Half World: A Novel (33 page)

PART FOUR

Blue Line

1

Coming back, calling, waking slowly, thoughts returning, smells, sounds returning, coming back, touch, the feel of air on his face, in his nose, his mouth, his eyes still closed, calling, gathering pieces of himself, coming back, waking slowly, then Thomas’s eyes open, Thomas awake.

Just before dawn, dark shapes in the gray room. The other bed, the shared dresser. Outline of the window; slow, rippling flashes in the glass, occasional headlights from cars or the train. Grain swimming in his sight like television static, soft and silent as snow.

Thomas sets his feet on the floor, pressing his toes into the wood, the balls, the heels, feeling the solidity beneath him, the earth two stories below. The ragged end of a prayer or verse circling in his head. Trying to catch it by its tail, pull it back so he can see its entire body, the long bright string of words, his lips moving in the dark.

Prayer of Richard. Hezekiah’s Prayer. Prayer for the Sick.

The rusty squeal of far-off train brakes navigating a turn. He stands at the window that later in the day will look out onto the brown brick of the neighboring building but now simply looks out into more gray. Cold morning, the second in a row. He squints at the clock, trying to make out the time in the dark. Alarms are set for five-fifteen, seven days, but he is always up early.

Dressing quietly. Ducking to see himself in the mirror. Patience with
his thick fingers as they attempt to maneuver his shirt’s buttons through their eyelets. Patience with the ponderousness of his movements. Breathing deeply, fully, as he has been taught.

In the bathroom, someone flushing in one of the stalls behind him, another early riser, Geoffrey or Gregg or Lavar, one of the newer men who still can’t sleep, haunting the hallway all night, pacing down to the bathroom and then turning and walking to the window and the fire escape at the other end. The movements of these men a comforting thing to Thomas, their eyes open while he slept and splintered, while pieces of him scattered in the night.

Philippians 4:13. Matthew 8:8. Lord, I do not deserve to have you come under my roof, but just say the word and my servant will be healed.

Breakfast in the dining hall, other men coming in, stifling yawns, lighting cigarettes, sitting at the long tables with coffee and eggs and bacon, hash browns, buttered toast. Smoking and talking, low-toned conversations, just a word or two on each end, then long spaces of silence. Checking watches, the clock on the wall above the bulletin board. Checking Bibles, checking watches.

Everyone into the Fellowship Hall at 6
A.M.
, filling the rows of folding chairs. More cigarettes, smoke swirling lazily in the overhead lights. Some men already wearing their orange jackets, checking and rechecking their pockets for Bibles, cigarettes, change, the small paper cards with the address and phone number of the ministry barracks. Always checking, rechecking. No one here used to constancy or routine. No one here used to things being where they thought they’d put them.

Reverend Lee’s aftershave enters the hall a half second before Reverend Lee. Six-oh-five, precisely. Routine is crucial, precision is crucial. Out beyond the boundaries of routine and precision are chaos, temptation, anger. The men have all been taught this and they know it to be true. They have lived beyond those boundaries.

Reverend Lee steps to the podium. His gray slacks, his white dress shirt, his black tie. Shirtsleeves rolled to his elbows, shoes shined and gleaming. He checks his watch. Even Reverend Lee reduced to checking from time to time. Even Reverend Lee still feeling the pull of that other place.

Reverend Lee looks out over the assembled and says, Let us pray. The men stand and bow their heads. There is the prayer and a short sermon and then any necessary announcements. Lists of duties, names of new arrivals, a weather report. Things to be aware of. Construction on certain lines, problems in certain cars. At the end of the meeting Reverend Lee steps from the podium and takes the hands of the men in the front row and those men reach back and everyone clasps hands, reaching over empty seats, across the center aisle, heads down, eyes closed.

Prayer for the Work Day. Prayer for Peace. Happy are we who are called to His supper.

They leave the Fellowship Hall and wait outside to board the bus. Early light now, noise from the street. The bus’s exhaust mixing with cigarette smoke. The bus is a repurposed school bus, painted black with white hand lettering:
Outreach Christian Fellowship. Rev. Lee Metzger, Pastor.

