Lowland Rider

by Chet Williamson

  ~*~

  "Now come on!" Rags shouted, running toward the exit with his rolling gait, like a garment center rack come to life. Jesse stood spellbound, held by the sight of the boy's body jerking convulsively, the sound of muffled crackling, like sparks heard underwater, the smell that was already creeping up from the bed of the tracks, the smell of burning cloth, charred flesh.

  "Jesse! Goddammit!"

  He whipped his head to the left and saw Rags at the end of the platform, beckoning to him, waving his burly arms. Jesse looked down at the woman. She was looking at him. There was pain in her face, and apprehension, as if she thought a new attacker might now replace the first.

  "You all right?" Jesse asked, and her expression went blank for a moment before she nodded dumbly. Jesse turned then, and ran down the platform to Rags. Together they made their way through tunnels and down ramps until they found themselves on a downtown express. They chose the seat, just big enough for two, by the door. Rags was panting, and his face shone with sweat.

  "Oh man. Oh man, Jesse, you really done it now." Rags wiped his forehead with a piece of blue cloth he'd drawn from his pocket.

  Jesse said nothing. He only sat, knees apart, his hands between them, gazing down at the floor. His whole body was trembling.

  "Damn, don't do that again. Please."

  "I had to," he said in a low, cracking voice.

  "No, you didn't have to!" Rags turned to him, his face angry. "You don't mess with things, Jesse. Not down here. You just stay the hell away from trouble 'cause if you don't you gonna be in it. Dumbest thing in the world you mess in somethin' like that . . ." He trailed off into mumbling, and they rode for a time in silence, the heavy bass rumble and higher click-clack of the steel wheels on the track the only sound.

  "Thanks, Rags."

  "F'what?"

  "For messing with things. You saved my life." Jesse had stopped shaking. He gave Rags a thin smile

  "Yeah. Prob'ly."

  "Thought you said you shouldn't mess with things."

  "Well, hell, I wasn't 'bout to let that boy kill you.”

  “So you killed him instead."

  Rags's face became more pouched than before. "What you say?"

  "You killed him."

  "I killed him?" he said unbelievingly.

  "He hit the third rail, Rags. Landed right on it.”

  “I didn't . . . I didn't see, I was runnin'. Soon's I threw him, I was runnin'…"

  Jesse was amazed. At first he could not believe that Rags did not know what he had done, but the older man's dismay was so heartfelt, his shock so real, that Jesse knew he was not feigning. There was no artifice in Rags. Suddenly the man's shoulders began to heave up and down, and Jesse saw that he was crying.

  "I didn't wanta kill nobody . . ."

  He put an arm around the big man, and patted his shoulder. "It's all right. He would've . . . killed the old lady, would've killed me . . ."

  "I ain't never killed nobody, Jesse . . ."

  "It's done, Rags. He didn't deserve any better."

  Rags snuffled through the next stop, then said, "Oh, Jesus, you think that lady'll tell about us? What we look like? She seen us both . . ." His eyes widened. "And I called you Jesse! She heard me call you Jesse!"

  Jesse shook his head. "She was too upset. I don't think she even knew what was going on." It was a lie, and he knew it. The old lady had been totally aware of what had happened. "Besides, we saved her. Why would she report us?"

  "Oh, I hope she don't," Rags moaned.

  So do I, Jesse thought, then considered what it would mean. They would have to hide, but weren't they already hidden? How much more deeply buried could they be?

  The hell with it all. The boy had gotten what he'd deserved. He had tried to prey on the weak, had been given a chance to run, but had chosen to try and kill instead, and had received a killer's justice. No tears for him, Jesse thought.

  They rode through half the night with a minimum of talk, and played several games of chess, which boosted Rags's spirits. By the time they transferred to the Canarsie line, he was smiling again. "I got to hand it to you, Jesse. I been ridin' a good many years and that's the first time I ever seen anybody do anything like that." He scowled momentarily. "Now wait. I did see one poor fool try to stop a snatchin' coupla years ago, but as I recall it was his wife or girlfriend or somethin'. Besides, he got cut up pretty bad, so's you could say that didn't really count. People don't do much to help other people. Not down here. Not very often up there either."

