Fiction by F.T. Rea
August 16, 1966:
Roscoe Swift sat alone in a day car slowly rattling its way into
Central Station. The solitary sailor had spent the last hour turning the
glossy pages of Playboy and contemplating infinity. As the train
lurched he glanced out of the window at Tuesday morning, Chicago style.
Roscoe
had sequestered himself from the marathon poker game in another car.
The further the train had gotten from Main Street Station in Richmond
the more the call for wild cards and split pots had grown. Finally it
had driven him from the table. His resolute grandfather had schooled him
to avoid such frilly variations on the already-perfect game of poker.
“Gimmicks like that were invented to keep suckers in the game,” was the old man’s admonition.
On
the way to boot camp, volunteering to be a sucker seemed like a bad
idea. This was hardly the day Roscoe wanted to invite the jinx that
might be set loose by disrespecting absolutes.
In
the magazine’s lengthy interview section LSD pioneer Timothy Leary
ruminated on his chemically enlarged view of the so-called Youth
Movement. Professor Leary called the baby boomers, “The wisest and
holiest generation that the human race has yet seen.”
The
subculture forming around psychedelic drugs in that time was opening
new dimensions of risk for 19-year-old daredevils. Roscoe wondered if he
would ever do acid. His friend Bake had tripped and lived to tell about
it.
There
was a fresh dimension to the conflict in Vietnam that month. The Cold
War’s hottest spot was being infused with its first batch of draftees;
some 65,000 were being sent into the fray. Until this point it had been
the Defense Department’s policy to use volunteers only for combat duty.
On
the home-front quakes in the culture were also abundant: A 25-year-old
former Eagle Scout, Charles Whitman, climbed a tower on the University
of Texas campus and shot 46 people, at random, killing 16;
comedian/first amendment martyr Lenny Bruce was found dead -- overdosed
and fat belly up -- on his bathroom floor; news of songwriter/musician
John Lennon’s playful crack about his band -- “We’re more popular than
Jesus Christ now” -- inflamed the devoutly humorless; and reigning
Heavyweight Champ, Muhammad Ali, bent all sorts of folks out of shape
with his widely reported quip -- “I ain't got nothing against them Viet
Cong.”
Since
leaving Virginia the morning before, Roscoe had traveled -- via the
Chesapeake and Ohio line -- through parts of West Virginia, Ohio, and
Indiana, on his way to Illinois.
Taking
leave from the airbrushed charms of a model billed as Diane Chandler,
who was September’s Playmate of the Month, his mind kaleidoscoped to an
image of another smiling pretty girl, Julie, his girlfriend.
Then, for a second, Roscoe could feel the sound of Julie's laughter.
As
a preamble to Roscoe’s departure for basic training he and Julie had
spent the weekend in Virginia Beach, trying their best to savor the
bittersweet taste of war-torn romance, black and white movie style. As
luck would have it, the stately Cavalier Hotel’s central air
conditioning system went on the blink the Friday they arrived.
Since
the hotel’s windows couldn't be opened that meant the sea breeze was
unavailable for relief from the heat wave. Nonetheless, they stayed on,
because the hotel itself, a stylish relic of the Roaring ‘20s, meant
something. After two years of catch-as-catch-can back-seat romance, this
was where they had chosen to spend their first whole night together.
That
evening they stretched out on the bed and sipped chilled champagne.
With the hotel-supplied fan blowing on them at full blast, suddenly, a
good-sized chunk of the ceiling fell onto a chair across the room.
Roscoe reported the strange problem to the front desk, “I hate to sound like Chicken Little, but perhaps you have a safer room?”
Then
Julie suggested a stroll on the beach to cool off. Walking barefoot in
the surf, neither of them had much to say. An hour later Julie and
Roscoe were back at the hotel. With a little snooping around the pair
discovered the door to the Cavalier’s indoor pool was unlocked. As it
was well past the posted time for the pool to be open and the lights
were off in the chlorine-smelling room, they reasoned the facility was
at their disposal for a little skinny-dipping.
Roscoe set the magazine aside. He smiled, remembering the adage about how Richmond girls are different at the Beach.