Out onto Division Street, and then from train station to train station, dropping a man at each. Thomas’s view from the back of the bus is of the men shoulder to shoulder,
Outreach Christian Fellowship
in large white letters across the backs of their orange jackets. The ranks thinning gradually, spaces opening in the seats as the bus makes its way around the city.

Thomas gets off at Clark and Lake. His territory is the handful of stations at the far reaches of the Blue Line, just past the city limits. There is some overlap, one or two stations where Thomas could see another orange jacket walking the aisle a few cars down. There was no contact between the men if it could be avoided, nothing but the briefest acknowledgment, a nod through the windows at the ends of the cars. As a rule, the men worked alone. Reverend Lee did not want them to be seen as a gang or a cult.
Bible Riders
was the term people in the city used for them. It was meant to get a rise out of the men, but Reverend Lee told them it was nothing to get upset about. If the shoe fits, he said.

Down the stairs to the subway platform. The cold-air sewage smell of the station, garbage from overflowing trash cans. The bright metal smell of the rails. Thomas feels the wind of the train from the tunnel and hears the oncoming rush and then finally sees it. It is the most beauti
ful thing. He has always found it beautiful. A train is a prayer moving through a city. The engineer’s voice squawks through speakers in the ceiling. Doors open on the left.

He had been approached on a train. They all had. There was a rightness to the symmetry of the process. They came from trains; they returned to trains. For Thomas, it was at the Kimball station by a man named Kimble, who disappeared not long after, one of the men who worked the Ministry for years and then went out one morning and didn’t come back. Returned to the places past the walls of discipline and routine.

How many people on this train, do you think, share the name of the station? This is what Kimble had first said to him. Sitting beside Thomas, close, their knees touching, their thighs. Probably just me, Kimble had said. With the same name. I am probably alone in this regard.

Let me pray with you.

Thomas walks down the aisle of the first car. He slides open the door at the end and steps through. A second in the unprotected passage, then into the next car. He walks forward against the momentum of the train. Screech of the wheels grinding through a curve. Keeping his feet firmly pressed to the floor, redistributing his weight automatically in counterbalance to the sway and jerk, the thousand tiny movements of the train. Hands in his pockets. A small act of vanity, this ability to walk the cars without touching a pole or seat back.

You’ve been crying, Kimble had said, which surprised Thomas, because he hadn’t cried in days. He’d done nothing but cry when he left Oakland, but by the time he’d reached Chicago he had stopped, as if there were nothing left, as if he was dried out. So he thought this was remarkable, how Kimble knew. It would be weeks of riding on his own before he could see what Kimble saw. What he’d looked like in that moment, on that train. Weeks of riding before he would learn that nothing was hidden if you had the strength to see.

You’ve been crying. Let me pray with you.

He averaged two or three a day. This was initial contact only. Most of this contact was ignored or rebuffed. Spat upon, hissed at, pushed away. Maybe one man a week he gave a card to would actually call. One man
who would find the card in his pocket at some terrible hour and maybe find the dimes still taped to the card and find a pay phone and call the number and talk to whoever was assigned to the hot line. Maybe one man a month would actually come down to the barracks. Maybe one in three of these would stay. The odds are not good, Reverend Lee would say. The odds are great. The odds are exceptional.

Kimble hadn’t asked who Thomas was, how he had ended up riding the train. It was as if those things didn’t matter, as if they were so far beside the point that they were not even worth mentioning. It was early evening, rush hour, and Thomas had been riding for days. The other passengers forcing themselves not to see him. Not looking at Thomas and not looking at the space beside him. The empty seat a shared, shameful act among the other passengers. Then Kimble sat, without hesitation, their legs touching at one and then two distinct places. The raw, burned smell of cigarettes on Kimble’s breath. His head bowed and his cowboy’s growl low but clear enough that it was easy to hear through the rest of the noise, the conversations and radios and rattling progression of the train along the tracks.

We believe in one God, the Father, the Almighty, maker of Heaven and Earth. Of all that is seen and unseen.

He had come to Chicago because it was the only other place he knew. His mother had told him stories about how she and his father and Hannah had lived there before he was born. Hannah lived in Los Angeles, he could have gone to her, but he didn’t know that place. To him there was Oakland, there was Chicago. He had maps and he thought that he might know the way.

