Free Gob's Grief by Chris Adrian Page A

along the East River front, and then across Fifty-ninth Street to start the ride all over again. The day was dusty and warm. Walt rested his head against the window and watched the sun striking through ship’s flags. A great day , Hank said, and Walt wondered, not for the first time, if he ought to pay double the fare since Hank was with him.
    Lost in the sunstruck flags, Walt hardly noticed the passengers as they came and went, until, at Fulton Market, there boarded a man who demanded Walt’s attention. He tripped on the platform and fell into the car, catching his hand on the driver’s strap and giving it a mighty tug. The driver (his name was Carl, he was a friend of Walt’s) dropped a curse down on him. The fellow reached his hand up to squeeze the driver’s calf where it hung down in view of all the passengers.
    “Sorry,” he said. “I am so sorry.”
    A muffled reply came down from the driver on his perch. Walt looked away as the fellow came back, feeling shy all of a sudden, though he had never before been shy on a stage. He had accosted all sorts of men on the stages, and made many dear friends that way. But now, as the fellow sat down across from him, Walt stared out the window, down at the ground where the shadows of masts and rigging were everywhere. As the new passenger had come closer, Walt had peeked and seen that he was young, or at least he looked very young, despite the big brown beard on his face.
    “Hello,” he said. Walt did not reply, and that was when Hank offered his first posthumous demand. Say hello, Walt. But Walt remained silent.
    The young fellow began to sing a tune, “Woodman, Spare That Tree,” falling into a hum sometimes when he forgot the words. When they had been up the East Side, and along the lower margin of Central Park, the fellow spoke again. “You are on for the ride, just like me.” Walt said nothing, and Hank chided him. I’ve never known you to be rude. Walt put his head down and pretended to sleep. His palms were burning and his heart felt as if it were riding just under his chin. Just look at him , Hank said. Take a good long look. Then you’ll know.
    “Bostonians are supercilious towards everybody,” the fellow said.
    Walt let out a little counterfeit snore.
    “Are you from Boston?”
    Walt opened his eyes, but did not look up. “I am not from Boston,” he said. “It’s only that I would prefer not to have a conversation.”
    “Well, you might have said so.” The young man muttered to himself for a while, and when they had passed down to the oyster boats at Tenth Street, he stood up and exited the stage. Walt’s shyness and fear evaporated immediately, and then he wished he had not been so rude, and he was inclined to chase the man down just to apologize to him.
    But he was only gone for a minute. Before the car could leave him behind, he returned with a bucket of oysters and sat down again in his spot. Very soon Walt could hear him slurping them and throwing the shells down on the floor among the straw and dried mud. “Oh damn,” he said suddenly. Walt looked up to see that he had cut his thumb trying to shuck an oyster. There were only four fingers on the hand he’d injured; he was missing the littlest finger of his left hand. He brought his thumb to his mouth, staining his lips with blood. He looked away from the door and met Walt’s gaze, and Walt saw that his eyes could not have been more like Hank’s if he had stolen them and set them in his own head. Walt got a feeling, then, which crowded into his heart with the shyness and the fear, but did not displace them. This fellow, this boy, was intensely familiar—he felt sure he’d met him before, or seen his face, though he knew he had not. Give him a kiss, Walt , said Hank. Embrace him. He is for you, and you for him, a great true comrade and a great soul. He is a builder.
    “Are you well, sir?” Walt asked him, because the thumb, out of the young man’s mouth now, was bleeding profusely.