Lowland Rider (2 page)

There were seven of them, big, dumb, white, and Irish, the kind of city Irish that wouldn't know a County Cork man if he bit them in the ass, but who cheer each time the IRA blows up a children's hospital. They sang and called and bellowed, spraying "fuck" like blessings in between their other words. The other passengers in the car—a well-dressed, middle-aged couple who should have been in a cab anyway—got up and left as soon as the Boys entered. But the boy with the trumpet and I stayed.

I stayed for the reasons I always stay. They can't frighten me, not even if they kill me, so they don't try. I don't know why the young boy stayed. Perhaps he felt that moving would only attract their attention to him. He did seem to shrink within himself, as though wanting to merge unnoticed into the hard plastic of the seat. It didn't do him any good. The Noisy Boys had him pegged as a wimp from the womb.

"Whoa, look at this!" one of them said, and I knew the kid was mincemeat. "A moo-
sish
-un!" I've come to the conclusion that with all the media glop kids stuff themselves with today, faulty pronunciation must be studied. "What do you play, kid?"

"Trumpet," the boy said, so softly I could barely hear him.

But the Noisy Boys heard, and went into a rap on sucking and blowing. All the while the kid kept his eyes down, not looking up for fear of what he might see. "
Lemme
see it," one of the gang said. "I
wanta
see your horny horn."

"Yeah, come on, asshole," another put in. "Show us your horny horn. Flash your little tooter!"

The boy didn't respond at all. If he had, if he'd started to cry, that might have been enough for them and they'd have left him alone. But he didn't. He ignored them. It was a big mistake.

"You hear me, pussy? I
wanta
see your
horn
." One of the gang, with a shock of uncombed red hair and several missing teeth, grabbed the case and yanked it away from the boy. He tried to stand up and go after it, but two others pushed him down. The back of his head made a crack against the window, but he didn't rub it. He was a spunky kid, for what that was worth.

Red Hair snapped open the latches and the lid fell open. The trumpet fell on the floor with a hell of a clunk. The boy cried out then, like he should have when he hit his head. He started after it again, and was again shoved back. Red Hair picked up the trumpet, dug the mouthpiece out of the case, and jammed it home. "Listen, guys," he said, "I'm gonna play a tune on the faggot's trumpet." He put the horn to his lips and a
cowlike
braying came out. "What is this shit?" he yelled, while his buddies laughed and hooted. "This horn's a piece of shit, it don't work!"

The rest of them took up the cry then. "If it don't work, bust it!"

"If it don't work, bust it!"

"What fuckin' good is it? Smash it!"

Finally the boy yelled in a thin voice far higher than the Noisy Boys—"You don't know how to
play
it, you stupid . . ."

He didn't finish. The ferocity with which Red Hair' glared at him wouldn't let him, and the car got very quiet.

I suppose I could have said something, have told them to leave the boy alone, have pulled the emergency brake cord and toppled them on their fat asses, but if I'd done either of those things, anything, really, but what I did, which was to sit there quietly and watch, I'd have been so much dead meat. Besides, I was an observer of the passing scene. I wasn't there to intervene. I was only there to watch.

So I watched, as Red Hair went up to the boy and stuck his face only an inch away from the boy's own. "You know how to play it, smartass," he leered at the boy, and something in Red Hair's face or voice or breath or all three made the boy's face sour, and he tried to look away. But Red Hair grabbed the boy's ear and twisted, so that the boy was looking at him once more. "You know how?" Red Hair snarled.

"
Yes
," the boy said, with more spirit than I would have shown under the circumstances.

"Then you play somethin' for us. We
wanta
hear a tune. Right, boys?" The rest of the gang jeered and whistled. Red Hair looked at me for the first time. "Right, Mr. Easy Rider?"

I nodded. Actually I thought it would be nice to hear the sound of a live instrument again. My only source of music for a long time has been ghetto blasters.

"You got a command performance, my man," Red Hair said, handing the boy the trumpet. "You play requests?"

"I can play anything," answered the boy, the brave, gutsy, abysmally stupid and suicidal boy. He might have been from Mars for all the sense he showed handling these cretins.

"
Wowie
zowie
," said Red Hair. "Anything, huh? Okay then, how about Taps?"

"That's just a bugle call," the boy answered.

"I
like
Taps," Red Hair said. "Play it."

The boy looked at Red Hair like he wanted to jam the trumpet up his ass, but he raised the horn to his lips and started to play.

It was beautiful. The notes, long and full, made the car sound like an echo chamber. It took me out of the tunnels, above ground again, over to Union Field Cemetery in Queens, where we'd go with Grandpa Gordon every Memorial Day when I was a kid, and we'd stand under the late spring sun and look out over the graves and hear the soldiers fire their salute and then listen to the bugler play Taps so sadly you thought your heart would break. Even the Noisy Boys seemed entranced.

All of them except Red Hair. Just as the boy was letting the last note of "God is nigh" fade away, Red Hair brought up his foot fast as light and kicked the bell of the horn as hard as he could.

The mouthpiece disappeared between the boy's lips and I saw teeth splinter and fly. Red Hair kicked again, straight in as before, and the rear curve of the horn snapped the boy's jaw down and the brass tubing went in until the valves hit the kid's upper lip. There was a gagging, choking sound, and the boy went down, his
earflapped
cap still tight against his head. Even the Noisy Boys gasped.

But Red Hair barked, "Come on," and led the gang through the car toward me. At first I thought I was next, and I tensed, ready at last to fight for self-preservation if nothing else. But I didn't have to. As Red Hair passed me, he leaned in my direction and said, "You got a lousy memory, don'tcha?" to which I tacitly nodded agreement. He was just about to open the door to the next car when he froze, and I thought with joy that maybe a transit cop with a big fat gun had his paw on the handle of the other side.

