Wednesday, overturned

MARTA tracks, looking west from East Lake station

When you see a single empty seat on a standing-room-only train and decide to take it, you know you’re in for something. But it was early, I was tired and I wanted a seat for at least part of my morning commute.

As soon as the train doors whooshed open, I rushed to sit down, then casually said “hello” to the man next to me.

He looked around 60, heavyset with a very round face covered in light gray stubble. He wore a red sweatshirt with tattered lettering and a frayed parka. He slowly turned his gaze from the window to my eyes.

“I started the day at Indian Creek,” he led off. The system’s easternmost station. “I’m getting off this train at Five Points.” My destination as well.

“Where are you headed then?” I asked. It seemed like he wanted to keep talking.

“All the way to North Springs,” he said. “And then all the way back down to East Point, which is my final destination.”

With that, he looked out the window again, then intoned a single word: “Overturned.”

I wasn’t sure if I heard it correctly, so I tried to tune out the conversations and too-loud music leaking from nearby headphones. And the word came again, with the same lack of inflection.

“Overturned.”

It’s not really a word that stands on its own, except maybe in a courtroom or on the sideline of a sporting event. There wasn’t much context for it before eight o’clock on a Wednesday morning – except, obviously, in this man’s head.

And then he said something else: “There’s a coffee shop.” We had just passed one, before decelerating into the Edgewood-Candler Park station. He followed that observation with another “Overturned.”

More folks boarded the train, and we were off westward again.

“There’s a barbecue restaurant. Overturned.”

I thought about what the word could mean, what significance was behind its mysterious repetition. Was there tragedy?

“There’s a fire station. Overturned.”

I considered a car overturned. A ruling overturned. Something big enough to stick a word in a brain and keep it repeating.

“There’s a church. Overturned.”

Sitting next to me was a life overturned by something. A man taking a train to the northernmost tip of the system, then almost all the way to its southern terminus, for some reason following and checking off mental markers all along the way.

“There’s the downtown connector. Overturned.”

Where had he truly started, I wondered, and which way would he take home – wherever that was – after going to East Point?

He cleared his throat and looked toward me again. “Excuse me sir,” he began, “can I get by you? I know this isn’t my station, but I need extra time to get to the door.”

I nodded my head and said, “sure.” As he shuffled off, I wished him a sincere “have a good day,” but I don’t know if he got it.

I heard one last “Overturned” before I left the train on my way to work. But that’s not exactly true; I’m still hearing it in my head, still uselessly trying to decipher its meaning. Today, I haven’t gotten much else done.