Lowland Rider

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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

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.

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.