The Middle, Excluded

            by Joseph Shemuel

 

They went up and down and around and around and around. With each sway in perpetual motion, the young riders shrieked gleefully and threw their hands in the air, only to steal them back down an instant later for fear of falling. Their wooden steeds, painted silver and gold, obeyed without whinny, never demanding water or hay or rest. Each one had a brightly colored light on its head and if I squinted, they made blurry rainbows against the dark sky. Lively classical music emanated from boxes on the merry-go-round’s top rail. The cheap speakers discolored it – no treble, no bass, none of the thrill or emotion that I had loved as a child. It sounded like a song you hear in action movies when the protagonist, probably a suave young outlaw played by Heath Ledger or whoever, is escaping through the forest on horseback with the cruel oil tycoon’s sexy wife. It was Beethoven’s fourth, I think. After three minutes and twelve seconds – I was counting on my Timex – the music and motion and lights came to a stop and parents surged up to collect their children before vanishing back into minivans and hybrid station wagons.

I looked down at my book. The old brown pages reflected just enough tinted light for me to discern the words, but the spinning shadows from the carousel made me nauseous. I kept reading Either/Or, trying to separate the pseudonymous characters. Kierkegaard was nearly impossible to understand even with full light, and eventually the Danish words all looked the same.  I closed it and glanced around. The park must have closed because its lights and music were off and everyone was gone, except the attendant. My watch said 8:13, so I got up to leave.

I could barely see anything, but I could hear the man’s broom scratching on sheet metal as it swept up candy wrappers and that was enough, as long as it didn't stop. Every time he paused between strokes to stretch his back, stare at the stars, or who knows what, my stomach tightened a little. The bus stop was just over the hill behind me, a ten-minute walk if I went through the dense ivy and eucalyptus instead of taking the path. But I couldn't make it in the dark or the silence. I walked toward the attendant, away from the jungle. When I came near, he jumped back, dropping his broom. Like I was crazy or something.

“Shit! Where the hell did you come from? Park’s closed, man,” he said.

“Hi,” I said. Then, pointing over my shoulder, “From that bench, the brown wooden one.”

The man tried to see, but I guess it was too dark to make out a brown bench against a black forest. He picked up the broom again but didn’t start sweeping. He held it in front of him, the bristly part up, right hand grasping the handle, like the old farmer in Woods’ American Gothic. His face wasn’t far off - all white and gaunt, but with dark, furtive eyes. “How can I help ya?” he asked.

“Ummm – just one thing,” I said quickly, looking him in the eye, “Don’t stop.” His shifty pupils were dilated and I could tell he was still scared, which was odd because I was sure he’d recognize me after all the days I’d spent up here. “Don’t stop sweeping, OK?”

“What? Oh, well, uh. Almost all the trash’s gone and my shift’s just about over, but I have a few more minutes,” he said, taking a step back. The way his lips curled downward and his nose wrinkled a little, I knew he still didn’t trust me. “After that, no promises, kid. Again, the park’s closed. Alright?”

“OK. Thanks,” I said.

He turned around and began sweeping again, more violently this time, pushing the bristles back so far they almost snapped on every stray pebble or woodchip, but I didn’t mind. I walked back the way I had come, past the bench and into the thick darkness behind it. My watch read 8:27. The last bus came at 8:45. The ivy seemed much more densely tangled at night and grabbed my bare ankles on every other step. But I could still hear the broom switching back and forth, so it was all right. I felt mosquitoes landing on my neck and forearms. Tiny insects crawled up my calves and when I tried to brush them off, my foot caught and I tripped. It wasn’t all that bad, really, down on the ground. The ivy was tall and covered the edges of my body. I doubted that a passer-by would have even seen me. I rolled over and looked up into the stars, but it was too foggy to see anything beyond the tree silhouettes – not uncommon for Berkeley. A thin film of luminance made it through the foliage and hung on the ivy, which made the darkness pleasantly tolerable. I lay there for a few minutes, occasionally glancing at the jade Indiglo on my watch as the seconds ticked upwards. Forty-one, forty-seven, fifty-four.

