Old Mate John

Creative prose inspired by Robert Creeley’s poem ‘I Know A Man’.

    The train rumbles on with a steady hum and chug-a-chug, and the conversation has lulled slightly between me and old boy beside me. His breath is rough and loud, like a monster lurking deep in a fantasy cave, and I wonder whether in my old age my breath is so haggard. He is half listening, like most of my conversational conquests on this godforsaken train, and I take this as a sign that I can continue my stories in the comfort that he doesn’t really care to hear but doesn’t care enough to tell me to fuck off either.

   “And me mate, John al call him, but that’s not his real name, I used to do his head in with my existentialism, always asking him these questions, about human nature and that…”

    I’m talking to the gruff man next to me, but my head faces the other way, gazing out the window to the fields and mountains that whizz past at record speed. I take this train everyday and make a point to spot one new thing in the landscape sprawled across from me, in an effort to keep my mind sharp- or maybe just distracted. I wonder what it means to talk to someone. Am I even talking to this man? I’m not looking at him, he’s not replying, does this even cross the lines of conversation? But then I spot the faint shadowy outline of his head and chest in the window, and in the harmonious camouflage between his silhouette and the landscape, I know in my heart that I am definitely, definitely, talking to him.

    “But yeah, like, I don’t even know if I wanted answers really, just felt good to get all my dark thoughts outside of my head, and christ, its mad how much better the weather is up here when I tend to the storm.” I half laugh, pointing a crooked finger to my temple. “I’ve never been very good at sorting that stuff. The dark thoughts, I mean. And I see it in others as well- the eyes mate. You can always bloody tell.”

    The man makes a grunt-like sound that I can’t distinguish between approval and borderline slumber, and I take a beat to look at his stomach in the reflection in the window. Slowly rising and falling, and I imagine a giant void in there, endlessly spiralling into god knows what, slowly sucking all of the good and happiness out of him, until eventually his whole body inverts into the gaping mouth of the void. I wonder if his stomach would still rise and fall from deep within himself. I laugh, even though it’s not very funny.

    I’m snapped out of my daydream by the crinkle of brown paper in my lap, and I take a swig from the poorly concealed bottle within. I remember the days me and John could get pissed off sharing a quart of whiskey in the back of his car, and now I let the sweet stuff run down my throat by the pint without so much as a flinch. I suppose my own stomach void has developed quite the taste for barley.

    “I used to tell him all my mad dreams, John that is. I was gonna graft hard for them couple years, proper miserable graft, then at the end I’d buy this massive car and just drive away. Dunno where, never got that far, just drive and drive and drive and never look back.” I sigh. Even just thinking about those days makes me a little teary, and some part of me still believes that one day I’ll get that stupid car. “Course, John was the pragmatic one. Bit more serious and that.”

    I think I have more to say but my mouth stops cooperating and I fall into comfortable silence. After a while, he turns to look at me, and I mean really look at me, and he opens his mouth.

    “Why’d you stay?” The man croaks. His tone is half condescending half curious.

    His voice takes me by surprise and I suddenly realise he is not just an extension of my own conscious. My stare hardens out of the window, and the thoughts are reeling faster than I can keep up- John, the car that never got bought, the bills, the house, the job, the fucking train. Why did I stay? And just then, I spot my new feature of the landscape for the day, a nesting of rabbits darting across a patch of grass, hopping along. Together. 

    “Guess I just didn’t want to leave this view,” I whisper.