Lowland Rider

by Chet Williamson

  "She must hate animals anyway."

  "Yeah. Breeders, she calls 'em. I useta talk to her before she went way off. See a rat or somethin', she say them damn breeders—funny word."

  "Funny lady."

  "Funny? Not too damn funny . . . oh, I see what you mean. Like weird funny, yeah, she weird funny all right."

  The train rolled on, and Rags watched the white man, who had now turned his attention to the advertising panels, from which a defaced Miss Subways gazed out. "Where you headin'?"

  "Uptown."

  Rags laughed. "Well, shit, sure. Wheresabout uptown?"

  The man looked at Rags, and, for an instant, the grimness of his face was frightening. "Nowhere special. Just riding."

  "Where you live?"

  "Here."

  Rags shook his head as though he'd heard incorrectly. "You mean New York or what?"

  "Just here."

  "Down here?"

  "Yes."

  "The tunnels?"

  "Yes."

  "Bullshit. You ain't no skell."

  "No what?"

  "Skell. What we called live down here. You no skell. You lookin' too good be a skell."

  The man shrugged. Rags took it as an invitation, stepped across the aisle, and sat next to the man, who didn't move, except to open his mouth and breathe through it rather than through his nose.

  "What's your name?"

  The question seemed to take the stranger by surprise. He turned sharply and glared at Rags for a long time. Finally his face softened, and Rags felt the man was looking through him, toward something far away. "Jesse," he said at last, so softly that Rags could barely hear above the rattle of the car. "My name's Jesse."

  "Jesse, huh? Hello, Jesse. I'm Rags." Rags grinned. "Bet you can't guess why I'm called that."

  Jesse smiled back as he took in Rags's cloth-wrapped legs. "Bet I can. How come?"

  "How come what?"

  "How come you wear all those . . . those cloths?"

  Rags's face twisted for a moment, but then the grin returned. "They warm, boy. Nothin' warmer'n you wrap a whole lotta shit around you like a mummy. Keep you good and warm."

  "Why don't you just wear two pair of pants or something?"

  "Hell, you can't find no pants down here. But you find lotsa rags."

  "It's not all that cold, is it?"

  Rags frowned. "Cold enough. Cold enough for me."

  ~*~

  Jesse Gordon looked at Rags and wondered why he was lying. The early fall had been warm. The light turtleneck Jesse wore was more than sufficient, so the heat which surrounded Rags's body must have been stifling. The man's face was bright with sweat, and the smell coming off' him was vile. Though there was no trace of dried urine or caked feces, two odors that seemed to predominate many of the stations, the stench of sweat, both fresh and long-dried, was so great that Jesse nearly gagged, until several minutes of proximity inured him to the smell, and he was able to examine the man boldly.

  Rags was tall and wide, and Jesse suspected that much of his girth was due to the layers of cloth wrapped around him. The face, in contrast, was gaunt, deeply fissured black on black so that, from a distance, the sheened visage might resemble those African masks, carved of ebony, that Jesse's father had had in his shop before they were stolen in a burglary. Rags's head was tilted slightly to one side, whether from an unevenness in the multitextured collar of cloth that sheathed his neck or from a goiter Jesse could not tell. He guessed the man's age to be fifty. Despite the weight of years and experiences that Jesse could only imagine, there was a vitality about Rags, an inner fire that made the black man far more alive than all the other derelicts Jesse had seen in his short time below ground. The way in which he had confronted Baggie had impressed him as well. There had been an air of command in his tone that, no matter what his appearance or status, would brook no refusal. Whatever else he was, Jesse thought, this man was not a beggar. There was still pride in him.

  There was something else as well—adaptation. However long Rags had lived down here, it was far longer than the span of Jesse's own tenancy, and Jesse needed a mentor. There were, he well knew, techniques, tricks, procedures he must learn if he was to continue living below. In the few short weeks he had been in the tunnels, he had felt immersed in a quagmire of confusion. Like most New Yorkers, he knew only enough about the underground routes to get back and forth on frequently traveled byways. Everything beyond the Seventh Avenue local that took him to work, and the Lexington Avenue—Pelham Bay Park lines that went to his father's home in the Bronx, was a mystery. The hundreds of miles of track, the hundreds of stations that honeycombed subterranean New York City were nothing to him but brightly colored lines on a map, whose Plexiglass guard was most often veiled by fluorescent spray paint. The reality into which those parallel and intersecting lines translated was equally hidden to all but those who needed to travel them, to explore firsthand the dark lifeline, the web work of steel veins by which the city moved. In the mind of Jesse Gordon, as in the minds of most New Yorkers, those strange, interweaving lines were a source of fear. Even the lines with which one was aware had their unpleasantries, even their dangers. Might not those unknown routes then hold unheard of horrors, vicious deaths, predators more animal than human?

