The Mole People

by Jennifer Toth

  By treating me as a tunnel dweller, Blade brought me down to the psychological level of tunnel life, a more dangerous and unpredictable level. Exploring the tunnels as an observer, an outsider, had its physical risks. However, when I became accepted as an insider, privy to the anger and violence that are almost hourly events underground, the tunnels exposed me to another dimension, beyond fear and danger, inside myself.

  Blade had warned me. Early in one of his guided tunnel tours for me, he said, “The people down here are just like people topside, only tunnels bring out a different part in them. A part of them that topside people in fancy suits don’t think they got. But they got it all right. It’s inside everyone. Everyone’s got the power to kill.”

  Blade never analyzed a situation or weighed the consequences of an action before he acted, whether on instinct or whim or some other irrational emotion. He never doubted himself. If strange sounds came from a tunnel, we would enter it. If hostile men seemed to bar a tunnel’s entrance, we would go in if Blade felt “comfortable.” However, if a tunnel, no matter how peaceful it appeared to me, “felt bad” to Blade, we would quickly turn and walk out. That was our basic understanding. He showed me tunnels as he chose. I listened, and followed. Our friendship grew from there.

  He once scaled a thirty-foot tunnel wall to rescue a crying kitten, shivering on a high beam. Two hours later, he kicked an old man lying on the street because he hadn’t moved quickly enough out of Blade’s path. One night he carried a bleeding stranger, a victim of a robbery, fourteen blocks to a hospital because cabs refused to take an obviously nonpaying fare. (One cab did stop, but sped off when the driver spotted blood.) The next day Blade pulled a knife on a thirteen-year-old boy who was talking with friends, because Blade didn’t like the youth’s “attitude.”

  I SHOULD NOT BE EXPLORING TUNNELS, OR ANYTHING ELSE, WITH such a dangerously unstable person, but I still do not believe him dangerous. He explains events in tunnels and relationships between homeless underground communities with clarity and incisiveness.

  “Anger does strange things to me,” Blade says after I witness his confrontation with the teenager. “Feels like the pot of gumbo Mama used to make,” he says, “simmering and maybe gonna boil over, but not sure it will drop down the side to the flame and sizzle or explode.” Most tunnel people feel the same way, he suggests. Everyone here is suicidal, not fearing death and almost welcoming it, but with a primeval instinct for survival. On the surface, a bad day may lead to angry words, even violent outbursts, he says, but underground, it could mean someone’s life, perhaps your own.

  Perhaps my own, as it turned out.

  BLADE IS IN HIS EARLY THIRTIES. HE ISN’T SURE EXACTLY WHERE IN his early thirties, but thirty-three sounds like a good number, he says. He is very large, six foot four and about two hundred hard pounds. He lost the sight in his left eye in a fight; it is milky white rather than brown, like his right eye. He creates an imposing presence with a street smart aura, a frightening effect that he turns up or down as needed.

  His past is sketchy. He remembers only the bright red lipstick of his biological mother. He lived with a grandmother, his father’s mother, and considers her his mother. She died when he was nine. He grew up quickly after that, he says. Though he always minded his manners, he says, because his grandma told him to always be polite, he got into trouble, first with kids in the same housing project in the Bronx. He was passed from relative to relative, then foster home to foster home. He never uses his name, Wilson. “I was Wilson when I was seven, but I’m Blade now.” Blade became his name when he was part of a Brooklyn gang. “They call me that cuz I’m sharp and quick with the blade,” he says proudly.

  He tried to join the Marine Corps several times, he says, but was rejected. He claims to have been a Guardian Angel briefly, although the Angels have no record of him as a member.* He tells me at first that he is a graffiti artist, and as we pass graffiti in the tunnels, he points out his tag, or signature logo. Sometimes as we go he pauses to spray his tag on someone else’s work. He has many stories: Now he is just a hustler who spent his money on crack and lived in the tunnels. Now he has cleaned himself up and works at several odd jobs, and lives aboveground with lovers and friends.

  I MET BLADE AT ST. AGNES’ SOUP KITCHEN NEAR GRAND CENTRAL Station. Blade is friendly and laughs often and openly, with a happy-go-lucky air. He is a gentle and familiar face at the basement kitchen, which serves soup and maybe a little hope to the homeless. He is remembered because he always thanks the servers.

