“She was weird, all right. It was like she was two people.”
He was amazed to see that now Julio was the one who looked relieved, and he was struck with sudden shame. Julio Estavez, who was going to do no more than pilot a limo with a couple of pulsing red lights on top for the rest of his life, had just shown more courage than he had been able to show.
“You got it, doc. Hunnert per cent.” He pulled out a pack of Chesterfields and stuck one in the corner of his mouth.
“Those things are gonna kill you, my man,” George said.
Julio nodded and offered the pack.
They smoked in silence for awhile. The paras were maybe chasing tail like Julio had said . . . or maybe they’d just had enough. George had been scared, all right, no joke about that. But he also knew he had been the one who saved the woman, not the paras, and he knew Julio knew it too. Maybe that was really why Julio had waited. The old black woman had helped, and the white kid who had dialed the cops while everyone else （except the old black woman） had just stood around watching like it was some goddam movie or TV show or something, part of a Peter Gunn episode, maybe, but in the end it had all come down to George Shavers, one scared cat doing his duty the best way he could.
The woman had been waiting for the train Duke Ellington held in such high regard—that fabled A-train. Just been a pretty young black woman in jeans and a khaki shirt waiting for the fabled A-train so she could go uptown someplace.
Someone had pushed her.
George Shavers didn’t have the slightest idea if the police had caught the slug who had done it—that wasn’t his business. His business was the woman who had tumbled screaming into the tube of the tunnel in front of that fabled A-train. It had been a miracle that she had missed the third rail; the fabled third rail that would have done to her what the State of New York did to the bad guys up at Sing-Sing who got a free ride on that fabled A-train the cons called Old Sparky.
Oboy, the miracles of electricity.
She tried to crawl out of the way but there hadn’t been quite enough time and that fabled A-train had come into the station screeching and squalling and puking up sparks because the motorman had seen her but it was too late, too late for him and too late for her. The steel wheels of that fabled A-train had cut the living legs off her from just above the knees down. And while everyone else （except for the white kid who had dialed the cops） had only stood there pulling their puds （or pushing their pudenda, George supposed）， the elderly black woman had jumped down, dislocating one hip in the process （she would later be given a Medal of Bravery by the Mayor）， and had used the doorag on her head to cinch a tourniquet around one of the young woman’s squirting thighs. The young white guy was screaming for an ambulance on one side of the station and the old black chick was screaming for someone to give her a help, to give her a tie-off for God’s sake, anything, anything at all, and finally some elderly white business type had reluctantly surrendered his belt, and the elderly black chick looked up at him and spoke the words which became the headline of the New York Daily News the next day, the words which made her an authentic American apple-pie heroine: “Thank you, bro.” Then she had noosed the belt around the young woman’s left leg halfway between the young woman’s crotch and where her left knee had been until that fabled A-train had come along.
George had heard someone say to someone else that the young black woman’s last words before passing out had been “WHO WAS THAT MAHFAH? I GONE HUNT HIM DOWN AND KILL HIS ASS!”
There was no way to punch holes far enough up for the elderly black woman to notch the belt, so she simply held on like grim old death until Julio, George, and the paras arrived.
George remembered the yellow line, how his mother had told him he must never, never, never go past the yellow line while he was waiting for a train （fabled or otherwise）， the stench of oil and electricity when he hopped down onto the cinders, remembered how hot it had been. The heat seemed to be baking off him, off the elderly black woman, off the young black woman, off the train, the tunnel, the unseen sky above and hell itself beneath. He remembered thinking incoherently If they put a blood-pressure cuff on me now I’d go off the dial and then he went cool and yelled for his bag, and when one of the paras tried to jump down with it he told the para to fuck off, and the para had looked startled, as if he was really seeing George Shavers for the first time, and he had fucked off.