Then the broom sound stopped. I leapt out of the ivy and tore through the woods toward where I thought the bus stop was. I kicked my feet high as I ran to avoid the earthen snares below. As each foot stepped down, the ivy yielded and twigs snapped. Once in a while, the top of the ivy rippled with a sound like cards shuffling, and I heard rodents scurry away from my footsteps. I knew there were hundreds of ancient eucalypti all around me, but I somehow dodged them while running in a straight line. After several minutes, orange light filtered toward me through the impenetrable forest. I followed it and stumbled into a clearing lit by a narrow cone of light from a sole streetlamp. Inside the glow, there were three wooden tables with benches, but they were all empty. On one table, flies swarmed around the remains of a barbecue feast left by inconsiderate picnickers, so I held my breath and went around the other two. Beyond the clearing, I found the road. The bus stop was just down the hill and I walked along the shoulder.

Like most roads in Tilden, it wound back and forth and back and forth, forming an infinite series of tight turns that caused the occasional car to hug the divider. I was wearing all black, which was unusual for me because I preferred to wear at least one brightly hued article so that the goths or punks or whatever didn’t talk to me like I was one of them. I wasn’t, usually. When cars came from the front with their lights shining, I ducked off the shoulder and turned to cover my eyes. But I gave in to the lights because I had to, and because I liked them.

After a particularly steep and windy turn, I saw the bus stop. The bench wasn’t empty. Toward the far end of the bench, the side I always sat on, there was a non-descript lump. The shape seemed to smolder in the dusty air and shreds of moonlight which reflected off the metal bus stop sign. As I came closer, the winds hissed, shifting the figure to the right. I slowed my feet down, closed my eyes, and sat down on the opposite end of the bench, facing away from the thing. My Timex said 8:44. Nothing came for two minutes and twenty-nine seconds. Finally, cantankerous and blinding, the old bus came into view and I turned to follow its headlights with my eyes. It passed me and stopped at the bench’s other end with a sound like choked exhalation. I stayed seated, staring at its vague contour. The shape rose into a human form but didn’t shed its cloak. Then, in the puddle of light afforded by the bus’s interior, I saw it – an old faceless hag wearing burlap. She dug in the canvas folds and found handfuls of coins which glittered in the bus’s sickly gleam, before disappearing into the bus. I followed.

There was no one else on the bus – just the driver, the shape-shifter, and myself. She had taken a seat at the back and appeared to already have begun her metamorphosis back into the invalid I had seen before. Sparse fluorescent ceiling lights illuminated the rough texture of her garments and the indistinct skeleton below them, but left her visage in shadows. I chose a place at the front, in the “handicapped-only” section, and stared out the windshield, warming my hands under the heating vent. The bus started down the hill. Every few seconds, I gave in to my curiosity and twisted to observe the lump in back. The driver seemed not to notice her, keeping his eyes on the road. After one particularly long stare, I rose from my seat and steadied myself with the poles along the ceiling. I strained to pull my body toward the rear of the bus as gravity dragged me back the other way, down the steep road. The woman didn’t move, but I couldn’t tell whether or not she’d noticed me, or if she was even awake. As I fell into a seat adjacent to hers, she suddenly lurched forward, sloughing her hood. I slid further away but then lowered my head toward hers. Doughy, pale, wrinkled.
            “Ummmmm, hi,” I said. The voice wasn’t mine, but I had heard it.

“Hello there,” she said. Her words were like honey dripping onto a plate, a Billie Holiday 78 if you played it at 33. “I’m Charlotte. What’s your name?”

I didn’t like to say my name, especially not to people I didn’t know, so I didn’t. In the dim light I picked a familiar name. “Johannes.” It was half-true.

“Johannes? Johannes,” she repeated, each syllable its own word, making my head tingle. “What were you doing in the park this late?” Unlike most people, she didn’t accent any of her words, and her hands remained still, tucked into the folds of cloth. Her speech was flat but not unpleasant.

“Nothing,” I said, which wasn’t really a lie. “Just watching the merry-go-round, and reading, and sitting on a bench. Then I walked here to get on this bus. Now I’m going home.” I would have asked her the same question, but I already knew the answer. Instead, I just stopped talking and stared, waiting for her to ask me something else. She seemed good at conversation, at least for a street woman like her. I gazed through the window at blurry lights and old homes. The bus turned onto Rose Street, only a few minutes from downtown.

“Where’s home?” she continued. My stomach began to hurt again and I waited for a while before responding, “I can’t tell you.”

“Neither can I,” she said, “but I can tell you where I’m going: the City.” She said “City” just the way the college kids did, like it was the coolest slang in the whole damn dictionary. “I’m going to meet some old friends.” I didn’t know if she meant “old” like wrinkled and dirty, or “old” like she’d known them for a while. Probably both. “What are your friends like?” she asked.