  The tables are emptier than usual this late afternoon, probably because the weather has turned warm and clear with springtime, as I pour green Kool-Aid into cups. I bend down to get another cup for a pregnant woman.

  “Don’t look at her that way, man,” says a voice in a low and threatening tone. I recognize the voice as Blade’s and stand up smiling, but instead of the woman a man stands in front of me, lips slightly pursed and jaw askew, in a leering pose that makes me uncomfortable, then immediately angry. He looks me up and down, then reaches out to touch my arm as I hand him Kool-Aid.

  “Don’t touch her, man,” Blade orders loudly, but the man, who is probably drugged out, hasn’t heard or ignores the warning.

  A tray of tinny utensils clatters suddenly to the floor and Blade is standing before me, too, his powerful hand gripping the man’s shoulder in what looks like a very painful squeeze.

  “I said, don’t do that!” he hisses. The man just turns and walks away in a daze. Blade picks up his tray and continues in the line as if nothing has occurred. The kitchen staff, which had rushed forward anticipating a fight, drifts back to the pots and pans.

  Later, as I leave St. Agnes’ that night, Blade is hanging out at the corner with a group. The few pedestrians make wide detours around them. I can barely identify his face behind a cigar as I thank him.

  “No problem,” he says carelessly. “My mama raised me right,” he adds. “Nothin’ to do with you.”

  The following week when he comes to St. Agnes’, Blade advises me coldly not to bend over with my back to the line, rear in the air, but rather always keep my face forward.

  “And don’t smile at people in line,” he says. I thank him.

  I next encounter Blade while walking home one night. I have an uneasy feeling about a man following me, and I hold my can of mace tightly. Abruptly, Blade is beside me, and we stop. The man hastily crosses the street.

  This was to be the first of many times Blade became angry at me. “You shouldn’t be walking the streets this late,” he says. “That man was after you. Just cuz he’s white don’t mean he ain’t gonna hurt you.”

  I’m angry and tell him so, first because he thinks I’m racist and second because he thinks I’m stupid.

  “If I thought that way, I wouldn’t be standing here with you at night. I’ve been in a lot more dangerous situations,” I blurt out, “and I’ve been just fine.”

  “I know you done stupid things getting stuff for that book, but you been lucky. Someone must be watchin’ over you, girl,” he shakes his head. “You better believe, because you have no business in those tunnels. You don’t know the rules down there.

  “By rights you should be dead by now. Better believe it. You’re lucky you made so many friends, but one day you won’t be so lucky,” he warns.

  After that, he begins to instruct me about tunnel life, telling me of tunnel communities he knows. I ask him to take me to them, but he refuses. “A girl shouldn’t go down there,” he says. I intend to go down with or without him, I say, and he concedes. We are to meet at an entrance to Central Park.

  Blade doesn’t keep the date. I wait two hours that day, and the same on the next day. When next I see him at St. Agnes’, I tell him he’s unreliable. He laughs and says he showed up both days but just watched me to decide if he trusted me. I challenge him to tell me what clothes I wore, what color shoes, how I fixed my hair. He does, correctly.

  Over the next several weeks he calls me “kid
sis” and often pats my head. He takes me into the tunnels, where we visit many communities. He is usually cold and aloof to the people there, and I asked him why.

  “They’ll kill if they want, don’t forget that,” he says.

  No one has ever come close to threatening me, I retort. Maybe you just don’t want to see good in them.

  “Maybe you’re afraid to see the bad. You don’t live with them. You don’t have to. It don’t matter how much time you spend with those people, you will never understand them because you’re not one of them. You don’t know. I do. I know how to kill people. You don’t,” he says intensely, as if willing me to understand.

  “I know how easy it is to kill people, and I know that it don’t usually bother you after you do it. You just go get something to eat and forget it. You can kill for a cigarette, for five dollars, for anything you want. You don’t think that way up on the street, but down there, it don’t make any difference if you kill or you don’t. You don’t think twice about it,” he explains earnestly.

  I offer to pay Blade for escorting me the first time. He is insulted.

  “Never do that again,” he says flatly.

  Why are you spending so much time showing me the tunnels? I ask.

  “Because I’m crazy,” he replies. “And you remind me of a girl I sat next to in the first grade.

  “I always thought if she was black, she’d be cute. But she was white, transparent like,” he cringes. “White skin just looks bad to me. Anyway, she was a weak little kid. But one day this kid came over and ripped up a picture I was drawing for my mama, and she bit him. There was blood on her teeth and everything.”

