Small Mercies

This is now as far as Bobby and Vincent have gotten into the timeline of the night. The other witnesses have taken them through:

1. Auggie being chased into the station.

2. Auggie jumping the turnstiles.

3. Four white kids — as of yet not positively identified but suspected to be George Dunbar, Rum Collins, Brenda Morello, and Jules Fennessy — immediately jumping the turnstiles behind him.

4. Auggie running onto the platform as the inbound train neared the station.

5. The kids charging after him.

6. One of the white boys calling, “We just want to talk to you.”

7. A white girl calling, “You run slow for a nigger.”

8. One of the four kids (no one could say which kid) throwing a beer bottle.

9. The beer bottle landing by Auggie Williamson’s right foot, causing Auggie to look back over his shoulder. Causing his feet to tangle.

10. The train entering the station.

11. Auggie Williamson stumbling.

12. One of the four kids (a female) yelling, “You’re in the wrong fucking neighborhood.”

13. A thump. Every one of the first five witnesses heard the thump. The sound of impact — object meets human. (The conductor, meanwhile, possibly drinking on the job and a year short of his pension, claims to have seen and heard exactly nothing.)

14. Auggie Williamson spinning in place and falling in a heap to the platform.

From that point, all recollections of the first five witnesses grew hazy. Those were four loud, violent kids on that platform. No one wanted to catch any of their eyes by mistake. No one wanted to be dragged into this. Be the next person to hear they were in the wrong neighborhood.

So they looked away.

Then three walked off. Left the station. Took their chances hailing cabs.

Two waited for the outbound train that Seamus Riordan arrived on. Kept their eyes focused on the tracks until they could see the lights of the incoming train. But neither looked back at those four kids and whatever they were doing to the kid they’d been chasing.

The outbound train arrived. The two witnesses got on.

Seamus Riordan got off. At twenty past midnight, he was the only passenger to exit.

“And that’s when I seen the five of them.”

“You mean four.”

“The four of them and the spook kid.”

“Wait,” Bobby said, “what?”

“The four white kids and the black kid,” Seamus said. “Four plus one makes five.”

“But he’d fallen off the platform by then.”

Seamus Riordan narrows his eyes. “He was lying at their feet.”

“After the train left the station?”

“Yeah.”

“You’re not making this up?” Vincent says.

“Who the fuck would make that up? Your parents raise any kids who aren’t fucking retarded?”

Bobby Coyne watches Vincent for signs of impending violence, but by now he’s like a ball-snipped dog. If Seamus gives him much more abuse, he’ll roll on his back for a belly rub.

“So,” Bobby says, “the train’s gone, the victim’s still on the platform with the kids standing over him?”

“Yup.”

“And then?”

Seamus’s eyes bug. “I don’t fucking know. I didn’t make it to forty-three in this fucking town because I linger when I see four people standing over a body.”

“So he was dead?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“You said ‘a body.’”

“Yeah, like, someone lying on the ground. He was kinda moving from side to side. I could see that much. Then I left.”

“But he was on the platform.”

“How many times I gotta say it? You wanna try a new language? Fucking, I dunno, Flemish, that be better? He was on the platform. Rolling back and forth a bit. Wait, not rolling. More like... flapping.” He shrugs. “Like a, I dunno, a fish just came off the hook.”

Vincent peers at Seamus Riordan. “But what kind of fish?”

“A black cod,” Seamus says. And he and Vincent laugh their asses off.

Not for the first time in his life — or even the eightieth — Bobby hates humanity. Wonders if God’s great unforgivable crime was creating us in the first place.