Fred Florid

"People, people, people! Just listen a minute!" is what the young man said. He was about five-foot-eight, and his uniform hung on him, dark blue like a sheet you use for drapes when they're out being dry-cleaned. Somewhere in there were shoulders. He looked about eighteen and had bad hair.
            "I make announcements and take tickets. I don't drive the train. I don't own the train. I have a wife and two kids. She got laid off eight months ago. Our rent is past due."

            He paused and took a breath.
            "There's a Coke machine over there and a snack bar and a Starbucks down the street. Someone will be back in an hour to update you. Have a nice day."
            With that, the automatic chain-link gate slid closed and the long queue of unhappy, mumbling passengers dispersed.
            Except for Fred Florid. There's always a Fred Florid in situations like this. The scheduling snafu was directed directly at him. Always is.

            He hammered on the gray fencing. "Wait up, young man!"
            The boy didn't look back.
            Young man, I'm talking to you!"

            A door opened, the boy went through it, and it closed with a loud click.
            A ribbon of profanity streamed out of Fred's mouth like ticker tape. Heads turned. A mother covered her child's ears. Pigeons flew into the rafters of the ancient Central Valley railway station. Fred's collar was loose; his mustard yellow tie was undone. Despite the hot midsummer day, he had on a gray suit and drops of sweat trickled down his neck. His face was the color of a beefsteak tomato. Would he blow like Vesuvius? Would he shut up?
            A hefty man, the size of a linebacker and wearing a T-shirt with an American eagle on it, stepped in front of Fred. So did a priest, in black and wearing his collar. They asked him politely to remember where he was and to calm down. Fred, a tall thin man with a hawk-like face -- mid-forties, thinning hair -- sputtered and tried to shove his small suitcase between the two men. The suitcase was quite small and appeared more so due to its long telescoping handle, and he only succeeded in running it over the large man's foot. The piece wasn't heavy, made of composite material, and it had been well-used. On its sides were once-colorful airline and travel destination stickers, now faded -- stickers probably put there by a previous owner's child. The contrivance was not Fred's choice, except it had been, since the price was right at the secondhand store where he bought it.

            The big man took offense, as anyone might, and booted Fred's wheeled contraption away, pinwheeling it handle and all across the floor. He gave Fred a shove, knocking him off balance.

            "Get out of here, and take that ugly breadbox of a suitcase with you!"

            Father Serenity stepped between them and tried to pour oil on the waters. "The scheduled train has been cancelled," he said taking Fred's arm lightly, "and the next one could arrive in an hour. All the tickets will be good."
            Fred shook his arm away. "Do you know who I am?" he growled. "Do you know?" The question, though repeated, was merely rhetorical.
            The aggressive fellow said, "Unless you're racing to Africa to save children who are starving, I don't give a flying f . . . . Oh, excuse me Father." He said this in a barely controlled tone, inches from Fred's face. They could have kissed.
            "Get out of my way!" Fred hissed. Oblivious of the onlookers, he straightened his jacket and retrieved his mottled rollerbag. His two adversaries moved away and let him exit.

            "Bread box!" You wonder if they even have them anymore, as you wheel out of the station. You haven't seen one since you were a youngster. That was where your mom kept the Wonder Bread which you'd sneak to the kitchen at night and raid. Grandma had one, too. It was large and metal, faded yellow with orange flowers on it. The risk was greater at Grandma's house because the floor squeaked and mom and dad were in the guest room just across the hall.
            Off you'd go, back then -- Mom, Dad, Little Sister, and you -- to Grandma and Grandpa's house; a long, long drive down a miserably hot state highway in the middle of summer, stop-and-go traffic in every town. Couldn't they have taken the train and come to your house? Why you never took the train to see them was above your pay grade, age ten.
            To pass the time, you'd play Twenty Questions. Dad'd say, "Okay, I'm thinking of something," and you'd try to guess.
            Your sister, every time -- every time -- would ask, "Is it bigger than a bread box?"
            What did she know about bread boxes? How to tiptoe into the hall, listen carefully to hear if your folks were asleep, stealthily enter the kitchen, slowly pull down the door to the ancient, unlovely bread box so it didn't creak. Then, the harder part: opening the Wonder Bread bag without it crinkling, and pulling out a slice without waking the dog. If you did awaken him, you'd have to share. Don't even think about asking Mom for a snack before you went to bed. Good luck with that. She was done doing "mom" for the day. That's how she was.

