Lowland Rider

by Chet Williamson

  Lowland Rider

  By Chet Williamson

  Crossroad Press & Macabre Ink Digital Edition

  Copyright 2010 by Chet Williamson & Macabre Ink Digital Publications

  Copy-edited, formatted, and checked for accuracy against the original paperback edition by David Dodd

  LICENSE NOTES:

  This e-book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This e-book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to your vendor of choice and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author

  To Richard Picchiarini,

  Child of the City

  “. . . The gods of whom you speak were never all-powerful. They had, at all times, by their side those darker powers which they named the Jotuns, and who worked the suffering, the disasters, the ruin of our world . . . The omnipotent gods have no such facilitation. With their omnipotence they take over the woe of the universe."

  —"Sorrow-Acre", Isak Dinesen

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER 1

  BODY FOUND IN SUBWAY

  The body of an unidentified man was found on the Eighth Avenue express track at the 34th Street station at noon yesterday. Though platforms were filled with waiting passengers, none saw anyone leap from the platform.

  A transit police spokesman stated that identification would be difficult, as the victim's head was crushed, and the hands mangled.

  —New York Post, April 7, 1984

  ~*~

  MARCH 15, 1986

  The air screamed. It shrieked as if something torn, split apart, buffeted by irresistible forces. The wind blew dust and soot and debris left by thousands up into Rags's eyes, making them sting, so that he had to close them. "Muthah," he swore softly. "Or muthah train."

  The Eighth Avenue local came to a stop with a harsh hissing of brakes, and the small hurricane subsided, leaving the air chill, foul, and oppressive. The doors opened with a grating rattle, freeing several dozen passengers who scurried onto the platform and toward the stairs, eager to be above again, out of the tunnels. Rags waited until the human flood had ceased, then boarded the car and sat in the corner.

  A young girl reading a paperback book sat across from him. Beneath her light jacket she was wearing a white uniform. Rags eyed her white stockings, white heavy shoes. "You a nurse?" he asked, as the doors slammed shut.

  She looked up for a second, then back down at her book. Rags read the author's name, but didn't recognize it. He patted his right rib cage to make sure his own books were still there.

  "Nurses' good people," he observed. The girl licked her lips and kept her eyes on her book. "My sister was a nurse." The girl closed her book gently, got up, and started to walk down the length of the car. At that moment the train lurched forward, making her stumble. Her book fell onto the green tile floor. Rags lumbered to his feet, and with a grace borne of many years in a wheeled and moving home, snatched up the volume and held it out to the girl, who blanched, took it, and moved as quickly as she dared to the door at the end of the car, through which she disappeared.

  Rags sighed and maneuvered himself back to his seat. The girl was gone, and he could now see his reflection in the window across from him. He didn't like to see his reflection. That, and the fact that he liked people, was why he tried to sit across from them whenever he could. Most times, though, he couldn't. At night, for example. Of course it was always night in the tunnels, always night if you were a rider. Always blackness outside so you could see yourself against it, part of it, part of the blackness.

  "Black man," said Rags, eyeing himself scornfully. "Poor old black fool." An Orthodox Jew in the middle of the car looked up at Rags's words. Rags felt the eyes on him and turned. The Jew wrinkled his nose as though he smelled something bad, and Rags wondered if he had gone to the bathroom in his pants. He wiggled his backside against the hard seat, but felt nothing objectionable. He was glad. He had done that only twice before, and they had thrown him off the train both times.

  Now he breathed deeply, trying to smell himself. It was sour, of course it was—what could you expect when you wore so many clothes? But he couldn't part with them, all those reds and golds and greens and bright sunflower yellows wrapped around him like mummy-cloth, on his arms and legs and around his waist, his wrinkled black waist that he hadn't seen for oh sweet Jesus it seemed like months. He sniffed again and reminded himself to wash soon.

