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 | Concrete, pt. 3
entry by AnAppleSnail
1/8/2011 4:28 AM
| Gotta have a hobby
Another short fiction. Tunnel running is a bad idea. If you don't use the system daily, don't run it.
The door slams, and Sergeant Brian gets back in. “Learn a lesson, rookie, our job covers errythin' under da sun. Those two kids were out partyin' all night, and one hadda piss. He jumps the fence to do it and his friend goes to get him. Good thing too, there's a pit halfway to hell in there for the subway extension. But man, perps all freeze when they see the lights, even if they ain't done nothin' yet. Number one rule, son. Everybody in Brooklyn feels guilty 'round a cop”
At least that's how I imagine that conversation going, if this were a movie. Ryan's so pale that he barely looks like a New Yorker. You'd think he never talked to a cop about a speeding ticket! Of course, we were doing something a little different than speeding. The 'drunk goof kid' line doesn't usually work that well. But then the cop didn't see a thing, and they've got bigger problems to deal with than two guys in Brooklyn with no crack, meth, or guns on them.
%
This situation goes back to a night about a year ago when we were taking the 4 back to our apartment. We're roomies but have completely different schedules, so I only see him on weekends. I'm at the U taking design classes, and Ryan has a night job moving trucks at night, the only time you can really drive downtown. We were on the station platform in the hours where nobody's still up and nobody else is up yet.
“Hey Mitch, check that out.” Ryan points across the tracks to the other platform.
“What?” I don't see any - . There, a kid my age darts up a ladder from the subway tracks to the platform, and up the stairs to the street.
“Hey man, we should do that. I hear the tunnels are rad, all tagged up by the masters and shit.” Ryan lurches that way. He's had a few too many.
“Man, the train'll be coming through soon, you wanna get smashed flat?” We got on the 4 and headed on home, but every time we go places I see him eyeing the dark tunnels.
He kept posting pictures of work crews and tunnels on my wall. I think he wanted me to feel the same pull of the distant signal lights down the tunnel. Green for open and yellow for caution and red for closed track... it starts to get to me. Taggers and photographers creep through the subway tunnels, leaving their art or making art, dodging cops and work crews. City workers expand and maintain the system, and the whole thing breathes at night to the pumping of the trains.
We have a history of doing fun but stupid things. A river used to run through the park. It's buried now, but you can raft on it. If you don't mind the smell and the dark, it's quite the place. Certain roof doors have surrendered to my AAA card, and others just never quite close right. The views are amazing, and so is the sprint down the stairs when security catches on. I guess it's risky, but the most that can happen is getting hurt or being told to leave (with a tone of authority only ten bucks an hour and a plastic badge can grant). No worse than most sports like rock climbing, I figure. We've got plans this summer to raft down a canal. Everyone forgets that the Island used to have rivers on it. They're just just underground, out of sight. According to rumor there's an abandoned building completely surrounded by other buildings with a hole through its basement into the river. Cookout spot or cookout spot?
%
About eight hours ago, Ryan stepped out of his room and says “Hey, let's go do some dumb shit.”
“Sure man, what's the plan?” He always invites me to these things, but sometimes it's just too crazy.
“You ever wonder how the subways get built? Tonight's our chance to go look.”
“Shiiiiit, Ryan. Isn't fuckin' with the MTA like a felony?”
“Only if you punch 'em, otherwise it's trespass, maybe vandalism, and other charges dropped.”
“What kind of charges? Jeez man, you a lawyer or something?” I believe in informed consent, but no man can read the whole NY Penal Code and live.
“Well, it's transit infrastructure, so... DHS would be involved but just long enough to see that we aren't brown.”
Well shit. Do I want to do this? “Hah, you'd better watch out man, your Italian blood has you looking a bit too brown.” I hope to talk him down. If he goes I'll want to go and keep his head on straight. In the creek I was the one who had duct tape to patch the boat, and on the bank roof I thought to bring a walkie talkie to hear security coming to get us. Ryan tends to rush into things before planning them enough. He's getting better about that, but this might be dumb.
“C'mon, there's not much risk of getting caught, it'll be just like that one Amtrak tunnel we went to, the one that the mole men used to live in.”
I remembered crunching along gravel underground for two miles, with sunlight peeking through air vents and eerie voices calling out greetings from the darkness above and to the sides. We scrambled out of a shoulder-wide hole someplace into a goddamned highway tunnel and edged along the two foot wide sidewalk to the park. “So, just minimal risk of losing life and limb? I guess there won't be homeless people at least. I'm in. So how do we get there?” We went.