  Jesse still believed in that predisposed idea, that nearly archetypal concept. There were certain lines he dared not ride, certain stations at which he would not yet get off, and when the necessity of transferring required him to step from the relative safety of the train into those strange burrows, he moved quickly, unhesitatingly, only his eyes showing the panic he was ashamed, in view of the purpose of his presence there, of feeling. Fear was still with him.

  In the eyes of this large and odiferous black man, however, was no fear. The train, the tunnel, the entire network of catacombs were home to him. Jesse could feel it in the ease with which he sat beside him, the relaxed tone of his voice, all the qualities of self-possession which Jesse was so quick to notice, as they were so lacking in himself.

  "How long have you been down here?" Jesse asked.

  Rags shifted his body inside his cloth cocoon. "Long time. Years 'n years."

  "You stay here all the time?"

  "Most. One damn place bad as another. Somedays I go up above, get me some fresh air, maybe a washup at the shelter, little soup or somethin'. Mostly, I stay down here."

  Jesse thought that perhaps he shouldn't ask, but did anyway. "Why?"

  "I like it down here," Rags answered, perhaps too quickly. Then he sat silently, looking at his hands folded in his lap. After a time, he spoke again. "Here's where I feel safest."

  "Down here?"

  "Ain't so much crime's you'd think. Leastways it's what they say, and I think it's true. Lotta thievin', boys snatchin' purses and like that, but rapes and murders and stuff, they say there ain't that much."

  Jesse nodded. "You ever… see anything like that?"

  A snort came from Rags, loud enough and sharp enough to make Jesse look up quickly and see a gobbet of mucus hanging from one of Rags's nostrils. The black man wiped it away with a ragged sleeve. "I seen things. And not too long ago neither. I seen that Enoch… talk about your devil, your evil…"

  "Who? Enoch?"

  "Never you mind. Don't gotta know about Enoch. Know too much, more'n you want."

  The train howled to a stop. As it lurched, Jesse tensed and felt his stomach wrenched for what seemed the thousandth time that day. Rags, on the other hand, let himself roll with the motion of the train, like a wooden doll with a round, weighted bottom. He looked eminently relaxed. "You roll with it, not against it. It goes, you go. It stops, you stop. Otherwise you'll get a big mess of bruises."

  Jesse smiled. "I am a big mess of bruises."

  "They go 'way. You gotta remember, though. Go with it. That's the whole damn rule down here. Otherwise it spits you back up quick."

  They rode on. Jesse tried to become aware of the motion of the car, pretending he was part of it. After
a few moments he was swaying to its rhythms, which now felt more gentle, less violent.

  "See there," Rags said. "You ridin' smoother already." The car hit a rough piece of track, and Rags's back slammed against the seat. "Shit…"

  "Go with it, huh?" Jesse said, rubbing his sore spine with his knuckles.

  "Sonovabitch. I shoulda been set for that one. I remembered that one."

  "Wait a minute. You know the bumps in the lines?"

  "Well, hell, not all of 'em. But this one damn sure. One I ride most."

  "Why this one?"

  "S'long. Got a lotta stops. Don't have to change trains so damn much. That's the ticket. That's what you want. Why you be gettin' off and walkin' down those damn tunnels you don't have to? You find the long ones, you ride them."

  "Are there any that, uh, that you wouldn't ride?"

  "I ridden 'em all. Each line shit somewhere on it, but one line be baddest. That's the Beast."

  "The Beast?"

  "New Lots."

  "What?" asked Jesse, not understanding.

  "Nostrand to New Lots Avenue. Out in Brooklyn. Everybody call it the Beast 'cause it so bad." The dark lines in Rags's forehead grew blacker as he frowned. "I don't ride it no more." His voice grew softer, and Jesse barely heard the last words "…leave that to Enoch."

