about story starters
Sometimes it’s fun to think about the beginnings of stories, without figuring out where they’ll end. Of course, if I can figure out where it will end and who the characters will be, that’s all the better. But a lot of times I just have a start, and I chew over that for a while, and then it disappears. So I’m passing along this start to you and maybe you can make something better of it than I can.
I was on the train. It was late and I purposely chose a seat behind a man who looked quiet. He wore a shabby suit, he was hunched over, he looked like he was going home after a long day’s work. Just as the door began to close, two very loud drunk people burst into the train and sat right next to my quiet guy. One was a very, very tall man and the other a very tall woman. They asked the quiet guy what stop he was getting off, and lo and behold, we were getting off at the same place. I figured he would do what I would do, which was close my eyes and hope they went away. But the quiet guy began talking to them. They were all involved in divorce and custody battles, they loved their children, they were frustrated by various things. I was touched as I listened at what a surprising turn the whole thing had taken. These were three people who never in the world would have connected, and here they were.
A week later, I’m sitting on the train and three big bruiser types get on, or, as Woody Allen would put it “hairy knuckle types.” They were talking about some guy who was getting out from jail and I wasn’t sure if they were felons or police officers. All of a sudden a voice pipes up, from deep within the 5-seater and I’m darned if it isn’t my quiet man. He begins talking to them about Mike Tyson and various other boxers. They start to talk.
There’s a John Cheever story about a woman who keeps showing up to visit people who are dying, and I began to get a spooky feeling about this man. What if he was a figment of my imagination? What if he was a killer looking for drunk people? What if he was just a really lonely guy who could only connect with people on a train? (What if I should just read a book and stop listening to other people?)
What do you think?
December 18th, 2011 at 8:16 pm
Hi Susan,
Here you go. It’s a little long, but then it wouldn’t be a post from me if it wasn’t ;o). Hope you have a great holiday.
Quiet at Chistmas
Listen, you can’t tell anything about anyone by the look of them. I mean, murderers and lepers can get on the bus and sit down next to you, share a table with you in a crowded restaurant, crawl into bed with you on a late, lonely night when you think knowing a person’s name and liking the look of him is enough.
So, I was on the train late one night coming into Billerica from Cambridge. The conductor with the monkey grinder hat finally came by and punched my ticket. When he passed through the door at the end of the train, a man came out of the restroom. His long face was deeply lined. His eyes were half open. He sat down hard in the seat in front of me and slumped his thin shoulders so that his forehead nearly touched the grab bar on the seat in front of him. I didn’t know if he was reading or sleeping. The collar on this thin, maroon, windbreaker was worn, and there was a band of fabric over each scapula that was slightly lighter in color than the rest of the jacket. He looked worn and tired from both sides.
The conductor stepped back into the car and called out, “Woooooooburn! Woooooburn! Next station is Wooooburn!” The man in front of me didn’t move. We pulled into the station, the brakes hissing and squealing on the tracks like a dragon coming in for a gravel landing. Three men, one huge and slightly pigeon toed like an old college football player stuffed into a business suit, one medium sized with a loud laugh, and one little guy with his chest puffed out like a banty rooster.
“You ask me, Sandusky didn’t do a thing. Somebody would have come out with it sooner. ” said Banty Rooster.
“You don’t know that! I bet he did do it. I bet he’s been diddling little boys all along,” said Mr. Football waving Banty away like a gnat.
“You never know,” said Mr. Medium with a big smile on his face.
I sank down lower in my seat as they approached. Football saw me using only about half my seat and sat down next to me. I felt like that guy in the Cask of Amantillado, bricked in. They’d find my lifeless corpse at Billerica Station, wasted to the bone, spiders spinning webs in my ribcage. At least, that’s how long the ride felt to me at that moment.
Medium and Banty sat in the outer seats in front of and next to the quiet guy in front of me who still hadn’t moved.
“Hey buddy, what do you think?” Football asked and slapped Quiet guy on the shoulder. He jumped and lifted his head, looked from one man to another, and said, “I think my wife has left me, and I think I don’t give a good Goddamn about it. This is the matter that occupies my mind just now.”
Quiet guy’s voice was soft, but sonorous and carried over the noise of the train and wisps of small talk.
“Geez, tell us about it,” said Medium, the smile draining from his face. “I haven’t seen my son in three years.”
“Yah, we’ve all been through it,” said Banty, “Sometimes you just gotta say, ‘Fuck you,’ and walk away. Me, I’m not letting any woman push me around. I took the bitch to court and my Mandy spends every weekend and every other holiday with her old man.”
“Marge left me like that, out of the blue. I remember riding home on this train, as a matter of fact, getting off in Billerica and driving home to Lowell. Nothing there in our apartment but the cat and a note. I still love her, but sometimes you just can’t make it work. Just how it goes.” said Football.
I thought for a second he was going to cry, but he looked up and put his big, meaty hand on Quiet’s shoulder. “You got kids?”
They spent the rest of the ride talking about kids and marriage, both the bitter and the sweet, then they talked about football and cards, and when the train stopped they all got off and went their separate ways in the dark.
A few days later, riding the same train home, Quiet guy was reading the Boston Globe Sports section in his same maroon windbreaker. I sat behind him again, thankful for the silence. Two teenagers got on at Lexington Station. They wore their identical Boston Red Sox caps backward and their identical pants low-slung around their hips, so with their identical long white t-shirts, they looked like their legs were only three feet long. They were laughing, clowning, looking for a target.
“Hey old man!” One said.
The Other poked Quiet’s paper and pulled off his headphones. Kanye West blared from the iPod in the pocket of his jeans. Quiet folded the paper and looked at the boys. The Other sniffed in Quiet’s direction and said, “Something stinks, yo!”
One laughed. And so did Quiet.
“Must be your funky-ass music,” said Quiet.
“Oh! Snap!” said One, bending over to laugh and looking a The Other.
I thought, uh-oh, Quiet’s going to get his ass kicked by these two kids or maybe he’s got a sharpened screwdriver in his pocket.
The Other put the bud up to his ear and listened a second or two, then he looked at Quiet and said, “Damn you got that right! This guy ain’t even real!”
They spend the rest of the ride to Billerica talking about rap and hip-hop, pop and soul, Mos Def and Method Man, Beyonce and Mary J. Blige, and what they all owe to the preachers and poets who made it all possible. The boys learned a thing or two and so did Quiet.
So you see, you just never know what a package contains, until you open it.