            Your sister would always win at Twenty Questions. Your little sister. Your excuse was that you were still counting out-of-state license plates, left over from the last game you played in the suffocating heat of a car that had no air conditioning. But the real reason was you hated the game.

            The time you most remember losing to her was when Dad thought of a toy boat, and your sister figured it out. A toy boat! "Not fair," you cried. Boats, even toy ones, are bigger than bread boxes, and he'd clearly said "smaller." So you slugged her.
            Big mistake. Mom turned around, aroused from her reverie doing whatever it was she did on these trips and whacked you. Hard. She flung her arm over the front seatback and connected. She had lots of practice. "Freddie!" she yelled and you were grounded. Grounded on this trip? No way. The trip was punishment enough.

            You shouldn't have slugged your sister. It wasn't her fault. But you couldn't very well slug your dad. And for sure he let her win because you beat her at everything else. But a toy boat. Come on! And it was H-O-T hot in the backseat on those trips. Train delays and parents and little sisters and oppressive heat -- all part of an arbitrary and unpredictable cosmos. And no one else is going to give a shit. "Twenty Questions," a nonsensical game, a metaphor for life. It's axiomatic: Life is unfair.

            So why not get pissed off -- like today! Take it out on an innocent railroad kid when he's ignoring your wrath, turning his clueless ass around, and walking away. Venting is cheaper than counseling.

 

            Recalling Wonder Bread stealth missions reminded Fred he was hungry. No telling when the next train would come. Outside the station, past the cheesy food and magazine stand with its week-old pastries and lousy coffee and past the fake Greek columns, across the street Fred saw a small park. There were shade trees and an empty bench and a food truck next to the curb selling Mexican food. He ordered a plate of chicken fajitas and a Coke and sat down. He collapsed the handle of his rollerbag and plopped it on the bench to discourage company.

            Back across the street, people from inside the train station had disappeared. The iconic old station was silent except for a pair of pigeons strutting their stuff on a balcony ledge. Above them, high up and framed by a row of crisscrossed wrought-iron window bars, the black filigreed hands of a clock face were stuck at 10:45. The flat marble front of the building reflected heat like a radiator. Built in the last century when railroads were a big deal, it was identical to others up and down the line, in Santa Something, Los Nothing, Rio Whatever.

            In the middle of the park where Fred sat was an empty pond. Scarred, exposed green and brown mosaic tiles atop a concrete border in disrepair circled the erstwhile reservoir -- scalloped chunks missing and exposed stonework here and there. Two unweeded paths crossed beneath tall trees whose leaves fluttered listlessly in the semblance of a breeze. In the center of the dry pond stood an androgynous statue that should have been spouting water from a vase perched on its blistered granite shoulder, but wasn't, due to the drought. Next to Fred's bench was a drinking fountain, an upright cylinder of worn cement with gravel in its basin and a worn out-of-order sign hanging from a once-shiny chrome bulb. There was a swing set and a teeter-totter, like one in another leafy park years ago where Fred's grandpa would take him when his folks didn't.

            At Grandpa's house, Fred recalled, excitement consisted of watching him hose off the driveway and front walk after he was done mowing and gardening. Grandpa always wore coveralls that were actually pretty impressive. Shoulder to ankle, stark white -- Clorox white -- except for a slight green hue at the knees.

