Unlike the last time I had ridden the Polar Express, I didn't feel the need to wander around the train this time, or find myself in trouble. For some strange reason, the terrain the train passed through seemed a whole lot flatter and uneventful as well. Just dark, featureless, snowy land all around for as far as the eye could see.
"Conductor," I said, stopping him as he made his rounds and checks through my car now, "this trip is not like I remember. The landscape seems different. Where are the mountains and valleys? Where's Flattop Tunnel, or . . . or Glacier Gulch?" I stammered as I struggled to remember the names of the places I had been on this train so long ago.
"As I said, sir," he replied, "we're not necessarily going to the same North Pole you remember. So, the route may not be as you remember, either. Your perspective has changed, and so has what you see around you. At least you're not as much trouble this time as you used to be."
"That's why everything's flatter and less dramatic, isn't it?" I guessed. "It's because my life, and my possibilities, seem that way, too."
"If you say so, sir," the Conductor responded.
"It doesn't seem like we're picking anyone else up besides the one we missed, are we?" I now asked.
"Nope," the Conductor answered. "That other passenger we were expecting gave up."
"Gave up? Why?" I asked.
"No one is obligated to make this trip, even if they once wished to," he replied.
"So, am I making this whole trip for nothing then?" I almost demanded.
"That, sir, is up to you," the Conductor replied before resuming his rounds and turning back to the next car forward.
— — — — —
The whole journey now seemed bleaker . . . as bleak as the flat, dark, and frozen landscape outside the train. I had no companions to share it with, other than the Conductor and the hobo I'd seen at times so far. Not the geeky kid who annoyed me, not the shy little kid whom I had helped, and certainly not the girl who had initially been staring and smiling at me, and with whom I had wound up sharing much of my previous experience on the Polar Express. I often wondered what had happened to them all. I even at times wished I had thought to exchange addresses and phone numbers with them, allowing us all to keep in touch somehow. Part of me even wondered if they were any more real than the train had seemed to be.
"Bored?" a now familiar voice asked behind me.
"This trip does seem to be less eventful than the last one I took on this train," I noted.
"Why do 'ya think that is?" the hobo asked, having once again appeared in the armchair next to me.
"I don't quite know."
"I'm certainly not seeing you on the roof of this car, or on the front of the locomotive, like I did the last trip. That's why I is havin' to come in here like I am."
"Well, I don't have any reasons to be out there this time, like I was the last trip. No one to help or save, or even to return a lost ticket to."
"Miss that, do 'ya?"
"Getting in trouble? Almost falling off this train? No, not really."
"Playin' it safe. It's what grown-ups get good at."
"No, I take risks every day! Or I used to, until I got laid off."
"What? Bettin' which way a ton of pork or a barrel 'a oil is gonna go, price-wise?" he mocked. "Call that takin' a risk, do 'ya?"
"It's what probably got me laid off!" I pointedly responded. "I likely took too many risks with the commodity positions I was responsible for trading . . . lost too much money for the firm I was with."
"I see. You want a little more excitement 'round here though?"
"No," I decided, remembering some of my precarious adventures on this train from before. "This car seems nice enough to me this time."
"You're missin' out," he warned. "This trip will be over before 'ya know it, and 'ya won't have seen a thing from inside these windows."
Then he was gone again.
"Well," I then thought out loud, "while I don't feel like hanging off the outside of this train . . . maybe I should see the rest of it inside, if nothing else than to prove this hobo wrong."
So, leaving my laptop bag behind in the Parlor Car, as no other passengers were apparently onboard, I walked into the next car forward. Unlike my last trip on this train, I crossed easily between the cars this time. There was no daunting, icy, treacherous chasm of a gap between the cars as there had been on my last trip. Crossing between cars seemed all too easy and uneventful now. Maybe it was because I was now bigger, I thought.
When I slid open the door into the next car, I found it was just an empty coach, as I had seen before . . . as was the next car ahead of it, and the one after that. Then there was a dark car further ahead. Having come all this way through the train, I just had to check this last car out.
"The toy car," I said in recognition, as I entered this car's dim confines. It was filled with dirty, broken, discarded toys, just like I remembered from my previous trip years ago on this train. In fact, they seemed to even be the same toys I remembered. There was the Scrooge puppet the hobo had once tormented me with, and over there was the doll in the white dress that had seemed to touch the heart of the girl I was with on my previous journey aboard the Polar Express. Curiously though, I hadn't noticed the last time that the doll was in fact wearing a wedding dress and veil. I had never picked up a doll in my life. But something compelled me to pick up this one. I looked at the doll for a moment as I held it in one hand.
The doll did seem so sad, just as the girl had once said. But this doll's eyes seemed to have a spark of hope still in them. Something made me want to take it with me . . . if nothing else than to seemingly give it, and the hope it seemed to have, a chance to finally escape this dreary car.
