Townie (45 page)

These two were tall and scrawny, pierced and tattooed, one of them with a blue Mohawk, the sides of his head newly shaved. His dull eyes were lit with the surprise of the happy drunk who has just stumbled through the wrong door into somebody’s living room, not a drink in sight, but instead of turning around he and the other started forward in their hobnail boots. One of the teachers stood and said, “Please, gentlemen, there are girls sleeping. Can you go to another car?”

The one with the blue Mohawk raised his hand in a gesture that was both placating and threatening, his fingers long and white, the nail of the middle finger bruised or painted black. “We’re just seeing a friend, luv.” And they lurched forward down the aisle, their hands grabbing the seat backs. Most of the girls were awake now, and one or two were crying softly. It was the sound of children waking from a bad dream, the solitary misery of it, but it was what they had woken to that scared them, and the rear door rattled open as these two left and the first three made their drunken way back over the students. “Hush, girls. Hush now. Be
good
. Be
good
.” A laugh, then the dirty fingernails of a hand on Fontaine’s headrest inches from her hair, then they were at the door, sliding it open, a chest-deep
whoop
as it closed behind them. In it was the joy of the addict about to get just what he craves, the drunk who’s been promised a brand-new tab; there was only one more car behind this one, and it was clear that in it someone was dealing dope, for now the other two were already stepping over the girls, most of them awake, a few of them sitting up and leaning away from the boots and legs of these men who did not speak this time, just seemed intent to get out of this grandmother’s kiddie car to where the party was farther down the train.

Both teachers stood and spoke in German to the girls. Their tone was consoling and instructional. As the last two men reached the doors, one turned and winked flirtatiously down at the schoolgirls, then they were gone, and something was pressing against my ribs. There were whispered words in my ear.

“Honey,
do
something.”

Ahead of us the outer door was already opening again. Through two sets of glass, I could see it was one man this time. Blond hair and black leather, the dull flash of silver. I glanced past Fontaine to the nearest teacher. Her eyes were on mine, and the old carpenter’s were too, alert beneath white eyebrows. The inner door was jerking open. I was already up and squeezing past my wife, but it was like stepping into a cold, black cave, a final place that had been foretold in my youth. I stepped over a brown-haired girl lying on her side. Her eyes were as alert as the old man’s, and I was struck with a razored dread and a cosmic wonder too; of all the cars in this train, how was it possible that I had chosen one where I was the only young man, the one in front of the dealer’s car, the one filled with old people and frightened children? The preacher knew my fate and had given me time to pack my bags: why hadn’t I? Instead of working on my mediocre novel, why hadn’t I written letters home? To my mother in Miami, to my father in his wheelchair in Haverhill, to my sisters and brother? I would have told them I loved them, that I wished I’d been a better son and brother. I could have written to my friends and to former lovers. I could have written to anyone I’d ever hurt, and I could have apologized. I could have begun to atone for all the harm I’d learned to do. My dream had delivered me the bill, and now was the time to pay up.

The inner door slid closed and the man’s eyes passed over the school-children in the aisle and he kept walking forward without slowing. He was a parody of street-mean; his head was nearly shaved, his nose and ears pierced with silver. Draped over his beefy torso was a black leather jacket festooned with giant safety pins and hooks, a metal chain hanging across his heart. At the base of his throat was the green tip of a dragon’s tail, the rest down under his T-shirt and across his chest.

I stood in the aisle, the brown-haired girl directly behind me. The man kept coming and I held up my left hand, my weight on my back foot, my right hanging loosely at my side. “This car’s closed.”

The man stopped. I could see he was five or six years younger than I was, his face contorting into a mask of instant hatred I’d seen so many times before.

