A man of his occupation made his mornings most people’s afternoons.
The cops knocked on his door early in the afternoon, before his second
cup of coffee had gotten the chance to get cold. It wasn’t surprising
he expected it daily; he just wasn’t ready this day it was too much of
a burden for him today. His risks were evident and he sweated them
daily. His options always seemed limited from the very beginning. His
destiny a dreadful end of prison bars or a county paid pine box was
never far from the back of his mind no matter how he tried to ignore
it.
Across town I was running late for any number of various tasks. I was
wrestling with a leather jacket and the weather. The other guys were
already on their Harley’s and spitting oil and exhaust waiting for me
to get going. We saddled up and took off for lunch. The ride was
cool, the day was overcast gray, and the cadence of pistons and road
was perfect. The sun was lost behind the haze of atmosphere but the
bike in its extreme vivid black so dark as to be bright in the
reflections and eye grabbing that it had the affect of rays of
sunshine beaming through the black.
Breakfast or lunch, the time of day confused the distinction between
the two, was spent with two cops asking questions that made him
squirm. Wanting to tell the truth but knowing what it would lead too. He
stopped talking, put up the front he had done so many times before,
part humble idiot part bad guy. He just nodded and acted aloof and
stupid to all of the inferences they were leading. They knew he did
it, he knew he did it and it was just a matter of time before the two
ends of that rope were unknotted and found to be the same piece. He
shut down and the cops, almost as uncomfortable as he, realized there
was no moving forward and just the continuous acrid eye burning
cigarette smoke, rotting garbage, bad coffee and questionable odors to
contend with.
I ran the meeting of overpaid executives with all the comfort and ease
of talking to my friends about fishing. The meeting participants
listened, asked questions, and accepted my point of view. Their minds
already made up, a decision without making a decision. Postpone,
filibuster, stall till the answer makes itself clear. Not all together
an abnormal day for me. I kept on with the task knowing the decision
wouldn’t render my future much different then the days past.
He sat on his dilapidated couch smoking cigarettes that tasted
terrible drinking cold coffee thinking about how he was going to get
out of what he did. The end was as bleak as his beginning. His
destiny never seemed very bright and this was reinforced every day of
his life. Everyone saw him as a thug; every one treated him as a burden on
society. It was as if no one bothered to ever see a future in him, a
dream, a life outside of the shit filled life he was executing. His
life reflected this. He looked around his apartment from the couch
his legs propped up on the coffee table covered in ash, beer bottles,
magazines, and scraps of a disorganized life strewn about. It all
looked the temporary life he kept. His squalid surroundings were
nothing he needed, nothing he couldn’t walk away from forever. Carpet
that looked like a tar truck had driven over it before it was
installed. Walls gray with the residue of the last 40 years of other
temporary people, the stink of his neighbors, the hollow walls that
seemed to amplify sound rather then deaden them. It was staged to be
desolate for the desolate with out him even trying.
After the meeting was done I gathered up my notes, took my accolades
from peers and executives. Glowed in their praise and enjoyed the day.
I walked down to the garage and threw a leg over the bike. The seat
felt firm, the leather felt comforting, a steady beat of the iron
underneath me felt strong and I was eager and ready to grab a handful
of throttle and lean into the corners of the garage and set off a few
car alarms with the exhaust tones. My riding partner’s 1976 Pan Head
next to me rumbled to life and clanged as it went into gear. We
decided on a route home, not the highway the back way. We’d burn the
streets and make a short trip a long ride back to the office. A cool
breezed swirled through the parking garage it felt good on my face,
refreshing and cool.
He put down the cigarette, went to the back of the apartment his
sticky putrid colored linoleum felt to hang on his socks trying to
slow him or stop him. Kneeling down to eye level with the off white
and gold sparkled counter top he opened one of the cupboards and
removed the never used baking pan to reveal the bottom of the
cupboard. He pried up the floor of the cabinet at the base. Took out
the steel black pistol, felt the weight in his hands. Looked at the
other miscellaneous contraband in the hiding place all reminders of
the decisions he’d made these things for a brief moment made him feel
powerful and then as quickly desperate to get away from them. Pulling
the chamber open he looked in the bridge, loaded, full magazine.
