American West

Short Story about a part of my 3 week Amtrak journey from Boston to Seattle in September 2009. Pictures above relate to story below:

I squeeze past the Amish taking their seats and find mine. I see a window and lean my shoulder against it, looking out at the train yard. A man turns around and looks at me. I can’t tell his age. We smile at each other and share where we are headed. He lives in Utah, I will go on to California. I want to rest, to close my eyes and tell the man so. He grants my wish and I begin to tune out my surroundings.
The announcement I hear shocks me out of my drift into sleep. I am on the wrong train. This is not what I signed up for. Wyoming? No thank you. I need to get to Salt Lake City by way of the Rocky Mountains please. Amtrak apologizes but the train has left the station. Nothing can be done. We will get to Salt Lake City but we will go through Wyoming. There will be no stops along the way. The word they used was re-route. I go back to my seat and thrash my belongings around. I make a few phone calls and berate some customer service representatives. The man I met gets up and walks toward the dining car. I wonder what he thinks of my behavior. I wonder why I think this. I breathe, unclench my fists, and shake my head. I start to laugh. You would have to. I decide to follow the man I met into the viewing car. I sit in a booth and we smile again.
The windows show me telephone poles, highway, tractor-trailers, grass, rock and sky. This is Wyoming. I wonder if we are on Mars until I see a Fed Ex truck. I start to laugh again. I can’t help myself. The man tells me his name is Gene Thunder Hawk and hands me his business card without my asking. It reads: actor comma activist. Gene tells me that he has been in the movies. He has told this story before. He speaks Sioux and grew up on the Pine Ridge Reservation. I try to follow his narrative of how he met the film producers who got him work but can’t. A childhood friend was involved I do understand that. They had appeared together in such films as Dancing with Wolves, which I didn’t see and Last of the Mohicans, which I did. Thunder Hawk had roles involving tomahawks, horse riding and killing. I asked what brought him to Denver. He said he was sending his daughter off to war. She was going to Iraq. She had gone to Afghanistan with the Air Force three years ago. She wanted to retire but the military had other plans. He wanted to know what I thought of this and of the war in general. He listened as I outlined my views. I tried to make sense of them myself. He nodded his head but said nothing. Other people have been listening to our conversation. Even the Amish women are listening as well. Someone asks Thunder Hawk what his people think of his daughter being in the military. She is honored as a warrior, he said. She flies planes and has received many awards. We are proud. His voice changes as he says this. Everyone agrees with him, it is an honor. Thunder Hawk tells the group about his grandfather, who had given him his Sioux name. His name is meant to invoke power in each word. He mentions that he carries an eagle feather and goes and retrieves it when asked. He says his people often used these for shade on their eyes while walking or hunting. He places the feather on the top of his ear to show us. He tells us we are riding on an iron horse. At least that is what his people used to say about trains. A man named Ken informs us that we are following the trail of Lewis and Clarke on the tracks of the first trans-continental train route in North America.
I have been west before but not like this. I had travelled by airplane and visited cities where I stayed in hotels and met Europeans. I don’t miss the Rocky Mountains as I had even though the scenery stays the same for hours and hours. We pull into Salt Lake City at sunset. Thunder Hawk and I say our good-byes. I will leave for California in the morning.