“You don’t tell
me
what to do. Fuck you and your fuckin’
closed
car, I’ll cut your head off and stick it down your fuckin’
throat.
”

Now was that half second in which to move. Now was that flash of time to tear through the membrane around his yelling face, to drop him where he stood. He stepped closer. My fingertips touched his chest beneath his T-shirt—flesh and muscle and bone—and he was yelling louder, like seeing a chained German shepherd, hearing its chest-croaking bark, sincere and unrepentant, and he smelled like beer and nicotine and the sweat of the unwashed. Why did my right hand stay still? Why was I letting him go on like this in front of all these watching people?

“You
hear
me? I’ll fucking
kill
you.”

Behind us one of the girls whimpered. There were hoarse whispers from the old.

“Fine, but this car’s closed.”

My mouth was dry, my tongue thick. He yelled more words back, every other one
fuckin’
or
cunt,
and I wanted to get him away from the girls. I could hear some of them crying in the aisle behind me, and I nodded at every insult and threat he spit into my face. It was like opening my mouth and swallowing whole the ugliest part of him. He assured me he was going to murder me, how easy it would be to do it, and I nodded and agreed with him. I said, “Let’s continue this outside.”

“Happy to, mother
fucker.
Bleedin’ fuckin’
happy
to.” And he backed up, his eyes on mine. He reached behind him for the handle and flicked the door open. I could see he was strong, that confrontation was nothing new to him. Under the pale fluorescent light between the two doors, he glanced back at the platform separating the train cars and he flicked open the outer door, his eyes still on me, and I followed him out into the cold roar of speeding air and the train’s wheels clicking over the ties and a deep darkness on both sides of us beyond low steel rails.

“Who the fuck are you to tell me what to do?
No one
tells me what to fuckin’ do. You hear that?” His face was inches from mine. In the dim light from both cars I could see his eyes were brown, a life in them somewhere, one he’d lived over here while I’d lived mine over there. I wasn’t going to let him throw me off this train, but I noticed I was standing normally too, my weight even on both feet. And I did not care if he truly believed he could easily beat me up, kill me, make me disappear.

I leaned one shoulder against the outer wall, felt its shifting sway, and I stared at this man I’d filled so immediately with rage. I stared and I waited.

It’s what I did every morning. Tried to sit and stare at the page without expectation, without judgment. In order for something true to come, I had to disappear.

He was still yelling. I was aware of the black English countryside falling away behind his back and behind mine. There was the smell of diesel, the scorched iron of steel wheels zipping along steel rails. His brown eyes, two slits as he yelled, were ringed with moisture, and it was clear how much he needed me to know he was not one to be dominated by anyone else. He was not one to be fucked with, couldn’t I see that? Was I
blind
?

He did not say these words, but they were in the dark sheen of his eyes, and they looked to me now like a young boy’s, and I said, “So then you would do the same thing I’m doing, wouldn’t you?”

“What?”

“You’d protect those girls, too.”

“You’re bloody fuckin’ right I would. I wouldn’t let anyone fuck with them girls.”

“Then we’re on the same side, aren’t we?”

He didn’t answer. He glanced back at the car of children and old people. He looked at me.

“D’you know what I’ve fucking seen in my life?”

“No.”

It was as if he’d never asked anyone that question before, or maybe he hadn’t quite asked himself. He began to talk. He told me of getting kicked out of his house when he was thirteen. He told me of his father’s drinking, his mother’s “fucking around.” He told me of bumming all over Europe, living homeless in Madrid, Marseille, and Rome. He told me he’d done things he wasn’t proud of, bad things, only because of the bad things done to him. He told me he hated people who did bad things to little kids. “Bleedin’ fucking
hate
them.”

“Me too. I’m just doing what you would’ve done.” He’d been talking a long while. I was shivering.

“Fuckin’ right.” He looked tired now, the beer fading, the rage dissipated. His shoulders were slumped under his black leather, and he was smiling at me. “Where’re you from anyway, mate?”

“America.”

“You’re a fuckin’
Yank
? What the Christ you doing in the U.K.?”

“Talking to you.”

He nodded slowly, like I’d said more than I just had. The train was hugging a curve and I grabbed the door handle to keep from leaning into him. He squeezed my shoulder. “Look me up in Trafalgar Square, mate. You can’t fuckin’ miss me.”