 

            Here's how Gramps would wash the driveway: He'd attach the nozzle and twist it down. He'd tell you to turn on the water, and the narrow stream would shoot up fifty feet in a high arc that made a rainbow if the sun was right. Then he'd kneel down, one knee on the pavement, and sweep across and back, across and back, working his way to the street, blasting grass and weeds and dirt ahead of him like a miniature tsunami. He enjoyed using the hose and water even though a broom would have done the trick and faster.
            He was a cool old guy. He'd let you help. Then it was back into the quiet, musty house to a black-and-white TV where at least they didn't need air conditioning because it wasn't nearly as hot as the drive down from home.

            And back home is where you'd be grounded, not at Grandpa's. Which meant no swimming in the neighbor's pool for a week. Never mind that once you'd saved a little girl from drowning when she slipped and fell in and you were the first to jump in and rescue her. Never mind that it was over a hundred in the summer, and you'd lie out on the cement driveway with the neighbor kid and bake yourselves before heading back into the pool -- but not before sneaking into his kitchen and raiding their bread box.

            Come to think of being grounded, look at your job now. For two years you're on commission doing repos for a collection agency and people are broke and need their cars to get to work. Your too-small suitcase is stuffed with one change of clothes and a laptop. You're running late already for the next town and the poor guy whose car you'll have towed away.

            You weren't always the Fred Florid of today, were you? Like that time you rescued the little girl at the pool. You paid attention at school. Studied. And those times with Grandpa when you were really little; he'd lift you up to look outside at the birds at the feeder. You'd feel his early morning stubble on your cheek and he'd say which birds were which. He'd let you put the cream in his coffee. After he got sick, they wouldn't let you go see him in the hospital. Then he died.

            These days your default mode is trigger-happy. Trigger-unhappy. A wife you drove away. Pretty much friendless. Living alone. A good job once upon a time that you couldn't hold onto. So why try? To be engaging, cheerful? Why change? No such thing as Heaven -- no such thing as God, for sure -- and Hell couldn't be hotter than right now in this forsaken town.

            You, Fred Florid, are not the guy who has to remedy the world's negative karma!

 

            Starting in on his fajitas, Fred watched a woman and her young boy getting lunch. Cardboard food tray in her hands, she looked around for somewhere to sit. There was only the one bench. Fred flinched. It was the mom from the train station, the one who'd been horrified by his tirade. She looked his way and made the same connection, eyes narrowing. She turned away and looked again for the nonexistent bench. The woman and her boy weren't fifteen feet away.

            Now what would Fred do? He'd made like a monster in a kid's bad dream, been the strange man parents tell their children to run from and find help. Was there even one compassionate gene among his thousand chromosomes? Could he summon up a modicum of contrition -- sitting in the shade, on the only bench, as the day got hotter.

            Fred moved his suitcase. "Here ma'am. I'll make room."

            The woman flashed a narrow smile and shook her head. She turned away. Fred sighed, his tiny reserve of goodwill on a timer. But he said, "Please, use the bench." He motioned with his head and stood up. "Look, I'm over my tantrum. Honest." He hooked a finger into the pull-tab of his Coca-Cola and set his paper plate on the round top of a green metal trash can. "I was being ridiculous in there. I'm sorry."

            Apparently deciding the risk was worth taking, hungry child in tow and in a public park in full view of a food truck, the woman took a seat. Fred's plate was leaking half-eaten Mexican food, a black plastic fork balanced on top. He tried to manage the Coke with one hand and soak up taco sauce on a tortilla with the other. His paper napkins were soaked, but he tried to be nonchalant. He wanted to sit down. The nice woman mumbled something about it being a bad day all around. She and her son scooted to one end of the bench and gave Fred room to sit, which he did.

            Fred glanced at the woman. She was composed -- plain, and in her thirties he guessed -- not unattractive, with clear dark eyes. Her nose and chin were somewhat small for her face. Her eyebrows were large and the same unremarkable brown color as her hair which fell straight to her shoulders and curled at the end. She wore no lipstick. Despite the heat, she had on an ankle-length gray skirt and a modest long-sleeved blouse buttoned up the front, over which she wore a short, black vest.

