by Sol Yurick
He kept stopping and listening for trains. A hole in his right sock kept widening and his toe began to rub on the leather. He listened. He heard his choky breathing distorted by the tunnel echo. Everything rumbled steadily, but seemed too faint to mean that a train was approaching. What was it then? Something dripped; something else rustled. Rats? But he was used to those. Always rats wherever he lived. He slowed. There were coffin-shaped niches painted white, along the sides. A man could stand there if trains came along. He was still sweating from his run, but at least it was cool here and it didn’t bother a man to move. After a while the chilliness of the air became something felt on his skin, crawly, and that made him sure something was happening—he didn’t know—as if he was in a haunted place. Foolishness. Junior kid-stuff. He laughed. The echo of that snort-laugh shocked him; distorted, he didn’t know what it was for a second.
He walked on. He turned around. He could still see the station back there. How far was it to the next station? He couldn’t remember how long it had taken that train to come down. Couldn’t be too long, he decided. But the tunnel seemed to darken as he went; the chill increased; the steady rumble grew not so much louder, not so much as if something was coming his way, but as if the whole earth was vibrating, making weird noises.
Suppose the cops had seen him run up the tunnel? What if they had sent the word ahead to lay in wait for him? Wouldn’t it be silly to keep on? All that walk to fall into their hands at the end of it. How they would laugh at him. How cool was that, how smart? Stop? Wait: sleep a little? Still, Hinton thought, you couldn’t be sure. He wondered what had happened to the others. They might have gotten away and just not seen him. Maybe they thought the cops had him. The thought buckled his knees, made him tired enough to lay down. He touched the pin and the cigarette in his hat and thought, No, Papa Hector would never allow that. If they were free, they would be waiting somewhere for him. Where? Surely not at the 96th Street station. At 42nd Street where they were supposed to change for the Coney Island train. He kept going.
But if they were all captured, then it was serious. He was really alone. They would take the Family to the Station and hit them around a little, and get names and addresses, find out about the whole operation, that he had gotten away, maybe even about the man they had killed. When he got home, they would be waiting for him, like they had more than once waited for his half brother, Alonso. It might be simpler to just go back and give himself up. It might be in his favor, but it wouldn’t be manly if he did. They would laugh him down and point him out as a betrayer, and he would be out of the gang, alone. And if he was alone, they would always be coming down on him. It had cost him enough trouble to get into the gang and become a brotherson. He couldn’t give that up. He kept walking.
Something hit his hat. Bats! There were always bats in caves and tunnels, everybody knew that. Vampire bats! Bloodsuckers. He looked up. He shrieked—clusters of them! The shriek echoed up and down, dying slowly like the high twitters of millions of bats. He cowered, kneeling on a tie, unable to move. But they didn’t fly down on him. He waited. He suddenly scuttled. They didn’t pounce on his back. He stopped, out of breath again, and looked up, his hand held in front of his face. He saw thick hanging paint peels, crumbling plaster, stalactites. He took off his hat. There was a big water splotch on it where some limey water had fallen. Maybe the tunnel could cave in. He shook his head to shake out the fears and walked on fast, lurching and tripping. A matter of going on, keeping calm. He would soon be to that station. He would take the train and go on down to the transfer point and meet his family there. He brushed his hat. The pin was a little off center and he tried to adjust it. He moved on, taking deep breaths to keep control. His ankle and toe hurt because of the shoe.
After a while he saw that the tracks gleamed away in a curve till they were chopped off by the swell of the turning wall. The tunnel would be in a worse darkness than here; worse because the station lights would be cut off. What if a train was bearing down on him right now and he couldn’t hear it because of the tunnel wall? Did he dare go on? He half-turned. The lights of the 96th Street station were far away, barely visible now, clustered, gay, festive, tight little light strings vibrating like sparklers. He had come so far now that even the side lights illuminating the tunnel ran together at the far end. Then surely, Hinton thought, the station must be just a little further, probably just around the curve. But he stood there for a while, afraid, fighting it out, not wanting to go; afraid to leave the station lights once and for all. He was being silly. A punk kid, he told himself. It was only a matter of keeping on till he came to the station. There couldn’t be a train coming; he’d hear it. He moved again.
