Too Much Morning Glory

DESPITE WHAT various city officials may claim, there's been a spike in recent months in random, explosive, unpredictable street violence. It didn't always result in something you'd read about in the papers, but there was more anger out there. Morgan pointed it out. She'd been seeing more street fights around her neighborhood. Normal-looking people on bright, sunny afternoons were taking to swinging at each other over the tiniest of infractions. A slight bump, a dirty look, and before you know it, two guys were nose-to-nose in the middle of the street.

I first noticed it in my own neighborhood while standing in line at the grocery store. The cashier glanced out the window and said, "Oh, there they go again."

Across the street, a dozen teenagers were pounding the shit out of each other. Arms and legs were flying, bodies were swirling around, screaming kids were being thrown into the road. School had just let out.

"That's the third time this week."

The fight continued for several minutes, until two cops arrived on the scene.

This was all an odd sight in what was normally a very placid neighborhood. I briefly considered the possibility that maybe there was something to all this talk about school violence. Then I made a mental note to avoid that side of the street on my way home from work in the future. Goddamn kids. Even when they aren't rioting, they're a nuisance.

For years I've been in the habit of altering my normal routes and schedules when I know that someone I don't care to see will be in a certain place at a certain time. Street vendors, panhandlers, joggers, bartenders. I know it's childish, maybe even a little paranoid, to walk three or four blocks out of my way in order to avoid someone who will annoy me, but there you go.

That's why, for the past two weeks, I've been riding closer than usual to the front of the train in the mornings. When the obnoxious and shrill subway preacher first showed up, I thought it was a one-shot deal, that I'd never be bothered with him again. But when he began showing up in the same car at the same time every single morning, screaming the same litany of disconnected Bible verses, I figured it was time to do something. Confronting him, no matter how tempting that was, seemed pointless. What could I say that would make him shut up?

From what I could tell, every morning he would work his way from the front of the train to the back, hitting each car in turn. He'd spout his inchoate sermon in its entirety, then move on to the next car and start over. So I played a little leapfrog, moving closer to the front, boarding a car I was hoping he'd already been in. ^^^ It worked like a charm. After making my move, I neither saw nor heard him for two weeks. Then one morning, just out of curiosity, I returned to the car I used to ride in near the center of the train. I liked that car better, and I knew I'd always be guaranteed a seat. He couldn't still be around, I thought. Not after all this time. He surely must've moved on to another train altogether by now. It'll be fine.

When the train pulled in that morning and the doors opened, the first thing I heard was a raised voice. I flinched. Then I recognized it-it wasn't the shabby preacher's voice. It belonged to one of the regulars, a member of that particular car's morning crew-a group of five or six neighbors who rode the train into Manhattan together every morning. I relaxed, stepped aboard and found a seat. The preacher was nowhere to be seen or heard, and things were once again as they always had been. That group of neighbors could get loud at times, but at least they tended to be interesting. The morning was turning out okay.

Well, it was okay for the first four stops. I didn't look up when the doors opened at the fifth stop until I heard one of the guys from the morning crew say, "Hey, we've been waiting for you."

That's when the preacher's voice began slicing through the car again. How could I have thought any different? I was a fool. He might have been a few minutes late, but his spiel was exactly the same as it had always been.

Something had changed, though. As he marched up and down the aisle spouting verses in his heavy Jamaican accent, other voices raised as well. These new voices were angry and tired.

"Shaddap"

"Get the fuck outta here"

"Go to hell!"

Up and down the car for the first time, the people riding with me, the ones who'd been putting up with this nonsense every morning for weeks, were rising up against the intrusion, fighting back at last. An elderly black woman sitting across the aisle from me glared at the preacher and shouted, "Will you please shut up?"

All the new angry voices nearly drowned him out, but not quite. At the next stop (it usually took the preacher four or five stops to get his whole sermon out), a committee of three passengers stepped outside the train and confronted the conductor.

"Just get him off the damn train!" I heard one of them say. "You've got to get him off the train!"

All this warmed my heart. It was like something out of one of those inspirational films, like Straw Dogs. After his first few appearances, Morgan and I wondered why nobody said anything to him, why no one dared to confront him. Now they finally had, and they were doing it en masse.

But as the crowd screamed, he rattled on, ignoring them, spewing accusing nasal verse after accusing nasal verse. Given the general mood around the city of late, I wondered for a second if someone might throw something or take a swing, but they didn't. And the preacher never broke stride; his voice never faltered. He was in a trance, so wrapped up in his own visions and voice and mania that nothing could break through, nothing could interrupt him.

The catch to all of this, of course, is the fact that we-the passengers-simply couldn't win. If we sit and take it, he has a passive captive audience. If we fight back, scream at him, insult him, all his actions are justified. Jesus himself said that his disciples would be ridiculed and attacked. It's more proof that they're on the true path of righteousness. (I've heard more lousy, obnoxious street preachers make that argument, and it's really aggravating.)

Like so many uprisings throughout history, the efforts of those weary straphangers that morning were noble, but doomed. The only hope was to let him wear himself out and move along. From the looks of him though, that may not happen for a while. He doesn't even know what he's saying anymore.

Until he moves along or somehow ends up under the train, I think I'll be riding closer to the front again.