Ezekial's Train, Chapter One

“'Scuse me suh, 'Scuse me.”


Daniel shifts in his seat and opens his eyes as the porter shakes his shoulder, snapping his head to the side, startled and suddenly aware. “Y'all gone have tuh get offa the train, suh. Yo ticket is only tuh Miama and we done got theah.”


The train. The turbines spinning underneath as the train floats on a perfect cushion of magnetism, light shining from its eyes in the night, showing the bridge beneath and the dark sky above. The fixed metal glare of the Puma's face on the front of the locomotive staring ahead, its gaze as impenetrable as the sphinx. I can sense it even though I'm alone in the dark berth. I can see it. The train's face.

Shifting his weight from foot to foot, nervous and fidgety, the old black man shakes Daniel's shoulder again, jostling him a little more aggressively and constantly aware that he is treading on delicate waters touching a white man. “Suh? Suh?”

“Yes!”

The porter steps back, wide eyed, watching the man with the strange accent. “Yah, the train has stopped, hasn't it? Yah.” He shakes his head again, his neck snapping back and forth as he realizes the porter is staring at him. “And where am I again?”

“Miama, suh. Miama, Florida, suh.”

Miami, he thinks. Why Miami? Looking around he notices that he is the only person in the train car now, the only passenger at any rate. It's only the old black porter who stares at him, watching him closely as he walks to the door, glancing around briefly before he remembers his duffel bag and returns to pick it up, heaving it over his shoulder as he climbs down the fold away stairs and off of the train car into the heat that is August in south Florida. The temperature here is like the the deserts of North Africa but with more moisture in the air and it does not suit his Danish constitution or his current mindset.

The colors here are all pastels though, which match the heat nicely. The paint on the train station walls is new and clean, as it is in most places he's seen since coming back form Europe. Only three years after the war's end and America is shiny, clean, and prosperous, whereas back there he would still be looking at rubble, death, and destitution. Prosperity to the victors, But who shall be the final victors?

“Suh! Suh, ya done dropped this there on the train!” Even in agitation the porter's words are drawn out and full of extra sylables as he trots across the platform holding out a sheath of papers, gesturing towards Daniel as he goes. “Massa Christiansen is it, suh? Hope y'all don't mind me lookin' through this book 'a your's, suh. Them's some interestin' pitchers in there. Yes, suh, they is.”

“Yah. Yah, interesting.” He absent mindedly takes the sketchbook form the porter, gently placing it into his coat pocket as he shifts the duffel bag to the ground.

“Suh, what 'a them pictchers of, suh?”

Break

The tower of Castle Kronborg is casting a long shadow today and Daniel stands on the very tippy top point of that shadow, beaming proudly. He can almost imagine that he is standing on the tip top point of the real tower, standing in the clouds, peaking into the heavens like a man in one of the aeroplanes his mum showed him in a magazine. A big papery thing with wings that looked like boards and a spinny propeller that looked like a pinwheel, he could barely believe that it left the ground. Surely, even the adults must know that only something with feathers like a bird could fly. And to carry a person, surely it'd have to have more than just two wings. One day Daniel would show them and build his own aeroplane, but proper, with feathers and everything.

“Damn castle's an eyesore if you ask me.” Even though most people have such a hard time understanding Grandpa Lars' accent, Daniel doesn't have a problem at all. They spend so much time together these days that it's like he's learned two versions of Danish to go with the English his mother is patiently teaching him in the evenings.

“That damn Shakespeare made a joke of the whole thing, and if he hadn't I bet we could've torn the damn thing down by now. Would make a great park down there 'steada that crazy castle.”

“Pa Lars, though,” He stands tall on the tip of the towers shadow and stretches his arms out like wings, “I like the tower. And besides, mum says that we shouldn't read Shakespeare because it's . . . what's the word she uses? Secular.”

“Yeah, and your mum thinks all kind of things too, but I'm old and can't nobody take that away from me.”

Daniel jumps from where he's standing and spreads his arms out as far as he can, waving them as if he'd just jumped from the top of the tower and is gliding down. “Pa Lars, thank you for bringing me here again!” He wraps his arms around his grandpa's legs and laughs, his eight year old voice high pitched and even more childlike than one would expect. “I love you, Pa Lars.”

“Yeah, I guess you're not such a bad kid,” He pats him awkwardly on the head before pushing him away. “Now get off me, alright?”