The curve was longer than it appeared; it unrolled slowly as he came along it. He kept turning around to look at the 96th Street station. He tripped, fell on his palms, got up and kept going. After a while the lights were all gone. He felt alone in a darkness greater than any he had ever known before. It closed in more and more as he kept going.
There was a little light ahead. Slowly he came up on it, trying to keep close to the center pillars. He came to and passed a glass-windowed room off to the right, on the side of the uptown tracks. Men in overalls were sitting around a table, playing cards. Two were laughing. There were some beer cans on the table. It looked cool and pleasant there. He stumbled and made a noise as he passed and froze behind a pillar. They didn’t seem to hear anything, since they didn’t turn to look. He almost wished they’d notice him, take him in, give him a glass of beer. Not really, he thought, they were all white men, the Other. Even though it looked nice there, how could you be sure? He forced himself to keep walking and left the light behind.
The rails hummed. The dripping became louder, more frequent now, building up into the sound of water running. The chill became harder, a little stiffer in his face. Was there a train coming? The loneliness increased; he had never been as alone as this, never as cut off. Little sounds accumulated till there was a constant murmur keeping pace with him. He had to tell himself that his fear was a silly fear, not a man’s fear. Not fear of what there was, but a little boy’s fear, a terror of what wasn’t. A Junior fear. He had to be a hard man, like the others—Arnold, Hector, Bimbo, Lunkface, Dewey, Ismael. These were never afraid. After all, he remembered with pride, he hadn’t been spooked by that corpse and ghost jazz in the cemetery like that Junior, had he? No, he hadn’t!
But by now he should have come to the station. How far could it be? And he tried to quick-march. Footsteps multiplied off the walls. Many people, or a many-footed something seemed to be walking just behind him. He stopped a second-fraction after. It was still, except for the perpetual humming. He felt as though a great multitude had stopped with him too. He listened for breathing; he heard only his own. He moved on: they walked with him. He reminded himself again; it was a matter of keeping order and staying disciplined and thinking of the thing after—connecting with the men, for instance. And, anyway, he joked with himself, he was probably in the coolest part of the city. He made himself laugh but stopped. If he laughed someone might hear him. He smiled. He tried to cheer himself with the thought about the way the Family eyes would bug when he told them, “Man, let me tell you where I was and what I did.”
A roaring came, filling the tunnel; he looked around for it: a train was passing on the uptown track. It was on him and the pounding and shaking and echoing was painful around him, and he jumped into one of the niches. It was childish, he scolded himself. The train was on the other side and if it had been here, he would have been killed before he had time to be scared. He stepped out between the rails and looked at the lights rattling by on the other side of the pillars. People were sitting in there; he could see the backs of their heads, and he began to run after the train, shouting at it. But no one turned around to look at him. Then the train was gone.
He stopped running. He walked on again. No, there was something there, someone. He thought of singing, but all he could think about were the moaning r
hythms of a rock’n’roll hymn, and that was childish. Besides, if the cops were waiting up along the line, why give himself away? Anyway, who believed that religion shit? His mother said gospelly things all the time, but that was when she wanted something out of someone.
He had another thought. What if he had not gone up the same way they had come down on the train? What if he had gone up some spur that went on forever, or branched off into many tunnels? He would be lost forever, alone in this blackness. Except, of course, for the rats. They were here. He could hear them rustling. And except for that . . . whatever it was, moving, always moving when he moved, stopping when he stopped.
