luminous hours between morning and evening rush, merrily clanging along on schedule down sunny streets.
He becomes bitter, glares at the Nun bouncing and chuckling on his air cushion seat, and wishes he could beat her knuckles bloody with a ruler, could make her stand in a corner with aching arms outstretched balancing a Bible on each palm, could deprive her of recess and banish her to the wardrobe closet.
But the Nun, now no longer a nun but a conductor in her own right, seems oblivious to all but the streetcar. Throttle open, bell clanging, and a fine sweat gathered like a mustache along her upper lip, suddenly boisterous as a gondolier, she breaks into song, its melody a cross between “funiculi funicula” and a hymn, its lyrics a psalm.
Although the Lord be high above
He doth recall the lowly
And deep within the secret heart
The Lord shall surely know thee
Her flashing teeth bite into the apple from the Conductor’s lunch bag. Each crunch of the apple seems transmitted to the streetcar as if spikes of electricity were driving it forward in a more and more abandoned way, and Martin remembers drives down a country two-lane in his old Camaro with the Girl of His Dreams beside him, unzipping his trousers, urging him, Faster, faster , as if the way she touched him were actually propelling the car. If a motorcycle cop had been pursuing them then the way cops are pursuing the streetcar now, it would have looked to him as if the female passenger suddenly vanished, and though Martin was gripping the wheel and it was his foot on the gas, the Camaro was responding to what her tongue was doing.
I’ll love Thee with mine own true heart
Before the world I’ll praise Thee
Your love was there before the start
Thy mercy doth amaze me
With an enormous jolt, haloed in blue lightning, the streetcar leaps the track, and as it hurtles airborne Martin glances out the back window to see if he might catch one last glimpse of that woman who’d reminded him of GOYD. Instead, he sees the motorcycle cops pitching headfirst over their handlebars and the crowd pulling up in a way that’s almost ceremonious, like a procession of mourners who have allowed the hearse to escape, as the streetcar plunges through a canopy of trees.
Ex-Conductor Martin, who was once so aware of any imperfection in the smooth steel rails, now feels the streetcar grinding savagely over earth, kicking up dust, crashing through bush. He feels his connection with the machine of whose identity he was once a part, slipping away, its familiar track a fading memory. He thinks of all the streets they’ve been down together, streets with their misleading, disappointing names: Blue Island—just an asphalt aisle through bankrupt factories; Sunset—a street perennially in the shadow of tenements; Tree Haven—an artery of concrete paved in broken glass. Why don’t those streets bear the names that tell their stories? Grand View with its pawnshops, bars, and crack houses should be called Dead End. When was the last time the stains on treeless Mulberry actually came from ripened berries? Better to call it Blood Street. And that noble-sounding intersection of Lincoln and State deserves to be Hooker and John. But Ravenswood is Ravenswood.
The doors whoosh open long enough for the commuters of the woods to file on. Their somber dress makes Martin grateful for the first time that he is wearing the black robes of the Nun. The shadows of their cloaks darken shafts of sun. The Nun who has become the Conductor continues her hymn:
How precious are Thy thoughts to me
How great Thy loving kindness
How blind the man who cannot see
That God will ease his blindness
But the commuters of Doowsnevar can only croak in a split tongue that must be older than any dead language.
A blur of vegetation streams by, limbs whapping the windows; humidity beads into sweat on Martin’s shaved head and streams down his wimple.
He becomes bitter, glares at the Nun bouncing and chuckling on his air cushion seat, and wishes he could beat her knuckles bloody with a ruler, could make her stand in a corner with aching arms outstretched balancing a Bible on each palm, could deprive her of recess and banish her to the wardrobe closet.
But the Nun, now no longer a nun but a conductor in her own right, seems oblivious to all but the streetcar. Throttle open, bell clanging, and a fine sweat gathered like a mustache along her upper lip, suddenly boisterous as a gondolier, she breaks into song, its melody a cross between “funiculi funicula” and a hymn, its lyrics a psalm.
Although the Lord be high above
He doth recall the lowly
And deep within the secret heart
The Lord shall surely know thee
Her flashing teeth bite into the apple from the Conductor’s lunch bag. Each crunch of the apple seems transmitted to the streetcar as if spikes of electricity were driving it forward in a more and more abandoned way, and Martin remembers drives down a country two-lane in his old Camaro with the Girl of His Dreams beside him, unzipping his trousers, urging him, Faster, faster , as if the way she touched him were actually propelling the car. If a motorcycle cop had been pursuing them then the way cops are pursuing the streetcar now, it would have looked to him as if the female passenger suddenly vanished, and though Martin was gripping the wheel and it was his foot on the gas, the Camaro was responding to what her tongue was doing.
I’ll love Thee with mine own true heart
Before the world I’ll praise Thee
Your love was there before the start
Thy mercy doth amaze me
With an enormous jolt, haloed in blue lightning, the streetcar leaps the track, and as it hurtles airborne Martin glances out the back window to see if he might catch one last glimpse of that woman who’d reminded him of GOYD. Instead, he sees the motorcycle cops pitching headfirst over their handlebars and the crowd pulling up in a way that’s almost ceremonious, like a procession of mourners who have allowed the hearse to escape, as the streetcar plunges through a canopy of trees.
Ex-Conductor Martin, who was once so aware of any imperfection in the smooth steel rails, now feels the streetcar grinding savagely over earth, kicking up dust, crashing through bush. He feels his connection with the machine of whose identity he was once a part, slipping away, its familiar track a fading memory. He thinks of all the streets they’ve been down together, streets with their misleading, disappointing names: Blue Island—just an asphalt aisle through bankrupt factories; Sunset—a street perennially in the shadow of tenements; Tree Haven—an artery of concrete paved in broken glass. Why don’t those streets bear the names that tell their stories? Grand View with its pawnshops, bars, and crack houses should be called Dead End. When was the last time the stains on treeless Mulberry actually came from ripened berries? Better to call it Blood Street. And that noble-sounding intersection of Lincoln and State deserves to be Hooker and John. But Ravenswood is Ravenswood.
The doors whoosh open long enough for the commuters of the woods to file on. Their somber dress makes Martin grateful for the first time that he is wearing the black robes of the Nun. The shadows of their cloaks darken shafts of sun. The Nun who has become the Conductor continues her hymn:
How precious are Thy thoughts to me
How great Thy loving kindness
How blind the man who cannot see
That God will ease his blindness
But the commuters of Doowsnevar can only croak in a split tongue that must be older than any dead language.
A blur of vegetation streams by, limbs whapping the windows; humidity beads into sweat on Martin’s shaved head and streams down his wimple.
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