Ed Granger had talked for the last forty-five minutes about his time at the Dupont Chemical Company in Wilmington, Delaware. In 1973 he had patented a metallic liquid that became the precursor to ingredients necessary for certain types of computer displays. In 1982 he participated in a study that demonstrated the efficacy of certain proteins in the treating of precancerous lesions on a rare species of lemur that shared a common gene with humans.
Now, sitting in the Amtrak Viewliner on the Westbound Empire Builder, he wore a red plaid shirt and rested his hands on his stomach, giving him the appearance of a man with an easy manner. He had glasses with thin frames that seemed incongruous with the baritone academic intonations that he used to describe phosphates, weak oxides, chemical induction of synapses.
Barry had fallen asleep somewhere outside of Minot, and Henry thus had no choice but to sit and listen to Mr. Granger talk about his industrious career. The late summer light seemed to shimmer in the distance off the high plains, as if reflected off a giant ocean of grains.
“You meet people on the train,” Barry had originally explained when pitching the 34-hour train ride to Montana. “It will be an adventure.” He breathed with his mouth open in the next chair.
Henry found himself not minding too much. Something in Mr. Granger’s voice, and the fluidity with which he handled complex-sounding scientific constructions, gave his whole conversational style a kind of hypnotic and yet enrapturing quality. It lulled even as it pulled, demanded attention, made Henry want to ask questions about amino acids, electron induction, activation energy. Even though Henry felt the gulf that separated them—gulfs, plural, more accurately—the simple charisma of Granger’s competence made it impossible not to be, on some level, interested in what he was saying.
A waiter came by to take drink orders.
“I’ll have coffee, please,” said Ed Granger.
“Same,” said Henry.
“They keep the air conditioning on too high in these damn cars,” said Mr. Granger.
Henry nodded. The train was making about sixty or seventy miles across the empty plains. They passed silos of corn and the occasional alfalfa field. A drunk and affable Navy veteran back in Wisconsin had told them that corn starts to disappear in North Dakota. They didn’t see much of it later in the trip. Henry tried to think of how long it had been since the last corn field.
“Do you take these kinds of trips often?” he asked Mr. Granger.
“Try to,” he said. “It’s harder now that my wife has difficulties with her back. She wouldn’t be able to make it across the country like this for sure.”
“She’s still at home?” Henry asked, though he felt a tug. Perhaps he should keep talking about chemicals.
“She insisted that I still do this trip. Drove me to the train and saw me off.”
Henry saw the car in his imagination. The silence and the fog on the windshield in the early morning. Ed’s small bag packed in his lap. Everything small with old people, and shrinking. Little hats. Tight jackets. Shrinking clothes to accommodate shriveling bodies. A heaping dose of pathos wrapped in an appropriately small foreign-made modest car. And impossible not to think of his own largeness in comparison. The largeness of his life which sprawled with its possibilities in front of him. The largeness of his ambitions and his ludicrous promises to himself. The largeness of his confidence in some version of immortality. “Old man, you will die before I even settle,” he could think to himself if he wanted. “Old man, you know nothing of the largeness of my life’s promise,” he could say if he wanted it.
“Oh,” he said.
Because Ed seemed to embody the difference between ambition and the realities of lived experience. Locked in a lab fourteen hours a day in pursuit of a solution to a particular problem with the activation of electro-nodules on a T-4 series LCD screen. That was his life, as was this, now, continuing to unfold on a 1970’s edition Amtrak Viewliner car, sitting next to a smirking twenty-something and his snoring friend.
“Look at that,” said Mr. Granger. He was pointing to an enormous wind farm coming into view to the southwest. Towering turbines spun out kilowatts slowly. Henry took out his picture and snapped a shot. The turbines looked like little white toothpicks. He tried zooming in, but the lens only captured the dirt on the train window. Mr. Granger seemed to be observing his struggles, and Henry put the camera down on the cocktail table between them.
“Ever seen a wind farm that big?” Mr. Granger asked.
“Never even saw one till this morning in North Dakota, said Henry, cupping his hands over his eyes to shield them from the afternoon sun. The train had gotten closer and he wondered if he should try for another shot with the camera.
“They look so strange on the plains,” Mr. Granger said. “These towering machines, looming over the land. I wish we could hear them.”
Henry imagined the humming sound of the blades cutting through the air and pictured Mr. Granger at the bottom of the turbine, looking up with his mouth open. He would calculate wind speed, angle of attack, think of efficiencies.
How would Henry himself look at it? A big giant wind turbine that he could photograph and email to friends or post to his photo-sharing account. Green energy, noise pollution, bird murderer.
The train passed the farm and continued West. Mr. Granger got up to use the bathroom. Henry wondered if it would be impolite to take the opportunity to go back to his seat. Instead, he sat and waited, having decided that he would take his leave when Mr. Granger returned. Fifteen minutes went by.
Twenty. Then thirty.
Eventually Henry decided to go back to his seat. He left Barry sleeping with his mouth open and walked to the back of the train.
Where had he gone? Had he been offended?