            On her head was a plain white cap of thin transparent material, slightly askew; one might suspect she was Amish or a missionary. Her boy, elementary school age, sneaked looks at Fred between mouthfuls of enchilada.

            Patting her mouth with a small napkin and taking a sip of soda, the woman looked at Fred. "Back in there." She nodded toward the station. "None of my business, of course -- back in there, it wasn't the young man's fault, was it?"

            This is what you get, Fred thought. What next? A lecture on temperance? Is she looking for people to save? But surprising himself once again, he decided to be civil.

            "No, of course it wasn't his fault. He was just the messenger."

            "And the other people in the station?" She nodded toward her son.

            "I said I'm sorry. My temper . . . well, sometimes it gets the better of me."

            Now what is this, you ask yourself! Your milk of human kindness will curdle in a matter of seconds, but somehow it doesn't. Surely one good turn -- giving someone a place to sit down -- does not equal a recovery program. Was there something in the food? You've had your share of therapy, reconciliation attempts with the long-gone spouse, anger management -- the works. You can't remember a time when someone was more than barely civil to you. Why this détente with a nice lady on a bench in a stifling hot park in a stifling hot town? Mexican food and soda pop -- hardly the wafer and the wine.

            Fred waited, continued chewing, then he asked, "What's your son's name?"

            "Elroy."

            "It means 'The King'," said the boy around a mouthful. He had bushy eyebrows like his mom and clear blue eyes. In shorts, T-shirt, and sandals, he could have stepped out of a commercial for Taco Bell, including the dribble of red sauce on his chin.

            "How old are you?"

            Mom answered. "Eight. We're going to visit his grandparents. Actually, his father's parents . . . even though his father and I are no longer together." She wiped a hand on a clean napkin and reached out. "I'm Marie."

            "Fred," he replied, shaking her hand. "Honest, I didn't mean to pry . . . ."

            "You weren't." She stopped, "Oh my gosh," she said, pointing with her head. "Look at that."

            They watched as a drama unfolded. A turista grande wearing running shorts and an aloha shirt unbuttoned over his belly was going at the vendor leaning out of his food truck. Not grande at all, more pequeño in fact, the fellow wore the kind of sunglasses that darken with brightness and a set of keys hung on a gold chain around his neck. A crumpled tennis hat completed the ensemble.

            As his diminutive wife looked on with a scowl on her face, the lout railed at the tired, sweaty entrepreneur in slowly-pronounced and overly loud English. Apparently the five dollar tacos he'd bought weren't up to his refined culinary standards.

            Marie giggled. "He’ll now punctuate this spectacle by turning over his plate and throwing the contents on the pavement."

            The jerk obliged by doing exactly that and Fred nearly emptied the contents of his mouth via his nose. "Don't do that!"

            And he laughed -- actually laughed -- and looked more closely at the unprepossessing woman on the park bench. Was he enjoying himself? Suddenly having a good time? Was this a time warp? A dream? Did she really say, "punctuate this spectacle?"

            Elroy finished his Coke. "May I buy him another?" Fred asked, but he got no further . . . .

            The sudden flash came out of nowhere. A woman screamed. People pointed and ducked. A flock of starlings scattered through the park. With a loud CRRR-ACK, a tree split and a limb fell. And then it was silent as a desert at noon.

            Fred jumped. When he came down, he missed the seat and slid to the ground, landing with a crunch and scraping his back on the bench. His plate of food floated in the air to the side, suspended and motionless like a flying saucer, before landing beside him. His body was shivering and his arms and hands were outstretched, flailing like he was trying to grab at the large shimmering imprint on his retina. Pain started up his back and Fred waited for his rage alarm to go off. But it didn't. Instead, he felt a warm mist moving through his brain.

