As the Current Pulls the Fallen Under

by Daryl Sneath

  The reporter’s witness (two too many people removed from the source to capture any sort of truth for me) said he was ‘crazed-looking.’

  Jack Nicholson poking his head through an axed door announcing the arrival of Johnny is crazed-looking. The sonofabitch who pushed Rayn to her death was not crazed-looking. He was human waste. I wish that’s how I’d described him to the police. Stinking, wretched, vile, repulsive human waste.

  That black and white grainy mugshot from The Star online grows in my head at times like a camera zooming in. Those glassy, bulging, dead animal eyes. That nefarious little grin. Like someone just punched him in the stomach and he liked it. Like he’s about to laugh and say, ‘Ooh, fuck yeah, that hurt, do it again, do it again.’ That greasy, matted, slicked-back blonde hair that’s the result not of careful combing but of aggressive, obsessive flattening.

  To note: it wasn’t an ‘incident’ and calling her an ‘innocent bystander’ doesn’t make calling him an ‘alleged attacker’ any less offensive. There was nothing ‘alleged’ about it and he didn’t ‘attack’ her. He killed her. He’s a murderer. A sick twisted fuck the likes of which evolution has fallen terribly short of eliminating. In the future it would be nice if ‘survival of the fittest’ referred not to physical strength or any type of dominance of one kind over another, but to simple unselfish decency. Survival of the civil. That would be an improvement. That’s the sort of evolution we need now.

  CLIPPINGS (15)

  (taken from randomacstofviolence.com/smokedbyatrain/comments)

  ‘Fuckin shame . . . tightest ass I ever seen

  hammer4hire

  I know right . . . she musta been a model or sumthin

  redsoxsuck

  i reconize her to where she from

  teeohbro

  Just found her. Nike ad. Here’s the link: nike.com/running/lakefrontrunner

  vulcher

  awsum u da man vulcer thx

  teeohbro

  np

  vulcher

  Check out that fuckn body

  hammer4hire

  Really to bad she bit it

  redsoxsuck

  Got her name. Rayn Down. Searching for naked pics.

  vulcher

  ahh yee-ah vulsher let us no bro

  teeohbro

  I tell you what I wish she’d bit

  hammer4hire

  Good one hammer

  redsoxsuck

  yo wait a sec rain down she a porn star?

  teeohbro

  You’re thinking of Rain Storm.

  vulcher

  yo right thx.

  teeohbro

  Fuck ya I’d a ruin’d her

  hammer4hire’

  ~

  When I googled ‘Toronto woman killed by subway train’ the video came up on the first page: 22,341 views. A number nearly equivalent to the population of Heron River. Not exactly viral but enough to make you wonder how there are so many people interested in watching someone else die. If not interested in, then indifferent to, and I don’t know which is worse.

  A few common reactions to a photograph or video that captures a moment of human terror: ‘Why didn’t the guy with the camera do something to help? How could he just stand there and watch it happen? How could he record it?’ These are easy judgements to make.

  But really, what’s a cellphone videographer supposed to do? Be a hero? Step in and mediate? The pusher had spent the last six years of his life immersed in therapy. It’s safe to say he was sick of talking. So what’s the witness supposed to do, save the victim? Run and push the stranger to safety so that he himself may be the one thrown to the tracks and killed? All with perfect timing?

  When asked the hypothetical question, ‘What would you do if you came upon a burning house and heard the cries of the trapped inside?’ most people feel a swelling in their chests and say something like they’d do their best to help those who were trapped. Which means they would run inside the burning house—despite the threat to their own safety, despite their physical limitations, despite their being human—and ferry the helpless outside. No one says, ‘I’d be frozen by the awe of it and so I’d stand there and watch, useless.’ No one says, ‘I’d thank my lucky stars it wasn’t my house burning down.’ No one says, ‘I’d pull out my phone and record the whole thing—you know the kind of dough they pay for footage like that?’

  No one says these things but people do them all the time.

