A Ribbon of Wake

 

CHAPTER 1

“66.”

Staring at the dimly lit, tandem elevator indicators, I instinctively tapped on one “6”…

 Nothing.

I repeated the gesture on the screen of my phone and it came to life. I wondered if one of the recently refurbished cars would come up for me, or if the softly glowing red digits would signal the betrayal of the much hated, dual descent, to the street level exits, 11 floors below. It was rare for both cabs to be aligned on the same floor at this early hour. Occasionally, someone will hold the door for a latecomer or a forgetful neighbor, but restraining the two doors simultaneously requires a bit of athletic ability, a questionable motive, and a familiarity and a comfort with rudeness. That seems like an unlikely combination, but this is a city of surprises.

Lately, the sounds of construction shake me from my slumber. Two major buildings are rising from the concrete right outside my windows and if that wasn’t enough, a multi-year subway renovation project has recently added to the chaos on my already clamorous street. I had been awake just long enough to wash, brush my teeth, pee, put on multiple layers of running gear, have a small cup of strong, cold coffee, pee again, find my keys and headphones, tie my Ghost 10’s, and slip, with my own unique interpretation of “quietly,” out into the deserted hall. The irony of my furtive exit tickled me, as a chorus of pile drivers out in the street rhythmically mocked my stealth. As I waited for my music to load, diaphanous calculations seemed to float mid-air, as random thoughts wrestled with the actual number of apartments in my building. In this post-war, brick structure, full of loosely connected lives, at least two of my neighbors were starting their day exactly when I choose to begin mine. I wondered how tactical the logistics of people’s morning routines could be. I marveled how often diverse faces joined an already occupied elevator, but always entered with a surprised expression. In the rare case that they weren’t looking down at their shoes, their faces never really disguised their disgust at not having the car to themselves. I sometimes used eye contact as a weapon to give me the advantage in these uncomfortable situations.

 

After what seemed like an eternity, an uneventful ride in a familiar empty car deposited me in a slightly more familiar, non-descript vestibule on ground level. Here, on every other day, I got my first close encounter with the weather and entertained my first analysis of the appropriateness of my choice of outfit. Of course, I knew without question, that if my selection was incorrect, my accepting nature would not allow me to return upstairs for a re-visitation of today’s wardrobe, even when I felt tarred and feathered. Instead, I would push on down to the river, cloaked in stubbornness. I would complete my routine, and reason that any suffering that I experienced, whether from excessive heat or cold, would be a just punishment for my miscalculations. I tended to excuse myself for the invisibility of the wind, but I quickly learned the hard way, that the shelter of the surrounding buildings on my trek outbound was temporary, and as soon as I crossed under the elevated FDR Drive, it was simply me and the Elements.

 

My warm up consisted of the aforementioned, carbon copy stroll through my housing complex and out to the East River. This takes roughly 8 minutes. On week days it is quiet and sometimes almost deserted. There might be a dog walker, or a cluster of them. They are rarely walking. I might see a runner, or two. I’ll zig zag through folks heading off to work, their heads down in that classic urban pose, buried in private thought and oblivious to my presence. Depending on how early I get started, you might see maintenance workers, school children or delivery people. I rarely see all of this at once, but I always see Security! I pass a security office, a security booth (two, actually, one always empty!) security vehicles with varied wheel arrangements, blue security light posts and, hopefully, Freddie, the Security Guard, astride his Segway,

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER 2

The run north, and back to my starting point, was always a test of will. Strangely, on the return, in good weather, the sun was my enemy and the wind was its ally. Some days, the combination of the two would be a conspiracy that although not ultimately victorious, would take its toll and inflict palpable damage to my ultimate goal of a good pace and a chest devoid of pounding. Occasionally I would sport my Lahaina Divers ball cap to protect my eyes from the blinding sun. The price I would pay would be in salty, profuse sweat and the perception of poorer aerodynamics that my unadorned, thinning hairline theoretically provided. I usually weighed these factors into my decision to go hatless or capped off. I prefer the purity of a simple, unassuming look when I run. It’s one thing to be one of the older participants of this morning ritual. It’s another thing to draw attention to this fact. I enjoy the anonymity of my pursuits and the sense of accomplishment with minimal fanfare.

As I emerged from the shadow of the Williamsburg Bridge, something caused me to look up river. I always try to focus up ahead on the trail and not down at my feet. This is the way to ride a horse and I have adopted this tactic in my running. It seems to make the miles fly by a little easier and there is a sense of progress when you reach a distant landmark and choose your next target. It also allows me to pick out a figure in the distance to use as a marker for keeping pace, or as a slowly bobbing buoy for me to overtake and pass.