"Playing with dolls, are we?" a voice behind me seemed to mock.
I turned around. But neither the hobo nor the Conductor were there. Just the puppets and other toys.
"No," I answered the voice that was addressing me. I now took the doll and tucked it in the left pocket of my overcoat anyway, almost to spite whomever was apparently mocking me. "Just experiencing a memory . . . a feeling. Maybe even giving someone, or something, a chance," I defended.
"Now that's takin' a risk," the hobo remarked as he appeared among the puppets suspended from the car's ceiling. "Don't know if I'd be seen with a doll hangin' out of my pocket."
"Well, I don't mind being seen with one in my pocket," I replied. "Maybe it deserves a chance . . . maybe even a new home, outside this car."
Taking that doll now felt right to me. More right than ever. For some reason, I felt emboldened, even freer. No, I wasn't about to start playing with dolls, I found myself defending to even my own rational mind. But I felt I should take the doll with me, although I couldn't explain why.
"Seein' that you're more open to takin' risks here," the hobo noted, "we've still got one thing outside on this trip 'ya might enjoy seein'. Care 'ta come with me?"
"Why not!" I suddenly found myself saying, almost with a smile.
We then exited the front of the car, and climbed up on the rear of the locomotive's tender.
"Now this is the way 'ta travel!" the hobo said as the winds and snow whipped all around us, even though I wasn't cold. "Well," he continued, almost with a devilish grin now looking forward, "looks like we haven't missed Homestake Pass and Glacier Gulch yet after all! Care 'ta enjoy the best view in the house with me?"
"Yeah!" I now agreed, with a growing grin of my own.
We now clambered over the tender, jumping seemingly unnoticed onto the roof of the locomotive's cab.
"Let's go forward on the Fireman's side catwalk," the hobo suggested, pointing to the left side of the locomotive. "He's too busy shovelin' coal to be lookin' out his side!"
We slid down the locomotive's curved boiler casing to the Fireman's catwalk and worked our way along to the front. As we passed its smokebox and stack, I could hear, see, and feel the engine chugging hard up Homestake Pass. Its metal heart and muscles seeming to beat and work not just underneath my feet and hands, but all around me.
"Right this way," he invited as we stepped down onto the small platform of locomotive's front pilot, just as we were passing the 'DANGER 179° GRADE' and 'USE LOW GEAR' signs at the top of the rise.
"Like old times, eh!" the hobo yelled to me as the train began its precipitous descent down the incredibly steep tracks.
"Yeah!" I said with enjoyment, having not experienced a thrill like this since I had 'grown up'. I gripped the safety bar firmly, but I was now smiling all the way down as the train once again plunged down a near-vertical drop. I then felt my body pressed, almost slammed towards the deck as the tracks suddenly leveled out and shot upward again towards the sky and over the second rise, only to practically float off the pilot again as the train plunged down another steep downward grade, with the passing tracks, ties, and surrounding mountain pinnacles all becoming a momentary blur.
"Wow!" I said as the train finally leveled out and slowed back to a more normal speed, feeling a deep sense of renewed life in me, almost rediscovery. I added a second "Wow!" . . . just because.
"Feeling good are 'ya?" the hobo asked, still beside me.
"Yeah, I am," I admitted with a smile. "Best I've felt in a while . . . even a long time."
"So why have 'ya waited so long 'ta feel good like this again?" he asked.
"I don't know," I replied, still catching my breath somewhat. "I got busy — first studying, then earning a living . . ."
"You were earning a living. But 'ya forgot 'ta live it?" the hobo noted.
"Yeah . . . I guess maybe I did," I replied with a sudden feeling of regret, even sadness now as I looked down.
"So, what'ya gonna do about it?"
"What do you mean?"
"Regrets get 'ya nowhere," the hobo observed.
"Hey, I've been going places, doing things!" I defended with a bit of irritation, even anger.
"But are they the right things?" he asked.
Suddenly, I couldn't answer him. "Hey," I now remarked instead, trying to change the subject, "where's the lake or river that I remember freezing over the tracks right about here?"
There was no answer. The hobo had disappeared, as had the lake or river that the train had once skidded over and threatened to fall into.
The hobo's question, "But are they the right things?" now echoed in my mind though, leaving me wondering as I just sat on the locomotive's pilot with my feet over the cow catcher in front, looking down at the tracks as the train continued to thunder ahead into the arctic night.
Suddenly, something emerged in my mind. Something I had thought about having. Something I had even thought I did have at times in the past, but now in hindsight realized I didn't. It was one 'right thing' that I now wanted to have, especially this Christmas.
And it was something I now strangely felt ready to ask for, if I got the chance, when I arrived at the North Pole.