A Train through Time. Elizabeth Farnsworth
we encountered porter James Dodge (he wore a name tag), standing at an open window. It was snowing now, and a prairie wind blew snowflakes into the vestibule. James Dodge said he found it invigorating.
He was taller and younger than my father. I stood on tiptoe to take in the cold air and agreed it felt good. “Where do you sleep?” Sally asked. “Do you like being a porter?” He explained that he slept in “sort of a dorm in an auxiliary baggage car” next to the engine but didn’t say if he liked his work. He also told us about the trip ahead. I was listening to the clickety-clack music of the train and heard only bits of what he said.
“I got on the Portland Rose in St. Louis. In Cheyenne, some cars, including yours, will be switched to the City of San Francisco, which is speeding north of us from Chicago right now.
“We may be delayed. A blizzard . . . Donner Pass . . . California. ”
After a few minutes, Sally and I got cold in the vestibule and went forward again. Near the engine, we came to a door that looked different from the rest. The door was locked, and when we knocked, no one came. We could hear men talking and an occasional thumping.
Sally asked, “What do you think is in there?”
“Guns and snakes—and we’ll need to get a key to feed them because porters and conductors will be afraid.” I made up explanations for what I couldn’t explain.
Brakes squealed—the train was slowing down.
“I have a promise to keep,” I said, and I ran back through the train to a car with elevated seats and a glass top. I sat down in the first empty chair. Sally followed and stood in the aisle to watch.
The windows were dirty, and I couldn’t wipe them clean.
On the platform, a woman in a heavy coat and feathered hat walked from the station toward the train, her face shadowed by the hat.
Please let her take it off, I thought.
She walked up and down, seeking her assigned car, and for a moment, the shadow lifted from her face. I cried out in disappointment. Then I saw people getting out of a car in a parking lot. They came toward the train and passed under my window. I studied each person’s face and sank back into my seat.
Sally asked why I was crying.
I told her to leave me alone, and seconds later she did. I heard the door of the car wheeze shut behind her and thought, “Perhaps I do want her as a friend.”
Leaving the station, the train rocked gently—a ship on a prairie sea. I sat for a while thinking about the promise I had made. Was it too hard to keep? When I returned to our compartment, my father was sitting in the chair looking back toward home. He asked if I’d felt the locomotive pulling harder than before.
“The Kansas prairie tilts up toward Denver,” he said, “which is a mile high. The engine is straining a little as we climb.” I looked over his shoulder and saw the incline. I also saw horses and cows left outside in pastures on this snowy day. We passed a farmer pitching hay to cattle from a truck. He waved, and I frowned in response.
“It’s wrong, Daddy, don’t you think? They should be in barns.”
“They’ve got thick coats, Elizabeth. Don’t worry. They prefer winter to summer bugs and heat.”
I studied women’s faces at stations in Ellis, Oakley, and Sharon Springs, recognizing the names of the towns because my father had taught me to read a Union Pacific timetable. The list of stops and estimated times of arrival appealed to me—a journey of eighteen hundred miles reduced to a single page. We were nearing a state, Colorado, where I’d never been before. Wyoming was next, then Utah, Nevada, and California.
It would be sunny in California, my father said. We’d see flowers called birds of paradise and eat lemons fresh from trees.
“We’ll feel better. You’ll see.”
We got off the train in Denver and, because of engine trouble on our Portland Rose, spent several hours in Union Station. I liked the café and the store full of books and newspapers. For a long time we sat on a wooden bench watching people rush to and from trains. I looked closely at each woman. My father noticed but didn’t ask what I was doing. He often said I had the right to my own thoughts.
Back aboard the train, as we sped north from Denver to Cheyenne, a bright moon hung low over the Rockies. I was reading The Road to Oz, and Daddy interrupted to show me a high peak that glistened in the cold light. It was no longer snowing, and the world seemed frozen to a stop, except for us. In the book, Dorothy was showing a new friend named Button Bright how to wind up Tik-tok—his “thinking machine first, then his speech, and finally his action; so he would doubtless run perfectly until they had reached the Emerald City.”
I wondered if people could be wound up and brought back to life.
“Good night, Louie,” I said, closing the book. “Good night, Daddy.
“Good night, Mommy.”
l
Haiti—1994
We drive slowly along a dirt road next to the Port-au-Prince International Airport.
The last flight out of Haiti took off last night, and the island is now cut off from the outside. UN-sponsored negotiations are failing; an invasion of US troops is imminent. The United Nations, the Organization of American States, and the Clinton administration are determined to restore President Jean-Bertrand Aristide to power. The military junta that overthrew him three years ago has declared a state of siege.
We need a few shots of the deserted airport for a NewsHour story.
Suddenly—an open gate. We drive through it and stop next to a runway. The crew and our interpreter, Louis Saint-Lot, jump out to shoot while I stay back with driver André Thelussa. We’re a little nervous because potential military targets like the airport are off-limits to reporters, but in our ten days of working here, those rules have not been enforced.
We get the necessary shots and are loading the gear into the car when a man comes running at us, waving his arms.
“Sir, wait, sir!” He yells.
He’s an airport security official, and he’s irate. As he and Louis argue in Creole, a four-door Toyota truck wheels through the gate. Four soldiers armed with M-1s jump out and hold us at gunpoint. Louis tells them that his uncle is director of the airport and will be displeased to learn we’ve been treated rudely. The official calls the director on a cell phone. A half hour later he arrives—an older gentleman in a dark suit—and assesses the situation. He’s a civilian, and the military is in charge. He tells Louis he’s sorry but he can’t help.
We’re under arrest for trespassing in a restricted area. The soldiers will escort us back to our hotel, and Louis and André will be taken somewhere else.
This is the nightmare I’ve prayed would never happen. Protecting local people who help us produce pieces for The NewsHour is a requirement of my work. Sometimes danger can’t be avoided, but we didn’t have to go through that gate. We’d violated a sacred trust by unnecessarily endangering Louis and André.
John, Jaime, and I refuse to leave without them. If the soldiers try to take them away, we’ll throw ourselves under their truck. The threat produces a tense standoff.
Finally, Louis insists that we go.
“No one will hurt me,” he says, “and I will protect André with my life. Go back to the hotel and call my wife. She knows what to do.”
Louis’s brother is a colonel in the Haitian army. His father was the first Haitian ambassador to the United Nations. The family has close connections to the military government and to the opposition, which makes Louis an especially good fixer. That’s what news crews call a local interpreter who also helps in other ways, like deciding when it’s safe to shoot. After studying at UCLA, Louis returned to Haiti to make T-shirts for the National Football League. A UN-imposed economic embargo has made it impossible to get the