THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, March 30, 1996 TAG: 9603300274
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Column
SOURCE: Charlise Lyles
LENGTH: Medium: 86 lines
Trains have romanced me since girlhood. With Mama, up the steps I'd go, hauling her jumbo, lime-green Sears suitcase, a Thom McAn shoebox of fried chicken and white bread tucked under my arm.
For hours the train would pound down tracks through junkyards where rusty auto chassis studded the ground like clumps of tough old moss. Through meadows polka-dotted with big black cows. Once, a storm ceased as we pulled into a station. I looked up and saw a rainbow arc over the train.
Inside the long, silver bullet, rocking in my seat amid the hushed conversations of adults, crunching overpriced diner-car cookies and gazing spellbound out the window, I felt safe and secure.
But a ride Thursday on Amtrak Train No. 95 jolted that sense of security.
After a 20-minute layover at Washington's Union Station, I bounced on board, ever-so-contentedly sipping a mocha-java smoothie. At the opposite end of the car, two, then four, stern-faced men boarded. Then an unsmiling woman in a leather jacket. Then another man in a trench coat.
Their miniflashlights cut the midday dimness inside the train. They shined into passengers seats, into eyes.
They were asking for someone. I couldn't hear whom.
An uneasy rustle ran the length of the train, like pigeons disturbed from a roost. By now, it was clear to everyone that we were in the middle of a drug bust. The stuff of TV crime shows was happening live.
Light flashed into the overhead baggage shelf, then stopped three seats in front of mine. ``D.C. Police. Is this your bag?''
A lanky, uncommonly handsome young man in a button-down shirt remained seated and silent.
The sound of a zipper. Rifling. Then, nothing: The search had ended. ``D.C. Police. You're under arrest.'' The man rose. As the handcuffs clicked shut, his head bowed automatically, as if he were some strange marionette.
The matter wasn't finished. A white I.D. card flashed in front of my face. ``Detective Paul Hustler, D.C. Police Department. May I see your ticket, please?''
I rifled through my junky bag, digging so deep that for a minute the officer looked suspicious. Finally, I found it. My quivering hands handed it over.
``Thank you, Miss Lyles.''
``Is this your bag?'' another detective asked a man across the aisle.
``I'm sorry, I'm legally blind,'' the man said, almost whimpering. ``I can't see. All my bags are here on the floor.''
``Do you know this man?'' another detective asked another man. ``Is this your brother?'' He began going through the man's bag, squeezing a bottle of contact lens solution on the floor, poking his fingers in a bottle of aspirin.
At the end of the car where I had entered, police searched another tall, quiet man who resembled the guy who had been handcuffed. He remained silent, his arms outstretched like a scarecrow.
As an officer ran his flat palm up his sides, crotch, armpits, a shiver of humiliation ran up my spine.
At last, the detectives withdrew from the train. I watched them disappear down the platform with the arrested man, his coat draped over the handcuffs. The 22-year-old Bronx, N.Y., man was charged with possession with intent to distribute 127 grams of crack cocaine with an estimated street value of $13,000 according to a D.C. police spokesman.
But the cops made no apology to the young black men on board who had been searched.
For a long time the only sound was the echo of the bell that rang as we pulled out of the station. Then Vera Johnson spoke.
``I know they have to do their jobs, but this was so uncivil,'' said Johnson, on her way from New Jersey to an aunt's funeral in Norfolk. ``This is the United States, not Russia.''
Then, as our weary journey came to an end, Long Islander Antoinette Murray did a beautiful thing.
She began to sing, one of those deep spirituals that rise out of the heart and can carry you through a long and difficult journey into day.
Low at first: ``I sing because I'm happy. I sing because I'm free.'' Then rising rhythmically through the darkness of the train. ``His eye is on the sparrow and I know he watches me.''
I talked to her afterwards. ``Anything could have happened to us on this train. There could've been shooting,'' she said. ``We've been protected. I guess that's why I'm singing.''
For me, her song lamented the loss of a sense of personal safety that I once felt as I traveled this land. by CNB