“In a way this Fairyland is a disappointment,” Fay said. “1 don’t think they give the children enough to do; they can’t actually go into those little houses — all they can do is look at them. Like a museum.”
His weariness and lethargy kept him from commenting. He no longer felt related to the noises and movement around him, the swirl of children.
A conductor came along the platform, collecting tickets. He counted aloud. When he reached Nathan he stopped, saying, “Thirtythree.” Then he took Elsie’s ticket and said to Nathan, “Are you all together?”
“Yes,” Fay said.
“Well, I hope I can squeeze you all in,” he said, taking her ticket and Bonnie’s and Nathan’s.
“How many can you get in?” Fay said.
“It depends on the number of adults,” the conductor said. “If it’s mostly kids we can keep squeezing them in. But an adult is another matter.” He departed with the tickets.
“I guess we get in,” Fay said. “He took our tickets.”
Theirs had been the last tickets collected. Behind them, a family of five fretted and worried.
They won’t get on this time, Nathan thought. They’ll have to wait. He gazed off past the refreshment stand at the sturdy house that the third little pig had built.
When the train returned, he and Fay and the children moved with the others through the gate and onto the outer platform, along the track. As the cars became empty the new passengers clambered on. The conductor began shutting the wire doors of the cars. At the gate, the family with tickets were stopped. “No,” the attendant said. “You can’t get on if you have tickets.”
How weird, Nathan thought, seeing a small boy whose ticket had not been collected standing hopefully at the train, holding his ticket up. Here, if you have a ticket, you’re barred. If you don’t, then you can get on. The girls and Fay hurried toward the rear car, along with the others. His feet dragged; weighed down, he fell behind them. Children squeezed past him and hopped up into the cars.
When he arrived at the last car he found that Fay and Elsie had already found places. The conductor started to close the wire door, and then seeing Bonnie, said to her.
“Room for one more.”
Lifting her up, he handed her to Fay, inside the car.
Around Nathan, the other children without tickets disappeared into the cars. Only a few remained, and then only he remained on the platform. Everyone had been seated but him. The wire door on Fay’s car had been locked, and the conductor was starting away. Suddenly seeing him, the conductor said,
“I forgot about you.”
Nathan found himself smiling. Behind him, beyond the gate, the waiting people waved and shouted with sympathy. Or was it sympathy? He did not know. He found himself walking along with the conductor, back up the length of the train, toward the engine. The conductor prattled away, telling him how he had happened to overlook him. At the first car the conductor peered in and then said,
“Here. You can get in here.”
He clambered up, pushed through the little entrance, and found himself facing four Cub Scouts in blue uniforms. They stared at him as he tried to seat himself on the bench. At last he said to the first Cub Scout, “Why don’t you move over?”
The scout at once moved, and he was able to seat himself. His head brushed the roof of the car, and the angle was such that he had to hunch forward. He sat no taller than the scouts; only larger, more awkward, filling up more space — as the conductor had said. The wire door was locked and then the conductor signalled to the motorman.
After a series of noises the train jerked and began to move.
Under Nathan’s feet the floor drummed; the train vibrated steadily, without variation. They moved away from the platform and the waving, shouting people. Almost at once they found themselves out of Fairyland, among oak trees and grass.
Seated so far up in the train, he could look out at the tail of the engine and, beyond that, the area toward which they were moving. He saw the track ahead of them, the slopes of grass, a road to the right. Beyond the road were more oak trees and then the lake. Now and then he made out the sight of picnickers. They glanced up at the train, and once, the Cub Scout next to him started to wave and then nervously changed his mind. No one in the car spoke. The noise of the wheels was so constant that no one expected it to stop; they all sat patiently riding, gazing out, contemplating.
On and on the train went, always at the same rate of speed.
The unvarying noise and vibration and pace of the train took the fatigue out of his legs. Cramped as he was he began to feel more at peace. The oak trees lulled him. The inevitability of the train’s progress… always ahead of them he saw the track, the two rails, and there was nothing else the train could do but follow it. And nothing else that any of them could do but remain where they were, cooped up in the little irregular cars, locked in by their wire doors, hunched and huddled in whatever postures they had first assumed. Their knees touched; their heads almost touched; they could not even look at one another unless luck happened to have put them facing that way. And yet none of them objected. No one complained or tried to stir.
How odd I must look, he thought to himself. In here with these Cub Scouts in their blue uniforms. One bulging, misshapen adult crowded in where he shouldn’t be. Where several children should be, on a child’s train, in a child’s amusement park. Did the City of Oakland anticipate me? Certainly they had not. This is the luck of the schlimozl, he thought. Put up forward here, away from Fay and the ghls. Riding alone here while they ride together in back.
But it stirred no real emotions in him. He experienced a relaxation of physical tension; nothing more.
Is that all that is wrong? he asked himself. Merely the accumulation of tensions, worries, fears? Nothing of lasting importance? Can the constant vibrations of a children’s train soothe me and take away whatever it is that confronts me? This sense of dismay and doom. – .
He no longer felt the dread, the intuition that he had been moved against his will into a situation built for another person’s use.
He thought, There is certainly no hope left of getting away. And it isn’t even terrible; it’s possibly funny, if even that. It’s embarrassing. That’s all. A little embarrassing to realize that I no longer control my life, that the major decisions have already been made, long before I was conscious that any change was occurring.
When I met her, or rather, when she looked out of her car window and saw me and Gwen… that was when the decision was made, assuming that it ever was. She made it, as soon as she saw us, and the rest was inevitable.
Probably she will make a good wife, he thought. She will be loyal to me, and try to help me do what I want to do. Her passion toward controlling me will ultimately subside; all of this energy in her will fade. I will make substantial changes in her, too. We will alter each other. And someday it will be impossible to tell who has led whom. And why.
The only fact, he realized, will be that we are married and living together, that I will be earning a living, that we will have two girls from a previous marriage and possibly children of our own. A valid question will be: Are we happy? But only time will tell that. And not even Fay can underwrite the answer to that; she is as dependent as I am, in that final area.
He thought, She could bring about everything that she wants and still be wretched. Out of this I could emerge as the prosperous one, the peaceful one. And neither of us can possibly know.
When the train had finished its trip and was returning to the platform he saw the people lined up for their ride. The Cub Scout next to him plucked up his courage at last and waved; some of the people waved back, and that encouraged other scouts to wave.
Nathan waved, too.
(twenty)
With the money I received from my sister as cash payment for my equity in the house I opened a checking account at the Bank of America at Point Reyes Station. As soon as possible –after all, there wasn’t much time left– I set out to buy the things I needed.
First, I paid two hundred dollars for a horse and had it brought to the house by truck and let loose in the back pasture. It was almost the same color as Charley’s horse, possibly a little darker, but the same size, as far as I could tell, and in as good physical shape. It ran around for a day or so and then it calmed down and began to crop grass. After that it seemed perfectly at home.