All Gone (21 page)

I'm between the tracks. Being picked up. On something.

“Jumped.”

“Pushed,” the other carrier says. “I'm not accusing anybody. Just that people do get pushed.”

“Accidentally also.”

“It isn't a rush hour.”

“Doesn't have to be a rush hour for someone to get pushed on the tracks. People down here are always running.”

“Oh, all people?”

“Some. Half. A few then. Running to catch a train that hasn't come yet. That's maybe three stations away and for all they know broken down. And this passenger probably near the platform edge like they're all warned not to and got bumped off by mistake.”

“Will you two move him along?” a third voice says. “We got to get this line operating again.”

I'm being carried. Lifted to the platform on that something I'm on. A litter. Two men lifting me to two men. I can see them now. Policemen are here. A woman in white. Probably a hospital doctor. Emergency. The young ones. Not practicing in a private office yet. What are they called? Coin tellers? Cashiers? Was my mind run over?

“Leg looks very bad,” she says. The intern. That's it.

“We couldn't find his other shoe.”

“Forget the other shoe. Gently. Easier. His internals. He hasn't been thoroughly examined yet.”

“But the way he's dressed, those could be his only pair,” the policeman says. No, one of the men who carried me from the tracks. Where a train hit me. I was hit. Pushed. Bumped? Did I jump? I forget. I was standing on the platform. Reading a newspaper. Heard the train's whistle. Looked. No, extended my head. Leaned it forward. My head. And looked in the tunnel at the train coming to the station I was at. It wasn't three stations away, broken down. And it wasn't the tunnel coming to the station I was at. I was looking, extending, leaning forward. My head. My whole body. Half. Waist upward. Sideward. Trackward. Newspaper in hand. Folded. To what story? Crisis declared? President said this, did that. The train. Train story. Two headlights like headlights from a car. Automobile car. Whistling. Unlike a car. Coming. I even saw two children in the front window of that first car looking at the station the train they were on was approaching. But where was I? Still on the platform. Head and half a whole body extended trackward. Seeing the train approaching the platform of the station I was at. When what? Something happened.

“Here we go, mister. You'll be in emergency in a jiff.”

I'm being carried upstairs to the upper platform. Upper platform's for uptown locals. Lower's for locals going downtown. So I was going downtown or on the downtown platform for what? Extending my head to the left. Downtown trains come from uptown to the left. Though it hadn't reached the platform yet. Still in the tunnel. Headlights. Long whistle. So I was there at the edge of the extreme left of the station where the platform and tunnel meet. Two boys' faces. Children. Could have been girls. Pointing. A girl and a boy. Dark hair, light faces. Suddenly the conductor in his front-car compartment looking alarmed and shouting Stop.

“Light as a feather,” the front carrier says.

“To me he weighs a ton.”

“You ought to take your vitamins then.”

“Say, did you see that vitamin article in the newspaper yesterday?”

“Two days ago. I've been taking them for years. Megadoses of vitamin C. That's why my hair's so thick.”

“It didn't say anything about hair that I read.”

“Hair loss. I also don't get colds. But I was losing mine in patches. My pillow. Every morning. Then my brother said his brother-in-law had the same problem and someone told him of an article they read where vitamin C stops hair loss and restores a lot of what you lost. Look at my hair now.”

“I know what it looks like.”

“But it's the hair's body. I'd let you feel it if we weren't carrying this man.”

“Later.”

“Easy, you guys,” the intern says. We pass a change booth. Whatever they're called they're in. Those token people. A token person sets down his bucket beneath a turnstile.

“Good luck, brother,” he says, leaning over me.