            Marie hadn't bothered with herself; she'd covered Elroy's eyes with one arm and held onto his shoulders with the other. The boy was gripping the bench armrest, his half-empty Coke can rattling around under the seat.

            After a moment, Marie helped Fred up and he sat back. The trembling subsided and the mist cleared, but his head ached. Passersby and those who'd come out of the train station were assisting one another, some people wobbling as they regained their balance.

            Whatever it was -- and there was never a satisfactory explanation -- it was recalled by those who witnessed it as "ball lightning," some said, or "white lightning," or "heat lightning." A sudden dazzling flare covering the whole sky that backlit the old building across the street from one end to the other and high above the sculpted roof. No thunder, only a blinding brightness, like a photographer's flash -- to the eye, a white blindness that slowly faded, then rose over the park, swirled a moment like an enormous pinwheel and finally vanished into the clear, blue, and cloudless sky.

            There hadn't been an earthquake; nothing showed up on seismographs. After a few days of sleuthing, police and news reporters turned up nothing unusual. No mysterious nuclear blast or atmospheric disturbance. Not a powerful sound barrier event from the nearby Air Force base.

            "One of those quirks of nature we don't quite understand," concluded several meteorologists. A preacher of a curious evangelical sect downstate had a rapturous explanation citing several Biblical references, but he was ignored.

            Fred gathered himself. He turned to Marie and asked if she and Elroy were alright. She nodded. "Let us just breathe a minute and I'll let you know," she said. She smoothed Elroy's hair and kissed him on the forehead.

            Fred's head still ached though it hadn't struck anything. He waited for the pain to subside. It didn't, so he stood up and was immediately dizzy and sat back down. Marie bent to pick up his plate and took it to the trash can. She emptied out the pop cans and brought them back. She returned to the bench and patted Fred's knee before sitting down herself and pulling Elroy to her. The three of them just sat. The few other occupants of the small park and those on the train station steps and the sidewalk returned to normal activity, but talked among themselves and shook their heads, glancing at the sky every now and then.

            Fred closed his eyes and continued to sit still. Marie watched him, then asked about his dizziness. He told her it was going away. But he thought to himself how strange it felt -- a warming mist, a fogginess. More like light spring rain on his forehead as a child might feel looking skyward. Foggy was not good, he knew. Rather, clarity and sharpness had always been his strong suit -- especially at his job: sizing people up, reacting to what they said or how they moved, being incisive, calculating the expenses, profit, commission on the spot.

            But as he sat there, calm began to replace his anxiety. He was about to ask Marie if she noticed anything unusual about him but decided not to. Her head was resting on Elroy's and she was murmuring to him. 

            Maybe an hour passed. Fred dozed. By the time he blinked his eyes awake, the tree shadows had moved. The sidewalk food vendor had moved on. Marie and Elroy were sharing an ice cream cone -- both of them working on it to keep up with melting vanilla.

            "You're back among the living," she said. "Want a bite?"

            Unsolicited random acts of kindness occurred so rarely in his life that Fred didn't catch what she'd said at first. She asked again, "If you feel alright, Elroy can go fetch another. The guy's right around the corner."

            Fred shook his head. Leaves on the pavement skittered along like big brittle spiders propelled by a breeze that'd sprung up. Across the street, nothing had changed. The white marble of the station still looked like a Greek temple, but not so grotesque in the slanting sunlight.

            Pretending to be circus clowns, Marie and Elroy looked at Fred, rings of ice cream around their mouths, grinning and blinking their eyes.

            Fred laughed aloud. Laughed again, like it was the funniest thing he'd seen in days. Make that months. He wiped his eyes with his sleeve -- tears.

            They talked through the afternoon. Fred located a hose bib and filled their Coke cans with water. After a short back-and-forth about the flash of lightning, or whatever it was, they changed the subject. They exchanged last names. Fred shrugged and told her "Florid." Marie's was Sawyer. They told where each was from, where they grew up, mutual friends they impossibly might have. Nothing more about the bizarre weather event. Neither Marie nor Fred strayed into more personal information, though Elroy had an odd look on his face when his father's name was mentioned.

