i amused myself by rating each landscape against the next until my vision blurred-sobbing uncontrollably and staring down at the rewelded floors of the compartment while wondering what rats and hobos had lived there before the exhumation , what myriad battles over bread or scraps of clothing or glints of loose change had taken place , and how much dried blood had been painted over , and was that a scar the workmen had been unable to remove in the shape of the gray caps ' favorite symbol , and what was that stain/vein of green along the lower right side of the seats opposite-some fungus , some mold , some rot-and so just generally composing a long sentence in my head to keep out the emptiness , the sadness , and the plain old ordinary human embarrassment of what had occurred : waking up from my attempt to find duncan and sybel looking down at me with a mixture of pity and sorrow .