  Often there’s someone who dons a cape and flies in for the rescue, claiming in the five-second evening news soundbite that he just did what anyone else would have done. But he’s wrong. No one else did. Most people don’t. Most people stand and watch. Shocked and immobilized by the horror of the scene. Some people point a phone and hit record. Most shake their heads sympathetically, quietly thankful it wasn’t them. All human and understandable reactions to have.

  I’m not surprised by the comments attached to the video. I’ve been used to those kinds of reactions to Rayn for a long time. Most men who saw her walking down the street took mental snapshots of her, I’m sure. Many leered at the ads in magazines and commercials on TV, I have no doubt. Objectively speaking she was beautiful. Beyond beautiful. A goddess, most would say. I remember as early as grade seven guys in my class calling her a milf right to my face. Your mom’s a fucking milf, dude, you know that right? I’d shrug and say, Whatever. What was I supposed to do? They weren’t trying to insult her. Or me. The opposite actually. In their awkward hard-on driven adolescent way they were complimenting her. And me. I think at times I was accepted only because I was her son.

  Having sexual thoughts about a stranger is completely natural but there’s nothing natural about the likes of hammer4hire et al. They are sick, pathetic, insensate jerkoffs who need psychological help. It’s understandable for a guy to be curious and tentatively click the play button on potentially salacious or disturbing links, checking over his shoulder even though he knows he’s alone (I’ve done it myself—I’m sure as hell no saint), but it’s quite another thing to take the time to comment on, engage in a virtual conversation about, and repeatedly watch a video in which someone is killed. There are those who spend their lives trying to forget and erase the unending reels of terror they’ve had the misfortune of being witnesses to and here these senseless necrophiles are discussing the subject of the footage like she’s the latest pornstar sensation.

  Fuck them.

  I have fantasies about drawing them out of their seedy little dens of iniquity and unleashing on the lot of them a Bruce Lee inspired spinkicking fists of fury asskicking that would leave them unable to utter their own names. If only evolution would step in and alter the biology of such specimens so that every time they had a tug at themselves the potential for procreation diminished exponentially. Even better, there should be a built-in trigger in the brains of the inalterably fucked-up that cuts off the production of seed entirely. Sterility should be directly related to depravity.

  So, Dr. Carl, what do thoughts like these make me?

  I can’t figure out why the police needed a description of the pusher. They had a picture of him. It’s right there online. And anyway, who cares what he looked like? It’s not like he fled the scene and they had to hunt him down. He jumped to his own death calling on Jesus.

  I wish I’d pushed him. I fantasize about pushing him. It’s easy to imagine because in the competing worlds of ‘what happened’ and ‘what didn’t happen’ the result is the same. I’ve learned there’s no sense in dreaming something that alters the outcome of the past. Truth may be difficult to nail down but it knows itself and it’s impossible to erase or change in any major way, regardless of the effort or desire to do so.

  I’ve tried. I’ve tried to save her a million times in my mind. Lying on my stomach, reaching into the cold dark endless space between us, waiting for the fe
eling of her hand that I know will never come. Sensing the tips of her fingers. Her face. Smiling up at me. The scream of the train. The inevitable impact.

  So I stand and I push him. I load my two hands like the double hammer of a gun and drive them into his back with everything I have. His head snaps back and I stand there—chest heaving, fists clenched, tears welling—and watch him lose his fight for balance just as the train comes screeching into the station. I can actually sense all of it if I think hard enough. My hands on his back, the thud of his body being hit by the train. It’s like a rush of water washing over me. Cold and jarring and good.

  Then the truth comes sweeping in. The pusher spreads his arms and dives to his own death asking Jesus to take him home. I hate that he had that moment, whatever it meant to him. I hate that he had control and was given the chance to choose.

