The Warriors by Sol Yurick

Author:Sol Yurick
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Grove/Atlantic, Inc.
Published: 2003-11-15T00:00:00+00:00

July 5th, 3:00–3:10 A.M.

Their train pulled into 96th Street. The doors slid open. The train waited. Everything went wrong.

The 96th Street station is an exchange point. Two lines merge there: the Broadway 242nd Street local, and the Seventh Avenue express. There are two platforms which the local and express flank. If it pulls in first, the local waits for the express. Since it had come first, their express was waiting for the local. Local and express rarely ever arrive at the same time. There is an underpass connecting the north ends of the station. On the south end of the platforms, you merely walk upstairs and are outside. On the rear end, however, you have to go downstairs first, walk through the underpass, up the staircase to the opposite side. Because it is a four-line junction, the station is always full of people; because there are many people, there are sometimes fights. Transit patrolmen are around all the time.

It got hotter now, the heat of the train motors drifted up. The Family was fagged out, but too tired, too uncomfortable to sleep on the sticky vinyl and foam-rubber seats. They sat, restlessly waiting for the train to move, too beat to complain. A bright, four-color, three-dimensional platform advertisement advised them that this squarish symbol was the sign of the Chase-Manhattan Bank, your symbol of confidence and friendship, and that it was 3:00 A.M. How nice it would be to have already made the Times Square change-over to the Coney Island line, to be over with that long ride, to be back home—even if it was The Prison—sleeping. Dewey was itchy from mosquito bites; The Junior scratched at dried sweat. Now it was only a matter of drudging it through.

Hector half-dozed, facing his Family, back to the platform. Their eyes were almost shut, except for The Junior reading his comic book. A patrolling transit cop walked by the open door and glanced at the six of them sprawling. They hardly noticed him, but The Junior saw the flicker of enemy blue and made a mistake, giving Hinton the warning nudge. Hinton passed the nudge on automatically. The cop saw the motion pass along the line; there was a little hesitation in his stride. He kept going, then stopped and looked at them through one of the windows. Bimbo passed Hector the eye-sign; Hector turned and tried to see the Blue Man through the dirty window. Lunkface’s shoulders hunched. Dewey folded his hands in his lap like being good in school. Bimbo’s fingers plucked the tight pants-cloth free from the sweaty inner parts of his legs.

The cop passed out of sight, but his face appeared around the door at the far end of the train, giving them a quick size-up look. How much did he know? Were they looking for the men who had taken part in the meet on the plain? Did they know about . . . Had they found the body? Had the girl told? Well, if she did, she was going to be just as sorry because they were all in it together.

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