  The motion of the train rocked him to sleep, and when he opened his eyes again, the old Jew was gone, and Rags was alone on the car. He tried to remember how many stops the train had made while he dozed, and thought it was seven, which meant that 135th Street should be next. But then he felt a jolt and knew he must have counted wrong. That was the bad piece of track between 116th and 125th. He must have dreamed an extra stop.

  Now the train slowed, and Rags reminded himself to stay awake. He couldn't afford to sleep past the 168th Street station. There was an alcove he'd discovered there that the transit cops hardly ever checked. If he got off there he'd be fine, but if he didn't, he'd be stuck in Washington Heights without a token to get back downtown, and little chance of finding one. He hardly ever found them at the Washington Heights station—bastards must all have cast-iron pockets.

  The train stopped at 125th, and in the sudden quiet Rags thought he heard voices in the car ahead, then footfalls. He stepped to the other side of the car and looked out onto the platform where he saw six young men—boys really, with the wispy beards and moustaches of pubescence—leap out onto the platform and look around like rabbits. They moved quickly out of Rags's sight then, though he could hear their sneakered footsteps and loudly whispering voices until the doors closed.

  It made Rags wonder. The boys sounded almost scared, like they'd done something bad and were trying to get away fast. They weren't the usual jiving and laughing voices that kids had, the cocky, confident, outta-my-way-I-kick-your-ass tone. Instead they'd been hushed, cautious, as if something had gone too far. Rags started walking forward, toward the car from which the boys had emerged. He was just about to open the door when he looked through the window and saw the nurse.

  She was lying on her back, her dress pushed up, her white stockings torn and stained with blood. She was not moving. Through the two layers of filthy glass Rags could see that her eyes were open and staring, still clear, not yet glazed by death as old Andy's had been last week when Rags had found him underneath his bedclothes of moldy cardboard. The front of the white uniform was splashed with a deep red that spread outward even as he watched.

  "Aw Jesus," Rags wailed. "Aw sweet Jesus, have mercy." Where the hell were the transit cops? Where were they? They were always around to kick a poor old nigger in the ankle and tell him to get off the train or get the fuck up onto the street to do your sleeping. But where were they when something like this happens to a nice young white girl? To a nurse yet. Where were they?

  Rags knew where he was. He was in hell, sure enough.

  He wanted to go through to the next car, wanted to try and help. But he knew she was beyond help. Dead as hell. And if he didn't want to be blamed for it he'd better get his ass off at 135th, or he'd be napping in the Tombs tomorrow night, and he couldn't handle that. He'd been in jail. Better to sleep in crap and sleep free, he thought. Or even sleep in hell.

  Rags was still looking at the dead girl when they approached 135th Street and the rhythm of the wheels grew less frenzied. He was about to move to the outside doors, when he became aware of another living face inside the next car. But wait—it wasn't in the
next car, was it? It was in the one beyond that, two cars up from Rags. That face was looking through a window too, looking at the raped and murdered nurse, and that face was smiling.

  It was not a smile of bloodlust, but of contentment, a soft smile that made the face that bore it angelic. There was also, in the eyes, a hint of sadness. Those eyes came up then, and gazed into Rags's eyes. The face held Rags, and he studied it.

  The man was a mixture of racial types—long nose, flat lips like a black man, but straight, light brown hair, rather long, covering the ears. The skin was swarthy, but the eyes were blue. Rags knew his name. Enoch.

  Enoch smiled at Rags, and opened the first of the doors that separated them. Rags stiffened, and felt a hot trickle of urine that soaked into the layers of clothes he wore. But Enoch wasn't coming for him. It was the girl he was interested in, the dead and ruined girl on the dirty floor. Enoch stopped when he reached her, knelt beside her, and lowered his face to hers.

  Rags saw no more. Choking back a sob, he turned and ran onto the platform through the open doors, which slammed shut behind him like the closing of a tomb.

  The train rocketed away into the darkness, and Rags stood alone on the bare platform, shivering in spite of his many pounds of cloth. This town needs a deliverer, he thought. This town needs a Moses.