I opened my mouth to respond, but no sound came out. Silence, except for the bus’s deep rumble. I shifted my weight and looked at my shoes, then the ceiling. My stomach churned again. Not this question. Charlotte could not know, not that she would have believed me even if I had told her. “Good. He’s good,” I murmured, and that’s all I said, but she didn’t appear to mind. She turned away – only her head and shoulders moved – to face the window. I looked out of mine.

“Downtown Berkeley,” the driver announced. “Center and Shattuck. Last stop.”

Time to go. “Goodbye,” I said to Charlotte.

“Goodbye, Johannes,” she said, making the wrinkles and blotchy pigments move around into what she must have intended to be a smile. I tried to smile back.

I thanked the driver and exited the bus through the rear doors, out into the rain and lights and people. Too many people. There weren’t as many of them along the outside edge of the sidewalk, so I clung to the buildings like they had told me, except for at the corners and crosswalks, where I had to walk with everyone else. I put on my hood and concentrated on the lights reflected in the wet pavement, occasionally glancing at the timer across the street through the mob of heads in front of me. Three. Two. One. Red hand. Then there I was, in front of the BART rotunda, one step closer to freedom. I descended, down, down, down the escalator into the bowels of public transportation. More people on the tracks. 9:14 on my watch.

“Five-car San Francisco/Millbrae train in four minutes,” the sterile female voice announced over the intercom.

I secluded myself on an empty bench, not too far from the rest of the riders, and read my book until the train arrived. I chose the second-to-last car on the train, shrunk into a seat at the end, and waited for the high hum that would signal the doors were closing. The train smelled like sweat and stale food. There were empty bags of chips, candy bar wrappers, beer cans. Stains of various colors formed profane polka dots on the cushions and graffiti made it impossible to read the advertisements on the walls and ceiling. But none of it was there if I didn’t look at it.

I was the only person on my side of the car, but in the gloomy, flickering lights, I noticed one other rider across the car. Seated in the last row before the door to car three was a figure, stiff and indistinct except for the fabric over her chest, which slowly rose and fell. I could tell from the burlap cloak and depressed posture that it was Charlotte and I wondered how I’d missed seeing her board the train. She and I were alone.

Now we were underground, our high speed only evident from the mechanical clamor and the occasional sideways centrifugal lurch. I read and counted time on my watch until the train suddenly rattled to a stop. The lights flickered out. The pain in my gut instantly returned. I sat and looked straight at the black ceiling where I thought the lights would be, waiting for them to turn back on. When they didn’t return, I pressed the Indiglo button on my watch, but its faint green glow was not the same, not enough. There was nothing but black. I told myself it was OK and took deep breaths like I was supposed to, but it didn’t work at all. I needed to get out of the train, out of the dark. Supporting myself on the seats, I felt my way to the main doors and tried to pull the two handles apart, but they wouldn’t give. I pounded with both fists, first on the metal, then on the glass, to no avail. I shouted, “Let me out! Let me out!” but there was no one on the other side. Just darkness. Then I tried the door to car five, this time with my shoulder. Nothing.

I called out, “Charlotte! Charlotte?” She didn’t respond. My head throbbed and my stomach burned. My breaths were quick and coarse. “Charlotte!” I stumbled down to her end of the car, drunk on pain and fear. She was the same as when the train had left Berkeley, slumped into a listless mass of cloth. I bent down in front of her old face. Her eyes were closed. “Charlotte! Help!” I shouted again. “Charlotte! Wake up! Charlotte!” No response. No one had taught me how to deal with this.

I grabbed bunches of the crude fabric and shook her shoulders. Rattled her head. “Charlotte!” Hard, violent, anything to wake her up. Tears blurred my vision. “Charlotte! Wake up!” I shouted one more time. Her body convulsed forcefully, then remained still, eyes shut, head twisted perversely to the left. The loose burlap over her chest sagged. It stayed that way. As my breathing quieted back to normal, I heard music – thin and shrill, like from headphones. Under her heavy burlap shroud, a pair of earbuds hung from her neck, screaming out a jazz song I didn’t recognize. A saxophone blew a long trill and held the note for several seconds until it reluctantly faded to silence.

The lights came back on. “Sorry for the delay,” the train operator announced. “We’ll be arriving at Ashby in just a minute. Thank you for your patience.” The train sped up briefly as it rolled into the station, before stopping as quickly as it had started.

The doors slid open, and we left.