  "That's probably smartest."

  "Don't mean it's right. Now I was gonna just walk away from that shit tonight till you butted in. I woulda felt bad, sure, but I woulda felt a whole lot worse gettin' cut up. Can't blame people not wantin' to get cut up. I been cut up, and it ain't no fun. But hell, you just jumped in there like … like that Jamie Gordon guy, a-fightin' and swingin' your old sword … yeah, maybe you oughta get a sword. Scare the shit outa these punks. Yessir, be callin' you the Lowland Rider you keep that crap up."

  Jesse got on the train ahead of Rags and took a seat. His face had gone hard at Rags's first mention of the ballad, and the black man noticed it.

  "What's the matter? I say somethin'?"

  "No, Rags. Only maybe that name fits me too well.”

  “Lowland Rider? That why you acted so funny when you read it?"

  Jesse looked around the car. There was only one other passenger, a Hasidic student at the other end of the car, seemingly involved in a Hebrew newspaper. He looked back at Rags. Though weary with years, the man's face was open and honest. "I'm going to tell you something, Rags. Secrets. Just between you and me."

  "Who would I tell?"

  Then Jesse told him about Donna and Jennifer, about the gang and what they had done, and what Jesse had done to one of them. When he finished there were tears in his eyes, not at the pain of the memory, but the relief of being able to tell the story, and seeing his own horror mirrored in another person's eyes, even if that sympathetic listener was among the lowest of men. To Jesse, he was both father and priest and the small amount of God in which he still believed, and when he was through he felt better than he had in months.

  "Dear God, Jesse," Rags said, putting a comforting hand on Jesse's knee, "that's a sad story, true enough. I didn't know before why you'd come on down here, but now I think I see. Least I see better. Terrible thing to carry around with you. I'm real sorry."

  "I hate them when I see them, Rags."

  Rags nodded. "You mean spits."

  "No, not spits. I mean anybody who preys on anybody else. Anyone who turns something good into something rotten. I hate them because I'm one of them myself."

  "Can't be, Jesse. You're a good man."

  "I should've been better."

  Rags swallowed heavily. "So should everybody, what's that prove?"

  "I killed a boy who was trying to help me, Rags. That doesn't die easy."

  "We're all human, Jesse. You wasn't in your right mind. You shouldn't blame yourself." Rags whispered the next words earnestly, as if trying to convince both of them of their truth. "Only God's perfect."

  Jesse sat lost in thought. "God…" he whispered once, then was silent. After a time the train ground to a halt and he looked up. "Where are we?"

  "14th Street."

  "Let's get off. I found a five yesterday," Jesse said, getting to his feet. "I'll stand you a hot dog, okay?"

  "Yeah, sure." Rags followed Jesse out of the car and through the labyrinth. Within minutes they were chewing hot dogs, washing down the meat and buns with coffee. When they were finished, they found a bench and began to play chess. A few moves into the game Rags spoke quietly. "Jesse?"

  "Hmm?"

  "What I said about you gettin' a sword and all. I was jes' jokin', y'know?"

  Jesse looked up from the board. There was no humor in his face, only sadness, deep and lurking. "I know," he said.

  Coolly and methodically, he won the game.

  JESSE G
ORDON'S JOURNAL:

  MAY 17, 1987

  I try to do what I can. The opportunities occur infrequently, but more often than you would expect them to. If I let my imagination roam, it would not be difficult to conclude that I am drawn to these things. Or drawing them. As though my experiences imbued me with some electromagnetic force that pulls me to where these things are happening, where this evil is taking place.

  That sounds too melodramatic—evil. As though this is some moral swamp which nurtures sin. Yet maybe it's not too far off the mark.

  And it's not too far off because I don't want it to be. That's one positive thing about the underground—you can make it whatever you like. It reeks with symbolism, with countless opportunities for micro-cosmic role-playing. It lets me take fifteen-year-old punks and turn them into criminal masterminds, lets me take the tunnels and make them halls of Hell. It lets Rags take this man Enoch and turn him into the Devil himself, Satan ruling the underworld, pulling the strings that make all the puppets dance to the tune of evil.