He passed a blue light. Everything looked blue. What did blue lights mean? He knew what the red and green and yellow lights meant. It made his hand-skin look strange, old, covered with blue sweat. He wondered how it would be if people had blue skin. Like being dead, he thought, like not really being people. So maybe he was dead and had turned blue. The tunnel kept curving—maybe he had come back on his track and was walking in circles. Was that possible? He darted a few steps. It winded him, too quickly. Was there some kind of gas here; some kind of secret, unnoticeable poison gas? It smelled funny. The noises were louder. Or maybe the rats had an army down here. Here was their turf. Maybe they fought in gangs too? Maybe they were massing to come down on him and swarm over him. There was nowhere to hide.
He heard the sound of sobbing. The crying voices multiplied from everywhere till this whole world was filled with a chorus of sobs. Who was crying here? He stood still. And he cried now, and screamed, and waited for IT to take him. And if he shrieked, it would finally be over, because IT would know just where he was and come to get him quickly. He began to run and slipped and fell and got up and kept trotting the way he had been going. But the sound of sobbing and crying followed him with all the footsteps, mocking, filling the tunnel with weeping and crazy laughing at the same time, and the sound he couldn’t help making betrayed him to the world as a coward and a weakling. What would Papa Arnold have done? What would Hector have done? He was a man, he told himself. A man! Hadn’t he rumbled and held his own? Hadn’t he been drunk? Hadn’t he stayed cool? Hadn’t he stolen and not been caught? Didn’t he ball that bitch . . . too? Hadn’t he wasted his man? Was that the kind of man that little-babied so easy? Didn’t he learn long ago that to tear-up is to get laughed at, even by your own mother, or that motherfucker, Norbert, his mother’s boy friend. It was better in this world to dry your tears before they left your eyes, and stifle the howl-sounds from the earliest on, because it was only going to get you put down.
But IT didn’t come as easy, or get anything over with. There was no one here—nothing at all. Only the blackness, and he was part of it, and he was more alone than he had ever been. And now he became like a little baby, making howl sounds that he had never permitted himself to make. He heard himself and promised that as soon as he caught his breath, he was just going to start laughing at himself for the kind of Dominator he hadn’t been. Just suppose that the others had gotten away too, and were behind him, jiving him, sneaking up on him, to watch him, to test him, the way they had tested him when he had first come into the gang. That stopped him. He turned and looked back. He called out, “All right, I know you’re there. Come on out. I was only joking.”
He caught his breath and listened. He heard nothing but rustling and rumbling and humming. He saw nothing but a few big water bugs scuttle in and out of the circles of light.
He was muttering, “Fuck them, fuck it, fuck them.” And he got madder and madder and he was yelling with rage at what that mothering Family was doing to him, and he tore off his hat and threw it down and stamped on it, and the pin, and he went over to the wall and finger-wrote in the crusted dirt, “Hinton D. shits on the MF Dominators from the Father and the Mother on down, and on all his brothers.”
And he thought, all right, he would just pack himself into a niche and wait. He didn’t know what he’d wait for, but he would wait. He would curl up and put his head on his knees and wait till the cops, or his Family, or IT came and got him. He would do just that because he hadn’t been in a quiet spot for days and days now.
But what he had just done terrified him, because it so completely cut him off, and though they couldn’t see it, it was as though the Family would somehow know what he had done, and he would be out, but good. He got his hat, straightened it, fidgeted with the pin, taking it off, brushing it, pinning it back on the hat, straightening the damaged war cigarette. He wiped off what he had written with his sleeve and took out the Magic Marker and wrote, instead, the Name of his Family, to show that there was no place in this city, even this tunnel, where his Family was not or had not been. The act comforted him and he went on.
And after a while, he came around another curve and there was the station. He slowed and sneaked up on it, looking to see that there were no cops on the platform and that no one spotted him. He looked around and when the few people that were there didn’t notice, he climbed the ladder at the platform’s end and was on the I 11th Street station.
Now it was only a matter of getting to the Times Square stop and changing for the Coney Island train. He would meet the Family there. If they had gotten away, that’s where they would meet him. He was sure.
He jittered. He was ashamed of himself. He had gone through something he didn’t understand. He was glad no one had seen him, but he felt as if it was there, marked on his face, on his clothes for everyone to know what he was. He asked himself, how many of the others could do what he had done—walk through that darkness alone? The answer didn’t comfort him.
