Lowland Rider (33 page)

Show me then
, Jesse thought.
Madden me. Mold me
. Enoch heard, nodded, closed his eyes, and Jesse closed his own.

Again, Jesse saw. Nothing was held back, or seen through a dark glass.

This time, he saw everything.

Everything.

~*~

When Jesse opened his eyes, Enoch's face was bright with tears. "You see now," Enoch said. "You see what the balance preserves. You see what would otherwise come to pass."

"The death of love."

Enoch nodded. "The death of any love."

Jesse shook his head. "I can't," he said. "I'm afraid. I can't do what you've done. I couldn't. All those deaths . . ."

"You can. You have. You have killed, and today you sent a kind and simple man to murder an insane old woman."

"But how . . ." Jesse choked on the words. "Even if I agreed, how could I do those things? How could I bear to be around those people, those hateful people?"

"Do not hate them, but learn to love them, and they will love you. And serve you. And when your time is finished you will be
full
of love, too full of love to go on, too full of love to stay here anymore."

Jesse ached with the need to understand. "But how can you feel such love, and still . . . condone this . . .
demand
these . . . atrocities?"

"You do what you must."

"But how can you do it . . . and not feel ... pain?”

“You can't."

"Oh God . . ." Jesse said softly.

"Imagine my agony," Enoch said, "when I think of theirs. And that same agony will be yours. But you have the strength to bear it. And the strength to make the others serve you. To feed the evil. To keep it below."

"But the
balance
. . ." Jesse said desperately. "You spoke of yourself—and of me, if I take your place—as part of the
balance
. If there is evil, then mustn't there be good? Am I . . . are we . . . ordained to do only evil? Will I just be a butcher, a feeder of beasts in some metaphysical zoo? How can I
do
that? How could anyone?"

"You will find your way," Enoch said kindly, then smiled. "There may be more than one."

"Enoch . . . I don't think I can."

"You will. You are already a legend. Now you must become more."

Jesse, on his feet at last, nodded slowly, painfully. "But how? How, Enoch?"

"For that, there is only one way. There was ever only one way."

The whiteness around Enoch began to glow brighter, blinding Jesse, and when he could see once more, Enoch was gone.

But Jesse was no longer alone in the tunnel. Other people stood nearby, waiting for trains, the usual late night assortment, kids, night workers, people who liked the night.

And now a train was coming. It was the IND local, roaring into the station. Jesse heard the rumble of the steel wheels, saw the light growing out of the darkness, the light that presaged the one way of which Enoch had spoken.

A few people saw him move toward the tracks as the train drew nearer, watched him cross the yellow line and stand so that his toes touched the knife-edge of the platform. A woman divined Jesse's intention first, and her cry alerted others, so that over a dozen people saw what happened.

Jesse waited until the train was several yards from where he stood at the platform's edge. He closed his eyes, leaned forward, bit back fear, and despite the roar of the wheels, the glare of the golden eye of the engine that filled the station like the eye of God, Jesse slept.

And Jesse fell.

PART

5

So Jamie Gordon, cursed by God,

Or blest, as some do tell,

Became Death's trusty harbinger,

Who doth man's fate foretell.

And when ye ride the low country,

Gae
fast, and
nae
by night,

Else ye may spy the Gordon bold,

Who causes men to fright.

And if the Gordon cross your path

Your life is at an end.

He hath
nae
mercy nor
nae
love,

And
nae
man is his friend.

For he must ride the lowland dark

Till time itself may cease.

Ne'er Heav'n above nor Hell below

Gie
Jamie Gordon peace.

—Jamie Gordon, the Lowland Rider

MAN FALLS FROM SUBWAY PLATFORM

Several witnesses saw a man fall in front of an IND downtown local train in the 86th Street station early this morning. The man was identified as Enoch
Soames
, 33, a Haitian political refugee who had been missing for three years.
Soames
came to the United States after the deaths of several members of his family in former Haitian President Duvalier's prisons, and disappeared shortly thereafter.

There is some confusion among witnesses, all of whom reported seeing a man dressed in a dark sweater and pants falling in front of the oncoming train, while the victim was found to be wearing white clothing...

—
New York Post
, July 21, 1987

~*~

Claudia
Dorner
found Rags three days after she read the newspaper stories. He was eating a hot dog at the 59th Street station. Although at first she thought he was going to walk away from her, he remained seated on the bench, and moved over slightly to allow her to sit beside him. "Is he dead, Rags?" she asked him.

Rags nodded. "He's dead. He fell in front of that train."

"But it wasn't his body. The papers said—"

"I don't care what no papers said. Fella I know was there, fella named Sam. He saw Jesse, knew Jesse to see him. He said he saw Jesse fall in front of that train. Don't care what they pulled off the tracks, but it was Jesse fell in front of that train."

"But the clothing, and what was in the wallet. . .”

