Green Light on 514
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by Jennifer Stevenson
©1998
reprinted from The Fourteenth Alternative

I was slow getting out of the house and had to take a later express. My usual train is the 7:26. Run Number 507, air conditioned, new seats. The early a.m. dispatcher has a soothing voice, a warm old black daddy who can watch the conductors horsing around on the platform and just croon into the P.A.: "Five oooh sevvenn, clooose your dooors." By 8:00 he's off shift, and some south-of-the-border Hitler has the microphone. Today he was raising hell inside the booth--I could hear him through the glass--and when our engineer came hustling out of the booth and jingled into her seat in the cab, the P.A. barked "Five fourteen, you have a green light! Go-go-go! Go out now!" What a grouch.

I had a bit of a grouch myself. Since things changed it seems to take me longer and longer to manage the routine chores. The charge was down on my poodle cane when I went to take the garbage out this morning and the little suckers nearly got me. I heard on the radio another outbreak of mulberry trees busted up traffic on the Dan Ryan Expressway. Trouble for the suburbanites but not for me, right? Wrong. Just meant my jerk of a supervisor at my miserable job would arrive an hour later than he likes, and then he'd be in a mood.

And somebody got my favorite seat on the train, the single sideways seat where you can look out the window and watch the switches change, and feel the nose of the train swing out over nothing when she takes the curves. Five-fourteen was a clunker, one of the old cars with crankdown windows instead of air conditioning. I wriggled into a forward seat next to a deaf garlic-lover wearing an I-person.

At least the car was cleaner than usual. About twenty years ago some brainless asshole imported a New York street punk and a case of spray paint and committed "an installation" on a museum wall. Then the rocket scientists at the Trib ran an article in the Sunday magazine. Within two days the local gangs had caught the fever. And until things changed we had filth sprayed all over CTA property, roving antivandalism patrols, guard dogs, extra cleanup teams, punitive soap-and-water detail--when they could catch the little shits--and a lot of evil and expensive chemicals damaging the plastic. The 2600 series in particular, the ones the city bought in the 1980s, had a crummy paint job that couldn't stand up to solvents.

I mused on all this and my mood did not improve. No matter which way I leaned I couldn't see around the people in front. The garlic rocker glared at me for whatever reason and went to stand in the doorway. A little old oriental guy sat down next to me.

"You like the El?" he breathed in my ear.

I was so fed up I was raving before I even turned to look at him. He weighed about sixty pounds, I figured, including the White Sox baseball cap. The left front tooth was yellow and the right was gold, and the rest of his smile was naked. He listened to me grouse about the poodles and the bad-tempered dispatcher and the graffiti and he nodded up and down and smiled at me with his gums. When I ran down he bent his head close and poked me with a knuckle.

"You care about the train," he confided.

"Betcher freakin' ass‑-you bet I do. They run right. About the only thing that does in this town any more."

"But you in a bad mood, hm?" He poked and smiled some more.

"Damn right!" I said. A lady in front of me turned around and frowned and I lowered my voice.

"I am about to give up," I hissed. "I'm fed UP with this change. Trees aren't supposed to grow up overnight. Poodles are supposed to eat kibbles, not fireplugs. I'm scared to ride in elevators. Hell, I'm surprised people ride the train any more."

He nodded. "It come from the bottom of the lake. Two‑-six‑-many miles out, nobody go there. You wait," he nodded. "You see." Crazy old guy. Some things don't change. You still meet nuts on the train.

I was feeling pretty nuts myself. He's gonna have to hustle to keep up with me.

I smiled nastily. "No kidding? Bottom of the lake, huh? And what's that got to do with‑-" Something weird outside the window caught my eye. "Oh, shit. Here we go."

We had passed Wilson Avenue and were headed south into the curve by the cemetery. The platform at Wilson was loaded with commuters, and though there wasn't a train in sight they were clearing off fast, piling down the stairways. A pair of tough-looking kids stood at the south end of the platform. They stared past us toward the cemetery with keen, scornful eyes.