I wound my way down five floors of parking garage, enjoying the hard
right sweeping turns and the concrete walls amplifying and resonating
the engine exhaust off of the walls causing them to double in sound
and affect. Dave’s pan head set off a car alarm with the straight
pipes and we gleamed with deviant smiles and tried to get more car
alarms to ring. We were suddenly little boys with big toys. We made
it down three flights of cars before having to stop and wait for the
other traffic waiting to exit. We shouted over the exhaust about the
car alarms and laughed. I fumbled with gloves and wallet to get ready
to pay the parking attendant while balancing the bike between my legs.
He pulled a blue hoody sweatshirt over his long white t-shirt. He
laced up his boots, grabbed his back pack, cell phones, wallet, lastly
the gun. He held it in his hand looking at it sideways. He marveled at
the calling it had on him, how it’s engineering and precise lines
beckoned him. It was alluring it was a siren sitting on a rock singing
him into the break waters. He hid it in the pouch of his sweat shirt
gripping it and feeling secure in its presence. It had become an
entity, a voice with out speaking.
He shook his head and exited the apartment like it was any other day.
The day was particularly bleak, gray, and windy with the leaves dried
and blowing like confetti. He sighed, tried to push down that feeling
of dread in his gut. Those fear that the phone ringing, the knock on
the door, the steps in the hall would be the police or worse coming to
find him. The dread of his life made him wonder why he bothered at
all. Others like him seemed to be able to brush off the fear with out
any hesitation. His ate at him. Haunted him, he tossed at night, he
dreaded the day, he hadn’t slept in what felt like his whole life. He
couldn’t remember the last time he remembered going to sleep with out
feeling hopeless and waking up comforted and rested. Sleep was a
nightmare, awake was hell.
We took way too long getting out of the parking garage. The cashier
couldn’t run two parking tickets at once she had to run each
separately, we laughed at the simplicity and complexity of the task.
The other two riders had left before us, we waited for the Cadillac to
clear the left turn and pedestrian traffic to walk by. We jumped out
of the garage, tires hitting the black pavement, gripping it hard and
pulling us left, we were in synchronicity in function and motion. Fuel
and air meeting and burning we let the motors do what they knew best,
propel us forward. We shut down a car coming up the block and slipped
out in front of it with room to spare, the thrill of being on two
wheels and pulling mild risk like this made the ride exhilarating. We
rumbled on turning left at the end of the block, watching traffic and
people as we waited for the line of cars passing us. We sped down the
block, the clean sidewalks, the hustle of four o’clock people going
here and there made the down town see important and electric. The
haze of the day seemed to brighten, it didn’t but it seemed too. We
came up behind a bus and slipped into a free lane to buzz around. We
grabbed an opening and slipped around the bus and took a hard right.
He stepped down the stairs, one after the other each weighing foot
step heavy on the steps. His mouth was dry he was twitchy and nervous.
His anticipation of what was next was sickening. He hadn’t eaten but
he had no hunger, his mouth dry, it tasted metallic, bad like nothing
would ever taste normal again. He licked his lips, they were dry and
bitter with the acrid remains of a cigarette. He hit the pavement and
started walking north. Cars raced by all going somewhere, all
seemingly infinitely more important and relevant then him.
We rounded the corner and finally got a chance to stretch the engines
RPM’s the tiniest bit before hitting another stop light. We chatted
at the light, nothing in particular, the stench of the bikes, the
slowness of traffic it was meaningless and light. We were smiling and
enjoying the gray of the day in an unusual way.
The bus stop was ahead, it looked like any other bus stop, like boring
dullness. He hated waiting for the bus; he hated having to sit there
in the glass enclosure. It felt like all the cars were driving by
looking at him in an aquarium, judging him, making decision on who he
was. They didn’t know him, they didn’t know what he liked what he
thought about what his dreams were and no one ever asked or ever
cared.
We stopped at the intersection; it was an ill conceived light timing.
Green ahead, red where we were, we would race to try to get the yellow
at the next intersection but it was just a game, we knew we wouldn’t
make it but we would try. Like a game of sprints but with 80 pounds of
torque. The light went green. We rolled our wrists and machines pulled
ahead pulling us at our arms as the bikes forward motion tried to
leave us behind.
