Jennifer Stevenson's checkered resume includes the usual dude-ranch painting, counterweight shifting, sunflower repair (real and rubber) as well as advanced degrees in structural family theory and gestalt therapy, but what she's proudest of is her facility with seducing crows into accepting unshelled peanuts from her.

"It took years to develop. The local crows even follow my car now," she says. "If I sing 'Good Morning, Good Morning, Good!' they'll come flying from anywhere in earshot." We don't know if the crows prefer them raw, roasted, or roasted-salted. A poll is in progress and results will be released when the current fifty-pound peanut bag is empty.

Jennifer grew up in the suburbs of Chicago and earned her BA in English and music at the University of Iowa (located in God's country among the nicest people in the world). She married theater technician Rich Bynum and spent six years in New Haven, where he went to Yale Drama School and she took her advanced degrees. She fell in love with New Haveners, too, though this took some doing. She now lives in a suburb of Chicago, writing, doing the books for the family business -- Hawkeye Scenic Studios -- and avoiding work in the garden.

---

A Few Words from Stevenson's Work  

I was slow getting out of the house and had to take a later express. My usual train is the 7:26. Run Number 507, air conditioned, new seats. The early a.m. dispatcher has a soothing voice, a warm old black daddy who can watch the conductors horsing around on the platform and just croon into the P.A.: "Five oooh sevvenn, clooose your dooors." By 8:00 he's off shift, and some south-of-the-border Hitler has the microphone. Today he was raising hell inside the booth--I could hear him through the glass--and when our engineer came hustling out of the booth and jingled into her seat in the cab, the P.A. barked "Five fourteen, you have a green light! Go-go-go! Go out now!" What a grouch.
        I had a bit of a grouch myself. Since things changed it seems to take me longer and longer to manage the routine chores. The charge was down on my poodle cane when I went to take the garbage out this morning and the little suckers nearly got me. I heard on the radio another outbreak of mulberry trees busted up traffic on the Dan Ryan Expressway. Trouble for the suburbanites but not for me, right? Wrong. Just meant my jerk of a supervisor at my miserable job would be in an hour later than he likes to be, and then he'd be in a mood.
        And somebody got my favorite seat on the train, the single sideways seat where you can look out the window and watch the switches change, and feel the nose of the train swing out over nothing when she takes the curves. Five-fourteen was a clunker, one of the old cars with crankdown windows instead of air conditioning. I wriggled into a forward seat next to a deaf garlic-lover wearing a Walkperson.
        At least the car was cleaner than usual. About ten years ago some brainless asshole imported a New York street punk and a case of spray paint and committed "an installation" on a museum wall. Within two days the local gangs had caught the fever. And until things changed we had filth sprayed all over CTA property, roving antivandalism patrols, guard dogs, extra cleanup teams, punitive soap-and-water detail--when they could catch the little shits--and a lot of evil and expensive chemicals damaging the plastic. The 2600 series in particular, the ones the city bought in the 1980s, had a crummy paint job that couldn't stand up to solvents.
        I mused on all this and my mood did not improve. No matter
which way I leaned I couldn't see around the people in front. The garlic rocker glared at me for whatever reason and moved pointedly to stand in the doorway. A little old oriental guy sat down next to me. He got chatty. I let him have it.
        He started it.
        "You like the El?" he breathed in my ear.
        I was so fed up I was raving before I even turned to look at him. He weighed about sixty pounds, I figured, including the baseball cap. The left front tooth was yellow and the right was gold, and the rest of his smile was naked. He listened to me grouse about the poodles and the bad-tempered dispatcher and the graffiti and he nodded up and down and smiled at me with his gums. When I ran down he bent his head close and poked me with a knuckle.
        "You care about the train," he confided.
        "Betcher freakin' ass--you bet I do. They run right. About the only thing that does in this town any more."
