Revolver

Revolver

Ben Crocker

Sam pushed the cleaning equipment into the gear locker. He let the door close against the smell of industrial soap. Sam slowly walked the length of the hall to the custodial office. He rapped on the door lightly with his knuckles.

“Mr. Prickett?”

“What’s up, Sam?”

“I just wanted to remind you tomorrow is my day off.”

“Yep, same day, roughly, every year. For seems like forever.”

“Thank you,” Sam said. He slid away and out of the office building.

When he was old enough to work, Sam started as a night cleaner for Metro Office Cleaners, Associated. It suited him. It was quiet, private work. Not glamorous, but completely anonymous. Anonymity was of utmost importance.

He unlocked the door to his apartment building and ran up the stairs. Three floors, nobody passed him on the stairs or in the hallway. He opened his door, jumped inside, and quietly closed it behind him. He removed his shoes and gingerly walked to his bedroom. The sun wouldn’t be up for an hour or so. He laid down in his clothes for a quick power nap.

When he woke, Sam got that feeling. He stood in the kitchen, studying the pasted mosaic of pictures of his mother and father above his lonely table and chair. Newspaper clippings surrounded the photos. A girl in a subway station; a printout New York Times article about John Lennon and an avid fan; a myriad of memorials from events fifteen years ago; one suggested a man surfed building debris. A waterless, clear glass vase sat in the center of Sam’s table. It held two dried, white roses. Sam stood in his kitchen, washing his one coffee cup. He placed it in front of his small, second-hand coffee maker.

He heard a neighbor outside, maybe struggling with groceries or laundry. Sam heard annoyed sighs and creaking stairs. He waited for silence. Sam had a secret heavy on his shoulder. He counted to thirty. He opened his door, and his neighbor came back up the stairs.

“Hey,” she said. Sam pursed his lips and nodded.

“Hi,” he whispered.

“I’m Stephanie, we’ve never met.”

That’s intentional, Sam thought.

“Sam, I work nights,” he said. “I try to be quiet.”

“Well, nice to meet you, finally,” she smiled. She glanced into his apartment and leaned to the left. “A photo collage?” She looked past his shoulder. Sam closed the door against his body. “Yeah, just my little project,” he said.

“Like an art thing?” she asked.

Like a none-of-your-business thing, he thought.

“Just important memories,” he said. “Nice to meet you, Stephanie.” He said as he walked down the stairs.

The crisp fall day was a comforting cool: he trudged down the crowded sidewalk, his hands buried in his pockets, the hood of his sweatshirt pulled down to cover his eyes. The cacophony of car horns, bike bells, heels clicking, the hiss and rumble of the subway below; Sam strode through morning steam rising through the subway vents and wove between the zombie pedestrians, eyes tethered to their devices. It was a wonder that no one walked into each other. They instinctively danced to the left or right a few inches without making contact. Men and women in power suits and briefcases speaking anonymously into Bluetooth devices. Skirting street vendors, the rich aroma of roasted cashews and almonds, the cinnamon-sweet smell of caramel-dipped churros, mingling with spicy mustard, relish, and steamed hot dogs. Dogs pulling dog walkers against taut multi-colored leads. Bohemian students bustling through the busy streets with “Occupy” stickers pasted on laptop cases and Starbucks to-go cups clutched in their fingers. All integral to the pulse of the city. The subway was Sam’s liminal destination. He hurried down the stairs and touched his MetroCard at the turnstile.

He waited for the train. He slid earbuds out of his pocket and up into his ears. His routine had started with long meanderings and introspective musings that inevitably ended at the one landmark he would never be able to escape. It drew him and others like so many iron filings drawn to a magnet. The long, lonely walks were physically tiring. Blocks turned into miles of dodging harried locals and over-stimulated tourists gawking at famous addresses. So he opted for the train--convenience, speed, and still the potential to people-watch. He practiced the fine art of blending: if he stood close enough to a wall, he could melt into it or transform his delicate olive skin, a color that confused many--are you Italian? Native?--into the rough red brick or dark tinted glass that was so common in his bustling city of ruin.

