Mr. Jason Talley,” he said, looking right into Jason’s eyes. “What did you do with the money?”

Streams of cold sweat ran down his sides and his stomach muscles cramped. He held his hands tight against his crotch to keep them from shaking. “Money?” he said, his voice dry, and he thought about the packages in Rachel’s bag, small bundles that could be anything.

“Yes. The money.”

Jason swallowed and focused on his words. “What money?”

“The money your mother gave you for singing lessons,” the officer said as he stood up and placed his cap on his head. “You had better hurry if you are going to make your train.”

Through the closed door he could hear the three men laughing as they left the station.

***

The train was already moving when Jason sprinted out of the stationmaster’s office, jumping through the door of the last passenger car with ten feet of platform to spare, his swinging backpack pinballing him into the narrow passage. An old man stood looking out the opposite door. He gave a friendly nod as Jason, panting, leaned against the wall by the restroom door.

His rail pass guaranteed him a berth in a first-class sleeper. If the Matsayagandha Express was like the other trains he had seen in India, he would have to pass through twenty third-class cars and cut through the kitchen car before he reached the air-conditioned portion of the train, three or four cars with cushioned seats and reading lights and hefty price tags. Unlike the first-class cars, there was no heavy, soundproof door separating this entrance area from the wooden benches that served as seats and, now, as beds. He took his pack off, held it by the good strap, and started down the aisle.

The seating arrangement was the same in third class as it was in first, the car subdivided into a dozen alcoves, each with forward and rear-facing benches. In first class the thick, padded backrest swung up to create a second tier bed—in third the hard beds were bolted into place, three tiers high. Each alcove in first class offered dark blue privacy curtains, third class making do with saris knotted to support poles or nothing at all. People slept three to a berth, their luggage chained to the bench frame to deter on-board thieves or crammed in the corner, serving as rough pillows. There had been close to a hundred people waiting for the train at Goa station and he spotted a few who were trying to settle in among the passengers, most of whom had been aboard for hours. They smiled and stepped out of the way as he passed, the train’s movement adding some strange steps to the dance.

The car ended in an entrance area that was the mirror image of the one he had climbed aboard, complete with two restrooms, a child-sized sink and twin doors that stood open to let in the cool night air, the roar of the train a small price to pay. Two long steps took him through the passage that linked the cars, and he was glad that it was too dark to see the tracks that raced below.

The pattern repeated for the next twenty-four cars—dark passageway, entrance area, crowded benches, entrance area, dark passageway. Sometimes there were men standing in the open doorways, watching the night go by, smoking little joint-like cigarettes under the No Smoking signs, sometimes he bumped into people going in or coming out of the restroom, a single-seater that lacked a seat, just an aluminum basin low on the floor that flushed onto the tracks. In every car there were snores that drowned out the train, a crying baby that drowned out the snores, and someone in the middle of the aisle, bags open, driven by an insomniac urge to repack his luggage.

The white-coated chai vendors and the teeshirt-wearing cooks were enjoying a late-night snack in the kitchen when Jason walked through. One of the cooks held out a wrapped sandwich and motioned for Jason to take it, shrugging his shoulders to say it wasn’t a big deal, another setting a cup of milky chai on the box that served as their makeshift table. Jason thanked him and took a seat, not realizing how hungry he was until he held the sandwich in his hands.

From a metal kitchen drawer one of the cooks pulled a boom box, setting it on the floor by his feet as he hit the play button. He skipped the first few tracks on the CD to reach a slow ballad, the woman singing in an impossibly high voice. The men around the tabled bobbed their heads in time with the music, and although he didn’t know the words, Jason sensed she sang of lost love and missed opportunities. When the song ended the man skipped back to play it again.

The sandwich was good, chicken maybe, or some deep-fried vegetable. One of the chai vendors, a sleepy-eyed adolescent working the midnight shift, pointed to Jason’s sneakers and laughed, and Jason held up a leg for the others to see the missed eyelets and huge bows of a ten-second lace-up, laughing along with the boy. One of the chai vendors tapped Jason on the arm. “Policeman?” he asked, pointing back down the tracks, and Jason nodded, drawing sympathetic grunts around the table.

The CD moved on to a bouncy number built around a call and response refrain. By the second verse they were all clapping and singing along. He’d had enough singing for the night, but Jason kept the beat on the bottom of an overturned plastic bucket. The third time through the song, Jason added polyrhythmic flourishes to the backbeat, finishing up with a double-handed drum roll and a geographically incorrect
Olé
. He left the kitchen a half-hour later, the cook handing him two more sandwiches, adding the same no-big-deal shrug.

Although it had the same basic layout as its third-class cousins, the entrance area of the first-class car was cleaner and, with a fifteen-watt bulb in the ceiling-mounted fixture, better lit. The parallel restrooms—one featuring the aluminum hole, the other a chipped and stained porcelain toilet—jogged out of the walls, narrowing the passage further. The car’s doors stood open, held in place by the train’s momentum, and through the doors the lights of distant villages and the more distant stars stood out against the black night. Jason opened the heavy, soundproof door to first class and shook as a blast of mechanically chilled air swept down his shirt. The door closed with a muffled thump behind him and he started down the passage, looking for his assigned berth. He was halfway down the car when a hand reached out from behind a blue curtain and caught his pant leg.

“So, Santa,” Rachel’s voice said in the darkness, “am I back on your nice list?”

Jason pulled back the curtain. She was sitting alone on the cushioned bench, the backrest still in place. On the two bunks across from her he could see the sprawled-out bodies of a pair of travelers, mouths open, drooling, decorum lost to sleep. She slid over and patted the seat next to her. He sat down and fished the sandwiches out of his pack, handing her both. “I think it’s chicken,” he said.

Rachel peeled back the corner of the white paper and nibbled at the bread. “You eat?” she asked.

“Back in the kitchen,” Jason said, his thumb pointing the direction.

Rachel nodded and re-wrapped the sandwich. “I’m not hungry,” she said and handed it back.

He leaned over and lowered his voice. “Listen, Rachel, what I said back there on the road…well, what I
didn’t
say…hell, I’m sorry.”

“Sorry?” she said, just as soft. “Jason, you’re not sorry. You’re fucking amazing.” In the darkness he felt her reach over and squeeze his hand. “But I’m still not hungry.”

“You haven’t eaten all day.”

“I know. I should be starved, but I’m not. Maybe it’s nerves.”

Jason chuckled. “Nerves? What do you have to be nervous about?”

“I’m afraid,” she said, cuddling up next to him, resting her head on his sloping shoulder, “you might start singing again.”