The War Against the Assholes (19 page)

26

T
he storm came out of the clear sky. In the third minute of the third quarter. Slashing ropes of frigid rain. Hail tapping our helmets and skin. Dry thunder and lightning. I watched it boil up in no time at all. We had just gotten into position. Santone was barking out his commands. The sky went dark. Blue to lead-gray in fifteen seconds.

A wind rose. Rain, gently, started. Within ten minutes we were surrounded by a thunderstorm. The dads in the stands opened their umbrellas. Or stood there in the downpour. We played on. I kept hitting James. I kept hitting Desmond. They fell harder in the churned mud. Santone fired a pass to Canary, who caught it and raced it in. He slowed to a trot right before the goal line. He did his minor celebratory dance on the other side: three shuffle steps and a head nod. I was clambering up from a tackle. That black guy was still watching me. Not the game. I wasn't worried. I was confident I could beat him in a fight. The only metric you really need. I gave him a two-finger V sign. For victory, not peace. He lowered his eyes and massaged his temples. The storm got way worse: thunder doubling and redoubling its grinding boom. Lightning arcing down. To building tops. To trees on the Corrigan campus. It just made the dads in the stands lose what little remained of their restraint. Zoo animals. Apes or boars. Hooting. Howling. Mouths agape. Eyes wide. When the lightning started I got pissed. The rule was that they had to call the game if there was lightning. An insurance thing. Which meant we'd get the win. But a win by called game is no win at all. You have to play to the end. More lightning touched the earth. The sky got darker. The referees dog-trotted onto the field, their shoes kicking up more muck. Their whistles shrilled and they waved their arms. Rule enforcers I've never liked. “That's right, you faggots,” said Gilder as we did the handshake line. He had no conviction in his voice. The Crow quarterback, his face illuminated by lightning, his blond shag of hair adhering to his bony forehead, just flipped him off again.
ROBERGE
, said the gold name across his black jersey. Number 6.

Coach Madigan skipped the postgame speech. He only had two. One for victory. About the impermanence of victory. And one for defeat. About the impermanence of defeat. You might call him a stoic. Words fail even a stoic when no recognizable outcome has occurred. It had not even been a game. We showered and changed in the field house. We trudged out, silently, across the hills of the campus, back to the remote and now empty lot where he'd parked the team van. The rain still slashing down. I wondered why we'd bothered showering. I saw it as soon as we crested the lip of the last hill separating us from our goal: our two front tires deflated. The van looked like it had gone down on its knees. A courtier. A battle victim. I didn't say anything. Coach Madigan saw it next. “Jaysus Mary,” he murmured. He never used profanity. He ran up to his van and slammed the side panel with the flat of his hand. Five times. Ten times. There's no reason to punish inanimate objects. Yet we do.

“They really fucked us in the ass on this one, coach,” said Simon Canary. Blinking those big liquid eyes. “Don't use language like that, please,” said Coach Madigan, “and pardon my hypocrisy too.” “Coach, can I just go home,” said Dalmacio Zingales. Coach Madigan waved his hands. “Later, everybody,” said Dalmacio. Rain beaded on his scalp. Naked. He was the first guy I'd ever met who voluntarily shaved his head. “Don't you need an umbrella, man,” I said. “Umbrellas are for the weak,” said Dalmacio, and jogged down to the iron gate at the campus edge. The rest of us stood there. Uncertain. I did not want to wait by Coach Madigan's side in the parking lot until a tow truck arrived. I did not want to cut and run. So I stood there in my windbreaker, listening to the rain hit the nylon and watching the fingers of lightning descend to the rusted-looking, rain-ravaged buildings along the Grand Concourse. Traffic built up. A chain of honks and cries from the street soon filled the quiet between each clap of thunder. Coach Madigan gritted into his phone, “No, you blasted idiot, I need you out here now, it's a blasted deluge.” He showed serious discipline in saying
blasted
. You have to respect that.