Must be collecting. But that was nice. And how come I didn't hear the chang of tokens against metal? Before that, metal against the floor. How come I hear nothing but voices, no other sounds? No footprints. Shoe sounds. My sounds. No pain. She gave me a shot. I'm heading for the stairs to the outside. We are. Outside is light. It isn't night. I didn't know. I'm not on my own two feet. In my own two shoes. Stand up and be counted, brother. Who used to say that? Put your shoes on, Lucy, you're a big girl now. Who sang that? When I used to listen to such songs. But my shoe. What they say happened to it? Did they ever find it? Will I now only need one? That's no joke. Let me see. What exactly happened to me before? Put yourself in the other person's shoes. My father, my mother. I'm looking left. Was. Then. What? Jostled? Pushed? Bumped? Did I jump again? Did I ever jump? Years ago. So what. When I was a teen. Melancholic kid then. In college but mostly out. Jumped. Fell right between the well. Train went over me. Never touched. I got up. When I was this teen. Up, and I said, after the train passed over me. Stopped to exchange with passengers above me. The conductor mustn't have seen me and if he did, kept his mouth shut. But I got up and looked at the train leaving the station and said from the well Never again. Hallelujah and Handel's chorus and never again. A man washing down the tiles of the platform said Hey, you nuts? What are you doing on the tracks? I said then I was lucky. To the man. And that something's got to be going good for me all right. Because I didn't want to die. I said all that. Why'd I do it then? Love? Depressed and no foreseeable prospects that I could foreseeably see and in love with a loveless love? That was then. What about today? Did I? Jump? Same reasons? Similar? Did I plan it? Was that what was in my mind? No, my shoe.

Sidewalk, sunshine and street. A pedestrian audience.

“What happened?”

“Jumped in front of a train.”

“She says he was pushed.”

“She was there?”

“He looks bad.”

“You wouldn't look good.”

“But do you see his face?”

“Don't look.”

“I can't help but look.”

“You can turn around.”

“Turn me around.”

“Bastards.”

“Who?”

“Whoever pushed him.”

“You don't want to say things without proof.”

“All I'm saying's what he said.”

“I didn't say it. She did.”

“Make way,” my policeman says.

I'm slid into an ambulance. Doors locked. Suddenly soundless, like a museum tomb. Blanket covering me. Correction. Egyptian. Addition. Can't tell from hot or cold, so what's the difference?

“How you doing, sir?” the doctor says. “You okay?” What do you want me to say?

Driven off. Though red lights. Truckmen. Busmen. Whole world round pausing in mourning for me. A king out there would have to stop. If I were a boy or that melancholic kid again I'd be enjoying the trip. But I'm hopelessly optimistic. Hoggishly opportunistic. They'll never take my leg. I could never take my life. So what's up, Doc? That's what I want to say to your okay. Leg going to go? Will it be a good hospital my leg goes in? Clean? Maybe this is a dream? Wake me. Wake up. Time to get ready for school. Can Johnny come out and play? He'll need all two legs. Johnny's actually my name. But did I only leave my shoe behind? Somebody laugh. No, they would have mentioned that. But leg looks bad. Heard people say. And leg means foot. Foot touches floor. I want to get to the very bottom of this, Doc. Isn't that a line from some movie or play? Radio show? All of those. Mysteries. Adventure yarns. Well I never liked mysteries or yarns of any kind. Whirrr, not that I can hear the siren and sudden stops.

“You'll be all right,” person in white says. “What you do, jump?”

Me? You see it in my eyes? Let me reconstruct for you, lady doctor. Male nurse. Person who rides with people to hospitals holding their hands. Not that I've been to one as a patient myself. Never. Once. Glass in hand. Hand you're holding, same hand. Different finger. Big one. Bad cut. Big deal. Right to the bone, the doctor said. Right to the bone, I later liked to say. And said not a while back. To whom? A woman? Woman I see or saw. Name begins with a D. De, Da. Da, De. Held my hand too. Was examining the palm. Telling me my life present, future and all my civil wars. Till she came to the ringer fing. Who? Not you. That woman. De, Da; Di, Do. Black hair, short body. Saying Short life, big finger. Long scar, what happened? Accident when I was twelve, I said. Glass cut right to the bone.

“Beep your horn if the siren doesn't work.”

“That creep still won't get out of the way.”

“Bump him.”

“Our fenders can get locked.”

“All the drivers do it for me.”

“They want to lose their jobs.”

“Not if you do it lightly.”

Black hair, lean body. Short break for fainting.

“Move it, goddamn you, you stupid driver. Can't you see we've an emergency in here?”

In a room. People in white working on me. Scratching. Tickling. Cut it out. Can't feel a thing. Other people working on other people on other tables in the room. Curtains. Some not. Some smells. Pillorying light. “Now, if you don't mind?”

