Rick Moody - The Ice Storm

Paul Hood had met a few of them, black people. Though there were none in his elementary school — East School — there were five in Saxe Junior High when he was there. They all came from the middle of town, from the rented rooms above Fat Tuesday’s or Pic-a-Pants. Three of them were girls, and they kept pretty much to themselves. When he looked back in his yearbook, in fact, he could never really remember seeing them at all. Except maybe eating cafeteria pizza in a little lunchroom clump. Probably they were so scared they skipped school. The guys, on the other hand, the two black guys were unavoidable. Brian Harris ruled Saxe Junior High. He wore his hair long, in a Black Panther Afro, and this spooked everybody. And he was a superior athlete, but maybe only because every white kid in New Canaan had been brought up to believe that Afro-Americans were superior athletes. This was something Paul’s dad had actually told him. In basketball, Brian Harris had developed this double-pump reverse lay-up thing that some white guys were trying hard to copy. All he had to do was walk to the basket — they just let him through. Harris was a walking god in Saxe Junior High. A superhero. They worshiped him.

The other black guy was Logan Krieg and he had a reading problem or something. He had constantly looked over Paul’s shoulder in English class. Krieg panicked visibly in class. When he began coming into school drunk or wasted, only the teachers were surprised. Krieg turned all the letters around in his assignments. He wrote baby writing. And then he pleaded with guys he didn’t even know, with white students, to cover up for him. Because he was trying to stay out of the special-ed class. He didn’t want to be in class with the retards. They all knew he was lying in class, lying about having done the homework, lying about having been sick, lying all the time, caught in this thick web of deceits, until he was immobilized by it. And then he was gone. Dropped out, shipped off somewhere, who knew? He wasn’t friends with anybody, really.

That was Paul’s experience with black kids. There were a few at St. Pete’s and they all stuck together, too. They were brilliant and militant. For the rest of his information, Paul had to rely on reports from the idiot box. The Rookies had a black actor on it, and there was Sanford and Son. And in the dimly lit mausoleum that was his 11:10 Stamford Local, he remembered watching the news one night with his father, the night Angela Davis was acquitted. From the Naugahyde reclining chair that was his dad’s chief consolation, Benjamin called out listessly, drunkenly, at the screen: Fucking communist dyke cunt -

Port Chester — where he was stranded — was something else altogether. Had Paul been able to leave the train then, to walk beneath its glittering electromagnetic force field, he would have trod streets without a white face on them. He had heard about places like this. These streets were the reason, probably, that his mother had repeatedly told him, when he was a kid, about a friend of hers who had set about crossing the railroad tracks. He had climbed up over an electric train, this boy, shortcutting from one side of the town to the other, and, on top of the train he had stood. To get a better view, maybe, or to feel the aggrandizement of standing on a train. But he had died in the process, of course. This story was where Paul had learned about electromagnetism. Because when the guy stood up he hit the voltage lines. The lines running over the train.

After forty-five minutes, the conductor reappeared to tell Hood and the other sleepers the news.

— Ladies and gentlemen, afraid we still don’t know when the train will be moving. Best thing is to just stay put here in the car and we’ll advise you as soon as we hear anything.

Down to the other end to repeat the announcement.

The next hours, in the deep part of the night, were as slow and ominous as the hours in a hospital waiting room. The emergency lighting dwindled and the sleepers in Paul’s car turned uneasily, cursing under their breaths. He wanted that oblivion of sleep but he couldn’t manage it. He was beginning to shake a little bit from the cold. He could see his own breath. And he was scared.

Then, sometime in the early morning, a large, hulking shape moved down the corridor. Paul was jumpy, he was expecting the kinetic bad guys of comic books. But it was just an older guy from the next car, a grizzled, gin-soaked-looking guy. In the blue glow of the fading emergency lights, the guy looked a little bit like Stan Lee, creator of the F.F. He was part C.I.A. operative, part elementary school teacher. He was fat, sinister, and jovial, and he fell into the seat across the aisle from Paul.

Paul didn’t know what to expect. He figured he was going to be attacked now, or raped, and that he deserved it. After Libbets.

— Seen the John anywhere, young man? the C.I.A. dude said.

— Excelsior, Paul said. Dunno, next car maybe. The man had a good laugh over something. He hacked up some gunk from deep in himself.

— Hell of a train ride, huh?

Paul nodded. Not wanting to say anything, not wanting to encourage the rapist. But then he did anyway.

— Wish I had a flashlight. Or maybe some lantern, some kinda camping lantern. And some freeze-dried stuff. And a battery-powered record player, a Close-and-Play, and a bunch of forty-fives or something. And comic books.

The man leaned over the aisle.

— And a girl, he said. A little company.

— I wish I was home, Paul said. That’s the truth. The man nodded. The highway was empty, out the window. Sanding trucks inched along.

— You’re going to New Canaan, I think, he said. I have a feeling about that. I think I have met your parents once or twice. I think I knew you since you were yea-high. Huh? Like they always say? Yep. That’s right.

He told Paul his name. William something.

— Nope, Paul said, I’m… from Stamford. Citizen of Stamford.

Paul was wondering when the conductor might be coming back.

— That so? My mistake. Not Ben’s son then, huh? My mistake. Well, I was going to offer to give you a ride when we get there. If we get there. But if you’re only going right into town, I won’t be much help. Unless you want to share a taxi or—

— No, Paul interrupted him emphatically, my parents will be waiting for me.

— Waiting for you after all this?

— Well, that’s what I’m hoping.

— I see.

The older man heaved himself up into the aisle then, and suddenly Paul could see his baggy eyes, his thick neck, his gray, metallic flesh. Up close. The man loomed over him. He clapped a hand on Paul’s shoulder. Breath like formaldehyde. This guy was an emissary from Dr. Doom. Only way to explain it.

— I’m guessing you don’t want a serious conversation, Paul. That’s my guess. And that’s fine by me. Have to visit the head in any case. But you have a safe journey.

— Hey, I—

— If you want a ride or something when we arrive, you just look me up. Back a car.

— I’ll do that, Paul said.

As the door slammed shut behind the man, Paul gathered himself up and ran back, as far in the opposite direction as he could, past the sleepers and their uncomfortable dreams, waking some as he hurried. Rapist, Paul thought, murderer. He settled two cars back. He buried his head under his tweed jacket. The things that went through his mind were the things he would have tried to put down, the thoughts he would have purged on a better day. He was thinking about the fellowship of modern sex criminals, guys who got off on the sound of women’s screams, elderly men sucking the cocks of little, fat boys, guys who beat up fags and got erections while they did so. Then he was thinking not of Logan Krieg, but of another guy who used to copy from his papers in class, a guy who used to threaten him at Saxe Junior High. Skip Maundy. Maundy used to stop Paul on the way to the cafeteria to demand his lunch money. Since Paul had led his parents to believe that school lunches cost a dollar, though the actual cost was only seventy-five cents, Paul gave Maundy the profit. In order to avoid being beaten up. So Maundy waited for him every day, making jokes like Hey, Paulie, we’ve got to stop meeting like this! HA! HA! HA! HA!