The cover was open. The little metal box, the cover. I shut that.”
“You touched the brake.”
“No. This was after the train had stalled. I shut the cover. Because the alarm was sounding.”
“The alarm was going off,” she said with disgust, “so you decided to touch the brake.”
So then—then! She turns away from me and reopens the box over the brake.
What the EMERGENCY BRAKE has to say for itself (early August 2000):
Meee!
MAYNARD GOGARTY tells the story of what happened on the uptown No. 6 train (early August 2000):
The conductor pretends to inspect the brake, but—what is there to inspect? The woman with the beauty spots just sits there, underneath the conductor, eyes shut, wishing for her privacy back, until finally the conductor gives up, turns to me, and asks, “You think maybe the alarm was going off for a reason? Like something is wrong and you shouldn’t be touching the brake?”
She hasn’t properly shut the cover, so the alarm is still bleating at us. But she leaves it bleating and unlocks the closet in our subway car, her little closet for the express stops, and she goes inside, saying, “I am not done with you.”
“But I did nothing wrong.”
“I’m telling you, I am not done with you.”
At first she is tinkering with some of the controls, shouting with the motorman over a telephone. But then—the lights and air conditioning come back to life. She leaves the closet, leaves our car, and then the side doors spring apart and 33rd Street heaves its flames into the subway car.
Over the hoarse public address system comes her voice: “Thirty-third Street. Grand Central next. Stand clear the doors.”
In her voice I can hear, she is not done with me. But as I am awaiting my trial, the two black boys—who knows where the three girls were hiding themselves—the two black boys with the trumpet cases board the subway car. One of them is chubby, the other one is skinny. They sit down not far from me, open up their trumpet cases, and begin admiring each other’s graffiti pens. That is what they were toting in their trumpet cases—vandal-sized permanent markers.
JAMES CLEVELAND talks television (early August 2000):
Brittany and Juney and Shawna flipped off the white guy. I said, “Why you all trying to get us in trouble?”
And Chief said, “You a coward, son?”
I hated that, because it was like he was trying to prove something that didn’t need to be proved. But when the subway doors fi nally opened, Brittany and Juney and Shawna ran to get on a different car, and so it was only me and Chief that got on board the same car with the white guy. And Chief was talking all loud, like, “I’a fucking show you, son, I’a fucking show you.” He was talking loud, and I couldn’t tell whether Chief was scared or not, which I also hated. He was saying, “Son, it is fucking hot in here.”
And yeah, it was hot on the subway. My jeans were like they just came out of the drier. And the white guy, when we got on, he was right there, like he was on safari, in his mad layers of clothes. I saw this show on thirteen about the Sahara. “Funding was provided by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.” It was about slaves in the salt mines and Timbuktu and camel caravans and all that. The nomads keep cool by wearing lots and lots of layers of clothes. And that was what it looked like the white guy was trying to do with his mad layers. But it is bullshit about layers being cool, because the white guy had a whole Congo River of sweat coming down his face. That was probably what the cold thing was that touched his balls—it was probably sweat.
The only seats were right next to the white guy. So that was where me and Chief sat, right next to the white guy. And Chief, he was trying to show off he wasn’t scared, so he opened his case and took out the pens. And he whispered, “Who the coward, son?”
Everybody was looking at us, so I tried to look normal, like, “Ain’t nothing to see here, folks.” Pretending the pens weren’t nothing special at all. But I was holding the pen in my hand, and the train conductor walked right in.
MAYNARD GOGARTY tells the story of what happened on the uptown No. 6 train (early August 2000):
The doors close on 33rd. The train leaves the station like a dog on a leash—lingering behind to sniff the stains on the platform, then jolting ahead, down the tunnel, already smelling the urine of Grand Central. And I, like the rest of the train car, am gawking at these boys and their pens, and their—bravado in displaying them. They are, I believe, quite illegal under Mayor Giuliani.
Reenter the conductor, to execute me right there on the linoleum floor of the uptown No. 6 train with her MTA-issue revolver. She is sturdy-footed, quite obviously used to riding in trains without holding on. She straightens her uniform with a tug at the belt—as if anything that tight could really become displaced—and seeing her, the chubby boy claps his trumpet case shut and the skinny kid shoves the pen he’s holding between his legs.
YVETTE BENITEZ-BIRCH, the conductor, quotes her brief lecture (early August 2000):
Jonas was the motorman, and he found the problem up front. It was just a brake in the third car, and so once Jonas found it, we were back up and running. Whatever that gentleman had done, that condescending gentleman in the white straw hat, it wasn’t responsible for stopping the train. But there was something about him that made me think he needed a talking-to.
I told him, “Mister, I don’t know where you’re from. Maybe where you’re from they let you touch the emergency brake. But here in New York City, we ask our customers not to touch the emergency brake. Understand?”
He said, “But madam! I am from New York City.”
I told him, “If you are from New York City, then you should know not to touch the brake.”
He said, “But touching the brake is exactly what I didn’t do.”
I was thinking, I do not have time for this—I do not have time to be called “madam.” But there were two little boys sitting there, and one of them said, “Hey lady, he lying.”
I thought, Now why would this skinny little boy call the man in the white straw hat a liar? I knew the man in the hat hadn’t pulled the brake, but like I said, there was something about him that I did not like. I thought, Let’s see what the boy has to say.
MAYNARD GOGARTY presses ahead with the story of what happened on the uptown No. 6 train (early August 2000):
The skinny kid says, “Hey lady, he lying.” This is a tone of voice I recognize from my students—the sanctimony of a child who is trying to cover up his own misbehavior.
His chubbier friend says, “Shut up, son.”
But the skinny kid insists, “No. This is what happen.” And then he tells a tale to be reckoned with: he tells the conductor that he and his friends were outside the train, that the girls were teasing me, and that I got mad and pulled the brake so that I could make a citizen’s arrest. A citizen’s arrest—such is the fancy of youth. But in the midst of this tale, and timed perfectly to corroborate, the door between our car and the next car up lurches open and the three black girls appear—looking for their lost escorts, no doubt. The instant they see the conductor, all three girls squeal “Oh shit!” and scurry back the way they came—letting the heavy door lurch shut behind them. But they had served destiny’s purpose: they had corroborated the boy’s story.
The conductor may be masterful at being bossy, but—she’s gotten in over her head here. She grabs the overhead bars, blocking up the entire aisle with her skepticism and her grimace. The train is slowing down, as the trains always do in that last stretch before Grand Central. The