Witness to nefarious activity or simple MetroLink paranoia?

Essay & illustration by Greg Kassen

This past winter, when temperatures were low and snows frequent, I decided to travel into the Big City via MetroLink. I live in Albers, a small town in Southern Illinois. Here on the east side of the river, we believe that the train has become more unsafe the longer it has been around. This opinion reigns despite many articles, studies and officials arguing to the contrary. I have been fairly ignorant about the realities of the urban conveyance, having only traveled amid large crowds to infrequent Cardinal games or major wrestling events. Nonetheless, I shared my fellow Illinoisans’ fear of the Metro. I wanted to experience the ride solo, so I went without a crowd on a random snowy Tuesday.

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According to MetroLink’s app, my St. Louis-bound train was supposed to depart from the Shiloh-Scott station at 10:52 a.m. I walked onto the platform but saw no trains until 11 a.m. My train finally left at 11:13 a.m.  I’d complain about this delay, but I didn’t get onto the platform until 10:55. I promise you that I would have been on time, but the first ticket machine would not take my debit card and the second machine was so cold that my fingers became numb trying to remove the round-trip ticket from its metal basket­. Perhaps I should have showed up earlier.

At 11:00, I boarded the waiting train with two other people. One of the passengers had a backpack and jacket with military logos, so he was probably from the adjacent Scott Air Fo­rce Base, and the other was a Metro employee who, for all I know, could have been the conductor. The military guy chose the front car. I chose to sit in the back car, the one the conductor could not surveil. I was not selling drugs or participating in any illicit activity, but, for the sake of this article, I was hoping to witness at least one drug deal or other criminal activity.

Despite Shiloh-Scott being the last stop on the Red Line, nobody got off my train. Certainly, there was no good reason to ride the train to its last stop and then stay on. I would, perhaps, be alone in the second car and be able to nurse my numb fingers in solitude. Yet, when I boarded, there was a man in a green hoodie and baseball cap sleeping towards the middle. He had slept through his stop, I concluded. Where had he meant to go? To Shiloh? The Southwest Community College stop? The Belleville stop? Maybe he had wanted to see The Arch and had fallen asleep all the way back in Missouri? It would be a long return trip. I periodically checked behind me on the sleeping man.

The man awoke before the train departed. I had not noticed the moment his eyes opened, but I assumed he looked around to find out where he had ended up. However, when I stared at him and first noticed him stare back, he did not seem confused or lost. Maybe he knew where he was and where he was going. Or, he may not have cared.

When the train first departed, I had the clever idea to record how many people boarded and exited my car at each stop. For some reason, I felt that my readers would want to know which destinations were popular on Tuesday around lunchtime. (By the way, the answer is none of them). I realize now, while writing this, that you guys probably do not care. My data would have been inaccurate anyway, because the design of the Metro cars make sitting in the back to observe the masses impossible: the front half of the seats face the front of the car and the back half of the seats face the back of the car. I sat towards the middle, the last of the seats facing forward, straining my neck to check behind me at every stop. When people got suspicious, I tried nonchalantly leaning the back of my head against the window to more easily and less conspicuously check in both directions. This did not last long either because people still seemed suspicious.

A few stops down the line, Metro employees in yellow reflector jackets boarded the train to inspect tickets. I felt special, like that kid from The Polar Express. To be honest, prior to this trip, I thought the ticket-checking process was simply a myth manufactured for movie audiences. Of the 20 times in my life that I have ridden Metro, not once had I presented my ticket to anyone. I suppose that was because I had always ridden with a crowd. It would be unwieldy to ask a swarm of red-wearing baseball fans to each show a stamped ticket.  

They started checking tickets in the back with those in the backwards-facing seats. Seated in the middle, I had time to prepare for their visit. I would be checked after the man in the green hoodie. For the sake of this article, I considered pretending that I had snuck aboard. “I thought it was free. Taxes pay for it, don’t they?” Instead, when the employee came to me, I handed him my round-trip ticket. I wasn’t in the mood to be shaken down for cash or booted off at the next stop merely for the sake of journalism. “Here you go. Sorry—” I said. My apology was curtailed by the checker moving on to the next rider. I was in the process of apologizing for stamping my ticket on the wrong side; the arrows on the slip showing me which side to stick into the validator were too subtle, I suppose.

Crossing the Border

While in Illinois, I had felt relatively safe. Riders were few and kept to themselves, the Metro employees were checking tickets, and the towns were familiar to me. Plus, the articles on crime I had read prior to my trip mostly pertained to the more populous stops of the Big City. Nothing eventful happened to me until the last stop in my state, the East Riverfront station. When the doors closed, a man approached me as I was pretending to read. He was mumbling a bit and either he or the station smelled strongly like cigarettes. I asked him to repeat himself and again I couldn’t hear what he said.

“I’m sorry, can you say that one more time?”

