Seville contemplates his foot which, under a huge blue sock, appears encased in a large plaster cast. In fact, his foot has swollen to twice its normal size.
Two nights before, he explains, a man demanded money from him and his friend Cindy. “I said, ‘Look, man, I give you what I got, but I don’t got nothing.’ And it was the truth. Look at me. Do I look like I carry money? I just keep myself clean, that’s all,” he shakes his head at the senselessness of the incident that followed.
“But this guy is all strung out. ‘I’ll take the girl then,’ he says. Now Cindy, she knows her way on the streets. She lives in the tunnels, too, but she does the streets to make some money for drugs and stuff. But this guy got me mad.
“I used to know a little karate when I was young, so I thought, what the hell, I’ll try it,” Seville smiles like a mischievous child. As he raised his foot to kick, the would-be thief flicked open a knife and split Seville’s foot from ankle to toes. Seville thinks he passed out briefly, and when he came to, Cindy was screaming. The assailant had run away.
“That Cindy, man, she can scream. Had I known that, I wouldn’t have done nothing, just let her scream. That’s what made him run anyway.” He laughs, but not for long as he recalls the medical treatment.
Cabs refused to stop for them. When one did, it refused to take Seville. “Man said he didn’t want blood in his cab.” Cindy finally persuaded the driver to take them to the hospital where most homeless go for care.
“Saint Clemens, man, they are the worst!” Seville flares. “I seen people die in their waiting room.” In his case, he waited six hours for treatment, by which time the foot was too swollen for stitches so the wound was stapled closed. The doctor asked him to return when the swelling disappeared. Seville means to go back, he says, but he just doesn’t have the time to spend commuting and hanging out in the waiting room. “I got to spend all day getting food and ready for the night, and then I got to spend all night staying warm.”
Seville’s tunnel is one of the city’s more dangerous places because most of the community are heavy drug addicts. Seville once dealt drugs and still knows how to procure them, so he says people respect him, or at least don’t mess with him, against the day when they may want his services. Seville himself does drugs sometimes, but he’s very cautious about getting addicted, he says, having seen how they destroy lives. He refuses all alcohol because he remembers his father and mother were alcoholics.
“Last time I was dealing [drugs], a girl tried to give me her baby’s food stamps and diapers for a hit,” he remembers, shaking his head. “She was holding the baby, and the baby and her little boy standing next to her, both was crying, and they looked half starved. So I gave her the stuff and then turned around and called HRA [New York’s Human Resources Administration] because that just ain’t right. They needed help. After that I stopped dealing. Nothing’s worth that. I had enough of it.”
SEVILLE ALSO EXPRESSES DISTASTE AT TIMES TOWARD SERGEANT Henry and his Transit Police, which is surprising because as police go, Seville often says, Henry’s not as bad as others. So as we sit, I ask him directly why he doesn’t like Henry.
“Because I seen him do things he shouldn’t be doing,” Seville says flatly.
“He’s like the rest,” Seville continues, growing angry with some memory. “If he has a bad day, he’ll beat up on people who are too weak to stand up. I seen him do things to people that were not necessary, not necessary at all. That’s why I look at him the way I do sometimes. Cuz I seen things he done, seen them when he didn’t know I was there.
“Yeah, I know he done good stuff, too, for some people, got them jobs or into rehab or apartments and other stuff, but he isn’t a saint by any means. That article in The New York Times about Henry and Grand Central, you see that? Didn’t say anything about the tunnels, but Henry loved it cuz it had a big picture of him and made him out a hero. He sure as hell ain’t no hero.”
Could you do a better job than Sergeant Henry? I ask.
“Hell, I wouldn’t want that responsibility,” he leans back comfortably, stretching his hands in the air and laughing. “I do what I can [for others] everyday, which is more than most people. Even when I was smoking and doing it up, I brought people stuff to eat. One thing about being homeless in New York, you can’t starve. There is just too much food around.
“One time I had this deal with Flacko with a restaurant in Grand Central that has a hot salad bar. When they closed, they packed up all the leftover stuff for us, and it was good—squid, ravioli, meats, sushi, first-class stuff you wouldn’t believe—and we would pass it out in Grand Central to others who were also homeless tunnel people.”
He pauses, recalling my question. “If I was in charge,” he says, with a mischievous grin starting, “if I was in charge, I’d put up a big sign on the platforms saying, ‘C’mon down! Everyone welcome! Come live free—rent-free, tax-free, independent, free like Mandela!’”
When he stops smiling, he turns earnest and leans over our table in the Chinese restaurant, spilling his now cold wonton soup, “If you write this book,” he says, “you tell them the tunnels rob you of your life. No one should come down here. There’s lots of reasons they do. They think they can just get out after the police stop looking for them, or when they get off drugs, or when they feel better and can face things again. You can’t go back up. Man, I wish I knew that twelve years ago.
“I just want you to tell them that. The tunnels take your life. That freedom stuff is bullshit. Everyone down here knows it. They won’t say it, but they know it.”
But you have left the tunnels several times, I remind him.
“I never really left them,” he says. “I took vacations from the tunnels,” he smiles lightly, “but I never really left them. I guess they’re my home. Their people are my people. They are what I know best. They are who I know best.
“Think about it,” his eyes dim. “You gonna just stop living where you live with your friends and your job and your family, learn a whole new way of life with nothing waiting for you there? How you expect me to do it after twelve years of doing what I do?”
We look at each other for a moment. Then he broke the silence with a smile.
“Tomorrow will be different,” he rights his Styrofoam soup bowl. “Maybe I’ll win the lottery and turn the tunnels into an underground resort area: ‘Challenge your survival techniques!’ Maybe tomorrow will be different. Don’t you worry about me.”
3
Mac’s War
IN THIS RECESS OF THE TUNNEL, MAC DOES NOT NEED A TRAP with stale food or a feces-soaked rag to catch “track rabbits,” as rats are known to the underground homeless. They come because the garbage is as dense as its stench. The light is very dim, but Mac is well accustomed to it all.
Many newcomers vomit here, he warns. No use wondering what the smell is, he says. It’ll just make you sick thinking of the possibilities. Ignore it, he advises.
I bury my nose and mouth deeper into the collar of my turtleneck. The cloth seems to filter the stench a bit. At least my eyes stop watering and my senses recover slowly from the shock.
A shuffling sound penetrates the quiet darkness, and Mac crouches low to the ground, like a wrestler preparing for a new round. This, he says, is how you hunt track rabbits.
A brown rat the size of a small adult raccoon sniffs its way out of the refuse and lumbers past Mac, undeterred by the stark beam of my flashlight pointed aimlessly at my feet. He is in no way frightened by humans and is prepared to ignore us.