Highline Henry and the Hotshot

(As composed and told to five-year-old Luke late on a clear, cold October night, by a fire under the stars and the whispering leaves. Near the tracks.)

Highline Henry was a man who rode freight trains a long time ago. That means he was a hobo. He's probably the most famous hobo of all the hobos you've never heard of. Most other hobos have never even heard of him. Henry was born not far from here. In fact, when he was a little boy, he used to lie in his bed and listen to the trains crossing these very same roads, one after another. It got so that he could recognize each train's engineer just by the lay of the horn in the night air. He got so used to the trains that if the sound of a certain horn was different, or later than usual in the night, it would rouse him from his sleep.

And when he was still very young — about five years old — he would often venture out from his house in the deep, dark, cold night and make his way through these cornstalks, on these hills, to catch just a glimpse of the trains rushing through the dark. Most of the time he arrived too late. But one night, around this time of year, he arrived at the tracks just as the rumble of the wheels did. When he felt the sudden rush of air and saw the bright orange sparks of the steel wheels against the rails as the train passed, he knew he had to see where all those trains were going.

And so, when he was just a little older and a little bigger, he left his home for the last time and walked down to the tracks and became a hobo.

For many years, he traveled with the trains all around the country.

He did some good things. He did some bad things. He wasn't a perfect hobo. But of course there are as many perfect hobos as there are perfect people in the world.

Henry rode every single yard of steel that was ever laid down in the United States, and some yards that never were. He rode, and rode, and rode. He saw everything he ever thought he wanted to see. He did everything he ever thought he wanted to do. He learned everything he ever thought he needed to know. But still, he hadn't seen everything. Or done everything. Or learned everything.

He traveled his whole life, slowly turning over the years. Until one day, when he was very old, he found himself sitting by a fire just like this one. And because fires make most men quiet, and still, and thoughtful, he grew very quiet, and very still. And as the October mist came over the hills where he was, he remembered the fields near the house where he grew up so many years before. He remembered nights like this, and being a little boy who still had a home. He thought about his mother and his father. His brothers and his sisters, and his friends. He hadn't seen them in a long, long time. He never thought about what it must have been like for them to watch him disappear the way that he did, into that cold night so many years long ago. And the more he sat, and the more he listened to the fire crackle and pop, and the longer he thought, the sadder he became. For so long, he'd thought only about himself — the places he wanted to see, the things he wanted to do, the things he wanted to leave behind. But now, he knew more than anything else that he wanted to go home.

And so, just like that, the way these things usually are, he was up on his feet. He ran toward the tracks so fast that he nearly left behind his pack. Stumbling back to the fire, he quickly gathered up his few things, and trotted to the siding where he knew a westbound train would soon be stopping.

And soon it was, although little did he know that he wouldn't be alone on that train ride home.

After the train came to a stop, he picked out his car and hopped on. Soon, when his eyes got used to the dark - and before he could change his mind and jump back off - he noticed another hobo sharing his ride, shivering in the corner.

"I'm so cold," the hobo told Henry, through chattering teeth.

But Henry was warm, in his long, thick coat and his flannel shirts.

He thought for a long moment. And then thought some more. And then thought just a little bit more, before finally speaking up. "I'm just going home," Henry said. "No further. And I'll have no further need for this." And with that, he took off his coat, and tossed it to his shivering companion.

The night rolled on with few words passed between the two travelers, and before long the train came to a stop. "Bless you," the once-cold hobo told Henry as he hopped off the train, Henry's coat still on his back. "When we see each other again, we surely won't be strangers."

"We will not," Henry said, smiling a little, and shivering a little too.

As the train again got underway, the wheels slipping and sparking beneath the engine, another hobo quickly scrambled onto Henry's car.

Henry was shocked. "How are you, friend?" he asked, startled.

"Good. Good and warm," the man replied loudly, patting his shoulders. "But I'm hungry. So hungry. And I have so many more miles to put beneath me. Where are you heading, and how are you?"

Henry thought for a long moment. "I'm only going home," he answered, thoughtfully. And at the same time, he remembered that he had bread in his pockets. "I'll be home sooner than later," he said. "This is yours if you want it." He tossed the pieces of bread to the hungry hobo.

The food made Henry's companion glad, and he and Henry talked for a long time about the places they'd been and the things they'd seen, as hobos will do when they're in talkative moods. But soon, the cold pressed in between the spaces in the car, and made Henry shiver. The air between the two men went silent. The freight car rollicked as though it was a ship battered in a Great Lakes storm. Hours passed before the train finally stopped again.