*
Stepping
off the train, Roscoe was two hours from another train ride. This one,
aboard a local commuter, would finish the job of transporting him from
Richmond’s Fan District -- with its turn-of-the-century townhouses -- to
a stark world of colorless buildings and punishing paved grinders:
Great Lakes Naval Training Center was his destination.
In
the last month Roscoe had listened to plenty of supposedly useful yarns
of what to expect at boot camp. Concerning Chicago, he could recite
facts about the White Sox, the Cubs and the Bears; he had seen the movie
about Mrs. O’Leary’s cow and the big fire; he thought Bo Diddley was
from Chicago. One thing was certain, Seaman Recruit Swift knew he was
further from home than he’d ever been.
Outside
the train station on the sidewalk, “They’re Coming to Take Me Away” -- a
novelty tune on the summer's Top 40 chart -- blared appropriately from
the radio of a double-parked Pontiac GTO.
After
laughing at the ironic coincidence of the music, Roscoe, Zach, Rusty,
and Cliff - comrades-at-arms in the same Navy Reserve unit in Richmond
for four months of weekly meetings - considered their options for
killing the time between trains, and they spoke of the ordeal ahead of
them.
“That’s
it, man.” Rusty explained. “The Navy figures everybody eats Jell-O, so
that’s where they slip you the dose of saltpeter.”
“Get serious, that’s got to be bullshit,” said Zach. “The old salts tell you that to jerk you around.”
“OK, Zach, you can have all my Jell-O,” Rusty offered.
“Not even a breeze; what do y’all make of the Windy City?” asked Cliff. “It’s just as damn hot up here as it was in Richmond.”
A
couple of blocks from the station the team of eastern time-zoners,
outfitted in their summer whites, stopped on a busy corner to scan the
hazy urban landscape. Finding a worthwhile sightseeing adventure was at
the top of their agenda.
Answering
the call, a rumpled character slowly approached the quartet from across
the street. Moving with a purpose, he was a journeyman wino who knew a
soft touch when he could focus on it.
In
a vaguely European accent the street-wise operator badgered the four
out of a cigarette, a light, two more cigarettes for later, then a
contribution of spare change. When the foul-smelling panhandler demanded
“folding money” Roscoe turned from the scene and walked away. His pals
followed his lead. Then the crew broke into a sprint to escape the sound
of the greedy beggar’s shouts.
Rusty,
the fastest afoot, darted into a subway entrance with the others at his
heels. Cliff was laughing so hard he slipped on the steps and almost
fell.
As
Roscoe descended the stairway into the netherworld beneath the city, he
was reminded of H. G. Wells’ “Time Machine” and observed, “I guess this
must be where the Morlocks of the Midway would live; if there are any.”
Zach smiled. No one laughed.
The
squad agreed that since they were already there, and only Rusty had
ever seen a subway, a little reconnoitering was in order. Thus they
bought tokens, planning only to look around, not to ride. Roscoe, the
last to go through the turnstile, wandered off on his own to inspect the
mysterious tracks that disappeared into darkness.
Standing
close to the platform’s edge, Roscoe wondered how tightly the trains
fit into the channel. As he listened to his friends’ soft accents
ricocheting off the hard surfaces of the deserted subway stop, he
recalled a trip by train in 1955’s summer with his grandfather. Roscoe
smiled as he thought of his lifelong fascination with trains. Unlike
most of his traveling companions, he was glad the airline strike had
forced them to make the journey by rail.
Walking
aimlessly along the platform, as he reminisced, Roscoe noticed a
distant silhouette furtively approaching the edge. It appeared to him to
be a small woman. She was less than a hundred yards down the tracks. He
watched her sit down carefully on the platform. She didn't move like a
young woman. Seconds later she slid off, disappearing into the dark pit
below.
Although Roscoe was intrigued, he felt no sense of alarm. Not yet.
Rosacoe
didn’t wonder if it was a common practice for the natives to jump onto
the subway tracks. He simply continued to walk toward the scene, slowly
taking it in, as if it were a movie. When Zach caught up with him Roscoe
pointed to where the enigmatic figure had been.
