The Railroad

by Neil Douglas Newton

  “So where are you going to go?”

  “Anywhere. I’m not going to let this happen again. I have to protect my child.”

  I stared into my drink; here was a situation needing a solution and I couldn’t think of one and that bothered me. “Can’t you get a lawyer?”

  “Of course I can get one. And Gary can get a better one. He has more money and he can hire a piranha. They can make me look like I’m crazy. He even accused me of molesting Maria. He can tie the system in knots.”

  “Don’t you have medical records of…what he’s done to her?”

  “I tried that. Maria’s pediatrician told me the same thing over and over. There’s some evidence of abnormality but it’s not conclusive. And he’s not going to risk a suit from Gary. Or worse yet, losing all his patients when they find out that he turned him in to the police.”

  “But they have their own kids! Are you telling me they wouldn’t care if they knew?”

  She began wringing her hands. I looked over at Maria who seemed oblivious to all of it. We were whispering as best as we could, but I had the feeling she’d heard all this and no longer felt she could do anything about it.

  “Do you want another coke, Maria?” I asked.

  She looked toward her mother for approval. Elena nodded and I ordered another coke, along with bourbon for myself; it promised to be a bad afternoon.

  Elena drummed the table with her fingers, something I’d found endearing years ago. “No one cares because no one wants to know. They have their own little orbit in the suburbs. If they admitted that Gary was…what he is, they’d have to admit it happens and then they’d have to decide what to do with Gary. That would be…difficult. They’d have to ignore him or, worse yet, take a stand. This is easier.”

  “So they wouldn’t care if it were their kids?”

  “It’s not their kids. That’s the point. No one wants to believe this. And so I become insane.”

  I was reaching, trying to find an answer. “What if you subpoenaed that doctor’s records?”

  “A good lawyer could argue that whatever was found was due to another cause. Without the doctor’s testimony on the specifics….” She let the thought hang. We both sat in miserable silence.

  “Do you have somewhere to go,” I asked finally. “You don’t have to tell me where it is. Just that you have somewhere to go.”

  “There’re a network of people who can help. I’m trying to get in touch with them.”

  “Are they a government agency?”

  She smiled, sadly. “No. They’re a group. An illegal group. They call it The Railroad. They move you from place to place until they can find you a permanent home.”

  I’d heard of it, but it was always third hand references and the occasional news story.

  “And you’re sure they can help you?”

  “No, I’m not. I’m taking a chance. It’s the only way I can protect Maria. I have a way to get in touch with them, but I need to go now, so I can get away from Gary. That’s why I need the money. I wouldn’t have called you otherwise. I know I was a bitch years ago, and that I don’t deserve anything.”

  “Stop. Okay, you were a bitch but you were young and full of yourself. And I was a sensitive boy. I probably enjoyed the tragedy of your dumping me. That has nothing to do with this.”

  “You know it’s odd. I’d rather think that you still had some feelings for me. That giving me money won’t be just charity. I know that’s silly.”

  I smiled. “I’ve never forgotten you. And I’ve always wondered what would have happened if I’d chased you west when you went with that guy.”

  I immediately regretted what I’d just said. I’d spent a year feeling vulnerable and stripped bare when it came to Elena. My heart had been broken and she hadn’t given a shit. After all those years I was surprised to find that it still hurt.

  I pushed the thoughts away. There were parts of my past that were better left where they were.

  “I guess it was for the best,” I said, a smirk covering my true feelings. “You wanted to leave and you’d moved on to someone else.”

  “The painter? Oh god. What a mistake that was. He was a big pothead and a waste of time. So were the next couple of guys. It seems like I don’t have such a wonderful track record since I left you. I guess I didn’t know when I had a good thing.

  “We weren’t ready.”

  “Maybe.”

  *

  She hefted the envelope, hours later, beside her minivan. I’d had her wait in the bank lobby while I got the money, not wanting her to see what I was doing. “This is what $2000 feels like?” she said when she took the envelope from me. “It seems a little heavier.” She eyed me suspiciously.

