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I met Kurt Vonnegut by chance one lonely Indiana evening thirteen years ago. This day after his passing seems like the right time to tell this story.
I pulled off the road on one side of a valley forged between two rolling hills. The year was 1993. A creek wound through vale center, directly below an old Indiana train trestle, the town's namesake. Tulip Trestle was the oldest, longest, tallest original wooden railway passage in the country. It rose hundreds of feet above the ground with a full half-mile span, a relic of the 20's when the trains would carry Al Capone and his gangsters along with sickly wealthy women to the hot mineral water spas at Baden Springs. Today the track is worn through in some places, but still structurally sound. Cargo trains clamor over the trestle several times a day, shaking the valley, shooting sharp slivers of creosote-soaked wood to the ground, far below. My husband at the time dared me to cross.
"Let's climb to the top."
He pointed to the point where the trestle met the granite outcropping at the top of the hill. Grabbing points of granite, slipping my sandaled feet into crevices, I pulled myself to the train tracks. Scores of teenagers had been here before us, graffiti marred the tracks and the rock, broken beer and whisky bottles littered the ground. Sitting at the edge of the rock, I raised my hand over my eyes and surveyed the area, marveling that this decaying vestige could hold tons of moving slag and coal. My arms were sore from pulling myself up, my left big toe was bleeding, and I had scratches on my legs from the rough climb. I stood up to scope out an easier trail down the hill.
He pointed to the other side of the valley, where the track faded into a speck on another hill.
"I'm glad you're not afraid of heights, Birdie! Let's walk across the trestle."
Damn. Caught in a lie, I had to act fearless. There were no side rails to hold on to, to keep me from falling. Each crossrail connected to the I-beams at least two feet from the next, nothing separating certain death from my feet but the sky. Taking several deep breaths, I stared straight ahead at the other end, and slid one foot in front of the other. I managed to get twenty feet when my stomach spun and fell through my feet. My progress was arrested by my terror; I wanted to grab something, anything; the wind whipped around me, threatening my precarious position.
My husband calmly continued to stride in front of me, he didn't recognize my abject fear. I eased forward, feeling the wood sway and rock beneath me. Halfway across the trestle, I made the mistake of looking down, in the space between the tracks cradling my feet. Vertigo weakened my knees, my arms trembled, and panic ripped through my chest when it occurred to me that a train might be approaching. The stream below was a thin thread, the cows just spots on a green carpet. I stared at the largest cow in the field, and in my mind I said, "Moo." She turned her head to look at me and gave a moo, a plaintive cry, mimicking the drawn out bleat in my head.
I became a fixture in my Salvador Dali vision, a breathing part of the trestle, sharing the same space as ghost trains from eras past, sharing the wind with the waving grains and the granite. I saw the women from my belly dance class skip across the trestle in the place between my eyes, caressing the structure with their feet, their hands, turning cartwheels, leaping from I-beam to I-beam, the trestle holding their weight, moving to catch them, anticipating their motions. For a moment, I became one of them, giving up the decision to understand why they could do this, instead feeling it, living it, melting with the trestle, until we both were a creosote and bird-pitch covered, sandal-wearing entity, reaching from the ground to the sky, running along the ground till we tickled the soft bristly flesh of the cows and ran our limbs through the cool stream. I ran across the remainder of the trestle; I knew I could not fall - I was the trestle.
Two years later I pulled over once more. My belly barely fit behind the wheel. I left my husband at home that evening, needed time, needed space, needed the memory of fractal