“Brief,” a doctor working over me says.

“Can you tell me what happened, John?” a policeman says.

I open my mouth.

Do I speak? He looks at me. Is very close. Now they're scissoring. Injecting. His lips are implanted in my ear.

“I know this is a bad time, John. But no time like the present. It's only we got to know. Records. This report here. Sooner the better. For you. Maybe for everyone. We have to know if we should pursue. Investigate. Did you jump? Were you pushed? And if so, by who?”

I open my mouth.

“What? Once more, John. Give it a try.”

I tell him. In my head, I tell him, I try. You see. I was standing on the platform. Newspaper in hand. Two in the bush. World's crush. Plane crash. Those were the three stories I was between reading before. When the plane came. The rains came. That was from a song. I saw the movie. First the show. Saw the lights. First the whistle. Train coming from uptown to down. That's when I jumped. No, I was pushed. Officer, I fell. Stumbled. Wain wumbled. Wind blew me onto the tracks. William Wind. Ye old bloke. I'm very light. Johnny Light Light Light. As a feather my father useta say.

“No sense out of him. His vocal cords touched too?”

“In shock.”

“Of course.”

All my clothes snibbled off.

I'm naked. I'm cold. Shock, who?

So there I was. Fifty Arabs on one side of me. Hundred cannibals on the other. Cliff with five-thousand-foot ravine in front. Pit of cannibal-eating alligators in my back. No place to go. No direction. Light as a feather my mother also used to say. If you were thrown off a building you'd float down instead of drop, my father would say. Way back. Don't say things like that, my mother said. To me? You're so skinny, my brother used to say, that when you stand sideways you can't be seen. No, my sister used to say. Sister and brother in hospitals too. Mother and father eaten by cannibals there too. I stayed by their beds. Hands on my heads. Watered their brows. Cheeks all of bone. That when you drink tomato juice, my sister said, you look like a thermometer. Sister laughed. That when you wear a red tie, she said. Brother laughed at what sister had said. Mother laughed at what sister had said and brother and sister were laughing at. And father because they all laughed. Now I'm last. In a hospital too.

“Got to clean the lesions first.”

Sutures does someone say? Scalpel? I see the scalpel. I saw the movie. See how they run.

Thermometer, and they all laughed. Their heads off.

“That's no rattle. Let's get the machines on him.”

“Wheel them in?”

“Wheel him too.”

“Double e-ing. Calling a clear.”

Bells. Bings. Blood transfusion. That's the sting going into my arm.

I jumped. Hey, copper, still around to hear? Nah, I fell. Gad's honest treut.

I was pushed, the dirty rat. There's your plate of beans. And when I get out of this joint. For I'm going to beat this rap. As you see, I'm hopelessly attitudinistic. Hopelostly antivivisectionistic.

No, I was so thin. So light. Johnny L. L. Light. That's what I was thinking of before. That when I got on the scale the needle didn't move. My father. That's how you can get a weigh. My brother. My sister saying Wag drags with your raggity gags and my mother a bony-beaked comedian of ninety, brown bear burned to white. I don't want to go and so I'm not going, she said, no matter what my age. Here the shiny sonshine her only survivor. Vitamin E. Dose of those once a day what'll save me, she said. Vitamin C. There's what I should do about my falling hair other than stepping out of the way. Vitamin D. Holding my short-lived hand. I was fibbing before, she said. Trying to catch how you react. You don't. Or I didn't. But I know nothing about palmistry except this line and it means long life. And here's where your lines of affection would be and your wrist as asthenic rascettes.

Actually, I was blown on the tracks. Like that newspaper. Single sheet. Carving our way through corridors now, blood stringing along. Yesterday's headlines making waves. Wind wound down the subway entrance from two flights above. Same steps I was later carried up on one of those rolling ambulance carts. Steered along sidewalk and street. Doors slammed. Siren turned on. Ambulance driven away. Hey, wait for me, I screamed. There's something you forgot. Pigeons settled on my chest. Invalid-eating dogs licked my paws. What are you doing lying on a stretcher in the street? a woman said. Ambulance rode off without me, I said. Oh, I saw that funny movie too. Harry? Cary? Darnit, sir, who were those two stars again?