  “Try ten.”

  “I knew it. Shit, Mike. I can’t take this!”

  “You can. You need it.”

  “Mike, No.”

  “Take the money. You might be on the road for a while.”

  “No…I can’t.”

  “I won’t feel right if you don’t take it. It could take you a while to get in touch with those people.” Those people. It didn’t sound very reassuring. I wished I could help her, but I had nowhere I could send her.

  She began crying again and, this time, so did her daughter. I hugged them both, urging them toward the van, just to get it over with. To my surprise, Maria returned the hug and I think I saw something like hope in her eyes.

  Elena looked back once as she started to drive off. I read a thousand things in her face, wistful thoughts of what might have been. But mostly I saw fear.

  *

  It's so easy to fall back into a meaningless existence, even when a train wreck like Elena's life touches you. For a moment you see a larger measure of reality, but then it's gone. I suppose that moment of reality just made me want to go back into my safe world all the more. Unlike Elena, I didn’t have to wonder what would happen to me; I had all my bases covered. I had earned my place in the sun and didn’t have to dwell on what had happened to an old girlfriend.

  It was three months after I watched Elena drive away that things went off the tracks. I was feeling special then, having just finished one of the biggest software conversions ever to grace Crabtree and Dain. The new software was already beginning to pay off in the form of greater speed and better reporting. We were finding holes in our operation that could conceivably save us millions. I was feeling my oats.

  I’d gone out the night before to celebrate with some people at the office. I’d gotten drunk and acted silly and even shared a kiss with Debbie Baum, the director of HR. She’d been an object of serious lust for a couple of years and now I knew that she, at least, shared my feelings. What would happen in the light of day was a different matter entirely.

  As I sat there in Michael’s, I basked in the glory of my new status. I’d just finished my fifth martini when my boss pulled me aside and hinted at my being rewarded for what I’d done. It was thinly veiled code, telling me that I’d get a raise and probably a promotion to an officer spot. While he spoke, some of the other techs at my level were looking at me strangely, like I’d become another person. The entire world seemed open to me.

  As I walked back to our long table, people began clapping me on the back, saying things like, “I hope you’ll still be talking to me in a couple of weeks”. I smiled, trying to be gracious, but feeling superior against my better judgment. Like most brokerage firms, Crabtree and Dain was mindlessly competitive. Not only did you have to come up with decent ideas, but you had to traverse the shark infested waters of corporate business, fighting detractors and getting buy-in on your ideas from frightened upper level management. After years of stress and anxiety, I felt like I wanted someone to be eating my dust, especially those who’d been clawing their way up the ladder with me, waiting to see if I’d fall off.

  One of them sat diagonally across from me. Bill Halleran and I had both been fighting for the same breadcrumbs for the past three years. We had both tried to launch similar operations
simplification plans at the same time. While he actually hadn’t tried to directly torpedo my ideas, he had done his best to play up the costs and to make me look foolish. In the end I’d proved that the initial investments my plan required led to major savings in the long run. I’d managed to automate document imaging, saving several hundred thousand a year on an outside imaging service. And that was only one of the ideas I’d come up with.

  I’ll give him this: if Bill was a sore loser, he didn’t show it. He was a bit sullen but actually graceful in his defeat, clapping approval along with everyone else as my boss extolled the virtues of my five year plan. He even smiled at me occasionally despite the fact that I knew that his career was a big question mark now that his boss knew that he’d lost the fight; managers want to expand their domains and Bill’s boss was seeing his shrink.

  I suppose it was the booze and a little bit of arrogance at the knowledge that the beautiful Debbie Baum might be available that made me follow the scent of blood like some alpha male in a tribe of baboons. Bill had his wife there and I could sense her discomfort. That seemed to send me over the edge.

