Michael Faulk looked at the station platform. The light sputtered, threatened to go out, some momentary drain of power. A lone figure, a man in a hooded sweatshirt, wandered out of the dimness and took a seat on a bench by the wall, arms folded, face in the deep gloom of the hood he wore. The man’s shadow went out from him. Faulk thought of the people of his country, personified in the Asian boy’s last gesture and in this image of a man sitting alone in unsteady light. The train had come, as trains do, into the station. Things would go on. And yet it all felt broken. He had left the priesthood.
Finally the train rocked into motion. He sat back in the seat and tried to sleep, and couldn’t. He thought of Natasha, so young and so far away. He hoped that somehow she had got in touch with Aunt Clara. He did not want to think of her worrying about him.
Washington looked unchanged. He tried to peer into it as the train neared Union Station. He did not know what he might find, but it felt important to watch for some essential difference, whatever that might be: cordoned-off streets or police flashes, more light in the neighborhoods. But there wasn’t much to see except the other rails with their dull strand of sheen, paralleling the track he was on, and, beyond that, the city’s businesses and the monuments, the neighborhoods, flickers of brightness in many windows, and then small vistas of avenues and the darker shadows of trees in the streetlamps. The angle wasn’t right to see the Washington Monument, but the Capitol dome was visible, glowing somehow with greater dignity in soft white light. When the train stopped it seemed to give a last shudder, as though sighing with weariness. He hurried out of the car and up the stairs to the main level. All the lights were on, and a few passengers walked behind and in front of him. It was very quiet. No one was saying anything to anyone else. Every sound carried hollowly — footsteps, baggage being pulled along, the small clatter of the cleaning and restocking of shelves by quiet workers. It all reverberated in the cavernous height of the ceiling. A few men and women were lined up at the ticket counter. No one seemed to be with anyone. Most of the restaurants and shops were barred and closed. Several people — it looked like a family — were ranged among the benches at one gate, amid suitcases and cartons of food and blankets they’d obviously retrieved from their bags. The man and his wife and a young boy were asleep. A girl in her early teens slouched on the shoulder of the sleeping woman, reading a book. She stared glumly, almost warily, at Faulk as he crossed in front of her, headed for the front entrance.
Out in the circular road at the front, the flags were at half-staff. He had never really looked at them before. A warm breeze blew. It was a humid night. Cabs were parked along the curb. He got into the first one and gave the driver Aunt Clara’s address.
The driver was a young man with large black eyes under thick black brows in a narrow, bony face — he looked like someone who had spent all day studying and whose mind was elsewhere.
He pulled out in traffic, and for a little space Faulk gazed at the back of his head, watching him negotiate the crowded lanes with a measure of aggressiveness, muttering low at other cars, attending to everything as if he were alone. At length, Faulk sat back, determined to ignore him. He saw the shifting views of the street and the other people in the cars they passed. Massachusetts Avenue. A couple in one car was laughing at something, the woman gesturing and nodding, the man holding up one hand as if in surrender.
How could anyone find a way back to lightheartedness?
This abysmal day had brought everything of normal life into question. What could be left of banter, jokes, silliness? He knew that this thought was irrational and that people would go on being people. Long ago he had learned to cultivate a healthy distrust of his own thinking when he was in the grip of anxiety.
He endeavored to concentrate on the ride, the streets and sporadic lights sweeping across the windows. He thought of Natasha in Jamaica. He looked at the night outside the car window, trying to picture her warm and asleep. And there her image was, clear and true, and his heart ached.
“Washington is your home?” the young man said suddenly.
Startled by the sound of the voice, Faulk took a few seconds, then said, “No.”
“You’re visiting.”
“Yes.”
“I have lived here twelve years.”
He searched his mind for something neutral to say.
The other spoke first. “Twelve years. I love America.”
“Me, too.”
“I’m a citizen, and some men wanted to beat me up today. Me. An American. They wanted to take my life.”
“Sorry to hear that.”
The young man seemed about to cry. “I’m not a Muslim.” He was looking in the rearview mirror, waiting for Faulk to respond.
“Well, in any case you’re not a terrorist—”
“My family — they — we’re Palestinian Christians, and I’ve lived twelve years in this city, and I’m an American citizen.”
“It’s been a bad day for everybody. Some people don’t know how to handle it.”
“They wanted to do me harm. For the way I look. An American citizen.”
“Hysteria.” Faulk shook his head at the inadequacy of his own expression, staring out at the city in the sparkling dark, the houses set back from the street with their warm lights and open windows. He saw some people sitting on a porch in the light from a doorway.
“My driver friends, they helped. They protected me.”
He did not want to talk now. He let a moment pass, watched the traffic coming the other way. Out the window to his left was Dupont Circle, with its little knots of people smoking and talking and drinking. He saw litter on the grass under a tree with a broken branch drooping onto the sidewalk. The streets feeding into the circle were full of glittery light. All the cafés and bars were closed, but there were people on the sidewalks, standing in the false brightness, talking. He saw two women embracing. The cabbie had grown quiet, and now Faulk worried that there was something hurtful about not taking the man’s part more.
He said, “People get scared and it makes them stupid.”
But the cabbie drove on quietly, having expressed his outrage. Someone called on the dispatch, and he spoke in another language into the little microphone. Then he turned his music up.
The rest of the ride was silent, but for the low music and the occasional sputter on the dispatch speaker. Faulk looked at the streets of his second home, and at the back of the cabbie’s head.
When they pulled up in front of Aunt Clara’s house, the cabbie tipped his cap back on his forehead and said, “You’re a kind person.” Then he smiled — there was something dimly hangdog about it.
Faulk paid him, smiling, and nodded. “Yeah,” he said. “You, too. Keep the change.” He got out of the car, pulling his bag, and pushed the door shut with his hip. It didn’t close all the way. Putting the bag down, he opened the door and slammed it, then leaned down and waved. The taxi pulled away. Michael Faulk watched it go down to the end of the street and turn, on out of sight. The bag had never felt heavier. He strode across to the porch and up the steps to the door. Aunt Clara opened it and pushed the screen toward him. She was in her nightgown. “God,” she said. “You scared me to death.”
“I’ve never been on a longer ride.”
“It’s three-thirty in the morning.”
He put the bag down in the living room. She came to him and put her hands on his shoulders. “You all right?”
“Have you spoken to Natasha?”
“The lines are all jammed from here out of the country. I tried. Believe me.”