We can see the train from our window, and the Uptown theatre, too, when the sun sets behind it and makes our room all golden like nothing will ever make us sad again. Jude calls it the Love Train, he announces it so we know it is going by otherwise we’d miss it for sure. Tonight we will ride the train, Jude and his daddy and I, but Jude won't know that until we get there.
We walk past sad people and dirty snow and smell the fumes from the cars on Wilson Ave. When we get near the station Jude is so excited we can barely hold on to him and as we start to climb the stairs we feel the thunder. Jude becomes frantic, it’s the LOVE train and we are missing it, so HURRY and when we get there and the train is pulling away it is almost too much to bear. Another one is coming, I say, in just a minute but Jude doesn’t work like that. He cries until the next one comes and when it gets close we hold him tight, because there is nothing to stop him from running right onto the tracks.
The train takes off and Jude is flapping and yelling THIS IS GREAT and something about Thomas and Gordon at the top of his lungs. People look up, their damp dull reveries broken for a moment and some of them smile but most of them stare for a moment and look away. I hate them for their plodding mediocrity. They seem so small just outside Jude’s sparkling circle of light. I get to stand in it and they don’t. So there.
When the train slows down for Sheridan Jude starts to howl because he thinks the ride is over, and continues to howl until the train gets going again. He does this at Addison, and again at Belmont. No one is smiling now. These lumps of dreary humanity don’t get how great the ride is, so they don’t understand the anguish at the thought that it might be over.
We arrive at our stop and haul Jude kicking and screaming off the train. We spend an hour or two with some therapists who want him to string things and match colors and put his own socks on and quit screaming so much. We brought him here, it was my idea, I wanted them to teach him to participate and learn and be more like those fools on the train. We are all glad to leave and I suspect they are happy to see us go. Jude is far more subdued on the way home, looking out at the moon behind the dark buildings and bare trees. I can tell we are getting to Wilson because the trains always slow down past the massive cemetery, out of respect for the dead. Mustn’t wake them. Jude leaves the train without a fuss this time, perhaps realizing it just isn't the place for him.
Good bye love train, you have proven too much for us today. We will ride you again someday, when we are calmer, braver. Until then we will wave at you from our window in the golden sunlight, and yell out your name as loud as we can.
