When I got to the middle of the street a black guy was already there, grandly gesturing to a car to pass by. People around here are great jaywalkers – they don’t stroll obliviously into traffic, cell phone to ear, the way the kids in college towns do, or wait, slavishly obedient to the walk signal like the good citizens of the Midwest, but advance at their own pace, crafty and relaxed, like Roberto Clemente taking a long lead off first.
Once the way was clear the guy stepped to the sidewalk behind me then quickly strode by, headed for the light rail station as I ducked into the little incline stop at the bottom of the hill.
It was empty. It’s the nature of the incline that when one car is going up the other is coming down and there are unobtrusive little boxes on either side with arrows that light up to let you know which one’s coming next. I went to the right and slumped against the wall opposite the first door, the package in my hands.
That’s the etiquette, you stand as far back as you can so that people getting off can get past in the narrow space. I straightened as I heard and then saw the car gliding to the bottom, knowing full well that there was still plenty of time before it actually arrived. The incline’s pace is pretty slow to begin with, but as it gets close to the bottom it becomes absolutely glacial, ever so gradually easing to rest against the foam tipped restraints. I didn’t mind. I was in no hurry.
Only an old woman and an Asian couple festooned with cameras got out. Like the cable cars in San Francisco, what has become an exotic tourist attraction for some was built as and still remains basic transportation for others. I’ve ridden next to people who sat there with their eyes shut, dozing, the breathtaking view in front of them having become just another part of their daily routine.
I slid onto the bench facing the window of the front compartment, still the only passenger, and soon we were creaking our way up. The landscape unveiled gradually as the car rose from the station; the trees, the river, the bridges, the downtown skyscrapers and finally the surrounding hills, cupping the whole image like a pair of hands. All of a sudden I had the sensation of overwhelming clarity, of entering rarefied air, not just from the ascent and the vivid sight in front of me, but somehow from within as well, as if for the first time in a long time I was really awake, in the middle of a something that actually mattered. Absently, I reached into my shirt pocket and pulled out that old snapshot of Virginia, holding it up to the window so that she became part of it all, which was only right because to me she was the city, the genius loci, indivisible from the landscape.
Then in the middle of this I was seized by extreme self-consciousness, not only about my absurd gesture, but by that peculiarly modern apprehension that I was being watched without my knowledge, seeing myself as I’d appear on a screen monitored by a mocking stranger. But the incline is too old school for that, with no cameras and only a little scratched graffiti in its concealed corners, and when I looked out the window again we were almost to the top.
I tucked the photograph away as the car crawled the final few inches, the doors finally shuddering open. A pair of ancient babushkas with empty net bags eyed me as I eased out and headed up the stairs and around the corner. It was only then that I had my first encounter with human authority, in the form of a goateed guy in a uniform who was talking volubly on a cell phone.
Another thing about people here is that they are also great workers, neither histrionically bored, at great pains to demonstrate how clearly superior they are to both you and their job, nor frustrated despots, determined to wrest every ounce of control out of their transitory authority, but comfortably equal to their situation, performing their occupation but not defined by it, retaining their humanity yet fulfilling their role, which in this case was to watch me feed two dollars into a waist high steel and glass machine.
Despite the fact that there are a number of signs indicating that the incline, like most mass transit, is exact change only, it still comes as an unpleasant surprise to some riders which they get to the top. I’ve noticed that the problem is usually solved with the infusion of the local mixture of ingenuity and good natured sarcasm. It’s also can be a shock to later discover that if you don’t get a fifty cent transfer at his point it will cost another two dollars to get back down. Usually I’ll ask for one, but today I didn’t – there wasn’t going to be any round trip for me.
The conductor nodded in acknowledgment, meeting my eyes meaningfully while never losing the thread of his complex argument, and I pushed through the door and into the sunlight. It was pretty much of a perfect morning, no doubt signaling the beginning of a perfect day, and I was tempted to wander over to the observation platform take it in, but instead put my head down and kept on going. I figured I should go ahead and do what I came to do – there would be more than enough time for the platforms later.
It’s hard to believe that after you’ve come this far you can still go uphill, but I did. Mount Washington has the kind of view that people pay a lot for, but behind the tony houses and condos lies a typically gritty neighborhood, with a combination tanning salon/tattoo parlor across the street from the touristy ice cream shoppe, and even the crusty old barber feels compelled to set out a couple tables of souvenirs, cheap sunglasses and rubber snakes, on the sidewalk next to his pole.
The post office is a few colliding, coiling streets up, and it’s hardly as picturesque as the whitewashed Carnegie Library on the bluff, but rough and worn, jammed into a narrow storefront. There are P.O. boxes on one side and a counter on the other, and I got into the inevitable line. A guy in front was making a comment I couldn’t quite understand, half-joke, half-complaint, to the stoic mail lady, and when she replied sharply his unmodulated, childish voice retreated to apology. As they squabbled I studied the bare shoulders of the woman in a tank top front of me, her skin dry and flabby, starting to lose the glow and elasticity of youth, having irrevocably passed the point when it would be better off concealed. The contentious customer lurched away, smiling goofily and holding up his hands, and I could see now that he was a little slow, not quite right as they say around here, probably some kind of local character, living at home and doing errands for his mother.
The mail lady was brusque with everybody, but then ended each transaction with a sweet and apparently sincere thank-you ver y much. She said it as she handed the woman in front of me her book of stamps and then it was my turn.
"I’d like to send this media mail, please," I said, laying the package on the counter.
"Is it a book?" she asked, turning it in her hands before dropping it on the scale.
"Yes," I said, "It is a book," and it was, a book given to me by a woman when we were both much younger, a romantic book with an even more romantic inscription on the title page, one that I’d kept close to me and read many times since, but which seemed like a kind of lie to me now. Fine she could have it back, a wedding present, congratulations. I’d crossed out the words she’d written and added only one of my own – Good-bye.
I mailed it to her firm, not wanting her to know I still kept track of where she lived. There was the name of a character from the book on the return with 600 Stadium Circle as the address. The city is full of trivia experts eager to display their knowledge, but I was sure that even if this clerk recognized the address of the old, now demolished stadium she wouldn’t care. I paid her, refused a receipt, got my Thank-you very much, and started back downhill.
There are several viewing platforms at the edge of the cliff, stretching almost all the way down to the Point. I’d already put some thought into it, but decided that it wouldn’t hurt to check them all out again. As I said, I was in no hurry, and it was important, after all, to pick the right place.
