Disembarking my routine shuttle bus that takes me from work to my train, I noticed a much larger than usual congregation of travelers waiting on the platform. Ordinarily, only several handfuls of folks loiter there for its arrival. On this occasion, there were several hundred passengers waiting to embark.
Were there that many workers who had mistakenly set their watches to the wrong time zone? Was a train-riding celebrity about to arrive?
But there was another curious fact: the previous train, scheduled to depart nearly an hour ago, was still sitting, not moving, on the tracks exactly where my train was supposed to arrive.
Was this a spectacular train wreck in the making? The adrenaline assaulted my veins. Quick! Prepare the iPhone’s video function!
I joined the crowd on the platform, plying several folks for an intelligence report, and discovered that they, too, lacked solid reconnaissance. Interpretation of the scene was up to conjecture.
Suddenly I noticed a train official on a walkie-talkie. Surely he could advise me; I asked him what was going on. His response was less than gratifying.
“Train broke down,” he muttered, before yelling at some people to get behind the yellow warning line. I heard him radio the arriving train—my usual train—to slow down as it arrived, explaining, “There’s a bunch of people here.”
Like weathervanes when a storm approaches, the awaiting crowd all pointed their heads in the same direction, toward the unoccupied second train track. I surmised it was intended for the arriving train.
But how could this gang of passengers all crowd onto one arriving train, which surely already contained its full load of passengers? And what really was the story of that broken down train, a disowned hulk just sitting there, clogging up good track space?
The new train arrived, and we herded in like cattle. The only missing components were the mooing and the slop of livestock droppings.
Miraculously, I was able to wedge myself between the wall of the train and a vertical handhold pole. With my head cocked to one side, I managed to stand relatively comfortably, slowly rotating myself like a rotisserie to spread the neck pain equally.
On the floor at my feet, a bearded young man wearing homemade jewelry and a headscarf displayed video clips on his computer to an attentive young lady, eagerly displaying himself performing various yoga-inspired dance routines in shows he performs across the country—perhaps across the world—I never could quite understand the context. Understandably, this fellow had a difficult time manifesting modesty since he excelled in all manner of crafts, meditation, disdain for the material world (except, apparently, for computers) and a oneness with nature and ecology, all honed such that it would make a Renaissance Man blush in comparison.
Meanwhile, the packed train clickety-clacked onward, past my usual stops, passengers eager to disembark, understandably displaying a mere veneer of patience.
Then, a most curious event transpired. On the second stop before my own, the train halted, ready to disgorge the host of impatient and disgruntled crammed-in train riders. The doors would not open. What seemed minutes later, the conductor’s voice came over the intercom.
“We will not be opening the doors until the sheriff’s deputies tell us we are cleared to do so. Thank you for your patience.”
I rotated my rotisserie-like stance, wedged next to the vertical handhold. A mystery was afoot, involving sheriffs! Was there danger from outside the train? Terrorists? Bomb-sniffing dogs? Worse yet, was there looming disaster from within the train?
Several minutes dragged by, when suddenly, three sheriff deputies burst into our train car from the car behind ours. They had, apparently, made their way through the entire length of the train, finally reaching ours.
They didn’t need to go much further. Employing the assistance of another officer who happened to be traveling in my railcar, the four officers gave sharp instructions for two young men to stand up. They handcuffed them immediately, though the throngs in the aisle would have made their escape impossible. The train doors finally opened, letting us view the officers trundling the two ruffians past a police dog, and loading them into awaiting patrol cars.
It had all been a sting operation! The two unwitting young hooligans had been aboard the “broken down” train, which was a ploy to transfer all the passengers, including them, into the second train, thereby gaining time for the officers to board the second train and set up the arrests. Once inside, the officers methodically made their way through the train, before finally finding them within my car.
The look of astonishment passed from passenger to passenger as they realized they had been traveling all this time, enduring a fake train breakdown—with criminals in their midst!
For me, working in a parole office, it was all in a day’s work. Tallying up the previous arrests I witnessed earlier that day at the parole office, these were simply more of the same—arrests number five and six.
By the time the doors closed behind the sheriffs and criminals, I was one stop closer to home. I rotated myself within my standing-room-only rotisserie and let the clickety-clack tracks take me away.