twenty-two

The long Red Line train rumbled through the station, tickling the stitches on my forehead with its rushing wake of air. The breeze felt good. The sky was hot and blue above me. I had started to sweat on the Charles/MGH train station platform, elevated above the cars passing below on Storrow Drive.

The train had just left the Longfellow Bridge. It had emerged from its tunnel in Cambridge, crossed the river, and would now plunge under the city of Boston on its way south to Braintree. I had just walked to the station from the emergency room at Mass General Hospital, where an Indian doctor had put a shot of Novocain and four stitches into my face above my right eyebrow.

A police officer had visited me in the emergency room, asking whether I had seen the guy who pushed me and whether I could give a description. I had given him a broad sketch of a guy with dark hair and a striped shirt, but said that it had all happened too fast for me to remember anything else. I’m not sure why I lied.

In my memory, the fall happened in slow motion. I could still feel the rough skin of his hand knocking my fingers away from the guardrail, and the hard knot of bone in his shoulder hitting me on the spine. I had stumbled forward onto the narrow inner steps of the spiral staircase. I missed the first step and had slipped off the second, pitched too far forward to stop myself from falling. I remembered every blow on the steps: hand … elbow … head … shoulder … back … other hand. Each one of them created its own knot of pain.

I could also remember the guy who pushed me. He had a wide face and a soft mouth. Black hair, black eyes, a small scar on his right cheek. He was a little walleyed, with his left eye drifting away while his right locked onto my gaze. That same rough hand grabbed mine, as if to help, and pulled me up. I could remember his message: “Mind your own business, Mr. Tucker.” I remember him dropping my hand and running out of the store.

I told the cop none of this. I couldn’t see how he could help me. At best, I imagined that he would ask me to come to the station, sign papers, fill out a report, or do whatever it was they did with people who had been attacked. I’d given the cop just enough information to get him to leave, and then I’d walked to the train station.

The train stopped moving and the doors whooshed open. I stepped inside and habitually put my Bluetooth headset into my ear. Carol liked trains. She arrived just as the train pulled out of the station.

She peered at the stitches over my eye and said, “Oh, baby, that looks so painful.”

I said, “Looks do not deceive.”

Carol reached out and came within an inch of touching the wound, but I knew she wouldn’t. She said, “Those people are animals.”

“Which people?” I asked.

“The ones who killed me. The ones who did this.”

“So I’m getting closer. Good.”

Carol’s eyes started to glisten. She said, “No, baby. It’s not good. You need to stop now.”

Carol disappeared as the train slowed and entered Park Street station. I stood. The doors whooshed open, and I emerged into the bottom tunnel in Park Street. The Green Line light-rail trolleys were on the floor above.

Normally I liked walking in the train stations. The station’s subterranean climate was cool and dry, and the flow of people walking in the same direction filled me with energy. But today was different. As I climbed the stairs, a Hispanic kid in a Celtics T-shirt came bounding down the stairs. He raised his hand to strike me, to push me back down the staircase. I tightened my grip on the handrail and shrunk inward, anticipating the blow. Then he was running on down the stairs, probably trying to catch the train I had just left.

I stood on the stairs for a moment, and then ran up them to get to the platform. I emerged breathless, and people stared at me. I could feel them looking at my cut like I was the weak one in the herd, the one that could be culled out and taken down. I averted my gaze from them and leaned on a support column to wait for the train. My stitches hurt.

The pain was mild but unstoppable. I had never been in a fight before. Growing up in Wellesley, going to MIT, and working in high tech had never exposed me, not once, to a situation where someone could or would inflict pain upon me. Now that it had happened, I realized how little control I had over my life.

I had always believed that I controlled how much people could hurt me. They could mock me, insult me, fire me, and even kill my wife, and I had this notion that while I couldn’t control them, I could control my response. I could decide whether I cared about the insult, or worried about being terminated. I could even, I thought, decide how much I’d let Carol’s murder get into my head.

But I couldn’t control this. I couldn’t control a guy pushing me down a staircase. I couldn’t control him shooting me with a machine gun. I couldn’t control the physical pain that this guy could inflict upon me. The way he could tear my skin and make me bleed. I couldn’t stop the blood with a good attitude.

The trolley rattled into the station. I looked behind me, expecting someone to push me in front of it. There was nobody. The doors folded open and I climbed into the car. There were five people spaced around the car, sitting in their chairs and staring into space. The guy closest to me was wearing white iPhone earbuds. He had them cranked up so much that I could hear the music as I sat in a forward-facing double seat. The train started up, and then Carol was sitting in the seat next to the window. Black tunnel streamed past the window next to her.

I said, into my Bluetooth headset, “I’m not stopping.”

Carol turned to me and said, “They’ll kill you, baby.”

“I thought you wanted me to do this. I thought you were hurt that I didn’t want to find out who killed you.”

Carol said, “I wanted you to ask Nate why he fired you. Then I wanted you to tell Kevin and let him catch them.”

“Well, that’s not happening now.”

“I know,” said Carol. “That’s why you have to quit. There is nobody to save you now.”

The train screamed as it took the hard turn under Boylston Street so it could head into the Back Bay. I waited for the noise to stop and said, “I’m not quitting. I promised Charlene. Did you know she blamed me for Kevin getting killed?”

“That’s nonsense, baby. You have to listen to me. You didn’t get him killed.”

“The hell I didn’t,” I said. “Charlene was right.”

“Charlene is grieving. She’s hurt and angry and scared. She doesn’t know what she’s saying. She can’t expect you to do this.”

The black tunnel rolled by through the window with periodic lights shining in. I said to Carol, “I’m scared.”

“I know, baby. I know.”

“But I’m not stopping.”

“But they’ll kill you. I know they will.”

I thought about the life that I’d lead if I stopped now. I’d hole up in my condo and go through the motions of life, just as I had for the past six months. I’d let my world shrink to my condo, the grocery store, and a Twitter account.

I said, “They may kill me. But this is no way to live.”

The train pulled into Copley Station and filled up. A woman with a small child stood next to me, looking around for a spot. I stood, gestured to the two empty seats, and said, “Please.” I caught the doors just as they were closing. They popped open again. The conductor whined, “Please move away from the doors” as I hopped off the train and headed up the steps.

Back on the street, I followed Boylston toward the convention center. It was time to man up and take my life back. I wanted to stop them before they killed again.