        "But you in a bad mood, hm?" he poked and smiled some more.
        "Damn right!" I said savagely. A lady in front of me turned around and frowned and I lowered my voice.
        "I am honestly about to give up," I hissed. "I'm fed UP with this change. Trees aren't supposed to grow up overnight. Poodles are supposed to eat Kal Kan, not fireplugs. I'm scared to ride in elevators. Hell, I'm surprised people ride the train any more."
        He nodded seriously. "It comes from the bottom of the lake. Two--six--many miles out, nobody go there. You wait," he nodded. "You see." Crazy old guy. Some things don't change, you still meet nuts on the train.
        Well, I was feeling pretty nuts myself. He's gonna have to hustle to keep up with me. I smiled nastily.
        "No kidding? Bottom of the lake, huh? And what's that got to do with--" Something weird outside the window caught my eye and I broke off.
        "Oh, shit. Here we go."
        We had passed Wilson Avenue and were headed south into the curve by the cemetery. The platform at Wilson was loaded with commuters, and though there wasn't a train in sight they were clearing off fast, piling down the stairways into the underplatform. A pair of tough-looking kids stood at the south end of the platform. They stared past us toward the cemetery with keen scornful eyes.
        We looked through the front window. Down on the track ahead, a figure in black was straddling the third rail. It had a spear in one hand and something small, maybe a handgun, in the other. It jerked its arms challengingly at the cemetery. The train slowed.
        I glanced into the cab. The engineer stopped the train.
        She put her head way out her window and yelled:  "Get off the track! It ees eeleegal to be on the track!"
        She waved her arm. "Get! Off!"
        The figure ignored us.
        "Fucking gangs," I grumbled.
        People behind us were getting out of their seats to look. The little old oriental guy sat next to me contentedly. His calm, or maybe everyone else's curiosity, drew the grouch out of me like drawing a splinter.
        I shook both hands at the ceiling. "Terrific! Now I'll be even later than the douchebag I work for. Oh, well. It ain't like there's something to do downtown. Same old aggravating horrible stupid shit."
        In spite of myself I peered past the lady in front. The train crept forward forty feet.
        The spear carrier was a boy about sixteen, maybe black, maybe part Hispanic. His face was streaked with warpaint, and he had on enough black leather to make a ballet dancer faint with jealousy. A paratrooper harness dangled off him, safety-line lashed to the track. He ignored us completely.
        "Hell, I may not have anything to do in another year or so. Way things are going. My last company went west when the mulberry trees got the Sears Tower. Thank god I wasn't on overtime that weekend. Jesus!"
        I figured the little old oriental guy was watching the gang boy, or at least his English was slow. But he said to me, "Are the changes so bad?"
        I turned and looked at him real closely for the first time.
        He was yellow all over and darker yellow in patches. Must have been ninety years old.
        "Are they so bad?" I said, amazed. "Are you kidding? The Dan Ryan has a strip dug up across all eight lanes, coming and going. And that's just this morning's little gem. I have to carry a cattle prod with me to the dumpster. The Sears Tower is bent over twenty degrees," I bent my elbow in the air, "from the eightieth story up. Do you know what that looks like? Doesn't that scare you?"
        "We do good job. You going to see," my companion nodded toward the front window. I gave him a where'd-you-come-from look. He sat restfully at my elbow and watched the show outside, the engineer, the other passengers.
        I have to say, the suited stiffs didn't seem real eager to get to work. I glanced over my shoulder and saw briefcases and Wall Street Journals abandoned on the seats behind us. Somebody made a suggestion and we all rolled our windows open. The little old oriental guy just bared his gums at the lot. Screwball.
        "You in the gang?" I said sarcastically. "Or maybe you're one of the space aliens that made all this shit happen?"
        He nodded. "I make the monster."

From original text of "Green Light on 514"

A bowdlerized version of the whole appeared as the cover story

in the sole issue of The Fourteenth Alternative, 1990

 
 
 
 Return to Linn's Client List