  MUSEUM STATION: TORONTO, ON

  Outside Varsity Stadium on Bloor the city moved on. Hundreds of people coming and going. Everyone seeming to have a destination or purpose in mind: students, suits, joggers, bikers, couriers, shoppers, parents with athlete-children wearing National Championships hoodies. Throngs moved in and out of Varsity Stadium. Teams with equipment bags. Coaches with ­lanyards around their necks. Press with badges. TV cameras and over-keen interns who held microphones under the chins of exhausted teenaged runners asking stupid questions like, ‘How do you feel?’ People walking by noticed and nudged each other. The potential sighting of someone important, someone famous.

  Max and Rayn drew the stares and nudges of passersby. People turned their heads. Someone, as always, approached and asked for an autograph.

  Max shifted the aviators to the top of his head, took the pen and paper, scrawled a name, and returned the stationery.

  The stranger looked at Rayn. She ran a hand through her hair and obliged. When she was finished she handed the pen and paper to me and said, ‘But here’s the real superstar.’ Smiling, Rayn bumped me with her hip.

  The stranger: ‘Really?’

  I shrugged and mumbled something about running.

  Rayn looked at me—half smiling, half sighing—and shook her head. ‘What he meant to say is he’s just become a National Junior Champion.’

  ‘Cool. You must be, like, really fast.’

  To keep from rolling my eyes I looked at the paper Rayn had given me and I noticed for some reason she and Max had written their real names this time and legibly. There was something lasting about it: Max Sorn and Rayn Down. They even sounded famous. I wrote my real name too and returned the paper.

  ‘Thank you. And hey, good luck with the running.’

  I felt Rayn’s elbow.

  I rubbed my arm. ‘Yeah. Okay. Thanks.’

  The stranger turned, held the paper over her head like a trophy, and ran back toward her group of friends. They would pass the paper around and thumb our names into their phones. Eventually they would pull up the Nike ads Rayn had done. My name would show up on a track site somewhere. They would get hits of Max in the Olympics, pictures of him in a Speedo, a towel around his neck. They would scream and post the pictures on Facebook. They would tweet their star-sighting: just met superhot swimmer #MaxSorn & his supermodel wife #RaynDown & their supercute runner son #Vector—I’d do them all (ha ha). They would have a story to tell. Which is, when it comes down to it, all anybody is really after.

  We carried on. Max and Rayn holding hands and me a step or two in front. Our standard formation. I grew up thinking happiness was a natural state.

  Our plan was to get Chinese, eat in the park, and drive to the zoo. It was how we celebrated. It was tradition: birthdays, promotions, commercial shoots, report cards. The zoo was our favourite place to go. Especially in the late afternoons when the crowds started to thin out. Sometimes we’d arrive even as they were locking the gates but because of Rayn we could still get in.

  I loved watching the cougars. My heart would start to go as we approached the cage. I’d stand there and watch the muscular pacing, the patience, the unblinking eyes fixed upon me as the animal moved back and forth, the low rumble in its throat, all a declaration of my impending doom were it not for the bars between us.

  Without notice Baron came running up from behind. He grabbed me by the shoulders and shook. ‘We’ve got to celebrate, Vec.’ He drummed my chest with both palms. ‘National champ. We did it, man. National fucking champ.’

  He couldn’t stop smiling. He put me in a headlock and I let him. He was happy and he deserved to be. We’d spent a lot of time together over the past year and he’d invested a lot of thought and effort in the individual design of my short and long term training. There was no doubt he knew what he was doing. By the end of the previous November he had laid out all the steps, the overlay and progression within and throughout each of the micro and macro cycles, each phase clearly defined, every major and minor race leading up to Nationals carefully chosen, and just to further exhibit his confidence in me (and himself), he predicted the time I’d run in each race. He was always within a second. He told me there was no doubt in his mind I’d be the first Canadian in Olympic history to win gold in the fifteen hundred.

  He spoke in absolutes. He spoke quickly and confidently and most of the time it was difficult to get a word in edgewise.

  ‘So what do you say? You name the place. My treat.’

  Rayn pulled herself close to Max.

  Baron pretended not to notice.

  ‘Awful nice of you, Charlie,’ said Max. ‘But we sort of have plans.’

  ‘So break them. Come on, Max, baby. Let’s celebrate.’

