Townie_ A Memoir - Andre Dubus [183]
The inner door slid closed and the man’s eyes passed over the school-children in the aisle and he kept walking forward without slowing. He was a parody of street-mean; his head was nearly shaved, his nose and ears pierced with silver. Draped over his beefy torso was a black leather jacket festooned with giant safety pins and hooks, a metal chain hanging across his heart. At the base of his throat was the green tip of a dragon’s tail, the rest down under his T-shirt and across his chest.
I stood in the aisle, the brown-haired girl directly behind me. The man kept coming and I held up my left hand, my weight on my back foot, my right hanging loosely at my side. “This car’s closed.”
The man stopped. I could see he was five or six years younger than I was, his face contorting into a mask of instant hatred I’d seen so many times before.
“You don’t tell me what to do. Fuck you and your fuckin’ closed car, I’ll cut your head off and stick it down your fuckin’ throat.”
Now was that half second in which to move. Now was that flash of time to tear through the membrane around his yelling face, to drop him where he stood. He stepped closer. My fingertips touched his chest beneath his T-shirt—flesh and muscle and bone—and he was yelling louder, like seeing a chained German shepherd, hearing its chest-croaking bark, sincere and unrepentant, and he smelled like beer and nicotine and the sweat of the unwashed. Why did my right hand stay still? Why was I letting him go on like this in front of all these watching people?
“You hear me? I’ll fucking kill you.”
Behind us one of the girls whimpered. There were hoarse whispers from the old.
“Fine, but this car’s closed.”
My mouth was dry, my tongue thick. He yelled more words back, every other one fuckin’ or cunt, and I wanted to get him away from the girls. I could hear some of them crying in the aisle behind me, and I nodded at every insult and threat he spit into my face. It was like opening my mouth and swallowing whole the ugliest part of him. He assured me he was going to murder me, how easy it would be to do it, and I nodded and agreed with him. I said, “Let’s continue this outside.”
“Happy to, motherfucker. Bleedin’ fuckin’ happy to.” And he backed up, his eyes on mine. He reached behind him for the handle and flicked the door open. I could see he was strong, that confrontation was nothing new to him. Under the pale fluorescent light between the two doors, he glanced back at the platform separating the train cars and he flicked open the outer door, his eyes still on me, and I followed him out into the cold roar of speeding air and the train’s wheels clicking over the ties and a deep darkness on both sides of us beyond low steel rails.
“Who the fuck are you to tell me what to do? No one tells me what to fuckin’ do. You hear that?” His face was inches from mine. In the dim light from both cars I could see his eyes were brown, a life in them somewhere, one he’d lived over here while I’d lived mine over there. I wasn’t going to let him throw me off this train, but I noticed I was standing normally too, my weight even on both feet. And I did not care if he truly believed he could easily beat me up, kill me, make me disappear.
I leaned one shoulder against the outer wall, felt its shifting sway, and I stared at this man I’d filled so immediately with rage. I stared and I waited.
It’s what I did every morning. Tried to sit and stare at the page without expectation, without judgment. In order for something true to come, I had to disappear.
He was still yelling. I was aware of the black English countryside falling away behind his back and behind mine. There was the smell of diesel, the scorched iron of steel wheels zipping along steel rails. His brown eyes, two slits as he yelled, were ringed with moisture, and it was clear how much he needed me to know he was not one to be dominated by anyone else. He was not one to be fucked with, couldn’t I see that? Was I blind?
He did not say these words, but they were in the dark sheen of his eyes, and they looked