I wrote this in the early 2000s, based on some notes I took in the 1990s, when I would ride the train from Boston to Haverhill. The station is obviously North Station, but before the renovations. I haven't been there in decades. The renovations have probably been renovated. Anyway, you can clearly tell that I wrote this under the sway of Joseph Mitchell and Malcolm Lowry, stylistically anyway. It's never been published--rejected one or two times. I realize why it's not fashionable to draw a portrait of a police officer that's sympathetic in any way. Yet what captivated me about this interaction was the futility of this dance between an unruly id and an ineffectual superego in circumstances that wouldn't let either win. Perhaps there was something in myself that echoed this scene.
Michael Erard, michael.erard@gmail.com
Word count: 1773 words
Scene in an American Train Station, Mid 1990s
His body slapping against the resisting glass door makes me look.
Over and over, frantic to make a train, but the door's too heavy; he can’t open it, he'll miss the train.
I go back to my book.
At once the door gives way and he stumbles inside, coat tails flying, tripping halfway across the floor, a nearly epic skid and flail on the mud-tracked tiles. Suit, scarf, overcoat: a businessman enjoying the happiest hours of his day. And smack between Christmas and New Year's, clearly it's the best time of the year, especially when you have a fat bonus to burn off.
I have been walking around in the cold all day. Doing what doesn't matter; all that matters is that I'm glad for the warm station, and that we're all waiting for the commuter trains to take us north, north toward home, about two dozen of us, sitting on long benches of dark polished wood. Like church pews, strangely. We'll soon be home from the city, kick up our feet, eat some soup. I take off my parka and start to read with the thought of warm soup in mind.
The businessman lurches past. That's when I see: the trench coat's frayed, he's got sweaters bunched up underneath, layers of dirty sweaters for warmth. This isn't someone burning off a bonus. His frosted glasses are taped. His face jowly and livid-skinned. His shoulders coated with glittering stars of melted ice. Dirty tufts of hair sticking out of under his ski cap. He passes far behind me. I get a whiff of what he's been drinking and, so informed, continue reading.
Then: SLAM! he sits down on the other end of the same bench and sighs long and satisfied. The warmth. The heat. He's so happy to be here, he moans quietly. Almost a lowing. A warm place on a frozen January night would make a cow out of anyone. His eyes are closing, his head tilting. The warmth. The heat. Moo.
I look back to my page.
A minute passes. How I can continue to read is a mystery to me now, how I began watching, could not stop, though I knew something should be done, but what?
It began with a silky slishing noise, then a dull thump. I was a Catholic kid, I know the second sound: skull bone on the wood of a church pew. Unmistakeable. I read while he naps behind me.
January rages outside, thus enters the policeman. He saunters over from the corner. Short, young, his belt bristling with paraphenalia. Heads straight for the drunk.
Behind me: "Up. Get up," the cop. His voices catches in a grunt hauling the man up sitting. "Up. Sit up. Up, you." I heard the reverse swish. "Up. Lean your head back. Or you're gonna have to go outside."
The drunk makes a sound.
"Huh?" the cop.
I turn the page.
The man strings some sounds together that sound like "Whatta you want me to do?" rolling his head back and forth.
"What do I want you to do? I want you to stay up," the cop.
The drunk topples. "Whoa," he says as he goes.
"No no you don't – " says the cop, and hauls him up.
"Watta yaaa – "
“Sit up. I want you to sit up. Sit up. Don't lie down. You're gonna have to leave if I tell you again to sit up. This isn't Park Street. Don't let me tell you again. No no get up. Get up. This is not a bed."
"It's not fair –"
"Listen – "
"-- I don't know what you're talking about,” the man complains.
“I am security," the cop says. "I can tell you to leave. I can kick you outta here, you got that? Now I don't want to kick you out but I will kick you out if you lay down."
I don't have to turn to see the man's eyes rolling up and his body sagging, his mouth gripped with a kind of surprise. The warmth. His mind willing but his flesh gaping at the cop. I imagine the cop poking him in the gut with the butt end of his long black flashlight, the man finding a moment of control, groaning and coming up, slapping an arm to his stomach.
"Sit up," the cop. He begs: "Please."
“I don't understand why you're being so tough," the man.
"I'm not being tough," the cop. "Do you hear me raising my voice? I'm not raising my voice. Anyone else I'd be kicking out. They'd be out of here. I'm lenient. So sit up. Don't lay down – . "
"What time can I –
"-- hey!"
" – lay down?"
"Buddy. Hey! There's no lay down time."
