Prophets and Stowaways

For most of the passengers on the Sunset Limited, it was the man’s insistence that God was angry and would rain down fire and brimstone that drew their notice and caused them to avoid his orbit as best they could on the narrow train. For Ron, it was the tiny spider rappelling down, then clambering back up a single, almost invisible thread of silk attached to the man’s starched shirt collar.

In truth, Ron was as much drawn to as he was repelled by this self-appointed prophet and arachnid “mule” who had boarded the eastbound Amtrack in Alpine, Texas, just two short stops beyond El Paso where Ron himself had embarked, desperate to escape what felt like the end of the world as he knew it. The holy-rolling spider man had taken a seat just across and slightly up the aisle from Ron and had almost immediately begun trying to save their souls of the other passengers, all part of a captive audience. He was passionate and insistent that the end was near.

Unlike this man, though, Ron was not motivated by an impending Rapture or fear for his soul. He was running away from his job as archives manager for El Paso’s Border Patrol Museum where he had worked for the last five years. He had appreciated the job because it gave him a chance to plying his trade as an archivist, but Ron had always felt uncomfortable with the idea of doing work that celebrated the fraught history of an organization tasked with defending borders his own kin had crashed five generations before. Ron’s people, all of Western European descent, had slipped into the country unseen by stowing away on a steamer.

His decision to board the train headed to New Orleans had been sudden, triggered by the museum board’s decision to celebrate the Border Patrol’s approaching hundredth-year anniversary by selling Centennial Commemorative Glock 47s to Border Patrol agents and other eligible employees. Ron knew his share of these agents and knew many were decent people. But he also knew there were bad players, too, many of whom were also angry about the politics of the country and the border. As a historian, Ron understood the danger posed by people with such a mindset having both a gun and the authority to use it, and he could no longer stay in a job that armed them in the name of history.

As Ron sat watching this man and his stowaway, he had to smile. That little spider might just make it out of Texas and all the way to the Big Easy...

— Katjack