            Nor was this a flirtation. Fred would have been astonished if it was. Women never selected his off-putting self out of a crowd as someone to get to know better. For her part, Marie's unpretentious grooming bespoke a woman who'd never attracted the boys at the school dance. She was a mother, period. But they clicked, in that common and transitory way of fellow travelers.

         They saw the young ticket-taker emerge from the train station -- same baggy blue suit, same messy hair. He walked past the tall pillars to the steps and looked to the right and left. He motioned with his arm. He spoke to passengers and nodded before going back inside. Other people materialized, and Marie and Elroy set off across the street. Fred hesitated, but Marie stopped and looked back at him, so he followed.

 

            That same old feeling, anger, like magma in your gut. Maybe that big lummox that assaulted you won't be in there. Good luck with that. Of course he will, along with the other passengers, the audience.

            Nothing's changed. Don't be a fool and think it has. A few minutes of pleasant conversation in a park with a pleasant lady and her son after a lifetime of being the third horse in a two-horse race. You do have to be on that train, however. Time to gird up. Rage is your default mode for good reason, as well it should be because of the crap the world throws at you.

 

            Inside, the queue was moving slowly. Fred stood behind Marie, the boy in front of her. The line continued to move toward the gate. No one seemed to be looking at him. Just people intent on boarding the train, holding their tickets, scooting their belongings along with a foot.

            Then, up front next to the gate, Fred spotted the big brush-cut head of his one-time antagonist with the obnoxious T-shirt. Across from him was the priest who was helping an elderly couple with their luggage. Fred's fight-or-flight mode kicked in full bore. He felt his face start to flush, his temperature rise even further in the hot, stuffy station.

            A couple of precautions made sense. He collapsed the handle of his oh-so recognizable, multicolored suitcase. He nudged it forward with his shoe, not taking his eyes off his tormentor. He draped his gray suit coat over his left arm in order to free up his right -- though what he intended to do against a man that outweighed him by so much he couldn't have articulated. Confrontations were a way of life for Fred, but violence was not. Besides, he was sticking close to Marie and her boy, protective coloration of a sort.

            Fred clenched and unclenched his fists to keep them from shaking. The priest had disappeared but the big guy was standing outside the line as people passed. He seemed to be scanning the crowd looking for someone. His eyes met Fred's for an instant and stopped, then they both looked away. The old tapes were spooling like mad, one rag end flapping around on the reel. They moved closer to the gate. There were only two couples and a single passenger ahead of them. Marie put her hands on Elroy's shoulders.

            Fred watched as his nemesis was joined by a woman, probably his wife, and the two of them cut back in front of the line. They handed their tickets to the young attendant in blue who punched them and motioned them on through the gate to the train. Marie turned and looked back at Fred. She saw the look on his face, and rested her hand on his elbow for a second.

            "It isn't always about you, Fred. Sometimes things just happen."

            She turned back around and ruffled Elroy's hair. Fred's hands were still wobbly, but he managed a smile at the ticket-taker before the three of them got on the train which was steaming and hissing beside the platform.

            They chose seats across the aisle from one other. Fred stowed his famously small suitcase in the storage alcove in the vestibule reserved for that purpose. His laptop, his contacts, his itinerary, his life were in it unopened. A lurch, a slow wobble, and they were off.

            The train raced along, the car swaying and jitterbugging over the tracks. Fred's face pressed against the glass, they sped past fields and barns and houses and busy people in cars. He billowed along like a cloud. Marie sat across the way in the window seat asleep, her head resting on a pillow. Next to the aisle, Elroy thumbed his smartphone, brow furrowed, the tip of his tongue trapped in the corner of his mouth.

            Fred leaned across and tapped him on the shoulder.

            "Hey Elroy. You know the game Twenty Questions?"