  “So, Bill,” I prodded. “How is your reconciliation system going?” I knew that it was going nowhere and that he would have to scramble to attach himself to other people’s projects now that he knew he wasn’t going to be in charge of much of anything.

  He turned a little red. “They’re still reviewing it, I guess,” he answered lamely. His wife fidgeted in her seat.

  I smiled and scanned the room to see that just about everyone else was watching me and Bill. “I had gotten the impression that it would be indispensable for Susan’s group.”

  It must have hit him that I was going to be nasty; I suppose I hadn’t shown that side of myself before. He gave me a sour-lemon look. “Susan isn’t going to use my system. I guess she’s going to use yours.”

  “Ah,” I said, pretending to be profound.

  Bill and his wife shared glances and I smiled.

  “So what will you be doing for the next few months?”

  “That’s going to be reviewed, Mike.”

  “Well, if you want to do some programming on the reconciliation part of our groups system, let me know. We could use a good coder.”

  He blanched and turned his head away. I had asked him to be a lowly programmer, someone who took orders and didn’t direct anything. It was nasty, but somehow, I felt good about it figuring he had risked playing his hand and had lost. He’d caused me some tense moments in the past few years and I guess I was getting mine back.

  I saw his wife whispering into his ear. There were heated words between the two of them and I knew that she was telling him she wanted to leave. I smiled again.

  Everything seemed a haze after that. Somewhere along the line I turned in Bill’s direction to find that he was gone, along with his wife.

  It was getting late but that had never stopped me once the party really got started. I had called Dennis from the bar and offered to meet him in one of the strange bars in Tribeca located amid grimy factories; a hidden yuppie enclave. The Next Corner Bar was just off West Broadway. It had good hamburgers and the drinks were relatively cheap.

  I’d known Dennis since I was a nerdy pre-teenager. We’d grown up in a suburb of New York where kids spent their weekends trying to get some adult to buy them beer. We’d met at a mutual friend’s party and got along well for reasons no one around us could tell.

  Dennis had made it to the bar before I got there and was already on his third beer. “Give my friend here a formaldehyde, bartender,” he called out as I took a stool at the bar.

  “Laphroaig please,” I corrected him.

  The bartender smirked. “I think we have a bottle of that. Wait a second.” He disappeared behind the bar, poring over the contents of the shelves. “One more place to look,” he told us as he went off to the back storeroom. A few seconds later he came back with a smile on his face, holding a green bottle. “Three bottles left. I think they’ll be there for a while. You might drink all of it. It’s not popular.

  He placed a rocks glass before me, three quarters filled with an amber liquid. Dennis leaned over and sniffed it. “You’re on your own.”

  “Fine with me. Liver ho!” It was code from our murky younger days when drinking had first become a hobby. I took a healthy pull.

  “So you’re the golden boy now.”

  I thought of Bill Halleran’s face only an hour before and I smiled. “Yeah. I guess so.”

  “You think they’ll make you an officer?”

  “There’s been talk of that.”

  “What would they think of us back home? The two fuck-ups. And look at us now.”

  “Maybe we should go back. Take the grand tour.”

  “Oh yeah. The grand tour of Jerry’s bar. We could talk to them about systems architecture or criminal law.”

  “Criminal law would go over with some of them. I’ve been waiting for some of them to show up in some case you’re trying.”

  His eyes lit up. “The People v. Adrian Tannery.”

  I nodded my approval. Tannery had been the bully of bullies in our home town. “That would be sweet. Except I think he’s a real estate broker now.”

  “It figures. Hey Alfalfa?” It was a name we called each other, something from a time before we could even drink legally. No one besides us knew what it meant.

  “Hey Dennis?”

  “Do you really like what you’re doing?”

  “Whoa! Are you getting philosophical after only three drinks?”

  “I mean it. Do you really like it?”

  I hadn’t asked myself that question in such a long time that I found that, to my surprise, I didn’t have an answer. “It excites me. It gets me up in the morning. I like the highs. I try not to think about the lows. But…well now I’ve managed to do something I never did before and I’m going to get recognized for it. Maybe someday I’ll be CIO. Who knows? Why? Are you thinking about leaving the DA's office?”

