Man in a Brown Tweed Cap

Man in a Brown Tweed Cap

“Hey, careful there!” I said sharply.

I directed my outburst at him, although it was me doing the stumbling. I was carrying several packages from shopping and didn’t see him there, all bent over. Could’ve been tying his shoe, I didn’t notice.

He stood up. That’s when I saw him the first time. Honestly, I didn’t see him, just the hat. It was a worn, brown tweed cap like the kind news boys used to wear in old movies. Something flashed on it in the sunshine, a pin or something.

He nodded and backed out of my way. Didn’t say anything. Not that he needed to. After all, I bumped into him, not the other way around.

“Sorry,” I said. I think I did anyway, not that I needed to apologize or anything. What was he doing all hunched over in the street? Anyone could have bumped into him like that. Anyway, I had to stop and adjust all the packages, so I could see better, and moved on. Didn’t have another thought about it.

I don’t get into the city much. Not sure why. Funny, you move to a city so you could take advantage of all it has to offer, the stores, the museums, the sights, you know. Then, after a while, you settle into your little world and small-town life and rarely venture into the hustle and bustle. Too much hassle, parking or getting to and from the train. I mean once you’ve seen the sights a few times, there’s just not that much interest in doing it again. If people come in from out of town, of course, that’s different. You show off your local knowledge like some kind of… docent, is that the right word? You know, an expert on the place, the little details, history and whatnot.

Lucy was coming to town, for some business thing. We hadn’t seen each other since college. Talked on the phone a few times with promises of getting together. Of course, it’s something we all do, isn’t it?

“Let’s get together, sure. You come to Chicago. We’ll make a weekend of it, do some shopping. It’ll be fun, just like the old days…” But it isn’t the old days. You now have jobs, different partners, different interests. It’s never the same. And when you do get together, you simply reminisce about the same old stories and adventures. How trite it all seems. Lucy was big into art back in college. Liked to show off her knowledge of the French impressionists, Van Gogh, Degas and all. Monet, Manet, I could never tell them apart. What did I care? And the rest, like the guy who painted all the topless native girls. Must’ve been into tits, that one. Certainly, made an impression on him, I guess.

So, we’re coming out of the Art Institute and I nearly trip over this same guy. Again! Can you imagine? He’s sitting on the stairs smoking a cigarette. Same hat. Brown tweed cap thing with a pin on it. He’s old, late seventies maybe. A week’s worth of whiskers on him and these old clothes, a red flannel-looking shirt, threadbare sports coat, brown corduroy pants. This time, I did say something to him.

“You know you should watch where you’re sitting. I almost fell with you sitting there. That’s why they invented benches, so people didn’t have to sit on stairs, where people might run into them.”

He didn’t say anything. Never responded at all. Just sat there smoking his cigarette, looking up at me over his shoulder. I stepped around him and then turned and really gave him the once-over. That’s how I noticed his clothing. The pin looked like it was an army insignia of some kind. He could have been an old army veteran with nowhere to go. Or, he may have just been some bum or panhandler with old clothes from Goodwill. Lord knows we have more than our fair share of those.

Lucy says, “C’mon let’s get some lunch. I’m starving.”

“Me too,” I said. “Should we bring the Colonel along,” I poked my thumb back at the old guy on the steps as we walked away, “just in case I need to fall on my face and get run over by a bus?”

Lucy laughed. I always hated the way she laughed. She’d throw her head back with a toss of her long hair, like she was some old movie star, and just let loose with this long girlish, tee-hee kind of thing. In college, it was one thing. We were all kind of affected in one way or another, but now?

“Burgers, Thai or deli? Pick your poison,” I said.

“Why not pizza? That deep-dish thing the city’s famous for,” she suggested.

“Works for me,” I told her. “You’re the tourist. I’ll take you to the place I like. It’s only a few blocks from here. We could walk or take a cab.”

“Let’s walk,” she said. “Let me experience the big city while I’m here.”  