After a while the downtown train came and he got on. In the clear train light, mirrored in a window he saw that his clothes were water stained, plaster smeared, spotted all over with chalk. He didn’t sit yet. The back of his right sock was rubbed away and the flesh of his ankle was abraded raw. The shoe was still held together by the narrow band of frayed leather and he had to keep his toe cramped when he walked. One of his palms was scraped bloody and they were both dirty. He took off his hat. Water had mottled it. The shine of his insignia was dulled, and his cigarette was partly split and tobacco sprayed out over the band. He remembered what Lunkface had done to him. He wondered if Lunkface was enough of a man to walk through that darkness. Of course: Lunkface would come through, but strong. The best thing in life was to be like Lunkface.
Hinton sat down. He leaned back, unhappy, uncomfortable, not daring to sleep in case he missed his stop.
July 5th, 3:10–3:35 A.M.
Dewey and The Junior escaped the transit cop by bounding down the stairs. They swung off right into a short underpass smelling of piss. They pounded a few steps and cut off to the right again, bouncing up the staircase to the platform. They heard Hector, Bimbo, Lunkface chasing behind them. Across the tracks, on the downtown side, the train had pulled out; they could see the transit-chaser wheezing after them in a slow, clumsy pursuit, and it was a miracle they weren’t seen.
A train was waiting on the uptown local tracks. They whipped in and sat down away from the doors, backs to the window, half-scrunched down to avoid being seen, not looking behind them. The Junior pulled out his comic book and stared at it, trying to look like he’d been reading it for hours. He didn’t see a thing; he couldn’t read past one panel which showed a three-colored Greek warrior with his raised spear, ready to shove it into a skin-wearing enemy’s throat. He kept expecting to see, out of the edges of his eyes, the great black flat feet of the headbusters coming to close in on him. Dewey pursed his lips like whistling, but didn’t make a sound; he sat there, blowing air. He tried to keep his hands classroom-folded, but they fidgeted, picking at him, finding dirty places to brush off and creases to straighten out, refolding and beginning again. Where were the others; probably in one of the other train cars.
The doors closed. The train started. They didn’t know where they were going, they didn’t even dare to look up at the destination sign. The thing was to do nothing
for a little while; surely Hector would show. The train came to the next station, 103rd Street. The Junior wondered if they had come downtown this way. They hit 110th Street. The Junior became confused. The next stop was 116th and The Junior knew they were going a different way. But the third stop was 125th Street. They knew they had passed this station on the way down, but this was out in the open, high up on a trestle. They were confused now. They got up and went from car to car, looking for the others and found that now they were alone. Had the fuzz captured the others? They sat down and tried to figure out what they should do.
Dewey thought it would be a good idea to ride on for a while and then to go back. After all, he told The Junior, they knew—to change for the Coney Island train at Times Square—the BMT it was, Dewey remembered. They would go on for a while, cross over and double downtown, and meet the others where you get the Coney Island train. They would wait there for a while; if the others didn’t show, that could only mean that the busters had really taken them and they would make it home themselves.
They sat for a while. Now they were safe and The Junior could concentrate. He turned a page, forgot what he had been reading, and looked back to the point where the Greek warrior, muscled and big chested, was putting the spear point to the enemy’s gut. The Junior saw himself putting the spear point to the enemy fuzz—a bull in blue armor wearing a steel helmet, with a New York City seal shield, coming down the platform, charging down on them. The Greek heroes were climbing mountains and the enemy was japping for them along a ridge. They had piles of rocks in ready-to-cut nets, logs to roll down, which could be set on fire. The leader of the Greeks, cool in a gold glinting helmet with a wavy-fur crest, was trying to parley with the savage leader of the hill tribesmen, only they wouldn’t negotiate. The hero said, well, they had come in peace and they wanted to pass in peace, and they were marching through, and if we have to waste you, we waste. If you come down on us, it’s on your head because we wanted peace. Remember.