“Gentlemen,” he called out, “you're all adults. I trust you to get home. Should a mishap befall you, please keep it to yourself. I do not want to face any lawsuits from your parents, much as I love them.” He had extracted a black, seal-slick umbrella from his van and ratcheted it open. “The subway is thataway,” he said, “and a good afternoon to you all.” I envied Dalmacio. He was, I guessed, already warm in his living room. I now had a long subway ride to look forward to. Listening to Greg Gilder talk about what a bunch of faggots and homos we had just defeated. It suddenly seemed unbearable. So I took off, at a light run, to get there first, and possibly get on a train by myself. My teammates were just standing around, anyway. “Look at him go,” said Coach Madigan, “that's the spirit.” Ran past the iron fence at the edge of the Corrigan campus. Game-day banners, also featuring the Crow, eyes slitted and wise, smoke curling from his cigar stub. There had been an outcry one year. Against a smoking mascot, I remembered. Corrigan had prevailed. Ran past a guy seven feet tall, wearing a yellow poncho and standing silently behind a white quilt spread on the sidewalk. A pyramid of purple-black plums near his feet. Bare and ulcerated, I saw. The other street hawkers had not given up in the rain, although their would-be customers lingered in door embrasures. Guys selling incense and soap. Bootleg movies. Books about Pan-African nationalism. Used appliances. “Must be white-boy day,” I heard. A chuckle followed. Ran past the chuckler and the other silent hawkers. My bag banging against my kidneys. New sweat coming to my brow. I could have run over to Jerome Avenue but I just wanted to get out of the rain. So I ran to the green posts of the D stop on the Concourse. Ran down the stairs. Ran past the empty attendant's booth. Vaulted the turnstile. I had a card. But a train was there. I heard it downstairs, on the southbound side. No one hindered me. No one said a thing. No one else there. Except for a bug-eyed bum, sitting on a crimson milk crate and lecturing an invisible audience.

The train empty. The conductor announced the stops in a jovial voice. I didn't listen. Rain dripped from the hood of my windbreaker. Rain dripped from my hands. I wanted to sleep. But I didn't want to miss my stop or have my equipment bag lifted. So I forced my eyes open. Slapped my own face. Chewed on a knuckle. A boy, aloft. A pale woman. A whistled phrase rising and falling. Just in my mental auditorium. Great remembered pain I now could detect no trace of. Sleep. I needed to sleep, that's all, I thought. “That's all,” I said. Which is when I noticed the sheets of water sliding down the windows of the car. Through one, its upper section propped open, water poured in. Smelling of metal. Smelling of stone and filth. Ropy streams spreading across the car floor toward my feet.
Must be
, I thought,
a breakdown in the rain-venting systems between here and the street. A clogged gutter.
“Ladies and gentlemen, what the fuck,” said the conductor over the mike. His voice rising to a panicked shout and then cutting off. The train brakes shrilled. A violent halt. Momentum hurled me to the floor, to the inch of rising water. The car lights went out. “Hello,” I said. Nothing. From the conductor, from anyone. The air temperature in the car had dropped. Because all this frigid water was getting in, I thought. Up to my ankles now. I banged on the door. The water kept pouring in. I was in the last car. I could see back down the tunnel. I figured if I could get the rear-facing door open I could just walk to the next station. Don't know why. I had no experience in subway outages.

A scent reached me. Above the smell of the water. The smell of a hot-running machine. I thought:
Engine fire.
Then I thought:
Subways don't have engines.
Then I thought:
I'm actually not sure if they do or not.
Through the square window, blue-white flickers and flashes. An electrical wire had fallen, I thought. In the long linear darkness behind me. A dead static buzz came over the PA. I checked the window. The blue glow was getting closer. I jabbed the red emergency button. Nothing happened. Other than another dull buzz. The glow seemed to be moving at a human pace. Made no sense. Weather phenomena don't move at a human pace. And this, I told myself, was a weather freakout. Nothing more. Ergo it couldn't have a human pace. It couldn't have any human component. So I kept watching. Transfixed. My desire for sleep gone. Through the water pounding the car roof and sheeting the window, blurring my view, I watched and watched. The light jumped and blazed. Shadows leaped and receded. An ecstatic celebration.

Then I saw: all this activity was in fact centered on a human figure. I caught glimpses in the blue light. Male. Walking with a broken, rhythmical gait. Thud of a cane. Weak footstep. Strong footstep. The glow clung to him. Arcs and crawling threads. “No way,” I said. My voice scraped out. The glow lit him up: dark skin, a rain-darkened hat, a cane. That's what he was swinging. Its shadow stretching and vanishing. Shadow of a blade. It was my tattooer. I needed to leave. That much I knew. I threw my weight against the rear door. Hurt my shoulder. I yanked at the between-cars door. Jammed shut. I tried to pry the side doors open with my fingertips. Hurt my hands. I could not remember what the procedure was to open them in emergencies.
There should be a window release
, I thought. In the darkness I couldn't locate it. Blue-white flashes. Lighting up the tunnel sides. Steel struts, corroded. A blaze of yellow graffiti.

