by Ryan Edmonson

     Fluorescent light. Shining steel cylinders steadying sleepy passengers. Noses buried in newspapers. Ears overflowing with machine-made music. Eyes downcast, averted, avidly avoiding even the verisimilitude of connection. The screech and lurch of metal gnashing metal. An automated exhale like a death rattle. The whoosh and clack of doors opening.  

Black teenager bounds on train blasting boombox.  

Fourteen bars of blaring braggadocio.  

40-something white guy half a car length away shouts at him to him to turn it off. 

Kid turns it off. And then it’s on. 

Why are you telling me to turn off my radio. What business is it of yours? 

Because I’m a passenger on this train and it’s illegal. 

What are you gonna do about it, N-word? 

I’m asking you to turn off your radio. 

Kid walks over. 

What’s up N-word? What are you gonna do? 

I’m not an N-word. Look at my skin. 

Why you disrespecting me like that? 

I’m not disrespecting you. I don’t want to hear your music. 

My man, you better sit your ass on the sidelines with your gray hair.  

Two 20-something white guys intervene.  

One attempts to calm down the 40-something white guy. He’s not having it. 

Then he tries to mollify the kid. He’s not having it. 

Second white guy puts his arm up between the two disputants. 

Back and forth, back and forth. 

I’m 14 but I will still beat the shit out of you. 

Kid walks back to his end of the train, shouts over his shoulder. 

Pussy. 

Little punk. 

Curtain. Act I concludes. 

     Air thick with the electric crackle of potential violence. Darting eyes stealing furtive glances. Train grinding to a violent, jerking halt. Half of the audience departing, replaced by new, unsuspecting spectators. Doors closing. An imaginary hammer cocking.

Curtain up. Act II. 

Kid returns.  

White guy #2 holds his position with his arm up. 

Kid slides underneath and stands right next to his nemesis. 

They start talking over each other. 

What the fuck’s wrong with you? Don’t like my music? 

No, as a matter of fact I don’t.  

White guy attempts a mocking hip hop dance. 

Are you going to pull a knife on me? 

What the hell are you talking about? 

White guy has about three inches and 30 pounds on his side, but doesn’t look like he’s been in a scrap in a long time, if ever. His voice never falters. He doesn’t look flustered.  

Black kid is fit, slender and muscular. His confidence is bullet-proof. 

White, black. Age, youth. Quiet, noise. Propriety, impropriety. What is worth fighting over?

I look around the train. There are a handful of middle-aged black women; otherwise the commuters are predominantly white. What would have happened if there were other black males on the train? 

Formerly benign actor/comedian goes ape-shit on stage, shouting racial epithets at two black hecklers. Is ape-shit racist? 

When I was in the first grade, we lived in Stavanger, Norway. I took a cab to an American school with a kid named Bruce. There were two black kids in our class. Once, at recess, Bruce told me to call the black kids Niggers. I did. They chased us. It seemed funny at the time. When I got home I told my mom what had happened. She got very upset and explained to me why what I had said was wrong. I remember sitting in the bathtub, staring at my skin. 

I have only been witness to one fight in my life. In seventh grade, my friend Richard got knocked about in the hallway before school and I went completely weak in the knees.  

Two stops. All this happened over the course of two stops. At 6^th Avenue, they both exit the train, the kid leading and the white guy ushering him along with his hands, like a mother with a broom shooing her child out of the house. 

Laughter leaks out from beneath the hostility, relief and release, as if they have both gotten away with something. 

The train doors close. I keep going.
 

Ryan Edmonson is an advertising copywriter in Manhattan.