The Train of Small Mercies

by David Rowell

  Lionel took this as a good sign.

  Maryland

  Only the weekend editor was still in the office; Roy’s story was the last to be typeset, and now Roy was waiting to know what he thought. The weekend editor’s nickname, Roy had learned, was Mr. Sigh, because every time anyone gave him copy, the first thing he did, after reading the article and sitting down with the reporter, was to let out a long, deep sigh.

  Roy tugged at the knot in his tie and thought about putting his feet up on his desk before deciding against it. He had never spent so many hours reporting a story, and he had never written one so long. He filed it at seventy newspaper inches, although Mr. Sigh had no intention of running it that long. Roy had spent the drive over organizing the piece in his mind, and when he sat down to his Selectric typewriter, he spent the next thirty minutes on the first two paragraphs.

  Claire would have appreciated the irony of the whole situation, he thought. Too much time—and too much disappointment—had passed for them to have a sincere laugh over anything, and the fact that it had all happened because Jamie had lost a leg cast a pall over the whole episode, even if he could have told her. She wouldn’t have approved of the way Jamie had tried to belittle Roy, but there were always two sides of Claire. That was how she could date Jamie and be just as close to Roy, as different as they were. That was the essence of Claire. It was like Mrs. West had said—she charmed everyone, and you never quite got over her.

  But who was Claire’s confidante now? Roy wondered. There was probably a slew of sorority sisters with whom she shared her most intimate thoughts and love-life details, and no doubt her fiancé would have been every bit as intolerant of Roy had he and Claire stayed close.

  Mr. Sigh came out of his office, his face already set in a show of professional suffering. Roy straightened himself in his chair and waited as the man stood over him, ready to exhale his verdict, ready to teach the young man all the things about crafting a story he still did not know.

  New York

  The women’s voices grew raised and angry.

  “Well, we don’t wait that long for anyone,” the one in blue jeans said, “and now we have our date, thank you very much.” She looked over to Lionel as if she had known him for a lifetime and took his arm.

  “Who is this brother? The motherfucking Good Humor man?” one of the men said. His eyes were wide-set, his purple blouse rippling in the breeze. The other man stepped over and tugged lightly on Lionel’s jacket sleeve, then dropped it and cackled.

  The other man was bigger than his friend, his neck as thick as a bucket. “This ain’t a date. This is the boy that’s going to drive you home after your date.”

  Lionel knew he had played a part—a minuscule part—in something honorable and historic, and now, just as quickly, here was more of the kind of mindlessness that was making a simple walk in the city these days its own dodgy venture. “This uniform says I’ve been working on a train, the train carrying Robert Kennedy’s dead body from New York,” Lionel said, his voice rising with each word. “You fellas know anything about that? Senator running for president, brother of President Kennedy. Was trying to help the black man more than anyone in this country right now.”

  The two men let their grins dissolve.

  The woman in red stepped to the other side of Lionel. “You didn’t tell us that,” she said. “Damn.”

  “You fools should show some respect,” her friend said. “He’s got an important job, and what you got?” She began to pull Lionel away when the bigger man took hold of her arm.

  “Hold up, hold up there,” he said, and tried to soften his expression. “Hold up just a minute there now. We just had a little business that ran late, and that’s done, and we made plans with you ladies, and that’s why we come out all this way. And here we all are. So let’s just put aside this anger and get on with the evening. Can we do that? Nate, tip the conductor here for holding our place, and then let’s go and have a good time.”

  At that moment Lionel knew the night was on a course that he would regret for a long time, that he might remember all his days. It wasn’t too late to drop the girls’ arms right then and walk in the other direction, but he wasn’t raised like that. And as someone who spent his days dreaming up endless ways superheroes dealt with all vestiges of the criminal element, there was a small part of him that wanted to experience how the volatile situation might play out. Plus, there was some question of the ladies’ safety. Even if they did relent and go along with these two, would the evening end peacefully for them?