  Enigmas within enigmas. Webs within webs.

  Here's one I like: tunnels within tunnels. And no light at the end of any of them.

  Enough writing. My fingers hurt, and so does my head.

  CHAPTER 8

  May, she thought, was not the best month to do research on the subways. The place was a madhouse any time of the year, and the unseasonably high temperatures only made things worse. People seemed edgier, and the crazies, who in cooler weather were merely amusing, were now bathed in sweat, poised on the brink of violence. Or so it seemed to Claudia Dorner.

  Claudia was no stranger to subways. She had ridden them for twelve years, since she had first moved to Manhattan when she was twenty-two. Her outlook then had been as fresh and new as her looks and her MBA from Penn. She had taken a position with an investment firm, which she found, despite her degree, bored her. To alleviate this boredom, she had two passionate yet unproductive love affairs, began to write, and finally got married to Steve Fuller, an accountant in her firm.

  She sold her first article, a humorous guide to executive fashion, to Working Woman, about the same time she got a divorce from Steve, who she discovered was cheating on her after five years of marriage. Figuring that she had more of a talent for satire than for holding men, she concentrated on satire, and wrote and sold so much of it so frequently that eventually guilt replaced the pleasure in her success, shunting it aside with the unforgiving question of why, with all her obvious talent, she had not yet produced anything serious.

  The only thing that oppressed her more than this nagging question was the subway ride she took every day from her Eighty-fourth Street apartment to her office on Wall Street. Although she could afford a cab, she felt that the twelve dollar a day fare was a type of blackmail, an unnamed predator upon the fear and discomfort she felt so intensely on the trains, and she quite simply would not be so manipulated. So she rode the lines that gradually got worse and worse, and her freshness withdrew, deeper in, masked by the white bisque that serves as flesh on so many New Yorkers, until one day her fear and her desire met in the realization that here was her subject, here was something serious, something inconceivable and alien that was somehow also rich in meaning. Once the idea took root, she became obsessive about it, and quickly produced a proposal which she presented to Julia McWilliams, the articles editor at Manhattan Magazine, to whom she had sold several New York pieces. Julia bad been intrigued by the idea as well.

  "The subways," she told Claudia, "have always caused that ambivalence, that love-hate relationship, in New Yorkers. I mean, they're as much a part of the city as cable cars are of San Francisco, but everybody likes cable cars. I don't know of one poor bastard who'd admit to actually liking the subway."

  "Is it a go then?"

  Julia paused for a long while. "You really think you can get these people to talk to you?"

  "I can try."

  "You'll go escorted."

  "I wasn't planning to."

  "Christ, Claudia. Even Paul Theroux went with cops. The piece in the Times he did a few years back?"

  Claudia narrowed her lips, shook her head. "Do you think anyone down there would talk to me if I was with a cop? I read the article too, and Theroux didn't interview any skells."

  "So what are you planning to do, pack a gun?"

  "I thought about it." And she had, but decided not to. She didn't know weapons, and the thought was strong that when someone takes out a weapon, it usually gets used. "I'll be all right."

  Finally Julia nodded. "Okay then. But up your life insurance, toots. I'll tell you that I wouldn't do it."

  They talked money then, and the next day Claudia went down with a tape recorder and a note pad. Julia insisted on assigning a photographer, a bearded veteran named Wynn who looked like a retired fullback. Claudia quickly learned that it was a mistake. When she got close enough to a skell to talk, they invariably looked at her, then at Wynn standing a yard away like some strap-enwrapped mountain of muscle, and scurried quickly away. Although she was reluctant to lose the protection that Wynn provided, she knew there would be no story as long as he was around. After repeated urging, Julia agreed to drop Wynn from the piece, use artwork, and leave Claudia on her own.