Roscoe shrugged, “What do you make of it?”
"Let's see where she went," Zach said.
To
investigate the two walked closer. Eventually they saw a gray lump on
the subway tracks. It hardly looked like a person. Then they heard what
was surely the sound of an approaching train coming out of the tunnel’s
void.
As
Roscoe shouted at the woman to get up, Zach took off in the direction
of the sound of the train. The scene took on a high-contrast, film noir
look when the tunnel was suddenly lit up by the train’s light.
Running
toward the train, the two desperate sailors waved their arms
frantically to get someone’s attention. As they sprinted past the woman
on the tracks she remained clenched into a tight ball, ready to take the
big ride.
The subway's brakes began to screech horrifically, splitting seconds into shards.
The woman didn't move.
Metal strained against metal as the train’s momentum continued to carry it forth.
Roscoe's
senses were stretched to new limits. Tiny details, angles of light and
bits of sound, became magnified. All seemed caught in a spell of slow
motion and exaggerated intensity.
The subway train slid to a full stop about ten yards short of creating a grisly finish.
Roscoe
and Zach sprang from the platform and gathered the trembling woman from
the tracks. They carefully passed her up to Rusty and Cliff, who stood
three feet above. Passengers emptied from the train. Adrenaline surged
through Roscoe’s limbs as he climbed back onto the platform. Brushing
off his uniform, he strained to listen to the conversation between the
train's driver and the strange person who had just been a lump on the
subway track.
The
gray woman, who appeared to be middle-aged, spewed, "Thank you," over
and over again. She explained her presence on the tracks to having,
“Slipped.”
Shortly
later the subway driver acted as if he believed her useful explanation.
Zach pulled him aside to say that we had seen the woman jump, not fall,
from the platform. Roscoe began to protest to the buzzing mob’s deaf
ears, but he stopped abruptly when he detected a feminine voice
describing what sounded like a similar incident. He panned the
congregation until he found the speaker. She was about his age.
Filing
her fingernails with an emery board -- eyes fixed on her work -- she
told how another person, a man, had been killed at that same stop last
week: “The lady is entitled to die if she wants to. You know she’ll just
do it again.”
As
she looked up to inspect her audience, such as it was, Roscoe caught
Miss Perfect Fingernails’ eye. He shook his head to say, “No!”
The
impatient girl looked away and gestured toward the desperate woman who
surely had expected to be conning St. Peter at the Pearly Gates that
morning, instead of a subway driver. “Now we’re late for our
appointments. For what?”
Roscoe
watched the forsaken lady -- snatched from the Grim Reaper’s clutches
-- vanish into the ether of the moment’s cheerless confusion. Shortly
thereafter the train was gone, too.
“Well, I don’t know about you boys,” said Roscoe. “But I’ve had enough of Chicago sights for today.”
On
their way back to daylight Roscoe listened to his longtime friend Zach
tell the other two, who were relatively new friends, a story about Bake:
To win a bet, Bake, a consummate daredevil, had recently jumped from
Richmond’s Huguenot Bridge into the Kanawha Canal.
“Sure
sounds like this Bake is a piece of work,” said Cliff. “You said he’s
going to RPI this fall. What’s he doing about the draft?”
“This
is a guy who believes in spontaneity like it’s sacred,” said Zach.
“Roscoe, can you imagine Bake in any branch of military service, draft
or no draft?”
“If he can hack being told what to do at art school, I’ll be surprised.” observed Roscoe.
“Hey, man, I’m not so sure any of us belong in the service,” Rusty volunteered.”
“I hear you.” Cliff concurred.
Upon
rejoining the others from their Virginia contingent at Central Station,
the four sightseers found a legion of additional boot camp-bound
sailors from all over the country. For the men assembled, a two-year
active-duty hitch in the Navy Reserve was preferable to rolling the dice
on what the busy Selective Service system might dish out.
Rusty
and Zack eagerly rehashed the morning’s bizarre adventure: “One of them
told me there’s been three suicides in Chicago’s subways this summer,”
reported Zach. “Could it be the heat?”
