II

Rick and Rat walk the empty sidewalk together. Two blocks of barbed wire fences and corrugated metal security gates over the doors of locksmiths and hardware stores. The sidewalk is wet. Bits of gross paper are glued everywhere. Rick can’t help being reminded of how disgusting humans are. How capable they are of destroying a good thing.

Off in the east, the horizon has just started to turn orange under the cloud cover. On the other side of the downward sloping hill is a high red-bricked wall beyond that and an elevated tree-lined greenway along the on-ramp to Interstate 87.

87 represents freedom for Rick. A means to go beyond the never-ending urban sprawl that has spread from southern New York all the way to Philly and D.C.

The South Bronx is famous for burning. Yankee Stadium looms as a bastion of all the things he can’t afford. Manhattan is the place people like him go to when they got nothing else. Rick still has his strength and until that fades, he will not cross the river.

They keep walking with Rat pushing the wheelbarrow and Rick carrying both shovels.

After a block, Rat asks, “You ever do work for the MTA before?"

“Never.”

They are quiet for a few more steps, “I think that’s what we are doing, working for the MTA.”

“Has to be, right?” Rick guesses

Rat doesn’t say anything discernible. He does mutter about dark spaces and how much he doesn’t like them.

Rick stops paying attention to him, it’s always better to let a man have an emotional meltdown without interfering. At least that's what he’d prefer. No attention. He got enough of that while being locked up. Prison had a ring and he liked putting men with big mouths down. And he was good at it. He ate good in prison because of his fists.

His stomach rumbles thinking of the vittles his fame provided for him. The good thing about this particular neighborhood is the lack of delis. Not a single one in sight, not a restaurant, not a grocery store. And that’s good because he couldn’t afford to eat at any of those right now.

His stomach growls again, and he knows this is going to be one long ass day.

“Hey.”

“What?”

“Give me another nip on that bottle.”

Rat hands it over.

With a glug, he drains it and passes the empty back to Rat, who glares at him.

“That was half full, man.”

The bigger man doesn’t respond as they near the subway entrance marked by a glowing green lamp.

A few of the less motivated homeless are camped out on the sidewalk on cardboard boxes near it, lumps in sleeping bags or covered in newspapers. They all look soaked.

Rick has being homeless down pat. He keeps an eight by eight-foot tarp folded up with four bungee cords in the biggest pocket of his field jacket. A thing he doesn’t take off ever, not even in the swampy heat of a New York Summer. The tarp is better than a tent and he bought it from Goodwill a few years ago for twenty-five cents. He keeps a small can of Sterno and a mess kit in the other large pocket. Matches, a simple Swiss army knife in the left chest pocket under the stitched U.S. Army, and in the other, gloves and his wool cap when it's not on his head. He wears his jeans until he can’t anymore, and will only wear flannel under his jacket and a wife-beater under it.

Why?

The heat doesn’t bother him for some reason. The cold neither.

On his feet are jungle combat boots. His one splurge. He has kept these boots soled and the green ripstop canvas patched up since '69. Probably the only important thing he owns.

Usually, his routine is to wait for nightfall, and then crawl deep into the shadows of some park and camp out.

When they get to the subway entrance, Rat hits the call button for the elevator.

Rick asks, “Why?” before it arrives.

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“I’m not carrying this thing down there,” Rat responds.

With a snort, “wouldn’t expect you to.” Rick grabs the wheelbarrow in his free hand and hefts it so it dangles from his fist behind his back. It slaps against him with a whump after each step-down. Once on the platform, he pushes the wheelbarrow to the metrocard readers.

And looks at Rat, who is looking at him.

“The lady said we wouldn’t need a metrocard,” Ricks states, looking towards the attendant booth, which was probably empty behind a glass so scratched up and graffitied that it was impossible to see through.

The air is humid with the acrid smell of electrified metal and rust. The combination hits him in the nose and makes him sneeze. He can hear the scurry of rats and the flutter of loose trash in the tunnel. Trains elsewhere rumble. The fluorescent bulbs above flicker. Rat walks up to the booth to make sure it’s empty, which he then affirms.

