Salt-and-Pepper Man

“Penn Station?” I asked hesitantly. I was still unsure of my footing in this place.

“You got a ticket, kid?”

I looked at the salt-and-pepper in his white hair and wondered why his face looked like someone out of a movie. His sharp blue eyes were a colour that never ceases to amaze me, clear and deep.

“Kid?” His accent, loud, brash and hard on the ears, shook me out of my reverie.

“Uhm, no, I need to buy one.” The ‘one’ came out American-style, with a characteristic ‘woy-ne’ sound. I immediately felt a wave of guilt flood through me. I felt like I should go do penance and say ‘thu’ ‘chee’ and ‘kya bey’ over and over under my breath while counting an imaginary rosary.

“Well, I’m not going to charge you the extra three dollars today, but you need to have a ticket before you get on a train, all right?”

“I tried to buy one at the station, but I don’t have a credit card and the kiosk-“

“Oh yeah, it doesn’t take cash.”

“Where can I get a ticket then?”

“You can get one at Penn Station.”

“Yes, that’s where I’m headed. But how do I get one TO there?”

He looked and me and squinted, “And you say you don’t have a credit card?” He looked worried, trying to process this information. I wanted to grin up at him and tell him it wasn’t that big a deal and I didn’t feel deprived or anything. But he seemed to like being sympathetic so I kept my mouth shut, till I couldn't hold back a smile anymore. The lack of a credit card deepened the little crinkly furrow in his brow and he thought for a while.

Seconds passed, with us frozen in our places. My eyes wandered to the lunch box in his hand as I pictured the kitchen where it was packed. I had my money on cold pasta and some kind of juice, probably grape.

After what seemed like a while, he grinned at me and said, “Penn Station, you said?” and handed me a ticket from his ticket booklet.

I took the same train back from Penn Station after work in the evening. And the same train the morning after that. The salt-and-pepper-ed head bobbed in recognition as I got on the train and grinned in appreciation at my two-way-return ticket, bought from Penn Station. I smiled back at the joke we didn't crack.

He told me to “Get home safe” and waved as I got off the train. It felt nice, almost like I had someone to come see me off every day.

As I climbed up the overpass to cross the tracks, I felt a sinking sort of feeling. My salt-and-pepper-train-conductor would dissolve into everyday mundaneness (I’m pretty sure that’s not the word. Mundanity? Mundane stuff? Maybe mundane cannot be a noun. Either way, you get the drift.) He couldn’t wish me every day and wave bye every day, like the first day. That’s not what happens. All things slip into the oblivion that is ‘everyday’ and the excitement, the novelty, always fades. It’s a fact of life. Colours on a canvas fade with the passing of time and there’s nothing you can do about it.

The next morning, I didn’t return his friendly smile with my usual wide-mouthed grin. I smiled a shifty, eyes-avoiding-eyes kind of smile. There was no way to make him understand and he’d think I was crazy if I tried. I was probably crazy. Or cynical. Or both. Argh.

I tried not to look at the empty lunchbox and wonder where he ate lunch as I waited to get off the train at five that evening. He walked up to me and said, “You going to do this every day, kid?”

I felt him ruffle my hair and ask me what was wrong, even though he didn’t take a step towards me or say another word. I looked up at him and said, “Yessir” sounding a lot more cheerful then I felt.

“You might ‘wanna pick up one of them monthly passes then. Could work out a little cheaper.” He paused. “What do you know, they sell them things at Penn Station too…” And grinned wider than I thought his face would allow.

My face itched to break into a smile, but something dry suddenly suddenly flew into my throat from my heart and lodged itself there and refused to let me. I settled for looking into the blue eyes for a moment.

I got off the train. He stood at the doorway and waved. I waited for the “Get home safe” but instead, I heard, “See you on Monday then!”

The dry fluff flew back into my heart and melted into a drop of sunshine. I turned around, grinned, wide-mouthed, teeth-and-tongue in full view and waved.  

Mundanity, the silly thing, could hit whenever it liked. In that moment, that Friday afternoon, with a glorious weekend stretching out ahead of me, I looked mundanity full in the face and told it to piss off. The weekend was here. And the sun was shining. And the salt-and-peppered head would be here to bob a greeting in two days. “See you on Monday!” I yelled back.

[I must've met Salt-and-Pepper Man almost fifty times on the train in the summer of 2010. I never found out his name. And yet, the memory of him in my mind is as comforting as the memory of any conversation with a old friend. 

Until this stupid writer's block of mine passes, I'm just going to dig up things I wrote in the past (like this piece) and post them. I'm hoping some elements in the universe will take pity and return my writing back to me. <sigh>]