%
We're almostready to go in. I'm glad I have my coat on. Ryan's dressed more lightly, bouncing up and down like a jogger warming up. We're waiting at a place where the tracks plunge underground. A subway train comes around the corner on the aboveground tracks (ScreeeeeEEEEEEE) . “This the last one?”
Ryan nods. The rails gleam between us and the train.
(EEEYYYYOOOOOOOOOOOO) the train's blinding headlight passes, plunging into the tunnel. It passes out of sight, steel wheels howling on the steel rails (OOOOOOOooooooooeeerrrrrrr) rushing off into the distance. The dirty metal rails gleam red from the tail lights on the last car.
Ryan whispers “That was the last one for the night. Are you ready?”
I reply “Yeah. Let's do it.” I look down at the rails. Ten feet to the track level, with the 600 volt third rail ready to bite. The cover on it supposedly makes it safe, but people die every year from it. It looks mighty near to where we'll land.
“Nothing to it but to do it,” his catchphrase or something. He climbs up onto the concrete wall, hangs by his fingertips, and drops.
In philosophical terms, that phrase means “There is a fear inherent in doing new things, and the only way to overcome it is to face it.” But really it's just “Hell I'm nervous too, let's get this over with.” You can tell by his eyes when he says it. I think his impulsive nature is a defense against something. But it can't be stupid, or I wouldn't be about to follow him in. Right?
Dropping ten feet to gravel isn't so bad. But the panic of landing on a discarded tie and thinking it's the third rail cover is enough to panic anyone. Shitshitshit wait I'm not dead. I stand up and look for Ryan, crunching along the gravel into the tunnel. The distant tunnel lights just seem to point out the gloom. Every surface is coated with black steel dust, ground from the rails and wheels when trains brake or turn. He steps onto the ties and gestures to follow him. We don't talk a lot when we're sneaking around, because what do you say? There's two people and there's not much that needs said in the heat of the moment.
The tunnel looks a lot like it does in the station, without the platform. The tracks are down low with gravel around the wooden track ties, with the third rail lurking somewhere to the side. Most parts of the system have a platform-height tunnel, an unhandy height to climb to suddenly if a train comes. But if a train comes through, that's the only guaranteed clear space. I try not to think about that too hard. I mean, taggers come through alive all the time, right?
We jog down the ties, on the idea that the gravel is stabilized and easier to jog on. It's also the best place to see ahead around the corners. The shaking when you ride the subway isn't all bad rails. The tracks curve and twist to dodge unstable foundations, pipes, and footings for buildings. They have to meet with stations and tunnel ends, and they have to dodge some types of rock. Ryan has a book all about this, but the maps in it aren't really very good. Tunnels pass over each other and connect in strange ways, so no printed map can really show the system – a fact I found out last time I tried to navigate for the two of us in another part of the system. The air in the tunnel is getting warmer as we go. Ryan isn't consulting a map, but I assume he knows where he's going. His sense of direction is scary, he once took a slow truck through turn-by-turn directions from a New York bakery to Baltimore on country roads.
We pass occasional spaces off to the sides. When I was in DC, the metro has a lot of right-angle crossings that aren't on the maps. You know those have to be secret government things, and I always want to go look at them. These ones are no different, but I'm more curious about what Ryan has to show me. Like a leashed puppy in a park full of squirrels, I keep going straight ahead.
Eventually, Ryan stops. He pulls out a flashlight and starts looking at the wall, walking more slowly. I follow, looking around too. Our breathing is alarmingly loud compared to the dead quiet of the tunnel. When there's no traffic on the streets or in the system, the tunnels advertise the fact that they're dry concrete spaces far from the sky. There is no good way to tell how far underground we are.
“Here!” Ryan whispers. He feels the quiet too. Hopping over the third rail, he climbs onto a metal equipment box against the wall and stands on it. He puts his arms into a high hole in the wall I hadn't seen before and slithers in. The hole isn't much bigger than he is.
I gingerly step over the third rail and pull myself onto the equipment box. Cool air streams out of the hole, while the electronics box hums and clicks menacingly. I turn on my flashlight and put it in my mouth. The dusty aluminum taste is familiar by now, but I'm still not used to climbing like Ryan does. I get my body into the hole but have no traction to push in, and eventually put my feet against the roof to slide in. Without any other directions to go, I squirm along the tunnel, eventually settling into an army crawl, flashlight still in my mouth. I feel the cool air racing past me into the warm tunnel we've left. Up ahead the tunnel opened out into a large underground space. I reach the edge and look down – about the same distance down as it was in the other tunnel, but with no electronics box to stand on. Ryan is below me, looking up expectantly. No way back up unless we “borrow” a ladder. “Ryan! How are we gonna get back out?” I whisper to him.
“I've got that taken care of. Anyway, you wanna split cab fare back once we're out?”