A train arrives—first, the platform hums in anticipation. Passengers perk up and begin queuing at the edge of the platform. In the corner, a Specter Girl stops blending; she wisps away from the tiled walls, her smokey complexion taking form. Next, the train lights land on the white tile of subway walls, and the Specter Girl steps forward; the rails rumble, but the squeal of metal on metal doesn’t follow: this isn’t Sam’s train, it will blast through the stop and continue to some other destination further on down the line. The Specter Girl stepped to the edge of the platform. From her clippings, Sam knew that she was 25. The train crested the corner, the air on the platform became heavy with its presence. The Specter Girl closed her eyes, a reserved, calm spread over her face; she had long ago accepted this moment, the seed planted deep in her mind. She was comfortable with the outcome. She stepped off the platform. Sam looked down at his feet; none of the other passengers flinched. The Specter Girl dissipated as the rushing train passed. The brakes never engaged. The air pressure returned to normal. The Specter Girl resumed her post on the platform, an endless loop.

She said, I know what it’s like to be dead.

I know what it is to be sad.

And she’s making me feel like I’ve never been born.

The lyrics swam into Sam’s mind. Revolver. A magnetic title. It might have been about wheels, or the world-- maybe like Lennon’s later solo work Watching the Wheels.

The lights of the next train bounced off the tile walls, illuminating the mosaic of Utica station. The Specter Girl walked forward. She stopped on the edge of the platform. The air was heavy again, but the metal-on-metal squeal of brakes announced that this was Sam’s train, not the Specter Girl’s. She looked at Sam; he half smiled back, and she looked disappointed. Train passengers eagerly departed, and new passengers shuffled forward to replace them.

Ah, the lonely people. Where do they all come from?

Sam thought he had a reasonable idea. Christmases were the worst—incessant cheery songs playing earlier every year. Macy’s put out decorations right around the time school started back up, dredging up memories of the Yankee Candle balsam fir smells in his family’s old East 91st Street townhouse.

‘Here, Sam, put these on.’ His father sat him on worn wood floors and placed studio headphones over his ears. ‘Listen to the wall of sound,’ his father instructed. Sam listened. He heard the psychedelic pangs of Tomorrow Never Knows, the voice of John Lennon amplifying the words of Timothy Leary. I dreamlike yearning for enlightenment that only recreating an acid trip in song can provide.

‘Listen to Ringo’s drumming,’ his father said. ‘This is the definitive Beatles album, in my not-so-humble opinion. Some folks will point to Abbey Road, and others to The White Album. But there are too many weak songs on both. Octopus’ Garden? Honey Pie? Please. There are absolute classics there, too: Revolution--the fast version is better, more raw--While My Guitar Gently Weeps, fantastic vocals by Harrison, and a spectacular continuous weeping guitar by one of the famed fifth Beatles, Eric Clapton, who had a pretty good career of his own.’

Sam’s father’s eyes were wide with excitement. The dark brown of his iris almost blended with the blackness of his pupils as he power stroked an air guitar and hammered away at the floor with his right foot, emulating Ringo, keeping the beat with the bass drum while his hands stuttered along the rest of the set.

‘Every track of Revolver is solid, his father continued, becoming increasingly manic. McCartney loses a little of his boyish purity. Ringo gets a song: Yellow Submarine--corny as it is, yet somehow iconic. It's a fun song. Most noted: George Harrison rivals the songwriting of Lennon and McCartney. Revolver proves the depth of talent that stepped onto the stage--the world stage, as it happens. They grew as a band, which is not something most bands do.’

Young Sam looked up at his father with rapt attention. His mother curled up on the couch under a throw, sipping merlot and engulfing the latest Stephen King collection: Hearts in Atlantis.

‘Your mother is an avid reader, Sam. She consumes words like a Times Square junkie consumes heroine.’

She rolls her loving brown eyes. ‘And your father always chooses the most appropriate metaphors.’ She smiled back at him, letting the book rest spine-up in her lap, her straight black hair resting on her shoulders. Sam’s father twirled a lock around his fingertip. She offered her forehead for a quick kiss.

