Blue Moon Literary & Art Review

Here you will find the featured story of the month selected from a previous issue.  This story was published in Issue 2: Fall 2008 - Spring 2009.

Elevation

Adam Russ

     Seven pounds, 13 ounces—19 and three-quarters inches long.  I started out solid.  I had prospects.  After all, such figures placed me squarely at the 51^st percentile for both height and weight in the newborn American male category.  It was the last time in my life I have ever been above average.

     In the thirty-some-odd years since the day of my birth, I’ve lost fifty and some change of those percentile points to my generational cohort.  The fact that I’ve kept track into my thirties, well beyond the time when the human body reaches its full height, is a testament to my delusion that a growth spurt could be right around the corner.  Some of us are just ‘delayed’ or, my personal favorite, ‘grow to the beat of our own drummer.’  Unfortunately, my little drummer boy lost his sticks at 4 foot 3 and I haven’t heard a note since.

     Don’t call me a midget, one of the little people, or a dwarf.  And if I hear the words ‘vertically challenged’ thrown in my general direction, I’m going to get angry.  In the words of the mild-mannered Dr. David Banner, “You wouldn’t like me when I’m angry.”  On second thought, I probably shouldn’t use The Hulk reference.  The turning green thing coupled with my height can’t help but bring to mind leprechauns and that’s not quite the image I was going for.

     I’m short.  I can handle that.  There’s no need to sugar-coat or pretend to ignore it.  It’s a fact.  I’m okay with it.  It doesn’t define who I am.  Well, . . . actually it does.  It defines every fiber of who I am and dominates all aspects of my life.  It determines my career prospects, my friends, my recreational pursuits, and the women I never date.  There you have it: work, social life, leisure, and love.  What is that, like the trifecta plus one more thrown in for good measure?     

     There’s this famous logic puzzle.  Stop me if you’ve heard it before, but it goes something like this:

A man lives on the top floor of a high-rise apartment building.  Each morning on his way to work he takes the elevator to the bottom floor.  In the evening he gets back on the elevator and, as long as others are on the elevator or it has been raining that day, he takes it directly to his floor.  However, if he is alone and the weather was sunny that day, he rides the elevator half way up, gets out, and walks the rest of the way up to his apartment.

The challenge of the puzzle is to figure out why he does this by asking questions that can only be answered with a Yes or a No.  I like most puzzles, but this isn’t one of them.  It hits too close to home.

     After surviving eighteen years in a rural Midwestern town, I moved to the city.  It was liberating.  Walking in the streets surrounded by skyscrapers a thousand feet tall, being a foot or two below the human norm loses some of its significance.  Those towering structures were my savior from the corn-fed giants that walked the halls of my high school back home.  I wanted to live in the highest building I could find.  And so I do.

     I live on the 65^th floor of an 82-story building that I call home.  It wasn’t until I had been living there almost three months when it finally happened.  Usually there are so many people waiting for the elevators that everyone has to squeeze to get on.  Somebody near the buttons always asks ‘What floor?’  In an otherwise mind-your-own-business and don’t-make-direct-eye-contact mentality, the ‘What floor?’ gesture on a crowded elevator is one of the few acts of public civility that can consistently be relied upon in today’s urban environment.

     It was a Tuesday.  I remember because I was thinking I had just enough time to put a pizza in the oven and have it ready before the opening theme music of my favorite TV show.  Except for the tall doorman who always greets me with a private chuckle and a sardonic smile, as if my very existence is designed for his personal comic relief, the lobby was oddly empty.  I pressed the button to call the elevator and watched the numbers light up in descending order.  The doors opened.  A waft of perfume and two women who were mostly legs in my peripheral vision exited the elevator.  I stepped inside and turned 180 degrees to face the closing doors.  Like a well-disciplined soldier, the elevator car waited for further instructions.  I took a step forward to the panel of buttons to find my floor.  The 65 was out of reach.  I stood on my tip-toes and stretched my hand upwards, knowing that I wouldn’t be close.  With the tip of my middle finger, I was just able to press the lower half of 41.  The button glowed and the elevator began to rise.  Using every ounce of my athletic skills and dexterity, I leaped into the air and managed with a single desperate smack to press both 43 and 45.  It was the best I could do.  You try jumping into the air on a rising elevator some time.  It’s harder than you might think.

     Needless to say, after climbing 20 flights of stairs to my apartment, the pizza was not ready in time for my show.  But that was the last 20 flights I’ve walked up.  Humiliation is a cruel but thorough teacher.  Now, I always carry an umbrella, no matter the weather.