At this hour a cab is way faster than a subway, and split it's not so pricey. I squirm to turn around in the tunnel, then push my legs out and lower myself like I did to get onto the tracks. It's still a bit of a drop, this time on to solid concrete. I look around at the space we're in. A large underground vault with poured concrete walls and ceilings, it looks big enough to park a fleet of buses in. To the left there is a tunnel leaving the chamber with tracks on it, and in the middle, a tower of scaffolding covered in work lights that illuminate the scene. To the right is a partly visible strange train-like machine pointed into a hole in the wall, with a conveyor belt between the machine and a pile of rocks near the scaffolding. Shit, it's a tunnel boring machine! TBMs dig under the city, like a laser-guided mole missile, reinforcing the tunnel as they go so that the things above don't collapse the tunnel. They're expensive to lease and usually run 24/7. I guess with no subway service tonight they couldn't get the workers in for a shift. No wonder Ryan picked tonight for a 'sick day' at work! I wonder if his boss will pick up on the guy taking off every time other companies are off work? It makes sense to me now, that the huge chamber here was dug to lower and assemble the parts of the machine for it to extend the subway system. The scaffolding in the middle of the room reaches up to the ceiling high overhead, covered in work lights to light this artificial cave.
“Ryan, this is insane. How'd you find out about this?”
“Well, I was bringing a truck through and saw the street was closed up there. Later I came back and peeked in and saw this. But workers were crawling all over like ants and I don't have the balls go to a contractor worksite in a hardhat and pretend to belong.”
See? He is learning to plan. “Well damn, I've always wanted to go caving, eh? It's almost 4:30 man, so we probably can't stay here too much longer. Which way's out, up the light tower?” We don't have to leave so much for workers in here as the streets above getting busy.
He nods. “Yeah, it was a narrow window but I'm glad we got to see it. You glad you didn't chicken out?”
“Hell yeah, I wouldn't pass this up. Thanks for bringin' me.”
“Right, let's take our thumbs out and head on up.”
We climb. Scaffolding is a temporary structure. That means that it rattles when you climb it at anything faster than a crawl, and the metal on metal echoes thunderously in here. Climbing past all the buzzing lights makes them sway, throwing the shadows around the room into a drunken dance. I have a nervous moment at the top stepping from the scaffolding ladder to the ground – 80 damn feet below me is the next thing I'd meet if I slip. But I join Ryan up top pretty soon. Ryan hops the construction barricade – the plywood they put up to pretend nothing interesting is happening. I follow him, but as I lift myself over the fence I see blue and white lights flash at me. I wobble on top of the fence and fall to the ground, with pain flaring in my ankle. Ryan starts and then freezes – thank god. If he runs then I'd have to, and I don't know how far my ankle will take me.
Clicka SLAM-AM. Two doors? Ryan and I humbly wait on the sidewalk. I hope the subway dirt isn't too obvious. I've had practice keeping it off my face though, which is a big help. The older officer approaches us and waves the other one back. The young one has more stuff on his belt, the old one has more stuffing in his belt. The younger one gets back in the car, probably doing things with the radio. Shit shit shit.
“What're you doin' in a place like this, sonny? Is it crack or meth tonigt?”
One of those cops. “Well, sir. Ryan is, uh,” I slur my speech just a bit now, “a bit drunk, yaknow? I guess I am too, but not s'bad as he is. And he said he hadda piss, and up and went in there.” They'd seen me on top of the fence, right? “So I hadda go get him, cuz I know you ain't supposed to piss on the damn street. So I goes in there and stop him, but then we can't go out on that same side. So out we go here, and you scared me, sur.”
He looks at me real hard. I hope and hope and hope. “Lemme see your ID. Both of ya. Ok, Ryan Summers and Mitch Ray, here's what's gonna happen. If a description matching one ah you two is put out in the next while, someone'll be right over to check on ya. Stay off the fuckin' fences, okay? Okay. Go home and sleep it off, ya both reek like hobos.”
He hands us our Ids, gets in the car and jaws at the rookie while he turns the car around and leaves. I look at Ryan, he looks at me.
“Fuuuuuuuuuuck. Good save, Mitch. Goddamn. You gonna be okay getting' home on that ankle?”
I turn the ankle sideways and roll it around, and take a few ginger steps. “Yeah, I'll be doin' ok. You're the one that looks like a goddamned sheet. Have you ever talked to a cop? It's not that scary.”
“Not to you, man. You know how I am with people. If I'd been here alone I woulda wound up like Rodney King, somehow I'd admit to cop-slaying and shit.”
“C'mon bro, you just have to get used to 'em.”
[last edit 1/15/2011 10:44 PM by AnAppleSnail - edited 2 times]
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