Break

The compass glides around the paper in a steady arc, pivoting on its center and drawing a perfect circle. There's something about the simplicity of a compass, the simplicity of the circle, that's always appealed to Daniel. The circle of life and the circle of the universe. Surely, if there were a shape to give to God, it would be a circle.

“Danny boy, why are ya drawin' circles again then, eh? I know the period is free exercise, but it's always circles and globes with you, innit?”

“Yah sir, I just am like them. There is something about the maps of the world, do you know?”

“Aye. I suppose I do. And a talent you've got for them too. If you're going to work on maps all the time though, why don't ya work on more o' them nice ones like you've made for the school, then? 'Steada these crazy things you're doing now?”

He looks up form the circle where he's already begun sketching a continent. Savoring the feel of the graphite scraping against the paper, he looks up without stopping, even while he begins to speak. Old Samson's eyes narrow at that, curiously. “They are not being crazy though, sir. They are as I see in my mind. They are as of other earths.” Even at 24 Daniel's voice is a little higher than that of his peers and he's conscious of it.

“Aye, there ya are again with that business then. Lord Danny, what's to become of you? I know you're here for the suffrage of Dr. Mathiasen, and I know it's the point of the school and all, but you're a grown man.”

“We are friends, sir, Sorn and I. He helped me to come here, to America. I am grateful.”

When Dr. Sorn Mathiasen had written to him of a new college he was directing in Pennsylvania Daniel has jumped at the opportunity to come here, to go anywhere in America. Afterall, Dr. Sorn had been kind to him when after he'd enrolled at the People's College in Helsinger, encouraging his eccentricities rather than chastising them. He had encouraged Daniel to keep up with his maps and with his sketching, even though they bore little relevance to the blacksmithing he did for a living. When the opportunity came and with his family thin on the ground here after the Great War it had been hard to say no. With nothing holding him back he'd had no second thoughts of boarding the giant ship Olympic and sailing to America even if it did mean being jammed into a hold with a thousand Irish families along the way. It would be worth it, he knew.

“I know, I know, I've heard the stories, from you and him. There's something he sees in you, I suppose. Can't say I see it though.” Samson shakes his head and walks away, turning mid step as he reaches the next table, “I will say though, boy, that map you made of the globe that we framed there is something else, so there is that. Don't take my old words to heart, eh?”

“Yes, sir.”

Break

The colors here are all wrong, colors he's seen before, but never in this assortment. The plants, strange, the sky a dull purple. In the distance he can see a building like none he's even seen, in Europe or in America. It's so hard to look at the terrain though, when the creature is staring at him with such palpable force of will.

Its center head, that which bears the face of man, stares down at him form on high, the other three heads aloof and angled away, the lion in particular paying him only a sideways glance as the human face speaks in the echoing voice that they all have, “There is much we have in mind for you, Ezekial. Much you have not yet begun to imagine.”

The voice speaks in Danish but it is an accent unlike any he's ever heard. “Why do you keep calling me Ezekial?” He tries to shout at the creature, but it comes out as a whisper, calm and collected as a student addressing a teacher.

“Do not ask questions of us, human.”

The face of man shifts it's gaze upward and that of the lion speaks to him, the creatures four wings moving gently in the soft wind as it floats above him. “You are not ready and we will return when you are.”

The bird face looks down with a jerk and widens its eyes in anger, its glance piercing Daniel like a dagger and the creature is gone, floating up with a gentle movement of its wings, floating up to the great rotating sphere from which it came. The concentric circles of the ship spin faster as the creature moves back within it and it is gone in a flash, as is the world in which he stands, strange colors and all.

He is back in the break room at the factory and he is breathing heavily. Other workers try not to stare as he heaves and gasps for breath. The year is 1933 and this is the first time he has seen the angels, but it will not be the last.

Break

“Suh?”

He is back at the train station in Miami now, breathing heavily and shaking. “Yah, yah, that is mine.” He mumbles, dropping the sketchbook form his quivering hand, his fingers moving like one with palsy as he bends over to pick it up.

“Lemme do that fo' ya, suh. I's got it.”

The porter picks it up and puts it in his hand again and before he can begin to register what more the man has to say, Daniel has turned and moved off, bumping into a standing suitcase as he does, stumbling and moving towards the large double doors leading to the rest of the station. “Yah, yah, thank you. It is mine.”

As he steps through the doors a smiling woman hands him a paper cup full of orange juice, forcing it into his shaking hand and babbling to him in words he barely takes in. He takes it and leans against the wall, draining it at a gulp as if it were water and feeling the slight burn of the acidity as it goes down his dry throat.

But why? Why am I here again?