He came to the bus stop, felt the now warm grip of the pistol in his
hands. The weight of the gun satisfying in his hands, his finger
running up and down the straight machined lines of the trigger, his
confidence. He sat down on the far end of the bus bench and watched a
young girl walk by with out looking at him. He felt dread, he felt
hopeless, he felt empty.
We raced to the second light and hit the red light and came to a
planned but abrupt halt. I looked left a green mini van just behind my
rear tire. I watched north bound traffic start to come away from the
light. I saw a girl walk past the bus stop. I saw a man sitting there
in a blue hoody. I watched traffic I sat waiting for the light. I
watched nothingness; I watched molecules bounce around and act like
life, saw the chaos and order of people going here and there, felt joy
in the motion.
The entity of the gun seemed to pull itself out of his sweatshirt.
The gun was there it was looking at him, it was singing its siren
song. It looked like an answer, it smelled like oil and steel. He
was suddenly feeling light, calm, at ease. He felt remorse, he felt
weak, he felt strong, and he could feel.
I heard it first, the distinct pop of the gun. I had heard it before
at the firing range the distinct sound of a center fire bullet in a
short barrel. I watched as the bus stop glass turned into a million
pieces of fragmented glass. A large distinct hole in the upper center
of the glass the only clear part amongst the shards that made the
glass look like webbing. I saw the red on the glass. I saw the man
in the sweatshirt turn read and fall against the glass and slide to
the ground like he instantly had lost all control of his muscle. I saw
the girl turn around look behind her and then take off in a dead
sprint. I gasped for air, the light turned green and the reaction in
me went wild with gas and air as I left the starting line of the light
and moved as fast as I could away.
I didn’t stop or slow till I had too. Blocks later I came to another
light and I shouted with shaking voice “Dave did you see that?” he
looked at me blankly he heard the shot, he didn’t see anything.
“Dave that guy in the bus stop just got shot in the head and I saw it.
What the fuck was that? Seriously Dave I think I just saw a man die.”
He shrugged and we moved on. I was gripping the handle bars as hard as
I could, I was cool and sweating. I was anxious and nervous. I kept
turning over the image in my mind. I kept asking questions, kept
holding on to that feeling. Wondering why I felt numb and hot and
electric all at the same time. I could feel blood rushing through my
toes. We rode in silence till we went our separate ways.
I went home, I kissed my wife, I hugged my baby. I told her what I
saw, I described it in every detail, and I left out nothing. I spoke
of the green van, the bus stop glass, the girl walking away, the man
in the dark blue sweat shirt, the million piece of glass, the clear
punched out perfect circle in the upper center of the glass, I spoke
of the gray sky, the cool breeze the blackness of the bike, the sound
of the throttle everything but the blood in my toes.
I watched the new, I never watch the news, I don’t like hearing about
the war on the ground, and I don’t like the sensationalism of
violence, crime, hate, death. It’s too much for me to learn and then
to look at my daughter and smile. I watched every detail of the news
nothing, no mention of a shooting, no mention of any disturbance. No
mention of the man in the blue sweatshirt. Had no one missed him, had
he not left any mark on this earth? For weeks I checked the newspaper,
the internet. No report of a man dying, no report of a shooting. I
must not have seen what I thought I saw. Maybe the glass was always
broken. Maybe the girl ran because she was late, maybe the guy
slumped because he fell asleep, maybe the sound was just a backfire of
a car.
Two weeks went by and I couldn’t shake the image. I became obsessed
with proving what I saw. I felt like a crazy man wondering why I was
the only one that saw it. Finally I called the Police, I hesitated I
didn’t want to come forward with details but no one else had and I
mostly just wanted to know. I asked about a shooting. There was a
shooting; a suspect was found at the scene with a gun in hand.
Another call to a Police officer revealed the truth.
He died by himself, in a bus stop shelter, on gray day in October, on
a Wednesday at 430PM. I sat at a light bathed in the gray of the day.
I saw him take his life. He was surrounded by hundreds of people and
died alone.