We looked through the front window. Down on the track ahead, a figure in black was straddling the third rail. It had a spear in one hand and something small, maybe a handgun, in the other. It jerked its arms at the cemetery. The train slowed.

I glanced into the cab. The engineer stopped the train. She put her head way out her window and yelled:

"Get off the track! It ees eeleegal to be on the track!" She waved her arm. "Get! Off!"

The figure ignored us.

"Fucking gangs," I grumbled.

People behind us were getting out of their seats to look. The little old oriental guy sat next to me contentedly. His calm, or maybe everyone else's curiosity, drew the grouch out of me like drawing a splinter.

I shook both hands at the ceiling. "Terrific. Now I'll be even later than the douchebag I work for! Oh, well. It ain't like there's something to do downtown. Same old aggravating horrible stupid shit."

In spite of myself I peered past the lady in front. The train crept forward forty feet.

The spear carrier was a boy about sixteen, maybe black, maybe part latino. His face was streaked with warpaint, and he wore enough black leather to make a ballet dancer faint with jealousy. A paratrooper harness dangled off him, safety-line lashed to the track. He ignored us.

"Hell, I may not have anything to do in another year or so. Way things are going. My last job went west when the mulberry trees got Sox Park. Eleven years pickin' up beer cups and sweepin' popcorn and then wham! no job, no pension, no fucking insurance, gone in three hours. Only day I was ever glad to miss a ball game. Jesus!"

I figured the little old oriental guy was watching the gang boy, or maybe his English was slow. But he said to me, "Are the changes so bad?"

I turned and looked at him for the first time. He was yellow all over and darker yellow in patches. Must have been ninety years old.

"Are they so bad?" I said, amazed. "Are you kidding? The Dan Ryan has a strip dug up across all eight lanes, coming and going. And that's just this morning's little gem. I have to carry a cattle prod with me to the dumpster. Sox Park is a friggin' forest, trees four-foot-thick comin' up like bleacher bums through every bench. Do you know what that looks like? Doesn't that scare you?"

"We do good job. You going to see," my companion nodded toward the front window. I gave him a where'd-you-come-from look. He sat restfully at my elbow and watched the show outside, the engineer, the other passengers.

I have to say, the suited stiffs didn't seem real eager to get to work. I glanced over my shoulder and saw briefcases and Wall Street Journals abandoned on the seats behind us. Somebody made a suggestion and we all rolled our windows open. The little old oriental guy just bared his gums at the lot. Screwball.

"You in the gang?" I sneered. "Or maybe you're one of the space aliens that made all this shit happen?"

He nodded. "I make the monster."

"Oh for chrissake," I said, disgusted, and turned back to the window.

The boy on the tracks saw something. He started leaping up and down and yodelling with his mouth stretched all out of shape. A woman gasped. At the same time a tearing roar burst over us, like the sound the wind makes blowing over Sox Park nowadays. The sound seemed to come from everywhere at once. Everybody flinched. A chill scurried up my backbone and stood my hairs at attention. The roar came again.

The gang boy danced up and down on the ties. Twice he jumped in the air and hit the end of his spear on the third rail and blue sparks flew. Every time, just before his feet touched the wood, he yanked the spear-point off the rail.

The engineer leaned out and yelled "Don't touch the third rail!" Who does she think she is, somebody's mother? I grinned to myself. I love the CTA. Procedure and training. It works. My teeth chattered.

My companion drank it all in. I noticed him noticing me shivering. He irritated me. He's not even sweating.

In an irked voice I said, "Well, what the hell did you do that for?"

"Make monster?" His eyes lit up. "Aaah. To make different." His hands waved around. "People not work together. Not enough change. Hm?"

"There's plenty of change," I babbled. "It's too darned much change. Whose idea was this, anyway? Why not change Pittsburgh? There's a city with time on its hands." These are crazy times, I was thinking. One thing, people don't hold it against you now if you talk crazy to strangers once in a while.

Something impossibly huge lurched over the tops of the cottonwood trees in the cemetery. I saw a flash of green, black, gray, and an eye I couldn't believe in. The El shook under us.

