The Fugitivities, стр. 35

Nathaniel jumped out of his seat. The other travelers gasped and turned, pretending to see the situation for the first time. He marched right up to the kid so that anyone in the crew would have to get through him to the girl. “You need to back off, now,” he said in English, putting a deep Don’t fuck with me into it. The English surprised the kid, and he seemed to take a second to reconfigure the scene in his mind. “You heard me, step off.” The crew was reacting with a mix of incredulity and hilarity, but they were also signaling that they were ready to back their words. Nathaniel readied himself for a blow. In a flash, the kid spit in his face. Nathaniel was so startled that he was slow to react to the first punch. It was a weak one, but the action had signaled the game on, and they jumped over the seats and started pummeling. Nathaniel lashed out, landing confused blows, trying to keep his eyes open, looking out for a knife. He cracked the tallest one with an elbow to the nose. But they surrounded him, kicking him on all sides so he couldn’t get to them. The train was slowing. They all started shouting at once. The kid who had accosted the girl did exactly what Nathaniel had feared. He pulled out a knife. Nathaniel tensed, backing against the doorway. The black dude was telling his friend to chill with it. Nathaniel could see the plan forming. They’d stick him just as they pulled into the station, then book it. But they didn’t have him pinned down; his chances were still good. Maybe he’d only get grazed. The brakes were whining. The whole train was coming to a nauseatingly slow stop on an embanked curve. The kid was still holding the knife pointed at Nathaniel’s midsection. All he needed was a good lunge.

“Je vais te niquer ta race,” the kid shouted, laughing and waving the blade. Then suddenly before the doors could open, he reached over to the girl and thrust his left arm out, putting her in a stranglehold. He put the blade up to her face. Nathaniel had seen enough to know what was said by tone. The put-down that compensates for what the knife won’t do—this time. “Vas-y, je te laisse cette fois, t’es belle, petite salope.” The doors opened. He let the girl go, and the whole crew jumped out. Nathaniel looked at the girl, then bolted. His heart was pounding. He could see them at the far end of the tracks turning off into a corridor. He sprinted as fast as he could, cursing between clenched teeth. He turned at the corridor; it was a long underground passageway. He could hear their shouts echoing from the far end. It was a straight line, nobody in the way. He put the run on like Jesse Owens, ducking his head, pumping. He reached a staircase leading up to the turnstiles. At the top of the stairs directly in front of him were the swinging pneumatic doors. He burst through them, ready to let all hell break loose. As he came out panting, he noticed figures in blue sweeping in from his peripherals. Two men with gloves and clubs tackled him from behind and sent him smack against the floor. They immediately kneeled on his back, pinning his chest to the ground so that he could barely breathe. One of them started beating him, cracking the baton over his legs and arms. They held him on the ground and told him to shut up while one of them spoke into a crackling radio. Nathaniel could feel the blood from his mouth pooling the cheek pressed to the ground and spilling out onto the cold floor in front of him. Out of the corner of his eye he could see the sneakers of the other members of the posse. They were lying facedown, side by side, with their hands behind their necks. Some more cops showed up with dogs, muzzled German shepherds yanking on their leashes. Commuters walked by, glanced without slowing down. Still more cops arrived, and long discussions ensued; everything was conducted in a dispassionate, even subdued manner, as if each of them really wished they were somewhere else. Finally, it was decided that the posse would be cuffed and taken out in a van. Then they cuffed Nathaniel and walked him out of the station, ducked him with great difficulty into the back of their blue Renault and took off.

At the police station Nathaniel couldn’t do anything right. At first, he was so furious at being taken in at all that he refused to even try to speak in French and cursed loudly in English, at which point they threw him in a holding pen and told him he could wait there indefinitely for a translator. After a few hours, since no translator materialized, they decided to try again, and this time, Nathaniel, using his broken French, gave them his basic information. This only seemed to make them even more suspicious, convinced that he was an African trying to pass himself off as an American to avoid having to confess his illegal immigration. He wasn’t carrying his passport, but he did keep a New York driver’s license in his wallet. The officers passed the little plastic card around, making faces. No one asked him about the events on the train. They asked him about drugs. Then they simply told him he was going to continue being detained until they cleared things up and he was sent back to his holding cell.

He put his head in his arms and tried to sleep. He couldn’t. Never in his whole life had he gone to jail. The only time he had ever even seen the inside of a police station was when he was seventeen and had gone with his