There were two things about Chicago that I thought would never change: the constant noise, and the endlessly bursting colors. Chicago was a vibrant, bustling city, not a place that I would quickly call nondescript. Well, standing by a Chicago Loop train stop at five o’ clock in the morning, I could not have been more wrong about Chicago. But, then again, I shouldn’t really have been that surprised. A lot of things that I used to think were permanent had been changing.
I coughed into my elbow, doubling over my waist and my throat burning with each sharp wheeze. Sighing profusely and lifting my head, I continued to survey my surroundings and wonder how such an effervescent city could lose all of its zeal in only a matter of hours.
To give Chicago some credit, five o’ clock in the morning has never been a riveting time of day, no matter where you are. But it was abnormal for the city to be so silent, with no sounds resonating within my eardrums. Part of the silence could have been faulted with the lack of trains at the train stop. All that lay in the widespread field were tracks.
Several sets of them, the tracks, weathered with use and orange with rust. Dull, silver and brown lines extending endlessly in both directions, connecting cities upon cities with a single road. By looking up slightly, I could see Chicago’s tall buildings sprawl the skyline. A heavy fog, however, usurped the city of its usual color. Everything around me had a gray tone, even the chestnut-colored rust that draped over the rails.
There were plenty of people around, though. A bunch of them, all sitting in the grass and huddled in small circles. They all looked gray, too, but I didn’t think the fog gave their complexion such a pigment. Some of them had coats, ranging from ebony to charcoal in color, that they wrapped tightly around themselves to harness as much of their body warmth as they possibly could. Others had fingerless gloves, like mine, the frayed ash-colored material not doing much to insulate their frigid hands. No one was talking. No one made a sound.
My eyes travelled from face to face, studying each person’s expression carefully. Some had deep wrinkles and blanched skin that stretched tightly over their faces. Russet-colored soil stuck to the cheekbones and foreheads of many, while unhealed gashes marred the faces of others. Short tufts of limp hair stuck upright as a sharp breeze brushed through the throng of hobos. One or two people’s arms ended in rounded stubs of flesh. Coats and shirts hung loosely over people’s bodies.
All of the people there shared the same vacant look in their eyes, the same straight line of a mouth. The same expression of a sheep knowing its fate as it walks straight into a butcher’s shop.
I felt my eyebrows intrinsically crease together as I thought about these people that I sat with as we waited for the next train. All of them had stories. They all had parents; all didn’t come into the world in a state of destitution like this. What could have driven these people – these kids – from their homes and families? What reasons could possibly justify this fate for them? Some stories were probably just like mine.
Most were probably worse.
Wrapping my arms around my waist, I stood up from my spot on the grass. Blinking a few times against the bone-chilling breeze, I took a few short steps forward.
So many other people have the same situation as I do… and no one gives two hoots about them.
Two more steps forward. The heavy gray fog moistened the air slightly, giving his face a damp cooling sensation. The breeze began to let up a little bit, gradually calming.
If we’re all just destined for lives on the rails, then what point does my existence even have anymore?
My foot abruptly hit a hard object on the ground. My eyes travelled down and landed on a set of tracks that my foot had made contact with. Weathered with use and orange with rust.
Taking a shaky breath, I lifted one foot and set it firmly on the other side of the rail.
Suddenly, tremors began to run through my body. They started gently, but as my brain began to process what I was planning to do, they became violent. I felt more dampness on my face as moisture began to well in my eyes and drip down my cheeks. Biting my lip, I took another shaky breath and bent my leg. Within a moment, my other leg was on the other side of the tracks.
I inched across the wooden planks that bridged the two steel rails until I stood directly in the center and turned so I faced east – the direction from which the next train would come.
And they say that people like us can’t change how we end up.
And, just then, came a sharp, high-pitched whistle in the distance – the first sound I had heard since arriving at the train stop that morning. My ears perked up, followed by a feeling of lead being dropped into the pit of my stomach. The train was coming. Yet my feet remained planted there, unmoving, unrelenting.
I almost didn’t feel the sudden grasp around my bicep. When I did register the presence of someone’s hand on my arm, my eyebrows barely had time to rise in shock before I was yanked from the tracks and back onto the field.
When something very important happens in a very short amount of time, you get this weird feeling. Like how it might have felt to be punched in the stomach. Although the pain goes away quickly, there’s still this sensation as if a piece of the stomach was blown away from the whole, and the body is working to restore it. That’s my best attempt of explaining how I felt in that moment, after being yanked off of the train tracks.