A large tanker was approaching down the middle of the waterway. This is a very common sight. The boat traffic on this side of the island was varied and upbeat. I often ran parallel to the many ferries, NYPD harbor units and pleasure craft but didn’t pay too much attention to their details as doing so messed with my hard earned form. Turning my head for too long while I was moving at a comfortable pace fought my natural rhythm and I needed every part of my aged carcass to be in sync to have a successful outing. Even the occasional sighting of seaplanes had become less riveting than in previous years, although watching them take off and land on the shimmering river seemed fantastic and out of place on this narrow strip between the boroughs.

The tanker was enormous, riding high and proud in the water. It’s course was deliberate. The hull was cloaked in a weathered coat of blue. The color reminded me of the Whip, an old carnival ride that visited my Queens neighborhood as a boy. I sometimes wondered where these leviathans were coming from. It seemed less unusual to see a ship of this size heading up the East River down near the Navy Yard and below the bridges where the river opened up.

As a young boy, the Brooklyn Navy Yard was in my backyard, so seeing ships of this size was not the least bit surprising. My grandfather owned two buildings, just blocks from where the big ships were built and outfitted. One building was the home to his street level cabinet shop. I have fond but somewhat cloudy memories of the mystical adventures I had there as a child. Above the shiny aluminum cabinets were shelves that sometimes were full of homemade sour pickles and tomatoes. My father always seemed to leave with at least one jar. For several years, my grandfather raised canaries. These same shelves vibrated with colorful, jumping creatures, dressed in yellows and oranges. Wonderful, melodic songs filled the shop. There were cages on three sides bordering the old tin ceiling. Ironically, two birds that we were given to take home were awash in the same colors as the military ships we saw down the block. After generations of cross breeding, some of the canaries were losing their brightly colored plumage and masqueraded as sparrows, in shades of brown and gray.  Thinking back, we probably were given the drab couple because they were unsellable. I remember loving them, nonetheless.

Sometimes I felt like an outsider, as we were living in the midst of a Hasidic neighborhood. Our extended family contingent was assimilated into the fabric of middle class society in this part of Brooklyn in the early fifties. My mother would tell the story of the day she was watching me and my friend, Chaimey, a Hasidic boy, playing in our yard. I always sensed that I was a little “different” from the boys on the block and was sometimes excluded. Being surrounded by cousins tempered the long term effects of this exclusion. On this particular day, Chaimey  must have perpetrated some minor act I wasn’t happy with and as the story goes, I hit him forcefully and squarely on the head with my metal toy hammer. I can still see my Mother’s smirk when she would recall the details about how she saw the lump on his head lifting his yarmulke as she ran to his aid…

 

My uncle owned the local auto repair garage down the block. We knew everyone. This corner in Brooklyn was ours. Aunts and Uncles lived above the brightly lit store. Each family unit occupied their own floor. Diagonally across the intersection of Bedford and Rutledge, Granddad’s other brownstone housed my family on the parlor floor, and those of two other Aunts up those narrow flights of stairs. I was surrounded by the warmth of cousins and assorted familiar neighborhood characters. Freddie the barber was next door. Herbie and Sorrel welcomed us into their luncheonette across the street as if it were ours. I had my first egg cream…

 

There it was again.

A brief flash along the rail amidships.

I thought little of it until, as if on cue, two strides later, there were two more. Staccato this time.

That must have been what caught my eye and broke my trance.

My gait suddenly felt awkward.

 

 

 

CHAPTER 3

 

 

There were mornings that the river was quiet. The gray green strip, whose movement was barely perceptible, appeared as a sheet of dark glass that reflected the growing development on the Brooklyn side of the dark liquid border. Fertilized by increased prosperity and waves of immigrant labor, the landscape along the eastern shore wore a chameleon’s skin. I wondered where the creatives, who were symbolic of this neighborhood, found the money to inhabit its picturesque streets. An occasional ferry would add a grace note to the sleepy rhythm. This rhythm seemed more a creation of the breeze, than a disturbance of the hypnotic slow dance of minimal waterborne traffic. On these early sorties, I sometimes felt like the somnambulist, who functioned in his reverie, finding his way unscathed, solely relying on the confidence in his knowledge, muscle memory, and proven familiarity of his phantom world.

This was not one of those days.

The river was alive. It resembled an old washboard, the kind you only see in black and white movies or in the faint memories of your grandmother’s basement. A large tanker navigated the center of the causeway, its trail a striped train. A faded crimson tugboat steadily urged an unusual gray barge upstream. It was undaunted in its stubborn struggle against the current and seemed to hesitate slightly as it crossed the rougher water emanating from the stern of the tanker. The conning tower of the tug floated uncomfortably high above its deserted deck and looked like it would topple the small craft if it wasn’t so focused on the job that drove it forward. The stalwart craft proceeded, a miniature juggernaut, undiscouraged by the forces that were mere insects to it’s assigned task. The barge was fitted with a few rows of seats. They were empty now. I thought that a sad waste. It would have been the perfect location to watch the triumph of the crimson tug.