"Bless you," the once-hungry hobo said as he scrambled off of the car into the night, his belly full of Henry's food. "When we see each other again," he said, tossing the last of Henry's bread into his mouth, "we surely won't be strangers."

"No," Henry said, managing a smile. "We will not."

And yet again, just as the slack action rocketed down the line to Henry's car, and the train began to move, another hobo hopped on board his ride.

"Mind if I share a seat?" the man asked Henry.

"Not at all," Henry replied, a little weary, and - if he would admit it - a little scared. The night felt old, and was full of strangers. "How goes it?"

The hobo regarded Henry for a long bit.

"I'm warm, and well-fed," he replied. "That's not so bad. But I have to tell you I'm thirsty. It seems like I emptied the last of my water more than half a lifetime ago." The man lifted his hand to his lips as he said this, as if to verify he was as parched as he thought he was. "But where do you think you're heading tonight?"

Henry was quiet for a moment. He was thirsty too. He was just thinking about how thirsty he was. And still cold. And getting a little hungry now, too.

"I'm just going home," he heard himself say. "And I'll be home soon." His hand reached down in the darkness and traced the handle of his water jug. "But ..."

The stranger cocked his head and watched Henry carefully.

"But I have this little bit of water."

"Home!" This latest hobo repeated loudly, surprising Henry. "Home. Now that is a VERY long time, and a VERY long way from here, isn't it?"

Henry pulled out the jug of water he kept by his side, and passed it to his new-found friend. As he did, he seemed to feel a weight much heavier than that of the water pass from his hand to that of the stranger.

"In some ways yes, in some ways not," he said. 


The hobo nodded, and drank Henry's water eagerly.

At the next stop that night — that night which seemed now to stretch on and on, far longer than any other night Henry could remember — the thirsty hobo left, and yet a new hobo came aboard.

Henry was cold, and hungry, and thirsty, and tired. And he couldn't recall the last time he'd come across so many gentlemen of the road on one of his journeys. But he didn't have much time to ponder these thoughts, as the new hobo asked him many questions. And talked in long sentences.

"How are you, friend?" Henry asked, finally, interrupting the stranger's long stream of words.

"Well," considered Henry's new traveling companion, "I suppose I'm warm, and full of food, and full of water. So pretty good. But I'm lonesome." He paused, and looked all around himself in the murk of the railcar. "I am all alone."

"Well," said Henry, "That is one thing you are not. I am only going home. But I have many tales to tell before I get there, if you'll take the time to hear them."

The lonely hobo nodded, and Henry went on to tell story after story after story. As all his stories unfolded, it was as if his whole life was unpacked and re-told in the light of the passing farmhouses and towns.

After many hours, and much laughter, the train stopped yet again. The lonesome hobo jumped from the train.

"Bless you," he said, turning toward Henry. "You're a good man, Henry. Highline Henry. When we see each other again," and here the man paused for a long time, took off his hat, stepped closer to Henry, and peered deep into his eyes. "We surely will not be strangers."

"Won't we?" Henry heard himself ask. "Won't we?"

And before Henry could realize that he'd never allowed the other hobo his name, the stranger disappeared into the dark.

No more hobos appeared that night.

And there were still many, many miles to go.

The train moved on through the darkness, heading ever West.

Highline Henry grew colder and colder as the miles wore on. 

And he was hungry.

And thirsty.

And lonely.

He began to hate ever taking the name Highline Henry.

He began to hate that he had ever climbed into an open rail car, or had ever hoped to see where the trains went, or even looked at a train or heard the plaintive cry of one of their horns in the dark.

He hated ever wanting to leave home.

The hours of the night, and the endless sky, and the miles and miles of road stretched ever out before him.

The moonlight was weird and yellow and old. The world was rust and splinter.

Henry lay in the corner of his grain car.

"I'm so cold," he said, out loud, to no one. "So hungry. Thirsty. And alone."

Henry didn't realize, until it was too late, that he'd caught the last leg of a hotshot heading West that had no intention of stopping.

Still, somehow, he drifted off to sleep.

When a remarkable thing happened.

The stars had watched Henry all that long night. They knew that all Henry wanted, more than anything, was to go back home. But the stars also knew that there was no home for Henry to go back to. Not on this earth. In all those long years of his selfish wandering, his mother and father had long ago died and gone to heaven, and his brothers and sisters too. That he had long ago willfully squandered every good hand he'd been dealt. But they had also seen his humble heart: The heart that was sorry for each selfish thing he'd ever done, and knew the depth of the debt he could never hope to repay.