It wasn't a cop, though. It was Enoch. He opened the door and walked in, no coat on, looking warm as could be in just that thin white outfit he always wears. The Noisy Boys all looked as though God had just entered. They got deathly quiet and nearly all bowed their heads and looked down at their feet. Only Red Hair kept his eyes on Enoch, nodding to him and then gesturing back into the car, as if to indicate the boy lying there bleeding, his feet still weakly beating on the dirty linoleum.

Enoch looked at Red Hair and nodded a short, sharp nod. That seemed to be all Red Hair had been waiting for. He edged past Enoch as though he were afraid to touch him, as did the others, and in a moment only Enoch, the dying boy, and I were in the car.

Enoch stood next to where I sat, watching the boy's life pass away, and then he turned toward me and smiled, not saying a word, only looking at me as if he expected approval, even worship. I looked away. For all that I've seen since I've come down, the look on his face was the worst of all. The irony of it is that I saw there what I myself have been trying to achieve—a complete and total separation from my surroundings, the ability to look on all horrors unscathed. But what terrified me, gave me such nausea, was the implication that he not only rejoiced in the act, but had caused it as well.

And I foolishly thought of Moriarty then. Sherlock Holmes's old enemy, that "Napoleon of Crime" who ruled the underworld of London like a spider rules its web. What better image for Enoch, whom I have come to think of more and more as a ruler of this true underworld, this human cesspool to which I've confined myself?

He looked away from me then, and went back and sat next to the boy. He waited until all movement had stopped, then knelt beside him and pulled the trumpet from the split throat. It was bent and dark with blood, which lay in a pool around the boy's head. Enoch put his face to the boy's, and I was glad it was turned away from me so that I could not see it. Yet I felt powerless to look away. It seemed, as it had with the old woman, that he was kissing the dead face. Yet, when his face came up after a few moments, it was free of blood.

He rose, smiled again in my direction, and passed on to the next car. I retreated, not wanting to be found in the presence of the dead by some transit cop.

I'm beginning to think of Enoch as the Devil himself, who rules this particular hell. Maybe I'm starting to flip out all the way. The thought scares me, scares me even more than Enoch does. I can just picture myself like Baggie, with her dead rats and her worn shopping bags, prowling these tunnels and trains like some frizzy-haired
Charon
. Even the thought of becoming Rags is appalling. There is a sense of the grotesque that I like to think I've avoided in my appearance and bearing, even though I've been down here for half a year, and still feel that nothing will make me ascend. I think I will die here, whether soon or many years from now I have no idea. I only know I'd like to die like a man.

My self-disciplined inaction is starting to rankle as well. I hate Enoch. I would like, in some way, to cause his destruction, to kill him as painfully and mercilessly as he has, not
killed
, perhaps, but
caused
the deaths of others. I'm certain he is responsible. Maybe he's why I came down here. Among other things, so many other things. I still look for patterns.

I ate well today. I bought a hot dog, and had the man put everything on it. I asked where Bennie was, and he said that Bennie had retired. I'll miss him. This new man doesn't seem as happy as Bennie was, not happy at all. I'll miss the way Bennie would smile and say, "Run it through the garden, right?" Through the garden. That always made me laugh.

How can you have a garden where no sun shines? I'll get some sleep now. I'm tired.

PART

1

Oh, there was a rider daring,

Yes, there was a rider bold,

Who
hadna
need for silver,

Nor had he need for gold.

His name was Jamie Gordon,

And
frae
glen to glen

'Twas
the name most feared

By all the lowland men.

Death rode on his saddle,

And death rode by his side,

For death was a' there was to him,

Nae
pomp, nor peace, nor pride.

This man,
sae
guid
in years
lang
syne
,

Sae
kind to one and a',

Was pulled
sae
low by
murther
foul,

The sin of Cain's great
fa
'.

He had two daughters very dear,

Whose eyen shone like the sun,

Also a wife, whose
bonie
smile

Could make the Isla run.

The love he bore for these fair three

Was like unto the love

That
Jesu
bore for man below

And his great Lord above.

One day when Gordon traveled out

About his lowland farm,

A band of outlaws sought his kin,

Purposed to do them harm.

They had their way with Gordon's wife,

And then they cruelly slew

His lovely wife, light of his life,

And both the daughters too . . .

—Jamie Gordon, the Lowland Rider

I have descended. I have come into Hell. I am here for eternity, or until I die, whichever comes first.

I loathe it, and that is good. It is damp and dark and the air is filthy. You chew it as much as you breathe it. It stinks too. It smells of sour bodies and shit and urine that's puddled too long, that's dried so it's smelled forever.

I'm here forever. It's been only three days, and already it feels like forever. I wonder if this is how prisoners feel when they know there's no hope of parole. I know there isn't, no hope at all, and I know because it's in no one's hands but my own. I'm my own jailer, and I've sentenced myself, though I'm still not sure why, and I don't know if I will ever be sure.

Why do we do things? Why take this job and not that one? Why marry
her
and not
her
? Why take
this
way home? Why love this man, hate another? Why live? Why die?

I used to believe it all had purpose, that the things I did I did for a reason, that I was guided, even, if not by the good old Judeo-Christian white-bearded God, then at least by some
thing
. Even when bad things happened—a relative's death, a car engine blowing a gasket, throwing up my guts for no logical reason—I thought it was undoubtedly for the best. Somehow I would worm and weasel around until I had an answer, until I could rationalize it to myself.