Friday, October 15, 2010

That special day (in the tone of "Cathedral")

Tommy's head was spinning fast and furious. He always felt this way when he rode the G train from Jersey. Round and round his mind went, like a washing machine on edge.

The sudden pull back motion and the sharp whistle of each train stop pinched his ears. Made him close his eyes tight and grit his teeth so hard that he wouldn't have been surprised if his teeth cracked under the pressure.

Tommy hated Jersey. He hated the dilapidated look of his neighborhood, his neighbors, his life - disheveled and forlorn. Every once and blue - on days like today - he'd hop the G train and head to the City. New York was only a 20 minute ride away.

Today was special, Tommy thought, as the train picked up again, gradually speeding away from another stop. He could see the people outside turn to blur.

A little boy beside him cried out on the train. A skinny Indian man across from him sneezed. The young woman, whose right arm hovered above him as she held on to a pole, looked down at him, batting her deep purple eye lids. The train did its forward pull back stop motion, followed by that piercing pinch.

When Tommy closed his eyes this time, the scent of flowers made his way through his nostrils -  it was the young woman's perfume. As the train came to - back from its momentary dizzy spell of start, stop and go - he noticed the woman's purse open at will to the gravitational pull of the train. He saw a gun.

She pulled it out of her bag fast and waved it in the air, shouting "Everyone stand back!"

Tommy looked at the woman's face. Long black hair silhouetted it. He saw lines around her eyes and under it - like she hadn't slept in a week. All of a sudden, she didn't seem so young anymore. She quickly closed her bag with her free arm after giving Tommy a venomous look. Tommy quickly turned away, looking out the window. People continued to whiz by in a blur. The boy next to him - a young Indian boy - started crying again. He realized the boy was with the man across from him. Tommy's head started spinning again. Fast and furiously.

A middle-age woman with blonde hair, just three people away to the left of Tommy, screamed. The woman with the gun whirled the instrument at her. The boy cried louder and louder. The Indian man reached out for the boy, his arms gathering like a life saver around the kid just as the words "Nobody move!" were uttered by the woman with the gun.

A gunshot thicken the silence.

Tommy sucked in the air and closed his eyes tight, gritting his teeth as the train stopped and the smoke from the barrel filled the air. All Tommy could hear was the boy's howling tears that echoed through the train car.

Tommy opened his eyes and saw blood, then turned to notice the woman with the gun running off the train as fast as her long black boots could carry her. Tommy turned around and looked at the boy. He looked over and saw the woman, three people away, open her mouth wide as if to scream - but he couldn't hear her. He could only hear the boy, who fell into the arms of the Indian man. That's when Tommy realized that something wasn't as it seemed.

The blood, slowly growing into an ever thickening pool on the silver train car floor was his, not the boy's.

Tommy was on the ground. He couldn't remember how he got there.

"Thank you," the Indian man, who knelt down over Tommy, seemed to mouth. "You saved my son's life."

The world grew faint and quiet in sound and in presence. A smile slowly gathered around the ends of Tommy's lips.

It had been a special day after all. Life, now coming to an end for Tommy, finally had a purpose, he thought.

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