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The Corridor
By
Eric Feezell
Larry Barlow received a manila envelope in the mail the following Monday, no return address. Inside was his wallet, all its contents in tact. It must have disappeared Friday, dropped out as he snagged his coat on the entrance to the corridor.
The world had been wrong. Wrong to him, to everyone. Nothing was left to do for Larry but disconnect himself from the fear. There was no living in this, couldn’t be. Not anymore.
By his own hand, that night, he was freed.
****
The feeling surged suddenly, approached unbearable.
Get off Market Street, now.
Larry Barlow dodged and weaved like a frantic pugilist, dialing as much momentary self-comfort as he could evoke. It took skill, he reminded himself – luck, even – for one to weave lightly, easily the necessary patterns and specific steps that would allow safe and quick passage through that main artery of the city, a swirling delirium of financial analysts, performers, and pickpockets.
What plagued Larry Barlow was not so much unfamiliarity with the vivid scene – a source of nervousness that, to him, might have been justifiable – but a paranoia that rested deeper, behind the analytical mind. It couldn’t be helped. Not by Larry. Not by Larry’s shrink. With chaos, Larry associated the potential for violence. And the city, to him, was the definition: Chaos, distilled, in its purest offering.
It had not always been this way. He could still summon up vague bits of the urban romanticism he had espoused upon first moving into the chaos, nearly three years ago. Modernity. The Melting Pot. Cultural happening. Social justice. Three years ago these ideas had been real to him, living things.
But, in September, Larry Barlow had been robbed, beaten badly, by six or maybe seven middle-aged indigent men, all black. Maybe even eight. He couldn’t remember some of the harder details, didn’t want to remember any of them.
Yet, he did, of course. Every day the violent ordeal replayed itself foggily in his brain – a murky, static nightmare always broadcasting on one channel or another. And although the attack had only lasted ten seconds – just a sliver of a fragment of a single day in his thirty-five years as a living thing – it went with him everywhere afterward, annexed to his memory bank.
It governed him. He’d seen himself change through those next six months after the fact, could do nothing to stop it. Life rapidly became fear for Larry Barlow, and eventually that terror gave way to constant guilt and self-hatred. He did not want to feel the way he did, had been better than that before.
But self-preservation had become more vital than any belief, any prejudice. He could live with the guilt, with a muddled version of who he’d once been, as long as he could
continue to live. This was what he told himself each day along his terrifying pedestrian commute.
With a left down Fifth, off Market now, Larry Barlow’s posture went from brick to jelly, almost seemed to sublimate; his hands unclenched and his pace slowed. Breathing deeply, deliberately, he had made it once again, he thought to himself.
He walked along Howard, over to Eighth Street, now just a few blocks from his apartment. Up ahead of him, across Howard, the sidewalk gave way to a corridor, about thirty feet in length, running beneath the scaffolding of a construction site along Eighth.
Larry walked this path each day, to and from work, hardly noticing anymore the dusty mess of scattered building materials and drywall debris around the adjacent building, which had been undergoing modification at a snail’s pace for months. There, at the corner, he waited for the signal to turn, then crossed Eighth, approaching the corridor.
Straight ahead of him was its entrance, which led into a tunnel encased by makeshift plywood siding, through the sparse, infrequent cracks of which entered scattered beams of light, illuminating certain portions of the dark conduit. For a moment Larry stood, admiring the look of it, even as the walk signal had changed. He then stepped into the crosswalk, noticing a solitary figure approaching from the far side of the tunnel. It continued to move in his direction, more and more recognizable in form with each step. A tall man, hulking, shoddily dressed, dirty. There were few, if any, other pedestrians around.
Adrenaline flooded violently into his veins. He veered right off of the corridor with a quick pivot, his overcoat catching the side of the scaffold, tearing, throwing him off balance. Stumbling frantically into Eighth Street proper, he placed himself directly in front of oncoming traffic. A gray sedan nearly hit him, burning the brakes, narrowly swerving to miss.
Eyes straight ahead, hugging the outside of the corridor, he stepped hurriedly along, bracing for the familiar apex of panic; feeling his hair stand on end; the sweat from his feet, hands, and armpits; and the feeling in his stomach like imploding, buzzing heat.
To his left, inside the tunnel, the man passed him, barely visible between a small section of uncovered bars of scaffolding. Still walking hazardously against traffic, furtively, carefully, he shifted his gaze toward the figure just enough to see that he had been right.
The man was black, homeless.
Memories flooded back into Larry Barlow’s brain. He raised his left arm, using the side of the tunnel to help maintain his balance. He had been beaten six months ago, could have been killed. Lucky to be alive, said the nurses.
And despite his haziness upon coming to, his being strapped hurriedly into the gurney, the blur of red lights, he vividly remembered the whole ordeal and subsequent questioning, as though it had transpired in half time. Supine on the narrow rolling bed, he peered to his left. Blood was visible
on the sidewalk.
“So, I’m assuming they were black, right?” was the first thing the cop had asked.
Larry Barlow had not thought very much about the significance of the question at that particular point.
“Yes, officer. All of them were African-American. But I only remember the face of the first one that hit me.” Larry had mumbled. “His complexion was lighter, sort of similar to yours ….”
Larry Barlow stepped out of the street and back onto the walkway, turning his eyes back toward the entrance of the corridor. The homeless man had stopped at the opposite end, stiff and motionless, staring back at Larry. It suddenly became apparent to Larry—the man knew, could sense his fear. Looking down at his torn coat, Larry Barlow began to shake.
Memories flooded more heavily, now. The brief eye contact between them was enough to make Larry Barlow sick, and he vomited there on the asphalt, on his only pair of work shoes. He began crying uncontrollably.
At the other end of the corridor, the man bent down to pick something up – a quarter, a half-smoked cigarette, Larry couldn’t tell through the tears and sweat soaking his face. The man stood erect, yelling inaudibly, shaking his fist in Larry's direction.
He ran. Bolting around the corner, he managed two long blocks at a full-out sprint before his lungs could no longer propel him. But it was only the terrifying figure, and not the terror itself, that Larry Barlow could outrun.
The image remained sharp in his mind, grew and grew—punctured Larry Barlow once, simply, like a needle, until he passed out.
Copyright © 2007 Eric Feezell
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