Memory, or call it, the persistence of memory--Sam liked the concept, the obdurate past, melting time, beating its way to the forefront of the mind, planting its cancerous seed to fester and bloom--swam in and out around him. Memory lingers like an unwelcome guest. Christmas in foster care had made Sam morose. Not because he didn’t get the attention the younger kids received. At that point, he was at the stage where gift-receiving was embarrassing. ‘What do you want for Christmas’ couldn’t be answered with ‘a time machine’ without making the gifter feel like the task was impossible. Secretly, during those years, Sam prayed for a rare, late-onset case of SIDS so he wouldn’t have to pick the socks and Terry’s Chocolate Oranges out of his stocking and feign excitement. The absolute joy of the materialistic Christmas was walking the younger kids around the City while the parents worked their gifting magic. Sam, for his part, would park the youngest children at Fao Schwarz and chase them around the high-end toy store as they gawked at the talking animatronic tree, cuddled the life-size stuffed animals, and danced on the floor piano. The simple magic of childhood happiness, families huddled around the carefully curated window displays, reminding Sam that he had none. In those days, Sam stayed in his room, foam headphones cupped his ears. He would stare at the ceiling and listen to his late father’s favorite music. He avoided the laughing downstairs. His foster father would knock: “Want to come downstairs and join us?”

“No thanks, I’m fine.”

Followed by “Sullen prick,” as the door closed, the headphones returned to his ears.

Sam’s first walk, years ago now, had taken him to Central Park West. He didn't gravitate to the Park for the famous carousel. Unlike the brooding teen of literary canon, Sam had no desire to track down the duck’s winter retreat. His destination crept into his mind as he purchased a pack of gum and a Red Bull at a 7/11. A picture of John Lennon was pasted to the window behind the register. Decades after his assassination, avid fans still mourned the night their idol was stolen. He could hear his father singing with a CD: “Nobody loves you when you're old and grey, Nobody needs you when you're upside down. Everybody's hollerin' 'bout their own birthday. Everybody loves you when you're six foot in the ground.” Another Lennon classic appearing on Walls and Bridges in 1974. Sam’s father insisted that Lennon knew he was going to die early; the thought consumed him. Like a prophet. Some people said the same thing about JFK like the icons knew that they had foreknowledge of their impending demise and chose instead to stay the course, which lent these idols divinity, which is the natural reaction to tragedy: unconditional love, random acts of kindness, and undignified acts of heroism—a pair of white roses placed in marble names.

Sam had maneuvered the crowded streets until he stood at the base of The Dakota Apartments. He thought he heard screaming from inside--which was impossible. His father told him that the walls of TDA were packed with mud from the construction of Central Park. What Sam did hear were gunshots deep in his mind and a voiceover by Howard Cosell.

‘I was in the early days of trying to woo your mother,’ Sam’s father said. ‘It was a cold December Monday, and I compelled her to watch Monday Night Football with me. We were both at Fordham. She would study too much, and I too little, but we were making it just fine. I like to think that her willingness to watch a non-New York Monday night football game with me pretty much meant that I sealed the deal, and between you and me, Sam, I desperately wanted to seal the deal.’

Sam looked at his mother, who was smiling at her boys. Sam smiled a small child smile and returned to his father’s reminiscence.

‘It wasn’t a good game, the Dolphins and the Patriots. And then it broke; Howard Cosell’s voice filled the screen while the players huddled between plays:

‘We have to say it. Remember, this is just a football game. No matter who wins or loses. An unspeakable tragedy confirmed to us by ABC News in New York City: John Lennon, outside of his apartment building on the West Side of New York City, the most famous, perhaps, of all the Beatles, shot twice in the back, rushed to Roosevelt Hospital, dead on arrival.’

‘I cried Sam. Your mother held me. We listened to some of my vinyl. We were both barely alive when JFK was shot, but the Beatles, a group I fell in love with when I hung out with my older friends and their siblings, they were icons. John was immortal. He was right when he said--perhaps in arrogance, perhaps in dismay-- that they were bigger than Jesus.’

Sam sat introspective on the subway bench. He was waxing philosophical while the secret lay heavy on his ribs. A trio of junkies in greasy denim stood by the door. Two of the men were quietly chiding the third and pushed him toward the center of the car. The three men were giggling. The Junky cleared his throat.

“‘Scuse me, yo.”

He laughed nervously.

“So I got a song for you,” he danced from foot to foot, wiped his nose with the top of his hand, and unfolded a crumpled piece of lined paper. “‘Preciate it if you broke out some coin, haha. Aight.” He began a mumbled, jittery rap handwritten on the greasy paper. His eyes darted around the paper, mingled with nervous laughter. He held the danced from person to person, holding out his hat hopefully.

