By Bryan Alistair Charles

Every four years they come, like some vaguely menacing astronomical event. Every four years they come and they say, “I feel your pain, and I will be the one to alleviate that pain. My administration, day one, blah blah. I will return the great state of Michigan—for so long mistreated, ignored—to its former glory. Small towns like X are the nation’s lifeblood…,” or “Manufacturing centers such as X are the nation’s lifeblood. American values, etc. But you have been given a raw deal. The current administration, previous administrations, blah blah. My administration will be different. Your jobs have fled. I will bring them back. Your cities are struggling. We must bring the heart and soul back to these communities. And I will do exactly that. I am the one. I promise to fight for you until, whatever, the last dog dies. Or something. The American people, yada yada. Best days are ahead of us. God bless you, and may god continue to bless the—”

Wednesday. First week of the fall semester. I walked down the hill, away from campus. It was high-summer hot. Sweat stains darkened my T-shirt. My Walkman was blasting Come’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” The new semester had arrived with the always oppressively melancholy back-to-school vibe. But just then, with the sticky air, we seemed ages away from autumn and crisp afternoons, wood smoke, leaf-strewn lawns.

At the railroad tracks, a small crowd had gathered. People were standing in the embankment. A few were seated in lawn chairs. Some held little American flags on sticks. There were a couple of parked police cruisers and officers spread out along the tracks.

I pressed Stop on my Walkman, pulled the headphones down around my neck. Suddenly, I could hear excited conversations, a woman telling her young son (who was standing there looking glum) that this was history; it was not every day you got to see the president. 

A ruddy, grinning guy, his face slick with sweat, said to me, “You’ve got perfect timing.” 

“Have I?”

“Yep. Those cops there got the call a second ago. Apparently he’s due shortly.”

“He is?”

“Yes, sir. Any minute now, they said.” The man held up a camcorder. “I am going to get it for posterity.” 

“Like Abraham Zapruder,” I said. 

“What? Oh. Ha ha. Let’s hope it doesn’t go down like that.” 

President Clinton was traveling around by train doing an old-time whistle-stop tour, en route to the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. I had heard on the news that he was speaking in Comstock, a one-stoplight burg outside Kalamazoo, minutes from the one-stoplight burg (literally—Galesburg) where I grew up. 

I wondered if I should wait. The last (and only) time I had tried to see a politician was when Al Gore had come to campus in October of ’92, the giddy “Don’t Stop” era. Hundreds waited in a downpour for Gore to arrive and give a speech in the Dalton Center. He was beyond late. It was excruciating. Five more minutes…, I kept telling myself. Finally, soaked to the skin, freezing, I bailed.   

Any minute now? I was dubious. But just as I was about to slip my headphones back on and continue on my way, the railroad-crossing signal started to clang and the bars went down. A current went through the crowd. “Here he comes!” the woman with the bored son cheered. The ruddy man raised the camera to his face. Everyone turned to the left. 

There it was.  

An Amtrak adorned with American flags, the presidential seal, and a large banner proclaiming it “THE 21ST CENTURY EXPRESS.” 

The train was moving slowly. The crowd waved and cried, “Mr. President! Mr. President!”

At the end of the long modern train—sleek, silver—were two antique cars, boxy and dark. We heard the president’s voice through a loudspeaker, the familiar drawl saying, “Thank you…hi, thank you.” And then we could actually see him as the train moved past us. He was standing outside on a caboose decorated with red, white, and blue bunting, flanked by two secret service agents. 

He held a microphone in one hand and waved with the other, and he was smiling and saying, “Thank you very much…thank you.”

And the woman who believed she and her son were witnessing history shouted, “Thank you, thank you for coming, come back soon!” 

It was all happening so quickly. I had just had time to register how strange it was to see the president and to hear his actual voice issuing from his mouth as he continued to wave robotically—I had scarcely had time to absorb the image before the image receded.  

Bill Clinton standing on the caboose thanking us grew ever smaller and then disappeared entirely as the 21st Century Express rolled out of town. 

~

The following night, Clinton once again accepted his party’s nomination for the presidency. He made a long speech. We must build a bridge to the future, four years from now—think of it!—the new century…opportunity for all…strong communities…let us preserve this legacy for the next generation. 

And four years later, at the very dawn of the new century of which the president spoke, in December of 2000, three days before Christmas, after years of layoffs, lost shifts, attrition, the paper mill where my stepfather had worked his whole life (and where his father had worked, and I myself had worked for two summers, including the summer of 1996, at the tail end of which Bill Clinton passed through town and waved to me and thanked me) shut its doors, leaving the hundreds who worked there jobless. 

The jobs did not return. 

Not under Bush, not under Obama, nor any others. 

The paper mill lay rotting for a decade and then was razed. Only the cracked, weedy parking lot remains.