“Do you need a ticket?” he said.

“I don’t know,” I said at first. Who am I to tell this man he needs one to ride? Besides, I was fairly confident, despite basing my assumption on nothing, that the Metro employees would not check for tickets again. “Yeah, I think you do need a ticket. They just checked them, though.”

“How much?” he asked.

“I don’t know. Roundtrip cost me $5.”

“What? $5?”

“For a roundtrip. I don’t know how much a single ticket is.”

The man took out his wallet and showed me a Metro ticket where a driver’s license would typically be. “I’ll sell it to you for a dollar.”

“Oh!  Sorry . . . I already have one.”

We crossed the river, and the man got off at the next stop in Missouri. I assume he left the train, but for all I know he went into the other train car to hawk his wares. I looked for him. In my position, I could just barely peer past the two tinted panes into the next car to see what was possibly either a person, standing and speaking to another passenger, or a pole. I could not tell.

At the next stop a man came in with a brown paper bag and sat a few seats behind me. I was going to turn to look at him but thought that action might be poorly received. I pretended to read and listened. He was speaking in hushed tones. Then, at the next stop, he exited, throwing the brown bag away on his way out. I was oddly excited, writing in my notes a few theories about what the purpose and contents of the bag may have been. Maybe I had finally witnessed a drug deal! Later on, when I peeked into the trash bin, I saw nothing but innocuous-looking trash.

At Last . . . The Big City

For the next few stops, a few people boarded and even less exited. Slowly, the car was filling up with the citizens of St. Louis. I felt outnumbered, hearing faint whispers in the silence about the boy reading the green book with blossoming trees on the cover. I stayed in my own head, wondering about the man who tried to sell me the ticket and what side of the river he was from. Had I defeated the guardian of the threshold so early in my journey?

Eventually, at some stop past where Metro’s Red Line route and Blue Line route diverge, I saw a gesticulating woman standing on a platform bench. She was among peers and, before the train could even settle and the doors opened, I heard her yelling. The transcript I attempted to write of her monologue was mostly useless; the majority of what I wrote contained incomprehensible cursing. Looking back on the incident, maybe it was harmless; maybe she was so loud merely because she was having fun with her friends. I guess it’s reasonable that people get rowdy when having a good time. Nonetheless, riding alone in the Big City, I read as much malice as I could into her words. She was angry at someone, I was sure, and would soon cause mischief. The Metro is regarded as unsafe for a reason. Surely these are the types of individuals from the city that give the Metro its bad name.

I prayed that she would board the first car, but she dismounted the bench and stepped into my car. I was not able to count how many others boarded, but she came on with a group. They were loud. I feared that a raucous fight was breaking out right behind me. And she was no longer the only one yelling. People yell when they are angry. They were angry.

In a few minutes the woman and her friends got off without physical incident or discernible bloodshed.

Almost Home

No students entered the train at the University of Missouri-St. Louis stop, although I give points to the college for placing the campus police next to the North Campus station. At the North Hanley station, some passengers entered but most left. I, and four others, were headed to the airport. Someone else joined us at Lambert Airport’s Terminal 2. At 12:27 p.m., everyone exited at Lambert airport’s Terminal 1, the last stop in Missouri on the Red Line. Everyone except myself and the man in the green hoodie.

As was the case at Shiloh, where I first boarded, the train idled at this terminus longer than at the other stops. A handful of passengers entered, brushing light snow off their luggage and then the doors closed. I continued to wonder why the man in the green hoodie was still riding the train and if he was asking the same about me. An image of the vagrant Jack London came to mind riding a freight train through a blizzard, as he described in The Road. (Luckily, unlike on London’s freight, the Metro is heated.) I knew the man had a ticket; it was checked back in Illinois along with mine. When was the ticket validated, though? How long had he been on the train?

Return to Base

I was again back in Shiloh at 1:51 p.m. The man in the green hoodie rode back in the other car. I felt like he did this to avoid me, though I offer no proof. I try not to presume things about people, and it was somehow difficult for me to think this, but I believe the man in the green hoodie was homeless. I looked to the back doors at each homeward stop to learn when he exited and prove whether he intended to spend the whole day on the line. But I never saw the green hoodie exit.

When we arrived in Shiloh, a passenger exited towards the Air Force base. When I exited, I walked past the conductor towards the parking lot. I looked behind me on the platform to see if I could spy the green-hooded man step out. I could not. From the parking lot I looked into his train car. Not all the seats were visible. Perhaps he had exited amid a crowd back in Missouri, but I could not be sure.

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Greg Kassen comes from Albers, Illinois, a small town 40 miles from St. Louis. He received his Associates of Arts from Kaskaskia College and his Bachelor of Arts in English Literature/Writing from McKendree University in Lebanon, Illinois. Greg now attends Southern Illinois University Carbondale, where he is earning his MFA in Creative Writing — Fiction.

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