The Chalk in His Pocket

Conversations With Robin at the Edge of Departure

Eleven years ago, we lost the unparalleled Robin Williams. 

I've been thinking about Robin a lot lately, since long before I realized the anniversary of his death was coming up. Among other things, it made me realize how much I miss coming up with little stories to tell people about all these beloved figures who pass away. 

I apparently still really like mythologizing life, both my own life and life in general. And getting back to that, even in small ways, has been therapeutic in ways I didn't expect, like a return to form, because this is totally something I would have done as a little girl.

As I get older and so many of the public figures I grew up with and looked up to over the years pass on, it's freaking me out on this whole other level. Index of the Sainted Dead was created specifically to honor and elevate those people in a small, simple way I can keep up with and add to over time.

But before I had the index, I used to have dreams about a liminal train station called Cold Station. The vast majority of these sainted dead would pass through there and sometimes even stay a while before moving on. Sometimes I'd talk to them. And then I'd share these dreams on Facebook the next day with other friends who might be grieving.

When I met Robin there, he was throwing a Mardi Gras party, despite the fact that it was the middle of August. I can still taste and smell the special kettle corn he served. Then, not that long ago – maybe a week or so – I had another dream about Robin of Cold Station. In this dream, Robin had apparently elected not to leave (yet), as he'd found a new sort of purpose there. Here's a little flash fiction about that, to honor him on the eleventh anniversary of his passing. 

Remember, the opposite of death is not life. It's birth. That was a door. And this is a door. Everything else is one very long story you're writing yourself while you make your way across the bridge between them.

........

The first thing I noticed was the sound.

Not the great clanging of arrivals or the echoing call of the departure boards. (No, that was much further down the hall.) This was closer. A low ripple of laughter, a voice running ahead of it like water seeking its own course.

I followed it past the row of crooked postcards, past a man polishing his shoes who never seems to get them clean, past the potted ferns that shed leaves in slow motion, never hitting the ground.

Robin was in the big common room with the faded floral couches. By that, I mean he was where I half-expected to find him, the way you sometimes know someone will be in their place, the furniture rearranging itself as needed to accommodate them. 

He was standing on a chair, chalk in hand, sketching on the far wall. A crowd had gathered, the kind that isn’t ever in any particular hurry to go anywhere.

The chalk lines made little sense at first. Looping curves, jagged points, something that looked like the outline of a chicken with a monocle. Robin was talking while he drew, spinning out a tale that began with enlightenment and somehow detoured into the proper way to fold fitted sheets. People were laughing in bursts. At the jokes, yes, but also at the fact that they were there, together, listening.

When he spotted me in the doorway, he brightened. His face did that thing like a thousand-watt bulb flickering on, but softer somehow, and much more human. “Hey!” he called out, hopping down from the chair. “You made it back! I was just explaining the difference between enlightenment and laundry, but I think I’m still missing a step.”

Up close, I saw he was still wearing the Mardi Gras beads and the purple brocade suit from that first week after he arrived. They’d dulled with time and were showing their age. The plastic of the beads had become scuffed over the years. On his jacket, I noticed a thread or two coming loose. He had chalk dust smudged across one cheek and down the length of one sleeve.

We walked together toward the platform side of the station. 

The corridors hummed with that warm, in-between light that Cold Station always seems to have. Part morning, part evening, perpetually unable to decide between the two. Robin talked about the parties they’d been throwing. Smaller than the one I stumbled into after his arrival, but no less lively. 

Someone brought a saxophone and didn’t know how to play it. Someone else baked a cake so big that they served it off a baggage cart.

“It’s different now,” he said. “Not better or worse. Just… you know. When you’ve been somewhere a while, the big welcome fades into the rhythm of the place. And then it’s the little things that keep you going. A good coffee. A really bad magic trick. Running into someone you didn’t know you needed to see.”

We passed a ticket window where the clerk was asleep, dream-murmuring in a language I almost recognized. Robin paused to glance at the departures board. The letters rearranged themselves lazily. Elsewhere Circuit, the Last Local, the names of stations you can’t buy a ticket for unless you’ve been invited.

He didn’t say anything about leaving, and I didn’t ask.

We stopped near the chalk wall. It wasn't the same as the one in the common room. This one was much quieter, tucked between two narrow platforms where the trains come and go like ghosts deciding whether to stay. Here, the chalk marks weren’t jokes or doodles. They were fragments. Names, dates, bits of advice. A place where people leave something of themselves before they move on, or sometimes after they’ve decided not to.

Robin’s hand drifted over the wall like he was skimming the surface of a pond. “People think they come here to wait,” he said, “but it’s not waiting if you’re enjoying it. You can choose to be here. You can even choose to come back.” He glanced sideways at me. “Some of us… just like the company.”

We stood there for a while, reading the messages preserved in chalk. My eyes noticed a familiar looping script. It was something I wrote long ago, still visible despite the constant re-marking and smudging of the wall.

Before we parted, Robin reached into his pocket and pressed something into my hand. It was a piece of chalk, worn almost to a nub. “For next time,” he said. “Or now, if you’ve got something that needs saying.”

I wanted to ask him how long he’ll be here. Whether he’d ever thought about taking a train out, or if he’s already decided this is the better choice. But he’d already stepped back into the crowd, the beads around his neck catching the light as he went.

The sound of his voice trailed after him. Half a joke, half a story, all warmth.

When I finally looked down, there was a faint smear of chalk dust on my sleeve where he touched my arm. I didn’t brush it off.

........

Some other notes about Robin of Cold Station that didn't quite make it into the little fiction above. Robin walks the station like someone who remembers every grief, but doesn’t serve it anymore. Among other things, he:

• Leaves handwritten notes in menus that change people’s moods mid-meal.
• Pulls chairs out for people who haven’t been seen in years.
• Performs impromptu stand-up for those who forgot how to laugh when they died.
• Cries with guests in the Library when the story gets too close.
• Leads candlelight parades through Platform 3 for those boarding the train.

When someone says they’re not ready, he sits with them until they are. And when someone is ready but afraid, he tells them a story about his first memory of laughter. No one leaves with him. But a lot of people leave because of him.

"In his coat was the morning he never spent. He gave it to strangers who had forgotten how to look east."

- Index of the Sainted Dead: Keeper of the Pocket Sunrise