     I’ve started seeing a therapist.  Not seeing as in dating, but seeing as in paid visits.  She’s really great.  She listens to me.  Although on my more cynical days I can’t help but think that if I walked up to a stranger on the street and offered him a hundred bucks to listen to me for an hour, he could pull off a pretty convincing session.

     The most startling discovery I’ve gotten from my therapy sessions to date is that I have a fetish for the tops of people’s heads.  Who knew, eh?  Maybe it’s obvious to you, but I certainly didn’t see that one coming.  A friend of mine once told me that city life is all about voyeurism—looking out at the next high rise to see what people are doing in assumed privacy.  For me, however, the best view from my apartment window has always been straight down.  I love the perspective and the way you can tell time by the flow and volume of the bustle below.  Absent a pair of binoculars, which I find a bit creepy, from the 65^th floor I can’t really see enough detail to feed my apparent head fetish, so when my therapist first brought it up, I had my doubts.  But when she pointed out that I was a barber, which is true by the way—I’m a co-owner of a moderately thriving shop downtown—her case got a little stronger.

     Why did I start going to therapy in the first place, you might ask.  Well, that’s the crux of the matter, I suspect.  I think my therapist is hoping that if I just turn the faucet on and let the words flow, I will eventually get to talking about what happened that day.  No, not the too-short-to-reach-the-button-in-the-elevator day.  What she’s after is the day my mind refuses to let me recall while awake, but gives free reign to torment my dreams each night.  I can never remember the details when I wake up, but the flashes that linger are enough for me to wonder if I ever want to recall what happened.

     I could tell you the beginning and the end, but if you’ve read the newspapers or turned on a TV anytime in the last few months, you’ve likely already got a good sense of those details.  It’s what happened in the middle that I can’t seem to pin down.  And somehow I know it’s what happened in the middle that matters.

     I’ve always lived my life under the radar, but now I find myself lit up like a beacon.  My answering machine is always full.  That’s a new experience for me.  I haven’t heard the once familiar ‘No New Messages’ since before that day.  The messages are from journalists and reporters, mostly, from every major and minor newspaper, magazine, radio station, and television network under the sun.  I never return their messages, but I don’t mind them.  I realize the callers are just doing their job, serving up the fodder to feed the public appetite for the sensational story of the moment.  It’s actually kinda funny to listen to the messages one after the other.  They are so similar, as if read from a script: “chance to tell your story,” “struck a chord in the hearts and minds,” “want to know the real you,” “what was going through your mind,” “what did it feel like,” “the horror,” “the tragedy,” “the hero,” “have you seen baby Chloe since?”

     It’s the calls from family members and friends back home who have never called me before that piss me off.  What is it about proximity to celebrity that is so appealing?  I use the word celebrity here in the loosest sense.  I realize the attention will pass.  I hope it does soon.  I can’t go to work.  I’ve tried, but each time I show up, the barber shop gets so crowded with people either constantly asking me questions or just staring at my every move, that I can’t concentrate on the head of hair beneath me.  Yes, beneath me.  If you’re having a hard time picturing my 4 foot 3 frame at work, I’ve got a custom-built platform made of molded rubber 18 inches high that curves around the chair.

     I stopped showing up all together when my scissors snipped the ear of a long-time customer, almost severing his lower lobe clean off.  It’s the blood on the blade that brings it back to me.  Not at that moment, it didn’t.  I was too shocked and embarrassed to do anything.  Everyone in the shop gazed back and forth between me and poor Gordon, cupping his ear as blood ran down his neck.  All noise seemed to stop.  Even the incessantly chatty announcers on television, Mets versus the Phillies as I remember, didn’t seem to have anything to say.  I apologized profusely and offered Gordon free haircuts for life.  I’m not sure he’s going to take me up on that.

     I’ve heard the expression a flood of memories before, but never really experienced it until the image of the drop of liquid red against the shiny metal of my scissors released a rushing torrent of dark memories from the middle of that day.  They overwhelmed me.  I managed to make it to the back room of the barber shop and lock the door.  I flipped off the light, curled up in a ball, and rocked back and forth for hours.

     I’ve had a little time to process it.  I could never figure out why I always cringed the many times I was referred to as a hero after that day.  I initially thought it was just my inherent shyness or some sense of modesty.  Now I know different.