He wiped his nose with the back of his hand again and began a mumbled, jittery rap. Sam didn’t move. No one in the car moved. No hands found wallets or searched pockets for loose change. The two men the junky came in with laughed at their friend and slapped high fives.

“Aight, aight,” the junky was nodding at the crowd. “Tough crowd. Tough crowd. It’s aight. All cool.”

Sam pressed his arms tight to his sides. He had lived in numerous foster homes until the summer when he turned eighteen. He was orphaned when he was thirteen, but he had never resorted to begging. He sort of remembered his mother. Her quiet dignity shaped him. A face not unlike that of Kate Beckinsale. Or maybe more like Sandra Bullock. Liv Tyler? What remained firmly in his mind was the dignity. The refined confidence. His father had been a man wildly talented but fatefully undisciplined. Yet he was the more unmistakable face in Sam’s memory. He wondered what she had seen in his father. Maybe it was his heart. Had Mark David Chapman not shot John Lennon, had Howard Cosell not made his Monday Night Pronouncement, would his mother have fallen in love with his father? Did that moment of childish vulnerability pluck her heartstrings just enough for her to realize: I love this man, and I want to live with him forever.

The train came to a stop at Wall Street, and Sam got off. His routine required a slow march. He would look at the rising tower that used to be two before it was a smoldering pit, and then a singular rising tower again—the glass glinting in the sun. The specter people leaping through unbroken windows eighty-eight floors up.

He lost his parents, lawyers both of them; he wasn’t sure if either of them had been leapers. The steady march continued, among the cacophony of cars, bikes, and heels, the rush of the train below. The secret pressed against his ribs, he felt it bounce and hoped it would do the job he wanted it to do. He wanted to join his parents, but he didn’t want to miss. He flinched as he walked into the rushing dust. Phantom dust. Crushed cement and debris. Endlessly played on cable news until it too became iconic; a fixture of memory. The other marchers walked resolutely toward the tower. Their business lay within the glass atrium, Sam’s just outside.

He arrived at the monument; the city fell silent, either by design or by some supernatural reverence for the dead. Sam wasn’t sure which, and he didn’t care. Tourists milled about to take photos and remember—they, too, held their breath. The only sounds were the rushing fountain and the clicks of cameras.

Sam walked the perimeter of the old foundation. Names carved in stone ticked by with each step like so many grave markers. Up ahead, he saw dried white roses placed into carved-out names. A woman in a red peacoat was kneeling before him, facing the roses, snapping a photograph through bystanders of the lone rose purposefully placed in a name. Sam stopped in front of a familiar stone bench, waiting for his nerves to settle. He hugged himself, pressing the NYPD .38 Revolver hard against his ribs. The weight was comfortable.

I said, “Even though you know what you know,

I know that I’m ready to leave

‘Cause you’re making me feel like, I’ve never been born.

Sam pressed the pistol hard into the soft bottom of his jaw. This time I’m going to. He closed his eyes. The public display was unimportant to him. He could have gone late at night, but what does it matter in the city that doesn’t sleep?

He blew his mind out in a car, he didn’t notice that the lights had changed.

Lennon himself had written about the emotional plague that, once caught, it can’t be cured. Sam knew all too well. Once the idea fully seats itself in your brain: you know what it’s like to be dead; it never really goes away like a slow malignant cancer ebbing at the height of vulnerability. Sam’s serial sitting was his warm-up to the main event. One in which the other parties never showed up and, therefore, had to be called off. The waiting plagued him. It was reassuring to hope he would come back as a specter Sam. Perhaps he would be free to roam the city as he does in his spare time now. He could also be tethered to the location of his final act, not unlike the Specter Girl who stepped in front of a subway train in her previous life. The mess was horrendous; Sam saw it on ABC News one night before he cut the story out of the paper and pasted it on his wall. When the station reopened, he ventured down to look. He was delighted to find her standing in a corner, stepping up to every train and into every train that didn’t. So he chose this bench, within sight of the tower and memorial. If the dead were tethered, he wanted to be tethered near his parents and hope for a reunion.

Turn off your mind, relax, and float downstream, it is not dying, it is not dying.

Lay down all thoughts, surrender to the void, it is shining, it is shining.