"Pittsburgh change too," said the soft voice beside me.

It came out of the trees.

It's true, dinosaurs do move in slo-mo. The Sunday Trib had a story about the physics involved, getting an electrical pulse to mobilize a hundred and fifty tons of bone and muscle. Just to make it twitch takes almost a quarter of a second. It was possible, the article said, that a man could outrun one, given a little cover.

This thing rolled over the white stone mausoleums and the old black brittle catalpa trees, stepping carefully like a dog making to pee.

The gang boy yodelled some more. He laid his spear down on the ties, and spread his legs and braced himself, hands stretched out together.

I looked down by the monster's feet. My heart jumped. People running. They were scattering, running every which way like ants. It stepped after them, always a second too late for the smoosh.

It bent its mouthy head over the grass. I couldn't believe it would miss them. Kids. The gang, I guess. They dodged and slalomed through the headstones, painted head-to-toe with big white and red streaks. One by one they raced for the eight foot wall around the cemetery and scrambled over. The 'rex swung its head from side to side and managed to miss them all. My eardrums split on another frustrated roar.

"Look!" said the little old oriental guy. He stretched his skinny arm past the suits crammed at the window in front of us. A space opened up between suits, and then we could see better. "Hunters. Good."

The gang boy jerked a couple of times.

The roar stopped on a bark. The head swung back and forth, clipped a branch off a cottonwood. The boy shot again. I was so excited I never did hear the !pop of his gun.

The monster bent over to put its little paws, a mere two feet long from palm to clawtip, on the eight foot wall and peered.

The boy stood braced, not moving. He jerked.

Guess he hit it all right.

Very suddenly the dinosaur stood up, raised one huge crooked haunch, and brought it over the wall. There was barely room for it, the tracks were so close. The crowd in the nose jostled. Some people tried to get away from the front. The engineer came out of her dream and started backing the train an inch at a time.

The thing lifted the other leg over the wall. It had to raise its head way toward the sky to keep balanced. I had a hope that the heavy tail, as big around as the awesome bird-boney chest, would hang up on the wall, but it didn't. The beast was that tall.

It bellied up to the El like it was a fucking smorgasbord, and while the head slowly, slowly lowered to the tracks, the kid got off everything in his gun. Little marks appeared on the exposed throat. The head kept coming down. The engineer stopped backing the train. I think she was considering ramming the damned thing. Somebody jerked the red handle on the right front doors and got them open. Nobody jumped off the train.

The 'rex bent over, its mighty head on one side, and the kid backed up to the very edge of the ties on the far side of the tracks. He threw the gun at the 'rex, and then he picked up his spear and threw that. It stuck. I was surprised.

I muttered, "What a crummy weapon."

"No, look, he good hunter."

"Oh for chrissake," I think I said. Everybody in the car was crammed into the nose, shrieking through the glass.

The beast opened its mouth and leaned forward. It put its paws down on the tracks.

And screamed.

I'll swear I saw the kid grin before he jumped backward.

The lights and the motor died. The radio blabbering in the cab stopped. We were shocked into silence, a big silence with a big scream filling it fuller and fuller. I put my hands over my ears.

Smoke or steam boiled off the track where the thing grabbed it, and through the windows came a terrifying smell of a barbecue. Blue sparks tossed out of the smoke like firecrackers. The track hummed. The beast bent over the track and shuddered, and the train jerked on its steel wheels. The people in the back of the crowd sat down. The track, the train, everything was shuddering. The scream wound down to a hoot, and the hoot became a whining, and stinking smoke blew through the car from front to back, and away in the distance I heard a fire engine or something. I shut my eyes. Perfect timing, fellas.

The boy in leather clambered up onto the track, still in his harness. Behind him swarmed his little painted friends. Working in teams, they went at the head and foreclaws with chainsaws I was willing to bet they never paid for.

The CTA managed the crisis. The conductor got off the train and threw a manual switch to get us powered again. The engineer backed us up to behind Wilson and shifted us onto the Howard Street line, and we ran on the inside track until we got where we could transfer back to the express line below the corpse. A lot of people got off the train at Wilson to smoke or puke.