There was only one door into the car he’d come from, and he turned and pulled it open and walked down the fluorescent-lit aisle. The door didn’t close, and I watched him move down the length of the car. In that light I could see how dirty his jeans were, a rip in them beneath the hem of his leather jacket. His skin there looked pinkish and vulnerable, then he turned and walked deliberately up the aisle. I thought he might be coming back to talk some more, but he wasn’t even looking ahead and out the door he’d opened that still hadn’t shut. It was colder than before, loud with wind and spinning iron wheels, but in the font row sat two elderly ladies, one in a gray cardigan sweater, the other under a train blanket she’d pulled up to her chin. They were awake and at first looked startled to see him, but soon they were nodding and smiling.

He straightened up, blond bristles on his head glistening under the light, and he moved down the aisle, stopping every few seats to kneel and say something quietly to somebody—a middle-aged man, a woman old enough to be the mother he hadn’t seen since he was a kid, two plain young women, both of whom he’d woken to say what he had to say.

“Isn’t this remarkable?” the lady in the cardigan said. “He’s apologizing to everyone. He’s
apologizing
.”

I stepped over and pulled the door shut. It was two or three in the morning, and my fingers were numb as I slid open the outer door, then the inner. Fontaine smiled sleepily at me from her seat. I tiptoed around the brown-haired girl on the floor. She lay curled under covers, her cheek resting on a pillow, her eyes no longer alert but closed. Her teachers were asleep, too, slumped in their seats across from the Irish couple. The wife was snoring slightly, her head leaning against the window, her reading glasses at the tip of her nose, and her husband still had his book open. He was looking over at me. He nodded and winked. I smiled and nodded back and sat down next to my wife who apparently would not be a widow just yet.

She lay her head on my shoulder. I stared straight ahead for a long while. I couldn’t remember ever feeling this good. Not just about what I’d somehow done by not doing something else, but about people, the stories inside every one of us, the need for them to be
known.
And the boy in that young man’s eyes; he was all I saw after he began to talk, he was the only one I could hear.

THE DOORS
were opening again and three new young men were stomping into the car. I stood and stopped them just before the pillow of the brown-haired girl. I was met with the same resistance, the same threats, and now there were three, but I heard myself pointing out all the sleeping children, I heard myself appealing to the young boys inside them they used to be. I complimented them on their size and strength and told them I knew they’d be doing the same thing I was doing if this was their car, wouldn’t they?

Right, mate.

Right.

Cheers.

They turned and were gone, and I was halfway back to my seat when the outer door rattled again and now came two in rugby shirts, later one in a long brown coat, after that three more, drunker than the rest, the tallest one slurring “Ficku, ficku,” trying to slide past me, his breath bile and whiskey, and I was somehow able to talk him and all the rest back to where they’d come from.
How
was I doing this?

With the first one, as I’d stood normally between the train cars, there was the vague sense I was being guided by something greater than me and my own fears, a presence that began to flicker inside the man who’d promised to cut off my head and stick it down my throat. It flickered inside him and it flickered inside me, then it was a steadily burning flame, a found warmth I’d been inviting intruder after intruder into, but now, three or four in the morning, my limbs were heavy and my eyes were burning and it began to feel like some cosmic run of good luck was about to go dry: I knew this was still an unreasonable world; I knew I could not keep this train car clear all night long with words alone.

I sat heavily in my seat. Fontaine lay asleep against the window. I heard the doors slide open once more, and I looked up to where I’d been rising since after midnight, but the rattle and swoosh had come from behind and I turned and he was already at my side.

“Someone in this car’s not letting me friends through. Now who would do
that
?”

He spoke in a full voice, his accent working-class British. He stood in a crouch, must’ve leapt over each girl to get to my seat.

The girl with the brown hair opened her eyes and looked up at him. He squinted down at her as if she were misbehaving and would now have to be punished.

The girl pushed her face back into her pillow.