  Lionel looked to the women for any cues, but all four seemed to be waiting for what Lionel would say or do next.

  “Fellas, look, I’m not even trying to take these ladies out, all right?” Lionel began. “What I really want to do is call my own girl and then head over to Southeast for the night. So no one is trying to take your dates. But it’s pretty clear they don’t want to go with you. So let’s all leave it at that, and then let’s all go our own ways here. Let’s just keep it dignified.” Lionel exhaled.

  “Damn, I thought Dr. King got shot and died in Memphis a couple months back, but nah, here he is, preaching good as ever,” the thinner man said. “Nate, we brothers rioted for nothing, ’cause Martin Luther right here.”

  Lionel watched the bigger man, since he figured he would be the first one to act. Did he have a switchblade in his pants pocket? If so, maybe Lionel could use his suitcase to block it, and he could land a punch before striking out at the smaller man.

  “This is a waste of our damn time,” the woman in blue jeans said to the two men. “Arnelle and I are walking this way, away from all y’all. You want to fight? That don’t make a bit of difference to me. Just don’t take up my Saturday night!”

  She began walking, pausing for a second for Arnelle to catch up. Arnelle made a kissy face to Lionel before ambling off. Lionel was as shocked as he was relieved. Wasn’t it obvious that he was trying to defend them? The girls were halfway down the block now, the slap of their heels against the pavement too faint to hear. Lionel picked up his suitcase and shrugged his shoulders, which he meant as a way to say to the two men, simply, “Women!” But he hadn’t been able to turn around before the smaller man said, “Brother man, we’re not finished here. Where the hell you think you’re going like that? What you got—a shoe-shine kit in that bag? You ain’t done with work yet.”

  The larger man nodded thoughtfully, as if his colleague had made an inarguable point. They had already forgotten all about the girls. “He ain’t even offered to fluff up our pillows or nothing,” he said, and he thought that would draw a bigger response from his friend than it did. But his friend liked to believe that he was the more clever of the two.

  Lionel took in everything around them. There was not a steady stream of cars passing by, but whatever was going to happen would take longer than thirty seconds, and enough drivers would surely see the commotion. Whether any drivers would stop and try to do something about it was another matter.

  “Reach in that bag of yours and get your kit out, boy,” the smaller man said. “We don’t have all night.”

  Lionel nodded once, and he gave off a contemplative expression meant to suggest he was considering which tools would be best suited for the job. It was clear that he would have to hit first—and quickly—if he had any chance of getting away. He bent down, his finger on the zipper of his bag, and glanced up. The men exchanged satisfied glances, though they were also a little amazed that a shoe shine was exactly what they were about to get. Lionel was closer to the big man, and he decided that he’d attack him in the midsection first, since the man was so exposed for the moment. If he could cause him to double over, he’d have a few seconds to try to put the smaller man on his back, and then all he could do was run—in his slick-soled shoes, on his tender and rubbed-raw feet.

  Just as he was about to spring upward, the smaller man pulled his left boot back and kicked at Lionel’s head, but Lionel was able to throw his body back, and instead of th
e toe of the boot landing straight across Lionel’s face, the boot tip glanced off Lionel’s neck. The bigger man leaned in as Lionel staggered to his feet and caught him by the collar and threw an uppercut to his gut. As Lionel crumpled forward, he could see that the few people walking past had stopped to look on—not in repulsion, exactly, since they had clearly seen worse, but more out of a sense of obligation. The smaller man took a couple of steps toward Lionel and tried again to kick his head, but Lionel stifled the blow by catching his boot. Then he twisted it, causing the man to tumble sideways. Lionel caught too late in his peripheral the dark blur that was the bigger man’s fist, and when it landed just under his eye, Lionel was determined not to let it knock him to the ground. The force of the punch put so loud a high-pitched ringing in Lionel’s ears that it was hard to believe he was the only one who could hear it. Lionel wavered but managed to steady himself and put his fists up, more for show than anything. The smaller man had gotten up and was coming for him, and his friend all but stepped aside to oblige him. Lionel drew back his fist as if he were going to charge the man, and then he turned and knocked the bigger man square in the mouth. The smaller man registered surprise that Lionel could land a punch, and in his pause, Lionel then took the bigger man by the shirt collar and let fly his left elbow across the man’s head. Watching this, the smaller man seemed to remember that he had something in his back pocket that would be useful. But Lionel wasn’t going to give him the chance and dove into him, grabbing him around the waist and knocking him down so that Lionel landed directly on top of him.