“None of that matters. Jesse's gone."

She stood up. "All right. I just had to be sure."

He looked at the last bite of hot dog, sighed, and held it in his hand. "You gonna write about him now?"

She shook her head. "How can I write a story without an ending?"

Rags watched her for a moment. "He liked you, I think."

"I liked him. I liked him very much." Claudia brushed a stray wisp of hair back from her forehead. "How about you, Rags? Ever coming back up?"

"No." Rags shook his head, and Claudia saw him wince, and noticed that his head was cocked even further to the side than when she had seen him before. "Not
goin
' up. Not
goin
' up no more."

She nodded, raised a hand in farewell, and walked back up into the sunlight that seemed unaccountably cold, and the air that smelled stagnant, like damp, endless tunnels.

~*~

Two weeks later Rags was riding the Queens line westbound, dozing in the early morning, when he was awakened by the sound of a struggle. At the other end of the car a man with a cracked and worn brown leather jacket was tugging at the suit coat of an elderly, white-haired man. The old man was wheezing asthmatically, and his efforts were growing weaker, until his arms dropped and the younger man was able to wrench a wallet from an inside pocket and run into the next car.

Rags thought about trying to help the old man, but by the time he got to his feet the young man was gone, and his victim had toppled to the floor, gasping for breath. Rags hurried up the length of the car, and saw that the man's face was already blue from cyanosis. His breathing had almost stopped.

There was nothing Rags could do. The man would die within seconds, and Rags knew of no way to save him. The only thing he could do was stay with him until he died, talk to him, tell him that it would be all right, that soon he would be with Jesus forever. Then the door to the last car opened.

Jesse was in the doorway, dressed all in white, his face a mask of sorrow. Rags stared at him, eyes and mouth wide in amazement. Then Jesse began to move toward him slowly, and Rags backed away on his hands and knees toward the door of the forward car, where he stopped and watched as Jesse knelt beside the old man, leaned over him, and put his lips against the blue skin. The wheezing sound stopped, the body shuddered once, and lay still.

Then, for the first time, Jesse looked directly at Rags, and Rags felt a two-fold shock of recognition sear through him as he saw Enoch's eyes staring out of Jesse's face. The illusion lasted for only a moment, and then Rags saw Jesse, and only Jesse, just as if he were alive and human and not what Rags feared he had become.

There was recognition in Jesse's face as well, the sad ghost of a smile at seeing Rags, and he opened his mouth slightly as if to speak, but said nothing. Instead, a look of purpose came over his gaunt features, and he rose from the dead man's side and walked toward Rags, who still crouched on his hands and knees. Jesse knelt beside him and lifted a pale, bloodless hand toward his old friend. The fingers trembled, and Rags could see that Jesse was hesitant to touch him, almost as if he were afraid.

Then something in Jesse leaped into flame as a burst of emotion crossed his face. Rags saw desperate hope, fierce determination, the quenching of doubt, and, above them all, a surge of will that would have physically driven Rags back had not the fingers of Jesse's hand clamped like iron bands onto the cloths around his neck, holding Rags in a grip of fire, a white, cleansing, purifying fire that burned away all
Rags's
fear. . .

And consumed his tumor.

It did not shrink slowly, like a deflated balloon, nor did it wither and shift, melding with his body. It simply vanished as the knife wound had vanished, leaving his skin furrowed with age, but soft, flat, whole. The cancer had left him.

Now Jesse's hand was soothingly cool, even through the layers of cloth, and for the first time in many months Rags straightened his neck, and looked into Jesse's face, where he saw his own wonder mirrored. Jesse seemed filled with surprise, and even, Rags thought, a certain frail triumph. But there was not enough joy there to balance the sorrow that hung like a mist around his friend, borne of pain so strong that Rags could touch it with his mind.

Jesse took his hand away and stood up. In the instant before he turned and walked back into the last car, Rags saw a tear leave his eye and roll down his cheek, and then Rags was alone with the dead man on the floor.

Rags got up and walked back to the door, looked through it, and saw that the last car was empty. When the train stopped at the next station, he got off and crossed over to the eastbound track. He stood there alone, listening to the sounds of the tunnels, thinking that if it was so hard to be just a man, how much harder it must be to be a god.

"Hope, Jesse," he whispered. "Hope."

Then, slowly, he pulled out the ends of the cloths that swaddled him and unwound them from around his body, first from his neck, then his arms, chest, stomach, and legs, methodically working his way downward until the last piece of fabric came away from his ankles, and he stood wearing only a shabby white shirt and a pair of faded dungarees. He gathered up the rags in his arms and bore them, as gently as if he carried a child, to a refuse container, into which he dropped them a handful at a time.

Then he sat on a bench, bowed his head, and prayed for Jesse Gordon until the next train came, his last train, the train that would carry him up, into the light.