  It was the second time Rags had mentioned the mysterious Enoch, and Jesse's curiosity was aroused. "Who's this Enoch anyway?"

  "Jes' a man," Rags said vehemently. "He's jes' a man, that's all he is, no more." But it sounded as though Rags was trying to convince himself of that.

  "What's he do?"

  "He don't do nothin'." Rags gave a bitter chuckle. "Nosir, he don't do nothin' hisself, jes' lets others do for him. He smart, but he jes' a man!" Rags banged a hammy fist onto his own thigh.

  Suddenly Jesse felt uncomfortable. He realized that, although they had been talking like old comrades, he knew nothing about this big, strong black man by his side. He was alone in the last car of a subway train in the hours before dawn with a man who dressed in rags in the hottest weather, a man who stank of sweat and lived in tunnels, a man who, Jesse began to think, was most likely to be insane.

  Just as quickly as that thought came to him, there came another—more complex and disjointed, illogical even, but sharp and strong just the same. This is what you wanted, it said, and added, and are you not, insane as well?

  "You play chess?"

  Jesse looked up. Rags's face was still again, and his voice was calm. "Chess?"

  "I found this." He held out a small black plastic box. On it, in gold, were the words, Magna-Chess. Snapping open the catch, Rags showed Jesse the interior—a red and black chessboard, and thirty-two small black and white plastic pieces with tiny black magnets affixed to their bases. "Guess it fell outa somebody's pocket. Never learned how to play, but I always wanted to."

  Jesse clenched his teeth. He felt caught between laughing and running from the car, all the way through the train until he reached the motorman's compartment. Two madmen, speaking of chess. Of form, and structure, and strategies. It was funny and sad and absurd, and he thought of Donna and his father and Jennifer, and wondered why he was where he was, what he was really looking for, and if he could find it, and, most of all, if he wanted to find it.

  He started to speak, but his throat was tight. He cleared it and said, "Yes. Yes, I play. I can teach you."

  If you teach me.

  ~*~

  They taught each other. Although they each had much to learn, Jesse had more. His decision to descend into the New York City subway system had been born of despair and revulsion. He had seen the act as a suicide sees the ocean in which he will drown himself, as a haven, an end, a comfort, something to which all thought can be yielded, all effort surrendered. What Jesse Gordon had not reckoned with was that, unlike a suicide, he had chosen to live, and living beneath the city, he quickly discovered, was the most exacting and painstaking way to live that he had ever known.

  It was not merely riding, floating on waves until the sea eventually pulled you under; there was no sweet sleep at the line's end. That was where you rose from sleeping, and struggled again to stay above the waves, because beneath them, instead of rest, were sharks and smaller, fiercer fish, who bit your flesh with barbed teeth when you let yourself go under, so that all you could do was stay afloat. Not try to stay afloat—there was no trying, for there could not be. You did it, and that was all.

  JESSE GORDON'S JOURNAL:

  OCTOBER 6, 1986

  I have found a friend here. It's absurd, ridiculous. If anyone had told me a month ago that my closest friend would be a black subway bum with an addled mind, I'd have called him crazy. Crazy or not, it's true. We're both crazy, everyone's crazy.

  One thing is certain, though. If it wasn't for Rags—his name is Rags—I don't think I could survive the winter. I'm not sure I can even with him, but at least I've got a better chance. He is above all a kind man—dear, like a father at times in the way he treats me, and at other times like a child I must take care of. I'm certain there is something chronically wrong with his mind. He's extremely forgetful when it comes to general things like what month it is, but when it comes to the specifics of surviving underground, he is a master. Being with him, I almost feel like a student of Zen. His explanations are often as cryptic as those of some guru who speaks only in riddles, wanting his student, to figure out what the hell he's talking about. I'm afraid I'm just as great a mystery to him. It's amazing that we're able to communicate at all.

  Yesterday he asked me, "You hungry?"

  I told him I was. I hadn't had a bite in twenty-four hours. I wondered if I should offer to buy him a sandwich. I had the money—about ten dollars in my pocket, but then I wondered what he ate—and how. More to the point, I knew that if I expected to stay here, live down here for any length of time, I had better learn the ways of the place. I still feel like a stranger, and I wonder if I will ever be able to feel at home the way Rags seems to. I asked him what he usually ate.