  It was then that Lionel thought of his Black Justice character and how he would have handled the two thugs. Black Justice would have approved of his having attacked the bigger man first, and Black Justice would have admired the quick way Lionel responded to the man reaching for something in his back pocket. No one was used to more dirty tricks or uneven fights than Black Justice, and that required hyper-speed decision-making and reflexes. That was part of what Black Justice was known for. But just as Black Justice could never count on help from others, so this was true for Lionel. There were maybe ten people who stood watching the fight now, only one of them female, and as a spectacle the fight had more or less earned its credentials, but it had done nothing to encourage the breaking up of a lopsided match.

  Lionel was on the smaller man. He thought a solid punch to the head might retire him, but the bigger man, who had shaken off the shock of Lionel’s two blows, was another matter entirely. Lionel’s punch had been, miraculously, swift and efficient, and he could thank the two years during high school when he worked out regularly at Bald Eagle Gym, a few blocks from his house, after failing to make the football team, for that. Yet the larger man, with blood pooling out of his nose, was still in a state of disbelief that a man thirty pounds lighter than he—in a starched gray uniform, no less—had caused such injury. His eyes were blinking in wonder, like a little boy whose punishment far exceeded what he had imagined.

  If the police arrived now, Lionel’s suit, ripped and bloodstained in two places, might win him a more compassionate assessment, but the police were also just as likely to take them all in and let a judge sort it out in the days ahead. That would be the end of Lionel’s job, for starters, and what came after that was too much to let register as even a flicker in his mind. Lionel jumped off the man and ran left of the bigger man, who lunged for him but without full vigor. Lionel snatched his bag and began sprinting back in the direction he had come. The drumming of his shoes against the sidewalk drowned out the ringing in his ears, and he tried not to meet the stares of those who stopped in their tracks to watch him.

  When he had charged hard for two blocks, he looked back to see if anyone was following him—police officers, either of the two men, a bystander who hadn’t approved of the outcome. There was no one, but if a police car crossed in front of him now, they’d stop him based on his appearance alone. He then darted into an alleyway, wrestling off his jacket. Though he knew it was a pointless gesture, considering the ruined condition of it, he took care to fold the jacket once before pushing it into the bag.

  The most important thing was to lie low, to let an hour or more pass before he stepped out again. He pulled a wooden crate out from a stack of them and found a way to sit down on it, letting his head rest against the brick wall. He eased off his shoes and examined his hands in the dim light. His right hand was badly cut across the knuckles, but nothing more. It was his first night in Washington, and he had wanted so little from it: to talk with Adanya for even a minute or two, to stroll around the city after a cheap dinner. Lionel hadn’t been in a real fight since he was in tenth grade, but as an artist he had spent countless hours plotting fights and drawing them. Every once in a while one of his heroes lost a fight, and when he did he would slink away into some place of hiding and nurse himself back to health. Dark Matter, who as a custodian in a nuclear power plant had been exposed to nuclear radiation and could turn his skin into an unbreakable alloy, was once beaten so badly by the Sledgehammer that he had retreated into hiding for a solid month until he could recuperate. But such setbacks were rare in Lionel’s world of heroes. Mostly they never had to explain a pulpy face after a beating, and if they had to limp around for a day or two, there was no one around them who questioned what was wrong. All his heroes were loners. Their choice was always to fight. But how did they live with that month after month, year after year? Lionel wondered now. It was a question he had never asked himself before.

