Finn (15 page)

James led us to a door with a radiation symbol and the words “Fallout Shelter.” So that’s what the tunnels were. I felt sorry for anyone who went down there in the event of a nuclear war. Better to be vaporized.

There were metal stairs, which James said led up to the main floor. He said “main floor” the way an elevator man would, almost singing it, with the high note on “floor.” I had never ridden in an elevator with an elevator man, but my grandparents talked about it constantly. The extinction of elevator men was, in their opinion, a big symbol of the downfall of civilization. It tells you something about the world they grew up in. Their idea of civilization was forcing a poor black man in an insulting round cap to ride up and down all day in an airless elevator, just so white people could have the pleasure of saying, “Seven,” or “Three,” or, “Lobby, please,” and watching the man’s immaculate white glove push the buttons.

I started to feel guilty for thinking of James as an elevator man. I overcompensated. “Good job finding the stairs,” I said enthusiastically. It was an idiotic thing to say, like congratulating an Indian for knowing where the river was. I could tell James resented it.

We climbed the metal stairs in silence, the long climb made more lonely by the clanging of our feet, which echoed against the concrete walls. The stairway smelled like cooked food and mildew, the way emergency stairs in public buildings often do, but even that nauseating smell made my stomach growl. We went through two doors marked “Keep closed at all times,” down a short hallway lined with dented metal office furniture, and there we were, at the edge of the station’s famous dome room, craning our necks and gawking like tourists.

It was strange to come into the station that way, after crawling around in the fallout shelter and taking the emergency stairs. Everything seemed fake: the polished marble floors and the gilded statues of kneeling men holding up the world—even the hundreds and hundreds of business people using their cell phones, reading newspapers, and trying not to spill coffee on their fancy clothes. But the phoniness somehow made the place even more impressive, as if the station and everyone in it had been polished and scrubbed and dressed up just for James and me, to show savages like us the power of wealth so that we would immediately start to feel disgusted with ourselves.

It worked, too. I dusted off my shirt. James ran his fingers over his shaven head as if he were combing it, leaving four pale furrows in the stubble.

My first impulse was to lie down on one of the long curved oak benches, slide along the cool wood, and let the cricket song of expensive leather shoes lull me back to sleep. I turned around to ask James if he had ever slept in the station, but he was gone. I was on my own, at least for a while, which suited me fine.

My feet automatically moved me to the center of the station, directly under the famous dome, as if the floor was tilted towards a drain. It was oddly hushed there. When I was really little, my grandfather had tried to explain it to me, something about acoustics and domes. Standing at the center of the room, he said, was like putting on an enormous helmet which let you watch everything in silence. For some reason, I thought about God when he said that, which was exceedingly unlike me. Thinking back, it was my closest call with religion.

A sudden whiff of cinnamon rolls emptied my head. There was a pastry cart nearby, with big wooden wheels and a hooped tent over it. It was supposed to look like a covered wagon from the Old West, but what pioneer wagon ever had a boom box, or took credit cards? A dopey high school girl in a beret was waiting on people. There was a long line. She was incredibly slow because she stopped working every three seconds to put on a despicable
“Aren’t I adorable?”
face. Her smile was like an applause sign. The worst part of it was that the men in line seemed to think she really was adorable. They made sure to point out the absurdly large tips they stuffed into her jar.

In spite of all that, I couldn’t resist the cinnamon smell. It reached right into my stomach. Everywhere I walked seemed to lead me back to the pastry wagon. In the end, I waited in line and put up with Ms. Adorable. I ordered two pastries, one for me and one for Silvia. They cost three dollars each, and they looked much better than they tasted, but as soon as I finished mine, I scarfed Silvia’s, too. I told myself that she wouldn’t have liked it anyway, that it was too rich. I considered buying another one, but the beret girl, thinking I was a boy, had done a flirty thing with her eyes when I paid her. It made me want to run back down to the fallout shelter.

James was out on the sidewalk near the taxicab stand. The doors and trunks of all the cabs were wide open, as if the cabs had just been taken out of the oven and put on a rack to cool. James was doing tricks for a small audience of black drivers, a series of poses inside a tiny chalk circle he had drawn on the sidewalk. He really could bend his body in unbelievable ways. The cab drivers stood around laughing and covering their eyes and joking about James’s father being a pretzel, but they were good-natured men, and when James finished, in a pose which had his chin and forearms on the sidewalk and his feet high up in the air, they gave him lots of loose change. James accepted the money gracefully, like a professional.

When we were back inside the station, I asked him what he was going to buy with his money. “Clark’s beer,” he said. “My shoeshine man buys it for me. I give him a dollar tip.” James liked telling me about tipping a grown man. When I asked him where we could buy food and water, he looked at me as if I was insane. “You don’t buy that,” he said. “Unless you’re stupid.”