  “Besides,” he goes on after a pause, “you’re funny and I like to keep an eye on you. You do stupid things.”

  Blade likes the responsibility of guiding me, I decide. He sometimes walks me in a huge circle underground and claims we are in a new tunnel, just to make me confused and more dependent.

  After finding communities with him, I go by myself to interview the underground homeless. With him nearby, people are less free to talk, glancing nervously at him. They are even more anxious when I’m with him than when I’m with a policeman.

  One day I tell Blade that I’ve heard of a new tunnel to investigate and describe its location. He immediately says no one lives there, but later I learn that Blade sometimes sleeps there himself, so I avoid mentioning the tunnel again. He has said that he no longer lives in tunnels.

  So on one fateful day, a Thursday, I go into that tunnel alone. I find no one, although there are mattresses and garbage bags that suggest it is used nightly. I resist the temptation to look for Blade’s clothes. He had become more than just a guide and protector; he was a friend and it would be treacherous to search for his home in this unhappy place.

  I go away from the city for the weekend, but on Monday, I visit a familiar tunnel community. Sneakers, a small man who earned his nickname by being fast and quiet, tells me that Blade is looking for me. “In a bad way,” he adds pointedly.

  I laugh, wondering if he is angry at me because I left town without telling him. But Sneakers is obviously worried, so I ask why Blade wanted me.

  “Dunno,” Sneakers says, looking away.

  Another camp member, George, freezes when he sees me. It is in sharp contrast to the great warm smile I usually get. He stares at me for a minute before turning to Sneakers.

  “You tell her?” he asks.

  “No man, I jus’ tell her he was lookin’ for her,” Sneakers replies, kicking the ground.

  “You gotta get outta here,” George says urgently. “He’s not messin’. He’s looking for you bad.”

  George drops the garbage bags in which he has been collecting soda cans, takes my arm, and walks me toward the exit.

  “It’s no joke,” he says, looking into my face. “He’s after you.” He was visibly upset, so much that he could barely speak clearly.

  Why? I ask, but George just shakes his head. He doesn’t know, but it doesn’t matter why, he says. Just go. I wonder if he just doesn’t want to tell me.

  That afternoon, still not believing the danger, I visit another community. Tyrone, one of its runners, frowns.

  “It’s on the street that someone’s looking for you,” he says severely. A large man named Blade is looking to kill me, he says, “and he ain’t messin’.” He says that I should stay out of the tunnels from now on.

  I can’t believe any of this. They are serious, I know, but it is a huge misunderstanding. When I last saw Blade, on a subway platform, he patted me on the head as usual and was laughing. The image was crystal clear. Now I am standing on the same platform, at 33rd Street on the Lexington Avenue Line, and a homeless woman comes up—I’ve never seen her before—and warns me to be careful. “Blade is looking for you,” she says in a terrible repetition of the words I’ve heard all day.

  By now I have become thoroughly frightened. I know it is not a joke. Blade is angry, but about what, I have no idea. I must find out and set him straight.

  In the next few days I speak to other tunnel people, but they also warn me about Blade without offering any information about his anger. I should stay away from the tunnels for a very long time, they say.

  Tyrone agrees to try to learn why Blade wants to kill me. A few graffiti artists do, too, particularly Chris Pape, who has painted many underground murals and is accepted by tunnel people.

  Chris asks if I saw drugs in Blade’s tunnel, on the theory that Blade may have been dealing or storing drugs there. Perhaps he saw me, or suspected I saw him with drugs, and now he is scaring me away from any thought of talking to the police about it. No one really knows.

  Then Blade phones me at home. I have never given him my phone number. On my answering machine he says he wants to see me. He sounds angry and distant. Even when he has been angry before, he has not sounded so cold.

  “I need to talk to you,” he says coldly. He calls again, his messages increasingly frustrated and furious.

  “I need to see you. You need to talk cuz I know what you done.” I have never given him my address either, but he says he knows it.

  “I know where you live and I’m gonna come visit you. We need to get something straight finally.”

  The phone wakes me up, but no one speaks. I’m certain it is Blade.

  Tyrone calls me at the office. He wants to meet in Queens. I am now badly frightened, and, although I know Tyrone, I don’t know him as well as I know—or knew—Blade. So I ask Tyrone to meet in Central Park and he agrees.

