Lately I’ve been having dreams, Train Dreams

For decades, I kept a copy of “Fiskadoro” by Denis Johnson. I liked the idea of the book more than the book itself. It was an early post-apocalyptic novel set in the Florida where I grew up, the Keys, way south of my youth in Daytona Beach, but still, Florida. With my brother Dan, I was writing a post-apocalyptic novel set in the Central Florida I knew. It was the 1980s and we wanted in on the post-apocalyptic scenario that Reagan’s anti-Soviet MX Missile plan engendered. Dan, Air Force veteran and air traffic controller, was a Reagan man and I was not. There was energy in that – and we were brothers. I miss him still. Today is his birthday.

But back to Johnson. I read “Train Dreams” a decade ago when I still lived and worked in Wyoming. It’s a novella and I read it in two days. It touched me. I didn’t think it would. I did my best to read “Fiskadoro” but failed to finish -- I just couldn't get inside. Is this the same writer? My heart ached by “Train Dreams” end, much as it did last night when the credits rolled for “Train Dreams” on Netflix. It’s set mostly in Idaho, my old neighbor, and in the tall-timber forests I grew to love in my 40 years in the Rockies. Most of that time, the timber industry and environmentalists waged war. I wasn’t in the fight, but my location in the cities of the Colorado/Wyoming Front Range made me suspect.

I put that aside as I watched Robert and other loggers in early-20^th-century Idaho and Washington cut 500-year-old trees. Robert worked for his wife and daughter. He traveled to jobs by train, the most efficient form of transportation then. This was a love story featuring Robert and Gladys and little Katie. The couple planned and built the cabin themselves and did all the work. Tragedy came and some resolution followed. The ending is breathtaking yet somber.

It's a beautiful work, Johnson’s novel and the Netflix film directed by Cliff Bentley. The credits roll to a song called “Train Dreams” by Nick Cave. He was the right person for the job. I have it on my playlist now: 

Lately I’ve been having dreams, crazy dreams I can’t explain; A woman standing in a field of flowers, a screaming locomotive train; Crazy dreams that go on for hours and I can’t begin to tell you how that feels.

Robert doesn’t have the words.

I keep searching for them.