  Even then, Claudia was unsuccessful at establishing any rapport between herself and the skells. Her first conversation with an elderly gentleman, wearing coveralls and a yellow T-shirt that had once been white, was transcribed from her tape recorder as follows:

  CLAUDIA: Hello.

  MAN: Hey.

  CLAUDIA: Do you mind if I talk to you?

  MAN: Hey.

  CLAUDIA: Do you mind?

  MAN: Got a quarter?

  CLAUDIA: Yes, here you are.

  MAN: Got a quarter?

  CLAUDIA: Yes. I just gave you one. There, see?

  MAN: Got a quarter?

  CLAUDIA: It's in your hand. Your hand.

  MAN: Quarter.

  CLAUDIA: Yes. What's your name?

  MAN: I don't know.

  And there the conversation stopped. The old man stood up and left the car.

  There was another conversation, with another old man:

  CLAUDIA: Hello.

  MAN: Hello.

  CLAUDIA: What's your name?

  MAN: Bob. What's yours?

  CLAUDIA: Claudia.

  MAN: Will you marry me?

  CLAUDIA: Marry you? This is awfully sudden.

  MAN: You're all alike. All bitches.

  As with his predecessor, the man stood and left the car.

  Later that same day, Claudia approached a middle-aged woman sweating inside a heavy cloth coat, who, as soon as Claudia spoke to her, began screaming. "Shut up! Shut up!" the woman cried. "You won't give it to me! You got it, but you won't give it to me!" On this occasion, Claudia was the one to retreat from the car.

  It did not take her long to rethink her premise. She had supposed that there were people who came down into the subways for logical reasons, or at least for reasons that she could sympathize with, if not fully understand. She had thought of the subway as a symbol, that perhaps she could answer mysteries, illuminate the mystique, crude and cruel, that hung, veil-like, from the cold walls of these tunnels. Instead she had found only an asylum, and the theory that, instead of people being made mad by the life below, they had come down here already insane.

  Now she sat trembling in spite of the warmth, and felt the fear and discomfort creeping back. Into her mind came the urge to resign herself to the fact that she would not understand, that this place and its people would be, to her, eternally alien. Just as she was about to stand and walk into the sunlight, Jesse Gordon entered the car.

  She did not recognize him at first. His hair was long, with dark tendrils curling over his collar, and his black beard had grown in fully, covering his throat to the hollow of his neck, and riding up his face to the top of his cheekbones so that his eyes seemed hidden behind a mask. Rags was with him, bundled in cloths, and Claudia
marked the pair of them as skells.

  Talk to them, she thought, but hesitated. If she had been alone with them, she would have obeyed her impulse and forgotten the subway and her piece, and sought the fresh air. But the presence of other passengers gave her courage, so she waited until the train began to move, then stood and made her way to where the men sat talking quietly. She grasped the hanger in front of them and looked down. "Excuse me . . ."

  The younger man looked up first, and she saw his eyes and the contours of his face beneath the beard, and she remembered those eyes looking down at her in candlelight, that face sheened with satiny sweat…

  "Jesse…"

  His expression was perfectly blank. Then the furrow between his eyes deepened, and she knew he remembered too, remembered his ex-lover from the time they had both been single, careless, and, perhaps just a little, in love. "I'm sorry, I don't think I . . ."

  "Claudia. Claudia Dorner, Jesse."

  He gave a grim smile that admitted he was found out, then nodded. "Hello, Claudia. I didn't think anyone would recognize me."

  "My God, it is you. What are you . . . doing down here? I mean, I mean they're looking for you."

  "Then I suppose I'm hiding down here." He turned to the black man next to him. "Rags, this is Claudia. Claudia, Rags."

  Rags and Claudia looked at each other without speaking, both of them wary.

  "Say hello, Rags. Miss Dorner is the first to have found me. I guess that merits some recognition."

  " 'Lo," Rags said, and looked at Jesse, fear in his rheumy eyes. "I gotta be goin'. Things to do."

  He shuffled off into the next car, as Jesse looked after him. "There goes my best friend," he said. "And he was lying. He has nothing to do. Nothing at all except to get another train." He sighed deeply. "So. What are you going to do now?"