  The story he tells me is that Blade has killed a man in his tunnel, a “crackhead” who was harassing a woman passing through. It happened on the Saturday I was out of the city, but Blade thought he saw me witness the killing, and that I ran away. He chased me but I escaped, and then he saw me speaking to a policeman. When he was unable to reach me by phone on the weekend, he became convinced that I had gone to the police. Because I am not a tunnel person and don’t live by tunnel rules—the chief one of which is never to inform to the police on another tunnel person—I am dangerous to Blade and will be dangerous to him for years.

  This is what Blade believes, according to Tyrone. I believe Tyrone.

  Tyrone shakes as he tells me. “You gotta understand how dangerous he is,” says Tyrone. “You gotta leave the city, go home.” My rapport with tunnel people has ended. Some will refuse to talk to me, and others will hide from me, he says.

  “It’s not you, baby,” explains a homeless woman I particularly like. “It’s that people could get killed just talking to you. We want you to be OK. We love you, but we want you to leave. I don’t want to see you die, and if you keep coming into these tunnels like this, someone’s gonna go fetch Blade to get on his good side. There’s eyes all over this place, you know that. So go home, baby, please go home.”

  Blade’s phone calls by now are even more terrifying. He tells me he will come to my apartment.

  “I’m gonna come over with my blade. It’s better than s
ome piece gun. It got ya name on it and it thirsty. Ready to talk?” His words are blurred by street sounds from a booth, but his voice is steady and hard in a quick cold environment.

  That night, going down to do laundry in the basement of my apartment building, his scribbled tag is painted on the green wall of my elevator. I am hardly able to think, seeing strange colors. His signature had once been so reassuring to me, comforting; if I feared trouble, I could drop his name and I’d be left alone. Now his tag means he is close to me. I am afraid even to go outside, even for groceries.

  An officer tells me I should get a gun. No matter what happens, if I kill a man in my apartment, the case would never go to trial. I wonder if I could kill Blade. Within a few days of sleepless terror, I know I can if he comes into my apartment. I wish he would stand in my doorway so I could kill him—a man whose face I still remember only with a smile.

  A week later, I leave New York.

  IT WAS EXHILARATING, WALKING A TIGHTROPE, EXPLORING THE underground while living aboveground. I had been part of two worlds, but I came to know the tunnel world too well, enough to be caught up in its irrational behavior and volatile emotions. I was no longer privy and at the same time immune to tunnel life with the guise of an outsider. I had already been slapped around when I tried to stop a man from battering his woman. Now I might be killed, and now I know that I could also kill.

  As many tunnel people have told me, the line between them and people who live on the surface is very thin, much thinner than people on the “topside world” like to realize. I felt I could step over that line. I could also escape, and I did. I hope some of them will escape, too.

  Epilogue

  MONTHS HAVE PASSED SINCE I WAS LAST IN THE TUNNELS. Every time I hear about New York, I see a picture in my mind of the city in lights, sparkling with promise and excitement, and I think of the people I left behind in its shadow. Willie, Frederick, and Sane (David Smith) died before this book was published. Brenda is missing. Mac is still roaming the tunnels in search of track rabbits, and whistling. Seville’s hobble healed into a steady limp. He is still smiling, using his humor to help him and others cope while looking for the welding job to free him from tunnel life. Bernard continues to meet at his campfire with Bob, Tony, and the other members of his vibrant community. They talk about trying to retrieve Sheila, who is lost to alcohol and the streets. Sheila keeps true to her promise to Willie, and says that no matter how bad things get on the streets, she won’t live in the tunnels again. She misses the people down there, she says. She misses caring for them and being cared for. John moved out of the tunnel to live with a girlfriend on West 72nd Street. He met her with the help of John Tierney’s article in The New York Times in which he spoke openly about his quest for love. He left Mama in the tunnel with Joe. Chris is spending months’ worth of pay on paint for tunnel murals, he tells me, shaking his head. The one he’s currently working on, his most ambitious yet, will cost about $1,000. He’s planning to spread Sane’s ashes at the foot of the mural on the tunnel ground. Smith sprinkled the other half of his brother’s ashes along the No. 1 subway line, Sane’s favorite. Roger is slowly recovering from his brother’s death. Dolly is living with a man three times her age “for security until my rich man finds me,” she says, her eyes blackened by drugs. She heard on the streets that Frank is in jail, but she doesn’t know where the other members of the runaway community are now. Many more of those interviewed for this book may now be lost or dead.