I instantly whirled around see who had pulled me away. He was a part of the group of rail-riders that still sat in silence a few feet away. He chuckled slightly and pulled a hand through his limp, blond hair.
“Better be careful, there. You could have gotten pretty damaged,” he said. I nodded slowly, but didn’t say anything. Because we both knew that I had not wandered over to the tracks out of mere carelessness.
He gave me one of those up-and-down looks before extending his hand to me, “The name’s Steven.”
I looked at his hand for a moment before grasping it with my own and mumbling, “Leonard.”
Steven nodded, his thin lips pressed into a tight line, and rubbed his hands together. After a few moments of silence passed between us, he spoke again in a softer tone, “Leonard, how old are you?”
“Sixteen.”
“I see. I’m about eighteen, myself, so…”
I turned to face Steven again and looked up at him – he was at least three inches taller than I. He had a round face, not as pale nor as marred as the others’ faces were, decorated with a few lightly colored freckles here and there. His features were also rounded and subdued, surrounding a pair of brown eyes that, like the rest of the others, lacked a sense of life. A friendly face.
“Have you been doing this a while? Riding the rails?” I blurted out. Seeing Steven’s yellow eyebrows arch up, I tried to backtrack, “I mean, if you don’t want to talk about it–”
“No, no, I’m fine,” Steven chuckled softly as one corner of his mouth turned into a smirk, “My parents couldn’t feed all of us kids, so they told me and my brother to go and find work and support ourselves. And, well, in the Depression, it just isn’t that easy, right?” Steven raised his eyebrows at me and smirked again.
I nodded and sighed, “Basically the same with me.”
“What’s your actual story, though? How’d you get here?”
I shrugged, the movement alone proving to be an effort, as though a ton of bricks were strapped to each shoulder, “Well, it’s more or less the same kind of thing. My parents told me that I was going to talk to some storekeeper about getting a job as his apprentice. To help support the family, you know? My dad walked me here this morning, gave me twenty cents, and wished me luck. And, that was that.”
I glanced at Steven, whose eyes retained the same blank stare as they did before. After a moment or two, he nodded and asked, “Got any plans?”
“What do you think?” I scoffed.
“You’re not scarred, are you?”
“Terrified. Of it all, really.”
Steven clapped me on the shoulder a few times before stating grimly, “Better stick with me, kiddo.”
TRIAL AND ERROR (SABINA)
There were two things about Chicago that I thought would never change: the constant noise, and the endlessly bursting colors. Chicago was a vibrant, bustling city, not a place that I would quickly call nondescript. Well, standing by a Chicago Loop train stop at five o’ clock in the morning, I could not have been more wrong about Chicago. But, then again, I shouldn’t really have been that surprised. A lot of things that I used to think were permanent had been changing.
I coughed into my elbow, doubling over my waist and my throat burning with each sharp wheeze. Sighing profusely and lifting my head, I continued to survey my surroundings and wonder how such an effervescent city could lose all of its zeal in only a matter of hours.
To give Chicago some credit, five o’ clock in the morning has never been a riveting time of day, no matter where you are. But it was abnormal for the city to be so silent, with no sounds resonating within my eardrums. Part of the silence could have been faulted with the lack of trains at the train stop. All that lay in the widespread field were tracks.
Several sets of them, the tracks, weathered with use and orange with rust. Dull, silver and brown lines extending endlessly in both directions, connecting cities upon cities with a single road. By looking up slightly, I could see Chicago’s tall buildings sprawl the skyline. A heavy fog, however, usurped the city of its usual color. Everything around me had a gray tone, even the chestnut-colored rust that draped over the rails.
There were plenty of people around, though. A bunch of them, all sitting in the grass and huddled in small circles. They all looked gray, too, but I didn’t think the fog gave their complexion such a pigment. Some of them had coats, ranging from ebony to charcoal in color, that they wrapped tightly around themselves to harness as much of their body warmth as they possibly could. Others had fingerless gloves, like mine, the frayed ash-colored material not doing much to insulate their frigid hands. No one was talking. No one made a sound.
My eyes travelled from face to face, studying each person’s expression carefully. Some had deep wrinkles and blanched skin that stretched tightly over their faces. Russet-colored soil stuck to the cheekbones and foreheads of many, while unhealed gashes marred the faces of others. Short tufts of limp hair stuck upright as a sharp breeze brushed through the throng of hobos. One or two people’s arms ended in rounded stubs of flesh. Coats and shirts hung loosely over people’s bodies.
All of the people there shared the same vacant look in their eyes, the same straight line of a mouth. The same expression of a sheep knowing its fate as it walks straight into a butcher’s shop.