He’d lived in the house with her for a while, after she passed. Her body on the kitchen floor. He arranged her arms and legs so she was lying comfortably. Placed a blanket over her at night. Stared into her eyes, but there was nothing there. This was the shell. He lived in the house and then he knew he had to leave, that if he didn’t then someone would come and get him, and so he took what money he could find and rode a bus east. Days and nights, through mountains and farms, towns, cities. He remembered a trip like this from when he was a boy, sitting
beside his sister in the station wagon, watching out the windows, the world moving in time.

He was tattered and dirty. He had been crying since Oakland. People kept their distance. When he reached Chicago he walked into the cement and noise, and then he saw the train overhead, the rusty trestles, the cars shaking by. His father had told him about this, years ago. Riding the train. Thomas sat and rode alone until Kimble found him.

It had taken Thomas weeks of riding to finally approach someone. Kimble had told him it would be hard. There was nothing easy about it. Those he needed to approach would be those he didn’t want to approach. Those he was fearful of. Those clenched with rage. Those whose anguish came off their bodies like waves of heat. Those actually shaking with fear. Men speaking to themselves, whispering, moaning into the palms of their hands. Men smelling of sweat and other bodily fluids. Smoke and neglect. Terror.

Men on crowded trains with empty seats beside them.

The first few times he couldn’t look the men in the face. He looked at their hands as he spoke. The calluses and cracked knuckles, the mighty rivers of vein. Thomas speaking so loudly that every other head in the car turned to see what was happening. But he learned to lower his voice, and he got enough courage to lift his face, to look these men in the eye. What he saw was great and terrible, just as Kimble had told him. After he’d looked at the first face, he was unable to look away.

Let me pray with you. Let me read you this passage. Let me give you this card with a phone number you can call. Let me give you change for the call. My name is Thomas. I am going to sit here in this seat beside you.

They did not approach women. There was a sister ministry farther down on Division Street that worked with women. They did not approach children, though there were plenty of children riding the trains alone, running from something. Children were the responsibility of the city. They would be pulled from the trains into foster homes, group homes. Out of one fire and into another. We’ll see them when they’re older, Reverend Lee said. Be patient, though it is difficult, though you
see the fear and suffering. Be patient. You’ll encounter them on the same trains when they’re men.

He has lunch on a bench on the Jefferson Park platform, a bag of pork rinds, a bottle of Filbert’s grape soda. Licking salt and grease from his fingers as he watches the traffic on the expressway below. He keeps his Bible on the bench beside him, unopened. That morning’s prayer or verse still in his head, regaining volume now that he is outside the noise of the train. The buildings of the city far in one direction, the plains stretching away in the other. Blue sky, clouds piled high like towers. The train cars that stop at the station shedding steam in the cold air.

When he was a child, he’d believed he was a boy made of metal, with an engine for a heart, a computer brain full of schedules and routes. He’d moved along tracks that he’d constructed, or that he had found, left behind by others like him. Something had changed, though, he knew this. He had changed. The metal skin was a suit for a child and he could no longer fit inside. It still called to him, though. When he was sad or angry, or when he thought about his mother, when he missed her, he could feel the pull of the wires. He could still see the tracks stretching before him on sidewalks, along the barracks floor. In those moments he had to remind himself that he was no longer that child. There were no clear tracks to follow anymore, no metal skin for protection. But sometimes he still ached for the machine.

Early afternoon. Light through the grimy windows of the train. Forced-air heat. Seats nearly empty. Thomas walks the aisles, crosses between cars, sits for a time, watching the city blurring past. Telephone poles and wires, television antennae on rooftops. Montrose, Irving Park, Addison. Belmont, next stop. Doors closing on the left.

He had followed Kimble off the train. Thomas was one of the few who’d come directly onto the bus, into the barracks. He had dinner in the dining hall, went up to the bathroom to take a shower. When he came out of the water a towel and toothbrush and clean clothes were waiting for him on the edge of one of the sinks. He became Kimble’s roommate. That was another rule: If you brought a man off the train, or
a man called with a card you had given him, he came to live with you. He was your responsibility until he could stand on his own, until he was issued an orange jacket.