It was crowded, it always is. It was rushed, hectic and splintered. Folks going each and every way in their memorized anxious steps. It was cold as well, unseasonably so for this early May afternoon.
More than the usual waited for their trains inside the old stone station, an ambient warmth given only by exhale and body heat. The waiting stand and shift mostly stationary, staring aloft at the vast arrival & departure board, much like they might to the sky or a distant shore bank while clinging in shiver to a fallen tree in a fast moving river.
I have leaned to the station’s wall, in the gentle eddy of its soft current, in wait as well. At the benches to the center, a business man stands and busily works an iPhone in his right hand while checking his Blackberry in his left. On the bench, some two feet from him, lies another iPhone. This one however is white, screen down and occupying an open and unnoticed space.
I pause.
Only when the busy man has hurriedly moved on with his two cell phones, do I turn right and approach the police stand.
“You mean that one over there?”
The officer sits in a high wooden perch, like a judge surveying a large courtroom and holding a heavy gavel. He seems to welcome the distraction and shrugs while adding,
“It does happen.”
As I move away towards my train, I look back and he is approaching the lone phone with caution while speaking on his radio. Another officer, then another, this one with a working lab all approach it together.
After a purposeful sniff and a routine wag of the tail, the first officer then calmly picks up the white phone while concealing his slightly embarrassed smile. To his apparent surprise, the phone is not locked and he starts to scroll immediately through it, before finding a number and dialing.
At my last glance, he is far to the distant and doing most of the talking with whomever it is on the other end. Maybe, I imagine as I board my train, he is trying to convince some skeptical mom or dad, that he is in fact a Boston city police officer. . .
“It does happen.”
Sent from 📞 🚂. . .
© All rights reserved 2018
Tales From The Rail 
Some great writing…I picture it all in front of me..
LikeLiked by 1 person