Lycanthropia

Not far from where I live is an old train depot, a decaying hulk of building that was once the community’s showpiece. A century ago it sparkled, a hub of activity, the nexus of all transportation, surrounded by vigorous manufacturing concerns and bright commercial ventures. But as railroads dwindled in importance and interstate highways flourished, the center of the city shifted to the Continental Trailways bus station and various trucking firms, and the train depot fell into neglect. Soon it looked as shabby as the handful of hobos that lurked in the bushes down the track, waiting for the train to slow so they could hop freight cars and ride them to better days in Atlanta or Nashville, Memphis or Chicago. Anywhere but here.

When my family first moved to the area in the early 1970s, Southern Railway owned the depot and maintained it as a sort of afterthought, hiring high school kids to slop paint over it during the summer months and paying a part-time janitor a few bucks an hour to stand around, shoot the breeze with the idle ticket agent, smoke cigarettes, and put up and take down Caution: Wet Floor signs. After Southern Railway became the Norfolk Southern in the middle ’70s, the new corporation shut down the profit-gobbling station and ceded it to the city: Good riddance. Since then city fathers have been arguing over the property like vultures over the carcass of an albatross. No one knows what to do with it. Older folk, with a nostalgic eye on the past, imagine a railroad museum; middle-agers envision a chic yuppie restaurant; youngsters would raze the property and pave it over — there’s never enough parking downtown. Once a decade or so commissioners get excited about a project and vote to paint the structure or put new glass in its gaping windows. But most of the time the depot sits and decays.

The problem is easement. Though the Norfolk Southern gave the property to the citizens of Grover, they reserved control of 10 yards or so on either side of the track. Anything replacing the depot must respect the railroad’s right of way. It crimps any architectural endeavors and stymies even the asphalt pavers. Add to it the disposition of the area in question — it’s a lot like a swayback horse, still kicking but relatively useless — and little wonder the commissioners haven’t come to a conclusion in 30 years. As my grandfather was fond of saying, “You can put makeup on a pig, but it’s still gonna oink.”

Neglect has turned the building into a haven for all sorts of wildlife, not the least of which are a bazillion crickets. On a warm spring night one can hear them tuning up, then singing in a chorus that rivals the Mormon Tabernacle, both in volume and enthusiasm; and if one has the courage to creep past the No Tresspassing signs on the doors of the depot, one finds a virtual carpet of crickets pinging about like brown popcorn on the creaking hardwood floor. Depending on one’s point of view, it is cricket heaven or cricket hell.

It is certainly lizard heaven. Multitudes of anoles and five-lined skinks (whose young have cobalt blue tails and are sometimes mistakenly called “blue-tailed skinks” ) have come like ersatz followers of Jesus in search of free eats; in the depot they most assuredly find it. Even blind, lame, halt, ignorant and feeble reptiles need only saunter into the building, open their mouths, and sooner or later one of those popcorn crickets will leap right into it: Bam! So lizards not only live in the station, they also thrive, an indication that all God’s creatures — even the reptilian — have their day.

They also have a peculiar habit, one I witnessed myself on an unusually warm March afternoon. I had gone to the depot on rumors that the city fathers had finally come to a decision concerning the building’s fate; I wanted to make graphite and verbal sketches of the place before it was ruined by modernization. I sat on the creaky wooden platform, studying cracked window panes and peeling outdoor latex, drawing examples of bread-and-butter carpentry and imagining a time when the structure was brand new.

Around 4:30 I heard the distant whistle of a train, the sole remnant of our railroading past, that passes through Grover twice a week, both times in the afternoon, on Tuesday headed from somewhere north to somewhere south and on Thursday traveling in the opposite direction. It is, perhaps, not even real, but the ghost of a train destined to haunt these tracks until they have rusted into red-brown furrows of iron oxide tied together by sawdust. Its near arrival had a magical effect on the lizards. One by one they gathered on the platform until there were hundreds of them, a cold-blooded carpet of green anoles and brown-and-black skinks, their scales glistening in the failing sun, their eyes glittering in anticipation of a train that would not stop for them and, in fact, did not know they existed.

It passed in a slow rumbling thunder of iron muscle, the diesel engine huffing and the freight cars and boxcars clanking and screeching. Beneath me, the wooden platform vibrated and hummed until, once the caboose passed and I waved at its sole occupant, the earth slowly settled and stilled. Lizards began vanishing from the platform and, eventually, I was left alone with a single five-lined skink, a handsome chocolate colored fellow whose body was as wide as half the span of my hand. He stuck out his tongue, winked at me and said: “That was better than magic fingers on a motel bed. And free, too.”

“Pardon me?” I replied.

“Vibes, man,” said the lizard. “We skinks are all about sensuality. And that train trembles us from our noses to our tails.”

“Yeah?” I said. “I thought lizards were all about reptilian sensibilities. Things like deception and subterfuge.”

The skink stuck out his tongue. “Bad press, daddy,” he insisted. “We bear the burden of guilt for something a snake did eons ago. But that was his job and this — this — is no Garden of Eden.”

I looked around me at the gray city; this manufacturing loop indeed did remind me of Blake’s “dark Satanic mills.”

“Besides,” the skink continued, “how would the sanctimonious know how good they were without reptiles to measure themselves against? It’s a matter of degrees, man. You ought to know better than anyone, a man driven to distraction by his senses. How will you achieve Nirvana when you can’t even eliminate the need for a particular green from your sensory palate?” He shook his head. “No, sir,” he said. “Your only hope is making good people feel better about themselves by comparison.”

I considered the long trail of my reptilian past and chuckled. “Maybe you’re right,” I mused aloud. I lay back against the wooden platform with my hands behind my head and stared at the buckling plywood ceiling overhead. My blood ran cold in my veins; I warmed it by scooting into a patch of sun. I tasted the air with my tongue. It was sweet. “I suppose things could be worse,” I said. “I might be a rattlesnake.”

The skink snickered. “Snakes, rabbits, skunks, sheep…” his voice trailed away in a litany of animal names. “It’s all a matter of degrees. I’m going for a bite to eat. You want I should bring you back a cricket or two?”

“No, thank you,” I answered. “I think I’ll be heading home. Thanks for the enlightening chat.”

“Think nothing of it, man,” said the skink. “Consider it retribution for all those cutesy gecko commercials on television. Paybacks are hell.” He stretched and yawned. “You sure you won’t have a nice cricket?”

“No,” I replied. “Crickets sound disgusting as people food.”

The skink shrugged his narrow reptilian shoulders. “Your loss, daddy-o,” he said.

A moment later he was gone. I started the long walk home. On the way I stopped at Grover’s only sushi bar and placed an order.

“Clicket roaf?” the waiter echoed. “Oh yes-a, we have vely fine clicket roaf. You rike vely good.”

I tell you, it was a scene straight out of Lost in Translation. And we all know nothing Hollywood ever lasts. I closed my eyes and dreamed of a garden.

You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.