The Satchel

Last thing I remember was falling asleep peacefully in my own bed. Suddenly I feel the air around me change from the scent of a nice warm night air, fresh from a nice day’s rain. Peepers and frogs are the sounds that surround the night air. The noises turning slowly within my mind to a sort of screeching sound that you get from metal scraping against metal. The air is turning into the strong lingering smell of cigarettes and an odor I cannot place. It’s almost a wood fire smokey smell. Someone is burning wood somewhere. But it’s warm out. Why would someone be burning wood in the middle of the summer?

Slowly I begin to realize that I am moving. My bed is moving? How can this be? I begin to come to my senses and realize that things around me are not what I am expecting. I am awake and sitting up. I am sitting in what looks like a train car. Where am I going? What am I doing in this dress? I look down at myself and see that I am wearing a brown and white dress that is gathered at my wrists, which give way to ruffles that are dangling and resting softly against the back of my hand. It’s a brown and white striped dress in which the stripes are moving up and down the length of my body. The neck has a soft collar which buttons up to the top of my neck. Around the collar is white lace that follows the outside of the collar. There is the same white lace that wraps around the tops of my arms that hang snuggly around my shoulders.

I am carrying a small satchel where the strings from the satchel are wrapped around one of my wrists. It’s a brown satchel with a soft cloth material. People are sitting around me in seats that appear to be riding on a train. Each person is talking softly to each other. I am more conscious now of my surroundings and realize that I am on a train. But where am I headed? Where can I possibly be going? Everyone is dressed in what appears to be around the 1920s maybe. Men are wearing top hats and women are wearing sun bonnets.

I am so confused. I don’t know what is happening to me. Where am I going and what am I doing on this train that is headed where? As I begin looking around me, I am trying to put together everything. I notice that the conductor is making his way back to me, stopping along the way to gather tickets from the individuals sitting in the train compartment. I start to look through my satchel to see if I have a ticket inside. I am finding a comb and handkerchief. A picture of a woman and man standing next to each other, smiling, and holding onto each other’s hands. The man is a tall man with a burly mustache. His hair hangs down around his shoulders with a slight wave. His eyes are soft and happy looking. The woman looks like me, standing next to this man, holding his hands and looking deeply into his eyes with a smile on her face. Both are dressed in what appears to be middle class outfits. I am in a very nice looking dress for the time. The man is wearing a nice suit but no tie.

I realize the conductor is coming closer to me so I start to look for something that looks like a ticket to ride this train to wherever I am going, but all I can find is a letter. It’s a letter from the phone company that says that it is my ticket to Chicago. So, I am going to Chicago? I am traveling to Chicago by myself for what must be a job working for the phone company. As the conductor approaches, I hand him my letter. He carefully takes a look at it and hands it back to me with a kind smile and continues on his way to the next person that is sitting behind me.

No more than the second he looks at my note and moves on to the next person, a man shouts out from behind me, “This is a holdup”. “You are all going to give up everything you have and will be traveling our way, sorry about that folk”. Everyone started to gasp and scream. Women were clinging to the men that they were traveling with. Children began to cry. Everything was in an uproar. There was confusion everywhere.

There were two men standing while together and one man was talking to everyone. Both were holding guns. The man talking was a tall man with a long mustache that curled up at the ends. He wore a black suit with a white shirt underneath. The other man was dressed in brown cotton pants and a yellow short sleeved shirt. The second man was shorter, with a whiskery shadow on his face that appeared needed shaven but hadn’t gotten around to it the past couple of days. And what did the man say? We are traveling his way? What did he mean by that?

The two men started going from traveler to traveler taking everything from them that could be worth anything. I could here crying and one man was telling the woman he was traveling with that she should give up her wedding ring as she cried and slowly released the ring from her finger. I looked down at my own finger to see if I was wearing a wedding ring. There on my ring finger wrapped a beautiful ring that had what looked like leaves embedded into the golden material. It was so beautiful. I reached down to take the ring off and hide it before the men got to me. As I tried to pull the ring off my finger, I found it was really tight. I couldn’t get it off. I pulled a little harder, but to no avail I could not get that off my finger. What was I going to do? I begin pulling at the ring on my finger, but it’s no use. My finger is only beginning to swell from pulling on it.

As the men grew closer to me, I begin to feel dizzy and faint. The smells are changing again and I can feel the warmth of the night. The smell of a fresh rain in the air and peepers are once again the sounds of the night. I begin to realize that I am in my bed again, pulling on my ring finger with desperation running through my body. I am safe. I am home and safe in my bed. I began to realize that I was dreaming. It was all just a dream. A dream that felt so real.

I thank God that I am home and safe in my own bed, it was just a dream. It felt so real, but it was just a dream. I can relax. As I sit up in my bed, I notice sitting on the floor next to my bed is a brown soft coated satchel. I reach down and slowly pick it off the floor.