  He shadow-boxed Max, dancing on the spot. Huh-huh. Huh. Huh.

  ‘Thing is, it’s sort of a family thing we do.’

  Baron put his hands up, still smiling. ‘Say no more. Another time then.’

  He looked at Rayn. His face went serious. ‘I’ll let you be.’

  I broke in. ‘Listen, Mr. Baron. Thanks for everything. Really.’

  He ducked and weaved and tossed a couple of shadow punches my way. ‘Don’t mention it kid. Hell of a run. What’d I tell you? Sky’s the limit.’

  Max shook Baron’s hand. ‘Thanks, Charlie. Really.’

  I thanked him again, too, and as the three of us turned to leave he stood there by himself with his hands in his pockets.

  We were already gone when he ran up behind us again. ‘Let me drive you back to your car. I’ve got the van.’ He looked at Rayn. ‘Least I can do.’

  Rayn sent her eyes to the sky and squeezed Max’s hand which made him look at her. I watched myself kick a stone.

  Max tried a grin. ‘Thanks, Charlie. Really. We’re okay though. We like the adventure.’

  Baron nodded and put his hands up again. ‘Suit yourself. Thought I’d offer.’

  ‘Thanks. Really. We’ll do something next time.’

  ‘Right,’ he said. ‘Next time.’ Baron put a hand in the air, took one step backwards, turned, and walked away.

  Max kissed Rayn’s hand and on we went, me leading, and soon we were underground.

  ‘Osiris was an Egyptian king. Merciful God of the dead.’

  We stood there, Max and I, listening to Rayn. Like the station itself was a museum and we were alone, the three of us, in a great room with a statue.

  ‘His brother, Set, killed him and usurped the throne.’

  A train rumbled in like thunder and screeched to a stop. The doors slid open. People spilled out, filed on, an underground violinist busking in the background: a mournful song of human longing and heartache.

  ‘Undeterred, Osiris’s wife, Isis, managed to revive his body long enough to conceive a child.’ Rayn touched the white column as she spoke and moved around it. ‘She had a son named Horus who overthrew Set and became the god of light.’

  The train doors slid closed, the brakes sighed release, and the train slipped away.

  Ray
n touched my face with both hands. ‘We had a son who overthrew them all and became the god of speed.’

  She leaned in, kissed my forehead and smiled, then turned and took Max’s hands, looking up at him like a child. He brought one of her hands to his mouth and kissed the palm, felt on his cheek the coolness of the ring he’d finally been able to persuade her to wear.

  ‘Let me guess.’

  She closed her eyes, set her head back, and breathed in through her nose. ‘The smell is killing me.’

  He nodded and fished a few coins from his pocket, checked with me before going.

  I shook my head.

  ‘Hot peppers?’

  She went on her toes and kissed him. ‘Hot as they come.’

  He smiled and kissed her back. A few strides away he spoke over his shoulder without stopping. ‘Don’t go anywhere.’

  Twice he turned fully around as he moved away from us toward the vender, pointing to his eyes with two fingers and then to us. The second time she ducked behind the column of Osiris, waited, then stuck her face out so he could see her. He shook his head, smiling, and she laughed. Their playfulness never seemed odd to me or made me feel uncomfortable. It seemed normal. Everything about them seemed normal although almost nothing about them was. They were, when I think about it, extraordinary in every way.

  The next train rumbled in and screeched to a stop. This is where I wish I could jump in and hit the edit button. File new. Ctrl-alt-delete. Undo. Undo. Undo. But there are no such functions in the mind. The memory of certain moments is inalterably permanent, and as much as the printed word has the power to recreate, by its very nature there is nothing it can do when it comes to erasure. What happened happened and it keeps happening in my head. Even as I write this now nothing changes. Instead it becomes more fixed. Each word like a spike driven into the earth, pinning down the truth. The details, if anything, become stronger. The sounds clearer. The colours brighter. The impact more impactful: harder, driving, crushing, like a ball-peen hammer to the skull.