"I don't understand why you're being so tough."
"Sit up and you can stay there."
I turn the page and think of the warm soup waiting for me at home.
§§
After a while I get up, move around. There's two or three families, the kids' mittens stacked in a pile so they can chase each other while the parents sit and talk. I move my things across from the drunken man so that I can watch him. He's been leaning on one arm for a few minutes but this gives way and his body falls and his skull hits the wood again. He says nothing as he goes. I figure I know how he feels; if I'd been drinking, I'd be sleepy too. Maybe if he took his coat and some of his sweaters off, he'd be less drowsy. Imagine the smell of it though.
The cop appears and I am surprised to see how young he is and he will not suggest that the man take some of his clothes off. It's not his fault that North Station is heated like a greenhouse.
“Up. Buddy, up. Up. Come on." He is trying to enlist the man to fight gravity.
A pause. "Why?"
"You know why. Come on."
"Why?"
"You know why." The cop slaps his thighs with his hands, anxious, then reaches down and grabs the drunk by the front of his trenchcoat and tries to pull him up. If the drunk will not struggle, then he will. "Come on – " the cop heaves.
I've seen the drunken man standing and he is sizably taller than the cop who is stocky but is on the wrong side of the physics. So much of this scene would be avoided if one of these men could lever the other one, but the cop can't position himself under the center of the drunk to lift and the drunk is flopping from the drink and the cold and a day of both. It's like the man's mass is mocking both of them. He wheezes as if the cop is squeezing the air out of him, then flops forward, spineless, his face near the cop's belt. The contact repulses the cop.
"Get," he groans, "up," planting one hand on the man's face and the other on his chest and the man sprawls back on the pew, arms spread.
"Do I have to go out again?" he asks.
The cop has overcome the inertia of his compassion, and he gets tough. His face has snapped shut. He's breathing hard. "I told you – "
"Why – “
Stern: "-- before, you – “
" – Do I have to go out –"
" – Don't sit up – "
"-- Again? It's cold," the drunk says.
"You're right," says the cop. "You're right, it's cold. So stay up. Because I will put you out there," pointing a gloved finger. "Stay up. Or I'll do it," and he walks away.
I imagine this dance going all night, the cop and the drunk whirling around the church pews, the train pews, while I lie at home in bed.
§§§
It's not long before they're at it again, the dance of the cop and the drunken man, and again I watch, capable only of observing this scene that spins quickly from comedy to tragedy back to farce.
"Hey buddy. Hey, buddy. Hey – " the cop says. His hands, out of his leather gloves, slap the drunk's face. Each slap makes a smacking sound. The flesh slack, the eyes closed and unrolling.
Slap. "Hey. You alive? Hey – " Slap. He sounds scared.
His walkie talkie spurts static.
Slap. "Hey."
Slap.
"Shit," he says, putting a hand into the drunk's collar to feel for a pulse.
When he gets one, he snorts. Puts a hand on the drunk's shoulder and shakes him. "Hey," he says, "get up." Shake, shake. Rolls the enormous body against the back of the pew, making a low thump every time the shoulder hits the church pew. Thump, thump. Thump, thump.
Suddenly his pushes soften, and the torture turns to civic gentleness, one citizen to another, and the cop looks like he's reassuring the man, not rousting him. "Get up," he says softly, desperately. "Get up, get up, get up." As if he's waking his daughter on Sunday morning for church. As if he wants to tell his wife something in the middle of the night without alarming her.
Then I catch that extraordinary moment when the cop realizes this his own gentleness and throws it away from himself, embarrassed by his softness. When he looks up, his eyes catch mine. He's disgusted that I'm watching; he hates himself for being weak in this way. That's why he decides that he won't show any more compassion.
Duty flares in his eyes. He hits the drunk's shoulder. The slack body bangs against the pew, hard.
"I don't know you, you know," he says. "Get up. Get up. I'm warning you to get out. I'm warning you to get out. Get up. Get up. Let's go. Get up." The drunken man mumbles in his berth. Slam-slam. "It ain't a bed. It ain't a hotel. STAY. UP." Slam.
Does the cop know him? Maybe not by name. But in a way he does. We're all inside, the three of us, on the church benches of life and god help those who aren't, because outside the wind's blowing harshly, not a thing you walk into willingly. You would have to be pretty sick of things to leave the station, even if you're a drunk man who can’t stay awake, a tense cop with a soft heart, and a young man who fears the turn in his life that could make him, in a different life or perhaps in this one, a cop or a drunk.