"Wimps," I grumbled after them. I was shaking from one end to the other. A pigeon swooped down and snatched the cigarette off the face of a guy standing on the platform. He looked about to cry. His own fool-ass fault, smoking in the open.

My bowels wanted a time out, but I was damned if I'd get off the train. The Dan Ryan's chopped to hell, a gang makes a kill on the El tracks, big so what. I'm going to beat my cocksucking supervisor in to work today.

I felt a touch on my arm. The little old oriental guy looked at me with concern.

"You don't like the change."

The car was almost empty.

"You're god damned right I don't like the change!" I shouted. My tummy settled.

"What the HEY do you think you're up to anyway? Jesus Christ! I'm not saying it was a perfect world, but there were rules. There was a system!" I had my eye on my watch. Five minutes before we hit the Merchandise Mart. Plenty of time for a psychotic episode. Oh god, that barbecue smell.

"And why the hell nobody's caught on to you I don't know!" In the back of my mind I knew I'd be ashamed of myself for lamming into a crazy street person on the train. Maybe two days from now. When my teeth stop chattering. I half stood over him and yelled in his face.

"You can't do this kind of thing! It's no secret! The whole goddam world is changing! Somebody's got to know something!" He wants to take the credit for T rex in the cemetery, I thought, he can take some of the blame.

He listened to all this with the smile closed up and his eyes like raisins in his skinny face. He nodded like a dashboard chihuahua.

"You right."

"Well?" I yelled.

He just sat, listening.

My knees quit. I sat down. I said, "So how can you keep it quiet?"

His lips worked over those two big teeth. "Bribery."

"Br-bribery?"

"Sure. Give somebody something, he keep he mouth shut." He shrugged. "This is Chicago."

I laughed weakly. He smiled back, kind of there, knew you could do it. He touched my arm, a feather touch.

"You got very bad attitude, know that? You give us bad press. We give you something. Hm?" His eyes wrinkled shut on a smile.

"F-For what? I'm nobody special, buddy." I jerked a thumb. "Think I can kid the papers that that lump o'burger back there is a mass hallucination? I ain't nobody special," I said again.

The touch on my arm again. "Hey, everybody count. People stop complain. Adjust. You see."

A cold spot formed in my stomach. He's right. Everything was changing, world going to hell, and nobody, and this was what griped my ass and scared me worse than anything else, nobody seemed to care. Hell, my asshole supervisor used to work at Sox Park same as me. Never says a word about it any more.

I shivered. Gad, street people give me the creeps. This one was easily out-crazying me. Furthermore he knew stuff.

He said, "What you like, hm? Change you attitude." A finger came up. It had a long yellow dirty curling fingernail on it. "I know! We give you good mood for the train."

"Wha-hut the?"

"You see. Not good you grouchy all time." He pointed the unsanitary thing at my stomach. "Give you ingestion. Good mood, you don' mind little 'citement on the train. Okay?"

He smiled such a big happy grin, I smiled back. This crazy little old guy wants to fix my stomachache. After I've shouted in his face. A hot flush swept over me, but I didn't care.

There's the city for you. This stuff never happens in the fucking malls.

He patted me on the arm one last time. The train stopped and the doors opened.

He got off at the Mart, and on an impulse I followed him, but I lost him right away in the crowd. I flowed with the mob down the main hallway to the big brass deco elevators, and a whim shoved me squash into a steaming elevator, and a whim popped me out, sweating and gasping for air, on Four.

CTA headquarters. I know. I'll put in a citizen's commendation to that engineer, number 514. Sure kept her head this morning.

And, well, the paperwork was unbelievable. You'd think the dinos would put people off working the El. Not to mention the ties sprouting on the Lake Street line, like they were logged yesterday and never soaked in creosote. I waited almost a year for my engineer's license, for most of which I had to accept a transfer clear out to the O'Hare office. Anything to get away from my old supervisor. Besides, it meant taking the express into the Loop and transferring to the subway for the airport. An extra forty-five minutes in transit, easy.

I don't mind.

I love the train.