We walked down Michigan Avenue. “The Magnificent Mile,” it’s called. Many of the trendy fashion stores are there and the shoppers visiting them. That’s always a hoot for me. A lot of tourist types go browsing in them without a thought of buying anything, of course. Must be annoying for the salespeople. Too expensive for most, but at least they can fantasize. I like watching the out-of-towners, the people gawking in the windows or hoping to catch a glimpse of someone famous, like Oprah. Or who else, Bill Murray? Celebrities. C’mon, this is Chicago. The biggest names in Chicago deal in corn or hog futures.

Anyway, we get pizza and now we must walk. After eating a thousand calories worth of pizza, we’d need to walk to St. Louis to burn it all off. By now, though, our feet hurt. I feel a blister coming on from these shoes I’m wearing. We opt for the elevated trains, the “L” which forms a big circle around downtown before disappearing back underground, which is where we’re headed. You can get a little tour, a taste of Chicago, I tell her.

 We are both carrying shopping bags, as we descend into the Washington Street station.

“We’ll take a brief ride, then we can then cab it back to Union Station. That way you’ll have the whole enchilada, planes, trains and automobiles,” I say.

The escalator wasn’t working, naturally, so we walk carefully down the slick escalator steps as a staircase, clutching our bags in front of us. Along the underground walls of the station are buskers, banging on plastic pails for drums or inexpertly playing the same tired tune on a saxophone grifting for coins. Panhandlers have been everywhere today.

“Spare change, ladies?” “Help me, I’m hungry.”

Always the same song. You never know if they’re for real or not. Some of these types make enough to winter in Florida, I’ve been told. It all comes back to me, why I don’t come downtown much anymore. The hassle and the hustle. Lucy even doles out money to a few of them. Just ignore them, I tell her. Such a nuisance. But she shrugs and gives a fiver to a random guy offering directions. “No thanks,” I tell him. We know where we’re going, but before I can finish, he’s already pocketed the money and moved on to someone else.

We pay the fare and head to the subway platform. It was crowded, more than I can ever remember the platform being. We’re in a crush of people. An express train flashes by without stopping. The whoosh it makes drowns out all the sound around us. The breeze follows the train down the platform like a straggling gown.

The crowd on the platform grows with each passing minute as we wait for our train. The throng behind us is pushing forward. I see Lucy at my side grimacing as bodies press us toward the tracks. The caution line is suddenly at our feet, the painted stripe running parallel with the tracks, behind which it is safe to stand. A woman beside me bumps up against my bags and I defensively clutch them closer to my chest.

Between me and the tracks is a man. My knees bump into the back of his legs as the crowd pulses behind Lucy and me. She quickly glances at me and I see the frightened look in her eyes. I tell her not to worry, the train will be here in a couple minutes, but my voice is swallowed up in the cacophony of the station, the murmur of voices and screeching sound of an oncoming train. The noise is deafening as the train approaches, the metallic squeal of the brakes and the squawk overhead coming from the loudspeakers, announcing the arrival of the train. It is a mumbled, dissonant jumble of words that one can’t quite make out.

The crowd swells one last time, like a giant bellows expanding before disgorging its rush of air. Involuntarily, I am pressed hard into the man in front of me. At that instant, I realize only inches from my face, he is wearing a tattered brown tweed cap. The shopping bag I embrace crunches as it folds around the contours of his back. Then, he suddenly disappears, tumbling over the edge of the platform onto the tracks below.

Pandemonium erupts on the platform. Several people are screaming. A man yells “Grab him, grab him!” The screech of the train swells to a crescendo and then falls silent. A hubbub is heard from the mob, shouts and commotion. People crane their necks, all looking down in the direction of the spot where the man fell. I find myself standing next to the motorman’s window, the front of the train a few feet to my left. The mass surges forward to see if the fallen man has been hit. Off to my right, the doors open and the bystanders hustle inside. The passengers are compressed within by the new arrivals. I see Lucy at my right slip into the doorway. She looks sideways at me motioning with her head to join her. Finally, inside, we’re crunched together, clutching clumsily at the pole for balance as the doors close and the car jerks to a start.

As the train pulls away, I peer between the heads of passengers through the window of the door and catch a glimpse of the man in the brown cap. Standing on the platform, he is surrounded by several bystanders, patting him on the back and talking to him in an excited pantomime. As I’m watching, I see his head turn. Our eyes meet for the briefest second before the train sweeps past the lighted terminal and out into the darkness.