Goines On: In his dreams

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Goines’ in-laws by his son’s marriage texted they were thinking of taking a sleeper car on an AMTRAK Empire Builder from Minneapolis to Seattle. Goines texted back that he had taken a train from the San Joaquin Valley to Connecticut for his freshman year in college.
    His daughter texted, how long had the trip taken?
    He couldn’t remember exactly, but he texted he guessed it took at least two nights.
    He remembered boarding the Union Pacific RR train in Tulare early one August morning, with a trunk holding the encyclopedia his parents had bought for him when he was in the seventh grade.
    As though he needed an encyclopedia in his room at Yale! But he took it with him on the train. He guessed they must have checked the trunk for delivery to New Haven, after he changed from the New York Central RR to the New York, New Haven, & Hartford RR.
    He pictured the two high school friends who were there with his parents to see him off: Patrick and Alan. Was Jim not there?
    He thought he could remember Patrick and Alan. He could picture them better than he could his mother and father. In fact, it troubled him that he couldn’t picture his parents there at all....
    He remembered waking up the morning the train neared Chicago and seeing the moist stain on his pants. He assumed at the time that he’d had a wet dream while sleeping in his slightly reclined seat beside the friendly, attractive young woman he had enjoyed talking with the evening before. She was getting off in Chicago, he seemed to remember.
    Had she laid a hand on his lap during the night, in the darkened car? He had never thought of that before, but now, 63 years later...She was maybe two or three years older than he was, and likely more experienced. His “experience” then was limited to dreaming and masturbating.
    Goines didn’t text about that.

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