  Then he wondered if a Moses would really help. He wondered what even a Jesus could do.

  JESSE GORDON'S JOURNAL:

  FEBRUARY 18TH, 1987

  I have seen him again, twice in one day now. And both times involved with death, horror.

  I have been riding the Lexington Avenue line for the past few days, with the usual side trip to Penn Station. The weather is bitter cold, and this line seems warmer somehow. Rags is faithful to the Eighth Avenue, and I can understand. At his age it's almost like a home. But back to Enoch.

  It must have been around 5:30—early morning at any rate. I was dozing when a high scream woke me. We were stopped at a station, but the doors had either closed or not yet opened, I wasn't sure which. I looked out onto the platform and saw two black men in their early thirties assaulting an old woman. One of them was holding her purse, going through its contents, dumping things on the platform until he came to her change purse, which he pocketed. The other was kicking the woman, who lay on her side, her back to him. He kicked her in the buttocks, spine, and the back of her head and neck. I didn't see her moving at all.

  Then Enoch walked up to them, with that damned smile of his. The two of them bowed to him, as if paying him obeisance, and walked down the platform. The train started off then, but I saw him kneel by the old woman. At the last, it looked as if he were kissing her.

  I felt filthy. It was as if the whole subway, the entire system of tunnels, was soiled by his presence. I got off the Lexington at 51st and made my way over to the Seventh Avenue platform. I felt better immediately. Less happens there, I thought.

  But I was wrong. Between Cortlandt and Rector the gang piled on. I recognized. their colors—the Noisy Boys—and wondered why they were off their own turf. But it didn't matter to the boy with the trumpet.

  He was sitting at the other end of the car, a thin kid, maybe fourteen or fifteen, dressed in a winter coat that looked like a hand-me-down. He had on one of those old-fashioned caps with earflaps, though to his credit they were up. Thick-lensed glasses finished the picture. If ever I'd seen a perfect victim, patsy, schlemiel, it was this kid. I prayed to God when I saw him that he wouldn't get hassled, but it did all the good my other prayers have done. I knew, when the Noisy Boys came barreling into the car, that the best the kid could hope for was a stepped-on foot.

  There were seven of them, big, dumb, white, and Irish, the kind of city Irish that wouldn't know a County Cork man if he bit them in the ass, but who cheer each time the IRA blows up a children's hospital. They sang and called and bellowed, spraying "fuck" like blessings in between their other words. The other passengers in the car—a well-dressed, middle-aged couple who should have been in a cab anyway—got up and left as soon as the Boys entered. But the boy with the trumpet and I stayed.

  I stayed for the reasons I always stay. They can't frighten me, not even if they kill me, so they don't try. I don't know why the young boy stayed. Perhaps he felt that moving would only attract their attention to him. He did seem to shrink within himself, as though wanting to merge unnoticed into the hard plastic of the seat. It didn't do him any good. The Noisy Boys had him pegged as a wimp from the womb.

  "Whoa, look at this!" one of them said, and I knew the kid was mincemeat. "A moo-sish-un!" I've come to the conclusion that with all the media glop kids stuff themselves with today, faulty pronunciation must be studied. "What do you play, kid?"

  "Trumpet," the boy said, so softly I could barely hear him.

  But the Noisy Boys heard, and went into a rap on sucking and blowing. All the while the kid kept his eyes down, not looking up for fear of what he might see. "Lemme see it," one of the gang said. "I wanta see your horny horn."

  "Yeah, come on, asshole," another put in. "Show us your horny horn. Flash your little tooter!"

  The boy didn't respond at all. If he had, if he'd started to cry, that might have been enough for them and they'd have left him alone. But he didn't. He ignored them. It was a big mistake.

  "You hear me, pussy? I wanta see your horn." One of the gang, with a shock of uncombed red hair and several missing teeth, grabbed the case and yanked it away from the boy. He tried to stand up and go after it, but two others pushed him down. The back of his head made a crack against the window, but he didn't rub it. He was a spunky kid, for what that was worth.

