The Usual Suspects
By Harry Buschman
It was a frosty Friday evening in October with a long lazy weekend ahead, Clyde looked out the window of the Long Island Railroad train as the lights of the houses flashed by. The train slowed down for the last local stop at Floral Park, it would be express from there all the way to Plainview. Exactly 29 minutes.
With a contented sigh he opened his briefcase
and pulled out the Wall Street
Journal. Life was good. The life he and Cindy led in Plainview was particularly
good. Short of playing basketball or football a black man couldn’t expect
a better life than this. He opened the Wall Street Journal to the editorial
page and before reading, noticed the man next to him, (probably a 40k man) gave
him the once over. Yes, life was certainly good.
He looked down the length of the car before burying himself in the paper. It was a habit. How many black faces would he see? There were more now than there were just a year ago. Halfway down the car he noticed two young girls sitting together, one white, one black. They were laughing secretly as if sharing a joke. Did they work together? Were they neighbors? Their closeness was plainly evident. “How things have changed,” he thought back to life in the project when he and Cindy lived there. White people were a mystery then -- something he saw on television, as alien as people from another planet.
The man next to him lost interest when he saw the editorial page opened in Clyde’s lap, settled himself deeper in his seat and closed his eyes. From time to time Clyde would raise his eyes from the Journal and check on the two girls who still shared their secret between them.
One by one passengers got to their feet as the train slowed for the Plainview station. Clyde put his newspaper back in his attache case, clicked it shut, and stood up. He noticed the two girls were standing as well. Funny, he thought, he had never seen them before. Whatever started them laughing before had let up a bit, but one would look at the other and the giggling would begin again.
The doors hissed open and the train slowly emptied, a crowd got off the train in Plainview, but no one was in a hurry. The doors would remain open until the conductor and the engineer walked the length of the train to see if no one was left aboard -- it was Friday after all and some of the three Martini lunch people might still be asleep.
Clyde walked down the stairs to the waiting room, he opened his briefcase, withdrew the Wall Street Journal and dropped it in a waste basket. He noticed the two girls were still talking by the street door. They obviously hated to say goodbye until Monday. Just as he reached the exit, they broke apart and left, going in different directions, the white girl quickly walked in front of Clyde and he held the door for her. A whiff of scent, a clattering of her heels and she was gone.
It was evident she was headed in the same direction as Clyde, and because of that he wondered why he hadn’t seen her before. A new neighbor perhaps -- or maybe a visitor for the weekend. He thought it best to slow his pace and let her walk ahead of him, it was dark now and he didn’t want to alarm her. The clicking of her heels was the only sound in the street, she was invisible in the dark until she walked under a street lamp, then she would be brightly illuminated. He imagined he would appear the same to her.
He noticed she was walking faster. Her pace quickened and the rhythm of her heels was sharper, he could see her glance in his direction nervously. In a flash he read her mind -- “I’m being stalked by a black man!” How did he get himself into a mess like this? He wanted to make her understand she was in no danger, they were neighbors! He lived here! But he couldn’t change the facts -- they were elemental. How many times had he seen it happen on the mean streets of the project .... in lobbies ... elevators ... the black man was always someone to be afraid of.
Then it happened. His ears caught the interruption of her stride and the scrape of her heels. She tripped and went down -- he heard the contents of her purse spill out on the sidewalk. Then she screamed! “Don’t hurt me! Oh, God -- please don’t hurt me!” He wanted to run to her, but checked himself as a front door opened and a shaft of light illuminated the girl lying in the street.
“What the hell’s goin’ on out here? You in trouble miss?”
“That man,” she cried. “That black man!”
Clyde turned and ran. There could be no argument, no explanation -- for the next few moments he was more frightened than he had ever been in the project. The thin veneer of equality that seemed so reassuring only a minute before was stripped away and he might have been a Southern black a century ago, running from the Klan.
He stopped running, thinking it would be suspicious if someone saw him running down this quiet residential street. It would be better to walk -- walk quickly, but walk . But where? He couldn’t go home. He’d have to pass that girl again. Lord knows what they were doing now, dialing 911 probably. “He was a black man,” they’d say, “wearing a black coat and a black hat. He carried something black in his hand.” Then what? The police would pick him up, walking alone on these dark suburban streets. “Mind holding it right there, fella. I wanna see both hands on toppa your head.” The lights of the train station appeared ahead of him. He walked quickly back to the station -- he could call Cindy from there.
Except for one man asleep on a bench the station was deserted. He could hear the slow metronomic click of the wall clock and the muttering of the ticket clerks behind the closed ticket window. Clyde walked to the pay phone and then paused for a moment to look at the man curled up on the bench. He was a black man ... no coat ... no hat. An idea came to him. Should he? He could tell Cindy his hat and coat were stolen that afternoon.
It was a way out. Maybe not an honest way, but it wouldn’t make things any worse than they were ... and after all, he had a lot at stake. He had to be careful.
© Harry Buschman 2002
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