     Here’s what I remember.  Around 8:30 a.m. I was on the subway train headed to work.  My stop is early enough in the route that, as long as I get on the last car, I can usually get a seat, but not always one of the ones I want.  I was in a seat that faces backwards, which always makes me a little nauseous.  But, sitting backwards in the last car of the train that day probably helped save my life.  I remember swaying slightly back and forth as the train picked up speed through the tunnel.  I was feeling bold that morning so I had a pen in my hand hovering above the daily crossword puzzle thinking of a 4-letter word for Cracker topper, third letter i.  Monday through Wednesday I can usually finish the Times puzzle before I reach my stop across town.  Thursdays and Fridays take longer and I often have a few errors and unsolved clues left over before I finally give up.  The weekend puzzles—forget about it.  They just make me feel stupid.

     Brie.  Yuck—can’t stand the stuff.  I started to write the word down but never got the chance to finish.  The force was sudden and powerful—I am surprised anyone survived.  We know now that debris on the track from a partial tunnel collapse caused the derailment.  Like a kid playing with one of those plastic segmented snakes in the gift shop of every zoo, the cars of the train twisted, bounced, and buckled inside the tunnel.  Experts say that the derailment itself was the cause of 15 percent of the fatalities.  When I first heard those numbers I thought, what kind of job prepares you for figuring that out and who the hell needs to know those details anyways?  Apparently insurance companies do.

     One of the forward cars lurched upwards and slammed into the tunnel ceiling, which was already weakened from the partial collapse that had caused the debris on the track in the first place.  Experts estimate that nearly 60 percent of the fatalities were caused by the several tons of concrete and earth that fell to the ground, bringing the wild ride to an abrupt halt.

     Sight, sound, taste, touch, and smell.  My senses were assaulted by horrors I do not intend to describe.  I don’t give a damn what reporters want to know or what my therapist says is good for me.  There is a reason my mind hid this from me and if I could, I would bury it forever.  Every part that is except for the woman.  Her daughter should know that part when she’s old enough—when she’s ready.

     We were trapped inside the car, blocked in on all sides.  A frantic search by those who could still move revealed the only opening—a small hole through the car ceiling.  The opening was jagged, rimmed with twisted metal.  A man stood on the back of a seat and tried to force his way out, only getting his head and one arm through before cutting himself severely.  Two more tried with similar results.  Eventually they noticed me.  They sized me up and told me to try.  I didn’t want to.  Fear had me frozen.  Pleas turned to shouts.  I was grabbed and hauled into the air.  I dropped to the ground when I scratched the eyes of someone holding me.  Before I had time to scramble away, I was in the air again and being shoved through the hole.  The sharp metal bit into my shoulders and tore down my arms.  After my body was contorted in ways I thought impossible and deeply lacerated, I found myself on top of the train looking down into the car.  Some of the passengers looked up at me.  Others would not meet my eye.  At the time, I knew that despite my injuries I should feel glad, relief at having escaped.  I was certainly in a much better position than they were.  Instead I felt like an outcast, bitter resentment rose up in me.

     Angry, frightened, and in pain, I stumbled through the fallen tunnel to get help as I was ordered to do.  A woman’s voice called me back.  It was a hesitant shout, as if she were struggling with a terrible choice with little time to think it through.  I peered back into the hole.  The woman had climbed onto a seat back and was reaching her hands through the opening, holding out her baby.  The child wailed and wriggled, causing the metal to savagely pierce the woman’s arms.  She did not let go, but continued to use her arms as cushions to protect her child.  I had no choice but to take the baby.  I waited, expecting the woman to tell me what to do.  She didn’t.  The only thing she said to me was, “Her name is Chloe.”

     It was the picture that did it.  You know the one.  It has graced the front pages of newspapers and the covers of magazines the world over.  There is all 4 foot 3 of me, bloody and covered in dirt, emerging from the entrance of the tunnel carrying a baby who has her arms wrapped fiercely around my neck like a favorite battered and abused teddy bear.  If you didn’t know the truth, I guess it would look pretty heroic.

     Experts say that the remaining 25 percent of the fatalities were caused by asphyxiation and smoke inhalation from the fire that spread a few minutes after the crash.  Other than “the little hero and the baby girl” no one else survived.

     Her dad has been very kind.  Over the past few months, I’ve gotten several invites to family functions.  He says he wants me to check in with them from time to time—to be a part of her life.  I met them in the park a few weeks ago and when she saw me, she latched onto my neck and wouldn’t let go for over an hour.  When she looks at me with those big irises flecked with gold, it kills me.

     I went to her birthday party yesterday.  Chloe is growing like a weed.  She is going to be tall.