Stephen Dixon: All Gone

They speak about me.

“Leg’s a mess,” crouched one says.

“You see his other shoe?” standing one says.

Or the same one says. No, they’re speaking about me. Looking at me. Two figures. Two people. Men, I assume. Not two ladies yet. Ladies don’t work so much in the subway system yet. As cashiers perhaps. Coin tellers? Not cashiers. Not coin tellers. What are they called, those ladies and gentlemen who take my money and give tokens and change in exchange? Or just give tokens or a token if I’ve given them the exact change?

But I’m not there. Getting tokens, giving change. Saying Good morning or Have a nice day, which used to puzzle or please them most times. Ten-dollar bill’s the limit, their sign said. Mostly transistor radio music or news from inside their booth or cage. In the summer, baseball. Fall weekends, football. Nights, I don’t know. And once one with a beard with classical music tuned in. But I’m not there again.

I’m between the tracks. Being picked up. On something.

“Jumped.”

“Pushed,” the other carrier says. “I’m not accusing anybody. Just that people do get pushed.”

“Accidentally also.”

“It isn’t a rush hour.”

“Doesn’t have to be a rush hour for someone to get pushed on the tracks. People down here are always running.”

“Oh, all people?”

“Some. Half. A few then. Running to catch a train that hasn’t come yet. That’s maybe three stations away and for all they know broken down. And this passenger probably near the platform edge like they’re all warned not to and got bumped off by mistake.”

“Will you two move him along?” a third voice says. “We got to get this line operating again.”

I’m being carried. Lifted to the platform on that something I’m on. A litter. Two men lifting me to two men. I can see them now. Policemen are here. A woman in white. Probably a hospital doctor. Emergency. The young ones. Not practicing in a private office yet. What are they called? Coin tellers? Cashiers? Was my mind run over?

“Leg looks very bad,” she says. The intern. That’s it.

“We couldn’t find his other shoe.”

“Forget the other shoe. Gently. Easier. His internals. He hasn’t been thoroughly examined yet.”

“But the way he’s dressed, those could be his only pair,” the policeman says. No, one of the men who carried me from the tracks. Where a train hit me. I was hit. Pushed. Bumped? Did I jump? I forget. I was standing on the platform. Reading a newspaper. Heard the train’s whistle. Looked. No, extended my head. Leaned it forward. My head. And looked in the tunnel at the train coming to the station I was at. It wasn’t three stations away, broken down. And it wasn’t the tunnel coming to the station I was at. I was looking, extending, leaning forward. My head. My whole body. Half. Waist upward. Sideward. Trackward. Newspaper in hand. Folded. To what story? Crisis declared? President said this, did that. The train. Train story. Two headlights like headlights from a car. Automobile car. Whistling. Unlike a car. Coming. I even saw two children in the front window of that first car looking at the station the train they were on was approaching. But where was I? Still on the platform. Head and half a whole body extended trackward. Seeing the train approaching the platform of the station I was at. When what? Something happened.

“Here we go, mister. You’ll be in emergency in a jiff.”

I’m being carried upstairs to the upper platform. Upper platform’s for uptown locals. Lower’s for locals going downtown. So I was going downtown or on the downtown platform for what? Extending my head to the left. Downtown trains come from uptown to the left. Though it hadn’t reached the platform yet. Still in the tunnel. Headlights. Long whistle. So I was there at the edge of the extreme left of the station where the platform and tunnel meet. Two boys’ faces. Children. Could have been girls. Pointing. A girl and a boy. Dark hair, light faces. Suddenly the conductor in his front-car compartment looking alarmed and shouting Stop.

“Light as a feather,” the front carrier says.

“To me he weighs a ton.”

“You ought to take your vitamins then.”

“Say, did you see that vitamin article in the newspaper yesterday?”

“Two days ago. I’ve been taking them for years. Megadoses of vitamin C. That’s why my hair’s so thick.”

“It didn’t say anything about hair that I read.”

“Hair loss. I also don’t get colds. But I was losing mine in patches. My pillow. Every morning. Then my brother said his brother-in-law had the same problem and someone told him of an article they read where vitamin C stops hair loss and restores a lot of what you lost. Look at my hair now.”

“I know what it looks like.”

“But it’s the hair’s body. I’d let you feel it if we weren’t carrying this man.”

“Later.”

“Easy, you guys,” the intern says. We pass a change booth. Whatever they’re called they’re in. Those token people. A token person sets down his bucket beneath a turnstile.

“Good luck, brother,” he says, leaning over me.

Must be collecting. But that was nice. And how come I didn’t hear the chang of tokens against metal? Before that, metal against the floor. How come I hear nothing but voices, no other sounds? No footprints. Shoe sounds. My sounds. No pain. She gave me a shot. I’m heading for the stairs to the outside. We are. Outside is light. It isn’t night. I didn’t know. I’m not on my own two feet. In my own two shoes. Stand up and be counted, brother. Who used to say that? Put your shoes on, Lucy, you’re a big girl now. Who sang that? When I used to listen to such songs. But my shoe. What they say happened to it? Did they ever find it? Will I now only need one? That’s no joke. Let me see. What exactly happened to me before? Put yourself in the other person’s shoes. My father, my mother. I’m looking left. Was. Then. What? Jostled? Pushed? Bumped? Did I jump again? Did I ever jump? Years ago. So what. When I was a teen. Melancholic kid then. In college but mostly out. Jumped. Fell right between the well. Train went over me. Never touched. I got up. When I was this teen. Up, and I said, after the train passed over me. Stopped to exchange with passengers above me. The conductor mustn’t have seen me and if he did, kept his mouth shut. But I got up and looked at the train leaving the station and said from the well Never again. Hallelujah and Handel’s chorus and never again. A man washing down the tiles of the platform said Hey, you nuts? What are you doing on the tracks? I said then I was lucky. To the man. And that something’s got to be going good for me all right. Because I didn’t want to die. I said all that. Why’d I do it then? Love? Depressed and no foreseeable prospects that I could foreseeably see and in love with a loveless love? That was then. What about today? Did I? Jump? Same reasons? Similar? Did I plan it? Was that what was in my mind? No, my shoe.

Sidewalk, sunshine and street. A pedestrian audience.

“What happened?”

“Jumped in front of a train.”

“She says he was pushed.”

“She was there?”

“He looks bad.”

“You wouldn’t look good.”

“But do you see his face?”

“Don’t look.”

“I can’t help but look.”

“You can turn around.”

“Turn me around.”

“Bastards.”

“Who?”

“Whoever pushed him.”

“You don’t want to say things without proof.”

“All I’m saying’s what he said.”

“I didn’t say it. She did.”

“Make way,” my policeman says.

I’m slid into an ambulance. Doors locked. Suddenly soundless, like a museum tomb. Blanket covering me. Correction. Egyptian. Addition. Can’t tell from hot or cold, so what’s the difference?