  “No. I do like what I do. But sometimes I wonder if I will in a few years. Or if what I do makes any difference.”

  “Dennis, you need another drink.”

  “You may be right. It can’t hurt.”

  Three drinks and an hour later saw us in a cab up to the fifties. It was Monday night at Iridium and Les Paul was playing. For those of you who don’t know him, he’s responsible for creating much of the electronic musical equipment rock guitarists use today. One of the legendary rock guitars bears his name.

  I ordered smoked salmon with capers and some more single malt scotch. Dennis stayed with his beer and had a burger. Les Paul went through a number of his jazz standards and talked to the crowd. It seemed like a standard evening of New York Club jazz until an unexpected guest showed up: Randy Bachman of Bachman, Turner, Overdrive was in town for a BTO revival and had come by to see Les Paul, someone he’d idolized as a kid no doubt. We were graced with an impromptu and unexpected rendition of “Taking care of Business” which seemed pretty incongruous in a jazz club like Iridium.

  Meanwhile Dennis, emboldened by liquor, had started up a conversation with an auditor from one of the big eight firms. I caught his eye and silently asked a time-honored question. The woman just looked my way and giggled. I sensed that my presence would soon be redundant and, after another half hour, I made my apologies and took a cab home.

  The next morning I was musing over the kiss I’d shared with Debbie Baum when a few words from my radio caught my attention. …airplane crashed into the World Trade Center… fire raging in the top stories… rescue workers rushing to the scene…

  I guess I’d been ten or so when my father had told me the story of an army plane that crashed into the Empire State building back in the fifties. It had seemed like something out of fairytale past, where great shocking events occurred and appeared in movie newsreels.

  What were the odds, I thought, of two such events happening in a fifty year span; how often, statistically, could you expect a plane
to crash into a skyscraper?

  I dismissed the thought; there was nothing I could do about it, except perhaps to go to the office and deal with the mountain of work that still waited for me. At the corner I turned my attention south. There was the north Tower, miles away, its top engulfed in flames that showed no sign of dissipating. I stood and stared for a good stupefied five minutes before I realized that I was simply wasting time. What was done was done and I couldn’t change it.

  The subway was as it always was, annoying and a little too crowded. I’d taken to riding in front of the train so I could look out the window at the dirty tracks passing by. There were a few others who did the same, part of a small but dedicated cadre. I saw “Mr. Cool”, as I called him, a finger-snapping, suit-wearing, self-defined arbiter of cool. He’d snap in time to the music on his CD player and offer a too-hip finger pointing gesture at anyone whose style he approved of. I tried to avoid looking at him but it was sort of like trying to keep your eyes off a car wreck. When he saw me looking at him he smiled, just before I turned away in disgust. A few seconds later we pulled into one of the stations and I concentrated on the window in front of me.

  A woman rushed in, barely missing the closing doors. Breathing heavily, she came to stop just inches from Mr. Cool. “Hey!” he shouted to the woman, pointing his index finger. Everyone around him turned conspicuously away, including the woman in question.

  When I left the train, a few minutes later, I saw Mr. Cool snapping his fingers and nodding his head in time to music only he heard. I wondered if he spent all his off-work time alone, lost in his fantasies

  Back on the street, I knew something was wrong; there were very few people on the sidewalks at a time when people would normally have to fight just to move a few feet. Any other weekday we’d all be part of a complex dance that involved dodging human beings while continuing to move forward, non-stop. That day I could have spread my arms wide, run down the street and I wouldn’t have touched a soul.

  I made my way through an empty lobby to my bank of elevators, feeling like I was in some science fiction movie about the end of the world. Finally the guard at my floor confirmed my suspicions: there was something wrong and we were all instructed to leave immediately. The second building in the Trade Center had been hit; no one thought it was an accident any more.