The stars knew something else.

They knew that Henry wasn't riding just any ordinary freight train.And that those hobos he'd met along the way weren't strangers.

Henry awoke. Still, it was night. Still, he was on his hotshot heading West. There, in front of him, stood yet another hobo. How could this be? Had he somehow slept through a crew change? The man standing in front of him was tall, and seemed to glow with a light that gathered all lesser lights to it. His face was familiar to Henry. It became more familiar still as he spoke.

"Hello Henry," the man said.

"Hello, friend," Henry stammered, scared and yet not scared at the same time.

The man smiled, and some of the night's sharp silver seemed to glow suddenly gold.

"Yes. Friend. Friend indeed."

Henry thought it necessary to stand, but the tumult of the rails beneath the car kept him on his knees.

"Where are you going on such a cold, long night, Henry?" asked the man, who knew Henry.

Henry thought for a moment. And the truth of that moment rushed in upon him all at once. It caught the wind out of his lungs. It made him sad, and angry, and scared, and hopeful, and ashamed. And he answered. "I was going home." 

"Home?" the tall man asked, squinting.

"I ... I was," Henry said. "But I know the truth. I know that home is just a word for a place I left behind for good a long time ago. A word for a place that isn't there. A word for a place I don't deserve." 

The tall man nodded, slowly, lifting a hand to his stubbled face.

"But you're heading home anyway, aren't you Henry?" he asked.

Highline Henry's heart lifted a little.

"Yes sir."

The tall man laughed.

"Yes you are," he said. "And I'll catch up with you later. But I have other routes to attend to this night. That is, if you're satisfied with the one you find yourself on?"

Henry grinned. "Well, of course. Yes!"

"Good!"

The tall man stepped out onto the porch of Henry's grainer.

"You have just a few more miles to go, Henry. But I can tell you're cold. Hungry. Thirsty. I have no need of these things. Do you?"

And Henry recognized instantly his coat on the tall man's back. His pockets brimming with Henry's bread. Henry's water jug swinging by the tall man's side.

"No," Henry said, without hesitation. "No."

The tall man turned to Henry, grinning.

"So glad we're not strangers, Henry. See you at home."

***

Three hobos huddle around a jungle fire somewhere not far from here. The conversation has gone quiet. The fire is low and the coffee is cold.

All three of them lean back in the night, staring at the stars.

Suddenly, a shooting star stretches across the sky, arching brightly from east to west.

"Highline Henry on his hotshot," whispers one.

"Heading home," says another. "If you believe such things."

"I do," the tall man says.

October

What you could not help
is a long list
that rain spells
against safety glass
near shores of inland seas
ripe with engines
idled over whiskey-proof nights.

You threw chains
over them
and wondered at what home
might await you at the end.

What good was that?

Strangers
crouching
under weeping
leaves;

ballet
of switch-throws

and horizons
low as
your great-grandfather's
deathbed.

What good?

The space between
the curtain
and the floor;

The storm-flattened
cornstalks.

The totems
that the blade drags with it
over whiskers.

To the Stranger

Shards of ice, boot-made
on the stream,
for years
outside the library
or failing kitchen window,
or beneath
fuel-oiled trestle-works,
or in my youth
of loved cousins,
near harvest,
or along the freshwater
shores of
inland seas,
or in the forests
grown over boundary lines.

I never knew
and never saw
the feet that
marked the places
wherein
I was overthrown.

To that stranger,
I say
that I once
watched my tears
freeze upon
the soles of my own boots.

For that
you may one day pay
with shards of ice
boot-made on the stream.

marquette (part two)

Gold autumn heaven
tilts with all those streets

one shoulder lowered
up under

orange lights
strung porch-to-porch,

plane of the River
gone slack
among the maples
and idled ways back home.

Hotshots treetops combines
moving under hollow-ground blades
of moonlight

spared as you,

your father's son,
sons' father,

needle spun
on
compasses
dropped face-down

in fields lain over iron
tended,
untended.

Dread

I never saw the face of
That black dread,
nameless,
dervishing the leaves,
colliding
blind-eyed
along the fencelines
and orange light
of barge-cabin
on the river.

It breathed
and walked the River Road,
and the breath of it
came along with me
to canyons
rusted shut as
autumn trees
against the moon,
the dark
soaking through the stars
above.