Rock Island Line by David Rhodes (most life changing books txt) 📗

felt the lights of the diner bring him comfort, now he felt the comfort of thedarkness enfold him. He crossed Broad Street and went over to City Hall, creasing the bag across the top and putting it gently in his jacket. In the open walkway through the building he stopped and looked at the walls, which seemed to be made in order to resemble millions of fat worms wiggling over each other—one big seething mass of living stone worms without faces. He walked through the square, over the metal marker—the historical center of Philadelphia.

Following the only two people he saw, he went down some steps to a trolley landing beneath City Hall. Then, out of curiosity, he went down another flight of stairs to where turnstiles like robots stood in a long row, a fat man behind a heavy wire screen made change and beyond him lay the loading platform of the L. One more flight down, he came to the waiting platform of the Crosstown Express. Huge cement walls as thick as refrigerators with torn posters and writing from some prehistoric age. More turnstiles.

He stood in the darkness. Then the earth itself began to shudder and a light appeared like a frightened beacon and the Express came flashing and banging, metal screeching and doors clattering, up out of the black cavernous hole, stopped still like a giant metal insect and crawled off again into the darkness. July was filled with wonder. He imagined those cars could take him anywhere in the world, China even, if he got on the right one, without ever coming up out of the ground, unknown by the millions of people above, the driver’s eyes gleaming wild like a madman’s—two holes bored in the walls of a furnace.

To his astonishment, there was still a level lower, and he descended sleepily to the wooden landing platform of the Frankford Elevated. This was empty except for three long benches and a large green wastepaper basket. July went to the edge and looked up and down the tunnels. He let himself down the five-foot drop from the platform to the track level, went back underneath the landing and lay down on the dirt, his consciousness hanging from him by a thread. The inhuman thunder of the cars began to lull him. The maze of wires, discernible here and there bycracks of light from the wooden planks above him, hummed like tuning forks. He took out his gun and loaded it, leaving the chamber empty, however, wrapped his hand securely around it and fell asleep, dreaming of women with large savage hooks who flayed people alive and ate trash from garbage pails. Twice he woke cold and shivering, and pulled his jacket tighter around him. Especially his back was cold.

The following day July left his gun and extra bullets under the landing. He ate pancakes in a grease shop on Broad Street. Then he went to a dime store and bought a flashlight to study his new home. He noticed a change in the way people looked at him this day as compared to the rest of his life, and within a short time accepted it as a normal response without realizing that it was because of the dirt which had soiled his clothes. He wasn’t able to get back unobserved to where his gun lay concealed because there was always somebody there on the platform, or across the tracks on the opposite side. He realized fewer cars ran at night, and fewer people were on them. He would have to wait always until dark—or later, maybe on a Sunday, find another way to get down.

He went off to buy some blankets. He entered the first large department store, and when the salesgirl saw the look on his face when she told him the prices, she promptly and courteously gave him directions to the Army surplus store, where he purchased two—leaving him with only one dollar of his paper money.

He bought a large bag of popcorn and ate it sitting on his blankets in the park. He wanted to take out his pictures, but he didn’t want to do it there in front of everyone and without the gun. He stayed until just before dark and returned to beneath City Hall.

Around seven o’clock he slipped down under the platform and put his gun back in his jacket. Using the flashlight with great caution (in order to avoid being seen from across the tracks on the other side and, because it was new, not to wear down the batteries), he found a small dirt-floored alcove tucked back into thesolid concrete behind and beyond the wood roof of the platform. Originally it had been built to accommodate a set of control switches and relay boxes; but because it wasn’t needed, except for wires shrouded in conduit pipes running in every direction across the top, it was empty. It was long enough for him to lie down twice lengthwise, once and a half the other way, and stand up, excepting in two places where a low conduit pipe was directly above. Because it was not just beneath the platform and had a cement roof, he felt more protected from the footsteps above—they were less audible. He could also shine his light directly into the back of his room without being afraid of anyone seeing it from across the way. There was no wind. The rushing clatter of the L, though less overbearing, was still close enough to be reassuring in its monstrousness, like a drunken night watchman who would come stumbling up the dark tunnels with a torch, stop, look around and be gone.

He decided he would have to get a tarp from the Army surplus store. He took one blanket, folded it into a two-foot square and sat on it, crossing his legs and feeling the concrete of his wall against his back. The other he folded in the same way and put in front of him. Then out came the