“I
still had no idea what they were doing when I saw these two fools
hopping off the platform, right in front of that train,” Rusty chuckled.
“Hey, I couldn’t see squat on the tracks.”
“She’s
probably standing on the roof of a skyscraper, right now” Zach
theorized. “And, I’m sorry, but I’ll let some other hero break her
fall.”
*
Aboard
the train from Chicago to Great Lakes Roscoe sat by the window
considering the unseen dimensions of his new role -- a GI sworn to stand
between what is dear to America and its enemies. Only days before, as
he walked on the beach with Julie, he had felt so sure of being prepared
for the task.
Yet
as he sat there, with miles of unfamiliar scenery streaming by, Roscoe
felt waves of trepidation washing over his easy confidence. On top of
that, he wished he had gotten a little bit of sleep during the trip.
With
their destination only minutes away the four Subway Swashbucklers opted
to get in a few hands of stud poker; to accommodate Roscoe, wild cards
weren’t suggested.
Sitting
on a king in the hole, with a queen and ten up, Roscoe called Zach’s
fifteen-cent-bet. There were no pairs showing and the bettor had just
drawn a jack to his queen.
Cliff
mentioned that the Treasury Department had announced it would no longer
print two-dollar bills. “And, I heard boot camp pay comes in the form
of -- what else? -- two-dollar bills.”
“Where’d you hear that?” Zach challenged. “I bet it’s bullshit.”
“Maybe we’re going to get the last of the deuces,” said Rusty. “And, I’ll take any of them you don’t want.”
Roscoe’s
mind wasn’t on payday or the poker game. He was daydreaming about Julie
smiling on the beach, with her teal-colored eyes glistening and her
sun-streaked hair livened by a gust of wind.
Roscoe
grappled with his thoughts, trying to pull them together -- memory,
urges, and anticipation all marching to the steady beat provided by the
tracks. It occurred to him there was something more than mere distance
between his seat on that train and what had been his life in Virginia.
“If
time has borders, between one age and the next, it might be thicker at
the border,” Roscoe announced to no one in particular.
Rusty, the dealer, batted Roscoe’s oblique remark away, “So, are you calling Zach’s bet, or what?”
Expressionless,
Roscoe stared at his fourth card, a nine. He pulled out a cigarette.
Nodding toward Zach’s hand -- a pair of jacks, showing -- Roscoe flipped
his up-cards over, face down. “OK, even if saving the Queen of the
Subway from certain death doesn’t count for shit, anymore, there are
certain standards that still don’t change. Not for me.”
Rusty shrugged, “Meaning?”
“So,
this disposable hero won’t pay a cent for a fifth card to fill an
inside straight,” said Roscoe, lighting his cigarette. “First hand, or
last, it’s still a sucker’s bet. And, I’ll sit the next hand out.”
“Whatever you say, man,” Rusty laughed. “But we’ve probably got time for just one more hand. Sure you want to quit now?”
Roscoe
took a big drag of his filter-tipped Kool. He drank in the moving
picture of Illinois that was streaming past his window. The railroad
ties were clicking monotonously. He thought about how movies depict
motion by running a series of still pictures through a projector.
However, with the memory picture of Julie on the beach he’d just
conjured up, it wasn’t frozen like a still. Nor was it in full motion.
The image moved ever so slightly, capturing what amounted to a single
gesture.
After
receiving their last cards Cliff and Rusty folded, too. Zach chuckled
as he raked in the pot. Cliff gathered the cards and began to
shuffle; preparing to deal the next hand.
“You in, Swift?” inquired the dealer. “The game is seven-card stud. The ante is still a quarter.”
“This time let’s make it 50 cents,” suggested Rusty, sliding two quarters into the center of the makeshift card table.
“Last hand? I’m in,” said Zach.
Roscoe
blew a perfect smoke ring, which he studied as it began to float out of
shape. He promised himself that no matter what happened to him, he
would never forget that smoke ring.
With a wee smile, Roscoe said, “Sure. Deal me in.”
Dogtown Hero
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Cross-Eyed Mona
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