Another blue flash. Another concussion. I hit my knees. The six side doors opened simultaneously. Before I regained my footing, my tattooer climbed into the subway car. “Let's salute our city's infrastructure,” he said. Water ran from his coat and hat. The head and tip of his cane glittered in the half darkness. The blue blaze still clung to his clothes and hair, his skin. The air crackled. He smelled like lightning. “What do you want, man,” I said. “Problem is,” my tattooer said, “nobody can answer that question, Mr. Wood.” “You know my name,” I said. “How soon they forget,” said my tattooer. Blue light still clung to him: strings of it crawled over his coat, face, hands, beard. They were dimming. Dying out. “Please excuse this disarray,” he said, “but I have to admit I lost my temper.” “You lost your temper,” I said. “Yes, indeed,” he said.

His cane whickered upward. I heard it above the rush and patter of the water. He cracked me across the side of my head. My temple. My skull rang. I fell. I floundered. Sucked in a mouthful of the runoff water. It tasted, to my shock, clean. “Naked to the elements,” he said. Pain flared in my spine. He had jammed his cane against my vertebrae. Its ferrule. Also: how did I know the word
ferrule
?

Pinned. Beetle on paper. Or human in a cold, filthy three inches of water. Not to use grandiose metaphors. The runoff water tickled my chin. “How did you get stoned,” said my tattooer. Quiet. Clipped. “Get stoned,” I said. He dug in. My spine pain increased. I almost pissed myself from it. I whined. More runoff on my lips. Dysentery, I thought. If not immediate death. “Don't play the goat with me,” my tattooer said. “I smoke weed, you fucking crackhead, how do you think,” I said, “and I don't even do it really anymore.” The pressure on my spine increased. I whined again. Paralysis would be worse than dying. I had no idea how much a spine could take. “What,” said my tattooer. “No, what did you say,” I said, “and what was that about goats.” Rain dripped. I writhed. I gasped. I groaned. Didn't want to. Couldn't help it. “Stone's dead,” said my tattooer. “Okay,” I said. He was talking in a slow, hollow voice. “It's just me now. So there's no restraints on my behavior,” he said. Self-assessment. A trait common to any number of psychos. “I don't,” I said, “know who that is. But I'm sorry for your loss.” I meant that. When a stranger nakedly tells you about the death of his friend, there's no reason you can't be sympathetic. Even if he blames you for it. Even if he wants to murder you. Professional courtesy, I thought. “Sorry for my loss,” said my tattooer. The pressure of his cane tip on my spine vanished. “Stand up,” my tattooer said. “Are you going to kill me,” I said. “Stand up,” he repeated. I stood up. He grunted. A little blue light appeared, a dancing, flickering condensate of light, poised above his finger. A flame. A spasm of lightning. “What is that,” I said. “
Ars gratia artis
,” said my tattooer. He had a square beard. Shot with gray. My forearm thrummed. Where the tattoo was.

“Is Hob dead,” said my tattooer. “Who's Hob,” I said. Though I thought, for a breath or two, that I once knew that name. Can't just admit anything, though. “Is Hob dead, or is he still walking,” said my tattooer. “I do not know,” I said, “and you can go ahead and murder me if you want but that won't change facts.”
And what if
, I found myself thinking,
I knew him? Why wouldn't that be possible?
The point of blue-white light wavering above his index finger. There are always other possibilities. A whistled phrase. Dark, cropped hair. Mangoes and smoke. “Mike,” said my tattooer, “look in my eyes.” I looked in his eyes. The skin around them freckled. The brows heavy. The white pinked with capillaries. You see that in people his age. A sign of their exhaustion. “Do you know my name,” he said. “Your name,” I said. I had nothing else. My spine ached. My joints and lungs. Vibration built within my skull. The light emitted no warmth. Just a low, hushed roar. Muffled. Leafed. He brought his cane knob to his lips. The way a kid would. A badger head. Silver. With yellow gem eyes. He whistled against it. A quick phrase. I knew it. I did not know how I knew it. But I knew it. “I see I've been mistaken,” said my tattooer. “Been mistaken,” I said. Maybe this meant he would not murder me. He lowered his cane. “The human condition, though, when you stop to think about it,” he said. “Human condition,” I said. “Yes indeed,” said my tattooer. I watched the leaf of light dance above his index finger. That blue. It spread. It gloved his hand. His molars ground against one another. I heard them. Sweat beads reflected the blue glow. I saw them. Before I could react he grabbed my forehead. The water on my skin hissed. Evaporated. His palm, rough and seamy, grazed my eyebrows. No other way to describe it: pure darkness, rushing in.