From deep in the tunnel, he can hear trains rumbling along the tracks but none presently are heading this way. When a train comes it sucks the air out of the platform just before it appears. With nothing else to do, they wait. A man stumbles down the stairs. He sways in front of the card reader and tries multiple times to get his card to work. Bouncing off the security bar a few times before getting it right. He drags himself along the wall before finding a bench to fall into. Within moments, his drunken snores fill the station.

“He'll probably fall asleep and ride the train until noon,” Rat suggests.

Rick watches him thinking that’s probably right when a shrill alarm sounds, grabbing his attention. He looks over and a metal gate blocking the kiosk area from the tracks pops open and slams against the wall of metal bars to the left with a loud clang.

He walks over and with a quick look around to make sure he isn’t about to fall into some kind of NYPD trap. Not appearing so, he walks out onto the platform with Rat following with his wheelbarrow. The gate closes behind them with another loud clang.

There is always a first time for everything and for Rick, he has never seen a subway door act like this.

His heart thuds a bit faster in his chest as he stands on the platform because the day is starting to feel out of control. Like any second, something crazy is going to happen and he can't help wonder what it is going to be. Like most people who are tasked to go somewhere far away and kill other humans, Rick has a bad case of TSD. And stress makes him do stupid things. It makes him think crazy things. It makes him expect crazy things.

Crazy things rarely happen though and today he will most likely be picking up trash in the tunnels till six, leaving him ten hours to knock himself out with cheap booze before doing it all again.

“The tracks catch fire all the time because of trash. It makes sense. Someone needs to pick up the trash,” Rat says watching him nod along as if it made complete sense.

Maybe that's something he has heard people do. It makes sense it would be a task the MTA would hire day laborers for. Few if any union guys would do a job like that.

He’s lost in the act of convincing himself things are normal when a sound from out in the tunnel distracts him. It’s a chicka chicka sound. Chicka chicka, over and over again. The sound grows louder until from out of the black tunnel arrives a sort of horseless rickshaw with a tall oddly-shaped man sitting on the front bench. The rickshaw seems to be locomoted by a steam engine and clockworks that somehow balance the whole thing on two wheels.

The vehicle stops with a horrendous screech and not only threatens to stall but sends a shower of boiling hot water in both men’s directions.

They move too late and suffer a few small burns.

Rick glares at the man sitting on the bench. He seems unbalanced, flopping in all manner of directions at the waist and mid-chest. There were grunts and curses coming from armpits and knees. A tiny head protrudes from the MTA jumpsuit. He wears a Yankee ball cap over fluffy blond hair. Under bushy eyebrows are two huge blue eyes; under them, an impossible nose, both bulbous and too small for this person's face, giving him an innocent quality that borders on creepy, Rick decides. Under that nose was a huge fake yellow mustache that droops over the corners of a mouth twitching as if trying to hold back a giggle.

A tiny hand pulls a lever between its legs and the entire pile of whatever is happening here, almost topples over.

Then the body wiggles as if an argument were happening underneath the coveralls like the chittering of two squirrels fighting over a nut.

Finally, another tiny hand shoots out attached to an arm that seems far too short for the rest of the body.

Rick stands there, unsure of what to do.

“Give me your worksheet,” The voice is deep but fake. Like a kid pretending to be older.

Rick digs in his pocket and pulls out the crumpled receipt. He hands it over. The tiny hand seems overburdened when Rat adds his to the pile.

The tiny hand disappears inside the coveralls where a sudden flare of bright light illuminates two small forms, three when the small head on top disappears inside.

There is more chittering.

And the tiny head reappears and so does the tiny hand with the receipt given to him by the Spanish lady. He reaches out and takes back both. Handing Rat his, he sees the look of disbelief on the muridae-like face.

The fake deep voice says, “Get in,” gesturing with a tiny thumb to the small platform behind the bench. There is space there just big enough for Rick, forcing Rat onto the upturned wheelbarrow with the shovels between his knees in the back. He looks unsure, if nothing else. Rick shares his trepidation feeling like he has signed up for more than he bargained for.

The figure in front pulls the brake lever and his top half almost topples off onto the tracks, but somehow saves himself when two sets of arms reach out of the coveralls and grab him,.

The rickshaw begins to pick up speed.

Before they slam into the darkness of the tunnel ahead, Rick punches himself on the thigh, hard, just to make sure he is not still sleeping off the six-pack he downed the night before.

The punch hurts. So does the feeling that he has been drafted all over again.