  "Oh, what I find," he told me. "Sometimes I get some money, I buy me a whole hot dog or cheeseburger or somethin'."

  "A whole one?"

  "Yeah. Most times you can find a half or a few bites tossed away, you look hard."

  My stomach churned at that. "You eat what other people throw away."

  "Sure. Lotsa soft pretzels down the Brighton Beach line, but it don't take long to get sick of that shit. Fill you up, though. You ever see one of them things get wet? Puffs right up like a sponge."

  "You ever steal any food?"

  "Try not to, 'less I'm real hungry. Bible says thou shalt not steal."

  Rags quotes the Bible quite a bit, something I found surprising at first, until he told me he had once been a preacher. I didn't ask him how he ended up like he has. When and if he wants me to know, I assume he'll tell me, and till then, it's none of my business. "Whatta you feel like?" he asked.

  I said it didn't matter, that anything was fine, and he suggested we get on the Seventh Avenue line and head over to Penn Station, that the food was good there.

  I didn't like it. It meant leaving the subway, going up into the station itself. "How'll we get back on the lines?" I asked him.

  From somewhere in the folds of his swaddling, he brought out two tokens. "With these," he said, smiling at me. "I always got tokens, just like I always got pennies. Other stuff shines, and people pick it up, but not pennies. Even they see pennies, don't wanta pick 'em up. Not worth bendin' over for a penny. Is for me, though. And tokens. They're dark, not so shiny. See it, think it's old gum or dog shit or somethin'. Not me, though. I can tell a token fifty yards off. People always droppin' tokens."

  My argument went up in flames, but I thought, after all, Penn Station is still underground. There is something important to me about not seeing daylight, and I knew I wouldn't unless I went out to where the old ticket windows used to be, and I would be careful not to do that.

  Penn Station, like the subw
ays themselves, contains a mixture of people—businessmen, travelers, and a few skells, but not many. I felt terribly out of place there, mostly because of Rags's presence. My own appearance might be called scruffy, but not yet shabby, while Rags is unmistakably a derelict. I recalled that when I had taken trains out of Penn station I'd seen police rousting tramps and obvious psycho cases out of the terminal area and up onto the streets or down to the tracks below, and I asked Rags if we—while thinking he—wouldn't be bothered.

  "Just keep movin'," he told me. "They see you goin' someplace, they hope it's out of their eyesight, so they leave you alone. Don't matter you move slow or fast, just so's you keep movin'."

  We went up the stairs to the large, low-ceilinged room whose middle is taken up by the big call-board. Rags stationed us between the islands of seats where the passengers waited and the west stairways to the tracks. "We'll stand here, but you see a cop, you start movin'."

  A few passed while we stood there, and when we saw them we moved, hugging the wall, going toward the subway entrance. They gave us the eye, but didn't say anything, and after they'd passed, we returned to our original location. After a while Rags nudged me, and I looked where he directed and saw a bearded man in his mid thirties sitting on one of the benches. He was hurriedly eating a hot dog and watching the call-board as the train information rolled. His arm was looped through the strap of his leather shoulder bag, and he balanced a bag of french fries in his other hand. When he ate a french fry he did so gingerly, with an expression of distaste. "He's the one," Rags said. "Watch me."

  Rags stood beside me until the call-board started to change again. Then he walked purposefully toward the trash can nearest the man, who, simultaneously with Rags, stood up and moved toward it as well, thrusting his half-eaten sandwich and barely touched french fries into the paper bag. Rags didn't say a word—just stood by the trash can and begged the man with his eyes. The man's face soured, but he thrust the food into Rags's hand and disappeared down a track entrance. Chuckling, Rags returned to me.

  "You pick 'em out," he said, holding out the wet and stringy french fries. I ate a few and thanked him. "Pick out the ones eatin' on the run don't look like they're enjoyin' it anyways. Know damn well they ain't gonna finish. Then, when their train comes, get between them and the garbage and get a little old puppy dog look in your eyes. Easier for them to give it to you than to step around you to throw it away." He held up the packet of ketchup and I shook my head. He tore it open and squeezed the entire contents directly into his mouth, so that I could see what was left of his teeth. It wasn't much.