  Red Hair snapped open the latches and the lid fell open. The trumpet fell on the floor with a hell of a clunk. The boy cried out then, like he should have when he hit his head. He started after it again, and was again shoved back. Red Hair picked up the trumpet, dug the mouthpiece out of the case, and jammed it home. "Listen, guys," he said, "I'm gonna play a tune on the faggot's trumpet." He put the horn to his lips and a cowlike braying came out. "What is this shit?" he yelled, while his buddies laughed and hooted. "This horn's a piece of shit, it don't work!"

  The rest of them took up the cry then. "If it don't work, bust it!"

  "If it don't work, bust it!"

  "What fuckin' good is it? Smash it!"

  Finally the boy yelled in a thin voice far higher than the Noisy Boys—"You don't know how to play it, you stupid . . ."

  He didn't finish. The ferocity with which Red Hair' glared at him wouldn't let him, and the car got very quiet.

  I suppose I could have said something, have told them to leave the boy alone, have pulled the emergency brake cord and toppled them on their fat asses, but if I'd done either of those things, anything, really, but what I did, which was to sit there quietly and watch, I'd have been so much dead meat. Besides, I was an observer of the passing scene. I wasn't there to intervene. I was only there to watch.

  So I watched, as Red Hair went up to the boy and stuck his face only an inch away from the boy's own. "You know how to play it, smartass," he leered at the boy, and something in Red Hair's face or voice or breath or all three made the boy's face sour, and he tried to look away. But Red Hair grabbed the boy's ear and twisted, so that the boy was looking at him once more. "You know how?" Red Hair snarled.

  "Yes," the boy said, with more spirit than I would have shown under the circumstances.

  "Then you play somethin' for us. We wanta hear a tune. Right, boys?" The rest of the gang jeered and whistled. Red Hair looked at me for the first time. "Right, Mr. Easy Rider?"

  I nodded. Actually I thought it would be nice to hear the sound of a live instrument again. My only source of music for a long time has been ghetto blasters.

  "You got a command performance, my man," Red Hair said, handing the boy the trumpet. "You play requests?"

  "I can play anything," answered the boy, the brave, gutsy, abysmally stupid and suicidal boy. He might have been from Mars for all the se
nse he showed handling these cretins.

  "Wowie zowie," said Red Hair. "Anything, huh? Okay then, how about Taps?"

  "That's just a bugle call," the boy answered.

  "I like Taps," Red Hair said. "Play it."

  The boy looked at Red Hair like he wanted to jam the trumpet up his ass, but he raised the horn to his lips and started to play.

  It was beautiful. The notes, long and full, made the car sound like an echo chamber. It took me out of the tunnels, above ground again, over to Union Field Cemetery in Queens, where we'd go with Grandpa Gordon every Memorial Day when I was a kid, and we'd stand under the late spring sun and look out over the graves and hear the soldiers fire their salute and then listen to the bugler play Taps so sadly you thought your heart would break. Even the Noisy Boys seemed entranced.

  All of them except Red Hair. Just as the boy was letting the last note of "God is nigh" fade away, Red Hair brought up his foot fast as light and kicked the bell of the horn as hard as he could.

  The mouthpiece disappeared between the boy's lips and I saw teeth splinter and fly. Red Hair kicked again, straight in as before, and the rear curve of the horn snapped the boy's jaw down and the brass tubing went in until the valves hit the kid's upper lip. There was a gagging, choking sound, and the boy went down, his earflapped cap still tight against his head. Even the Noisy Boys gasped.

  But Red Hair barked, "Come on," and led the gang through the car toward me. At first I thought I was next, and I tensed, ready at last to fight for self-preservation if nothing else. But I didn't have to. As Red Hair passed me, he leaned in my direction and said, "You got a lousy memory, don'tcha?" to which I tacitly nodded agreement. He was just about to open the door to the next car when he froze, and I thought with joy that maybe a transit cop with a big fat gun had his paw on the handle of the other side.