  Washington

  When she stepped into the lobby, Maeve was eager to tell Mr. Hinton about the nurse’s husband, though now she remembered that in her daze she hadn’t thought to ask his name. But instead of Mr. Hinton, Maeve found that one of the bellboys was in his place. He couldn’t have been much older than she, with a touch of acne on his chin, and the fact that he had kept on his little red cap—a monkey’s hat, she decided—made her even angrier that he was standing there.

  Seeing the young girl’s pretty face, the bellboy stiffened his posture and cocked his head slightly at an angle he thought served him best. “Hello, miss,” he said. “Can I help you?”

  “I was looking for Mr. Hinton,” she said. “Is he not here?”

  “Mr. Hinton finished up a while ago. But is there something I can do for you?” He smiled a little too eagerly, and this put Maeve in no better a mood.

  “No, that’s all right,” she said, and turned away. She would see Mr. Hinton in the morning, before checkout. But then, she couldn’t be sure that he worked on Sundays. Standing, Maeve felt a little wobbly and decided she should lie down before she collapsed again. But if that unpleasant elevator man was still on his shift, she would take the steps to the sixth floor, no matter the risk.

  Instead, the elevator opened to its empty walls. She had eaten only a little soup at a restaurant in Union Station that wasn’t very good, but now she wondered if she should have forced herself to eat more. When the elevator came to a stop, the jolt made her stomach drop. Inside her room the air conditioner sounded even worse, but now she was grateful for the cacophony of its well-worn parts. She turned on the television set and sat on the edge of her bed, kicking off her shoes. She hoped to find some news report of the funeral train, but there was a baseball game on one channel, and a western on the other, and she was too tired to do any more searching. She pulled herself back onto the bed a bit more, and she thought again of the doctor from the station and how in that first moment his voice had reminded her so much of her father. Right before she drifted off, she remembered a story her father used to tell. Maeve had been sick with fever, and she had slept the better part of two days when she awoke to find him by her bed, holding a wet cloth to her forehead.

  “Well, hello there,” he said.

  She smiled weakly, not ready to speak. But he could see that she was in the mood to listen. When was she not? This particular story always started like this: “Did I ever tell you about the time Frankie Farland caught the nuns sleepwalking in the cemetery?
”

  New York

  Lionel stepped back onto the street, keeping his head down, but also constantly glancing over his shoulder, staying alert. Black Justice never let anyone take him by surprise, and since Lionel had created all the character’s sharp instincts, it was critical that he apply them himself this night.

  Lionel had a street address, but it was on the other side of town. He knew enough that in the nation’s capital it could be hard for a black man to get a cab, and for over twenty minutes, cab after cab passed him, many with empty backseats. More than once Lionel caught the expression of a white driver looking him over as he drove—the on-duty sign lit above—and wincing, or shaking his head in dismay at the very idea of stopping for him. Lionel kept walking. When a breeze picked up, the city still smelled faintly like a bonfire.

  Eventually, a cab driven by a black man caught sight of Lionel’s outreached hand and turned around to pick him up. He could only see Lionel’s left side, which was unhurt, and Lionel kept his face turned so that his right side was out of view. He thanked the driver for stopping and gave him the address. Almost immediately Lionel saw another pay phone, and it pained him all over again to not hear Adanya’s voice.

  When the cabdriver eventually came to a stop, they were in front of a single-story building that had been in need of repainting twenty years ago. Lionel paid the driver, and when he got out he was confronted all over again with his injuries. He stood for a while, appreciating the silence. Once inside, the laughter coming from the far end shot out like a car backfiring, which made him all the more mournful. He rounded the corner of a cinder-block wall, and there, among a dozen bunk beds, were the men from his crew, hovering over a game of cards. The air was heavy with sour smoke. He could see Buster Hayes dealing out a hand, and Big Brass was to his side, hoisting a bottle of beer for the last swallow. It was Big Brass who saw him first.