I had to go to the bathroom, and not just to pee, so I went and found the ladies’ room. A bored policeman stood by the door, sniffing the air like a dog. I tried to avoid looking at him. As I got closer, he moved in front of me. He tapped the sign with the tip of his billy club.
“Ladies’
room,” he said.

“Right,” I said, backing away. “For ladies. What was I thinking?”

There was no door to the men’s room, just a maze of tiled walls to block the view. I hesitated at the entrance. A little Mexican man in overalls rear-ended me and said, “Watch it!”

The men’s room smelled a lot worse than the ladies’ room, mostly, I figured, because of the open porcelain trough where the men lined up to pee. I had seen urinals before, but they were the individual kind, separated by little metal dividers to block the view of the person peeing next to you. The trough here totally lacked privacy. It was funny to see the men stare stiffly at the wall in front of them as they peed, as if some bathroom general was walking up and down the line inspecting them. I suppose they stared that way to create a sense of privacy, even if it was pretend privacy.

The toilet stalls were decrepit—corroded and stained and a disgusting mess, with strange holes gouged through the dividing walls. I finally found one with a dry seat and an empty bowl. I had never felt so naked as I did pulling down my pants in that men’s room. I expected someone to kick in the stall door any second.

James was waiting for me outside the bathroom with some bulging paper bags. “Food,” he said, opening one of the bags for my inspection. Inside were an apricot pastry with lipstick-y bite marks; lots of little packets of sugar; most of a fast food egg sandwich; and some candy bars still in the wrapper, meaning they were stolen. Another bag had drinks. I pulled one out, a glass bottle of half finished grapefruit juice. A cigarette butt floated in the juice. I swirled it accusingly at James.

“The rest are okay,” he said. I told him I thought that eating other people’s garbage was utterly revolting, but it was just something to say. I was still starving and I knew I would eat it.

Another bag had Clark’s six-pack of beer in it. The bottles clinked as we walked. James said that Clark liked his beer in bottles because the cool glass felt good against his gums.

As we were sneaking back through the railroad yard, I asked James if he knew how Clark had lost all his teeth. James shrugged. “Ate a nigger’s lunch in Phoenix,” he said. “Got his teeth knocked out. Boom!”

“Did you see it?” I asked.

“Not in person,” James said, “but I wish I did.”

When we got back to the boxcar, the door was jammed. Both of us tried, but we couldn’t slide it open. Then James handed me an old crowbar he found on the ground. He was very patient with me, as if he was loaning me his house keys because I’d forgotten mine. We finally slid the door open, but only a foot or so. The boxcar was dark. It took my eyes a few seconds to adjust.

“Finn!” Silvia cried.

Clark was in Silvia’s corner, wrapped around her like a python.

I didn’t say anything. I went over to Clark and whacked him with the crowbar, once on the elbow and then again on the side of the knee because he still wouldn’t let go. “Mr. Clarkson!” I said. “Get back in your corner!” And he did, just like a scolded dog. I stood over him for a while, the crowbar raised up over my head. I enjoyed his cowering. I liked how he was pleading for me not to hit him. I liked him calling me “Man.” I was angry and
strong.

“Come on, man,” he said, kicking his legs at me and pawing the air in front of his chest. “She wanted it. Bean-eaters always want it.”

And then, for saying that, the crowbar came down hard on his face.

N
one of us could believe what I had just done.

A curved black mark appeared on Clark’s cheek, as if the tip of the crowbar had been dipped in ink. It took a few seconds for the blood to start gushing. Then it came down off his chin, spattering the dusty boxcar floor in dark drops. Clark shrieked. He was too scared to be angry yet. He kept fingering his split cheek, pressing his knuckles against the lower edge of the cut. Occasionally he would wipe away some of the blood with his fingertips, as if the wound were an eye, and the blood, some kind of embarrassing teardrop. He kept asking, “Can I get some help over here?” but no one moved to help him.

I asked Silvia if she was all right. She nodded, but there was something new and formal about her. She was looking at me with disbelief and a little fear, as if I was a new person, a stranger, which was exactly how I felt. She wouldn’t come near me. It made me sad, but at the same time, I felt good about protecting her. I thought:
She’s had a big shock; she’ll be fine in a minute.
I was being so patronizing!

James was admiring Clark’s wound, shaking his head and saying, “Damn!” I didn’t know what to do about Clark. I think I said something lame like, “Serves you right.”

Clark was still cussing at me, but underneath I saw that he was afraid, and I was glad of it. I wanted him to fear me because now I was much more afraid of
him,
on account of how badly I had hurt his face. His dripping wound disgusted me, but I was also strangely proud of it. I didn’t bother to offer him one of my nice clean Ace bandages.

It had seemed so natural to hit him. I had never been on the other side of that before. It made me understand a little better about my past, what it’s like to raise a hand against someone and really hurt them, but at the same time think you’re doing the right thing.