I felt my eyebrows intrinsically crease together as I thought about these people that I sat with as we waited for the next train. All of them had stories. They all had parents; all didn’t come into the world in a state of destitution like this. What could have driven these people – these kids – from their homes and families? What reasons could possibly justify this fate for them? Some stories were probably just like mine.
Most were probably worse.
Wrapping my arms around my waist, I stood up from my spot on the grass. Blinking a few times against the bone-chilling breeze, I took a few short steps forward.
So many other people have the same situation as I do… and no one gives two hoots about them.
Two more steps forward. The heavy gray fog moistened the air slightly, giving his face a damp cooling sensation. The breeze began to let up a little bit, gradually calming.
If we’re all just destined for lives on the rails, then what point does my existence even have anymore?
My foot abruptly hit a hard object on the ground. My eyes travelled down and landed on a set of tracks that my foot had made contact with. Weathered with use and orange with rust.
Taking a shaky breath, I lifted one foot and set it firmly on the other side of the rail.
Suddenly, tremors began to run through my body. They started gently, but as my brain began to process what I was planning to do, they became violent. I felt more dampness on my face as moisture began to well in my eyes and drip down my cheeks. Biting my lip, I took another shaky breath and bent my leg. Within a moment, my other leg was on the other side of the tracks.
I inched across the wooden planks that bridged the two steel rails until I stood directly in the center and turned so I faced east – the direction from which the next train would come.
And they say that people like us can’t change how we end up.
And, just then, came a sharp, high-pitched whistle in the distance – the first sound I had heard since arriving at the train stop that morning. My ears perked up, followed by a feeling of lead being dropped into the pit of my stomach. The train was coming. Yet my feet remained planted there, unmoving, unrelenting.
I almost didn’t feel the sudden grasp around my bicep. When I did register the presence of someone’s hand on my arm, my eyebrows barely had time to rise in shock before I was yanked from the tracks and back onto the field.
When something very important happens in a very short amount of time, you get this weird feeling. Like how it might have felt to be punched in the stomach. Although the pain goes away quickly, there’s still this sensation as if a piece of the stomach was blown away from the whole, and the body is working to restore it. That’s my best attempt of explaining how I felt in that moment, after being yanked off of the train tracks.
I instantly whirled around see who had pulled me away. He was a part of the group of rail-riders that still sat in silence a few feet away. He chuckled slightly and pulled a hand through his limp, blond hair.
“Better be careful, there. You could have gotten pretty damaged,” he said. I nodded slowly, but didn’t say anything. Because we both knew that I had not wandered over to the tracks out of mere carelessness.
He gave me one of those up-and-down looks before extending his hand to me, “The name’s Steven.”
I looked at his hand for a moment before grasping it with my own and mumbling, “Leonard.”
Steven nodded, his thin lips pressed into a tight line, and rubbed his hands together. After a few moments of silence passed between us, he spoke again in a softer tone, “Leonard, how old are you?”
“Sixteen.”
“I see. I’m about eighteen, myself, so…”
I turned to face Steven again and looked up at him – he was at least three inches taller than I. He had a round face, not as pale nor as marred as the others’ faces were, decorated with a few lightly colored freckles here and there. His features were also rounded and subdued, surrounding a pair of brown eyes that, like the rest of the others, lacked a sense of life. A friendly face.
“Have you been doing this a while? Riding the rails?” I blurted out. Seeing Steven’s yellow eyebrows arch up, I tried to backtrack, “I mean, if you don’t want to talk about it–”
“No, no, I’m fine,” Steven chuckled softly as one corner of his mouth turned into a smirk, “My parents couldn’t feed all of us kids, so they told me and my brother to go and find work and support ourselves. And, well, in the Depression, it just isn’t that easy, right?” Steven raised his eyebrows at me and smirked again.
I nodded and sighed, “Basically the same with me.”
“What’s your actual story, though? How’d you get here?”
I shrugged, the movement alone proving to be an effort, as though a ton of bricks were strapped to each shoulder, “Well, it’s more or less the same kind of thing. My parents told me that I was going to talk to some storekeeper about getting a job as his apprentice. To help support the family, you know? My dad walked me here this morning, gave me twenty cents, and wished me luck. And, that was that.”
I glanced at Steven, whose eyes retained the same blank stare as they did before. After a moment or two, he nodded and asked, “Got any plans?”
“What do you think?” I scoffed.
“You’re not scarred, are you?”
“Terrified. Of it all, really.”
Steven clapped me on the shoulder a few times before stating grimly, “Better stick with me, kiddo.”
My mouth turned up into a small smile, “Will do.”