The lyrics of Revolver, the cold metal of a revolver. The hard mechanism that wouldn’t spontaneously jam. No well-worn magazine spring could save him. Pull the trigger; the single action lifts the hammer, and the double action lets it fall. Hard, polished wood would pound against his palm. As long as he didn’t flinch and miss, the hard metal would do its job. After all, it’s a mindless entity. It has no free will. No memory. No emotion or attachment. Unlike the animatronic tree that resided at the now-defunct Fao Schwarz, his tool of euphoria did not greet new users. It did not tell lame jokes. It is inherently dangerous, but it would not be possessed by some deranged soul and trapped for decades only to bring horror upon new ownership. His revolver was not James Dean’s car. When it was done, people would scream. Some would run. Some would investigate and rubber neck. The hot metal .38 would fall from his hand and be deposited in evidence or snagged by some passerby. Sam concentrated hard; he thought he could hear the leapers let out a small cry as he thought he heard them land. He imagined souls swimming peacefully in the falling memorial waters. All around him, people marched. Tower workers stopped in front of each other and offered clipped professional greetings as they held their phones close together. Sending files and conducting transactions. Almost like covertly switching briefcases in a crowded coffee shop. All the while unaware of the specter people falling around them. Unaware of Sam, sitting on the bench, head down, hood pulled low to hide the act he promised himself he would go through with today. His finger tightened on the trigger; the hammer moved a quarter way through the first single action. An image of Charlie Brown rushing toward the football danced across Sam’s mind. Today’s the day! I’m finally going to kick that football!

“Sam, what are you doing?” A soft, grave voice spoke, concerned, not scolding.

Sam opened his eyes; he expected some kind soul, maybe a harried secretary, engaging in one last undignified act of heroism that would never make the nightly news but would change the course of life indefinitely. Such actions define the actors--once I saved a life, how many people can assert such selflessness?

Sam looked into the grey spectral eyes of his mother. They changed. Not quite his mother. But familiar somehow. He cried. She looked like Jennifer Garner, but not from her TV days. Or maybe Evangeline Lilly? Her hair is auburn, not black. She wore a red, light wool jacket. Her hands were cold but strong.

Mom, he thought (said), I want to die. I want to be with you. And Dad. I don’t know you anymore; you’re both like faded Polaroids. And I’m living in a world almost the same as the one you left, but more hostile. Less free. Everyone is attached to their devices and not talking to anyone anymore. They’re stalking and loving and pretending and doing all those things virtually that they used to do together. You wouldn’t believe our connectedness, and you would be ashamed of the distance we create with it. But I watched the towers fall; they played it on TV in class, then repeatedly in the office with the other kids as we waited to speak to be picked up by trembling parents. Some of us waited. And waited. I watched as my life changed forever. I miss you.

Sam could feel the soft hands on his face. Warm red wool sleeves brushed against his face. His cheek ran cold. Were they specter fingers or salty tears dried by the wind off the river?

“I’m not your mother, Sam.” The voice was soft and friendly.

Of course, it wasn’t. But he had heard the voice before.

Can I stop by to say hi? Sam thought.

The auburn-haired stranger said something. He couldn’t hear. Something about the red sleeves: she softly twisted the revolver from Sam’s slackening fingers.

It’s like you’re buried here. Sam thought (babbled). He watched his not mother nod, smile through tears, and breathe heavily. Sam curled up on the cold stone bench. The woman made a phone call. A crowd of people turned and stared. They moved in on Sam, soft hands putting pressure against his body, pressing him further into the stone. Sam heard boots on stone; running uniformed men. Sam listened to the blip of sirens. The leapers disappeared. Business marchers kept marching and transacting. The sun glinted off the glass atrium. Sam struggled to sit against the weight of the crowd.

“I want to go home. I could stop in Greenwich Village, where a young folk singer started on the streets and cafes surrounding NYU, according to my father, who believed in Bobby Dylan. Rolling Stone Magazine, the online version, anyway, defends the folk singer’s supplant of Walt Whitman as America’s preeminent modern poet. The author of the article neglects to name William Golding as the author of Lord of The Flies. You would think a reputable magazine with an extensive editorial staff could do a little better.”

...that ignorance and hate may mourn the dead. It is believing. It is believing.