A baker’s dozen of geese caught my eye as they flew in formation, suddenly diving down towards the river. They skimmed just inches from the surface, gracefully crossing a ribbon of wake. I watched them as I ran. I expected them to break the line of water, perhaps with breakfast in their beaks. This was not to happen.

 

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER 4

Today began with nothing out of the ordinary. I lingered a bit over my cup of Sumatra dark roast. It was a great discovery after countless pots of Mocha Java. I briefly wondered if it really was from the island of Java, or just coined “ Java.” On the ride down, I was joined by two NYU students who were both buried in their phones. They were silent until, as if on cue, soft giggling emanated from both at once. I wondered if they were texting each other as I exited the elevator, leaving them to travel the last stop conspiratorially together.

The sidewalk was damp. It must have rained during the night. I fumbled with one of my many music apps until finally settling on spending the next hour cozily wrapped in the comforting warmth of the British Invasion. As the Honeycombs contemplated their rights, I set off towards the river.

I waited for the light to turn green as several yellow taxis jockeyed for position as they approached the intersection where I stood. A woman in red with a frisky little dog appeared in my periphery and as if we saw the starting flag, our trio briskly crossed, three abreast, ignoring the impatient cabbies. On the other side, I watched the couple walk north, studying each other as if in deep conversation. They passed a homeless man who was part of the small group of residents that inhabited the sheltered area under the highway. I wondered if the woman in red was explaining their plight to her tethered companion. Pausing to start my running app, I waited for the GPS to come alive, acknowledged the blinking blue dot, zipped up my jacket, shifted into gear, and motored south towards the Lady.

I casually started out, tuning in to my body as I ran slightly uphill and slowly established my pace. As the path flattened out, I carefully passed a young couple in matching neon running shoes. They were walking. I was feeling good. I exchanged smiles with a woman pushing a stroller as she ran towards me right before the trail narrowed for a short stretch between a mysterious, barbed wire surrounded facility and the East River Drive. Happy that I wasn’t sharing the Narrows with the stroller lady or the strollers, I leapt over a few puddles, moved right to avoid an aggressive cyclist and secured my hat against the gusts from the oncoming traffic just a few feet away beyond the fence.

Exiting the Narrows, I passed a large dumpster and veered left onto the well  maintained path along the river. Several runners appeared in front of me as the path straightened out and the portrait of today’s run started to develop. An encouraging voice in my headphones alerted me that I was half a mile into my journey.

My gait quickened as it usually does at this point. Concentrating on how my body was feeling at this moment, I accelerated to another notch on the Old Man Scale for the long straightaway to the one mile cue and my next landmark. At this point of the Greenway path, the lane closest to the East River becomes a metal bridge that crosses over a small indentation in the shore and you can run straight on the short metal bridge or veer right on the paved trail and run the half circle around the small inlet to rejoin the main route. Depending on the tidal cycle, sometimes this resembles a pool full of water and sometimes there is a visible slope of jetty -like boulders piling up from the waterline to the pedestrian railings. Debris often collects in this pool, with wooden beams being a common site. Sometimes they tire of floating and sun themselves on the adjacent rocks. I tend to avoid the bridge when it is wet or icy, but have gotten more confident running across the glistening grating as the entries in my log grow.

This design element of the river walk repeats again right before you reach the Williamsburg Bridge. As I look to the south I see flashing red lights and what appears to be the gathering of a small crowd a few tenths of a mile towards the bridge. After a few more strides I see that there is a wavering barrier of yellow tape stretched across my projected route across the second metal span. Not knowing what’s up, nor being surprised by the tape, I mentally adjust my anticipated route to the less direct half round. I have often seen similar tape along my route due to the various ongoing maintenance and improvement projects that the city undertakes for its citizens, so I am not that concerned.

As I start to process what I am seeing, I realize this is something different. A police boat sits low in the water. It’s blinking beacon appears intermittently as it rises and falls behind the railing. Several onlookers are gathered along the half round. Two police vehicles, cherries blazing, form a perimeter around the detour making this part of the route impassible. I slowed down to assess my options. I see what looks like a ladder leaning inside the rail that reaches down to the jetty whose slick black rocks were slowly coming into view. At first I only saw the tops of some heads, emanating from dirty neon stripes. Several were hooded. They appeared to be removing something from the water. It was at that point that I knew that the sound that was in my head wasn’t inspired by the Mersey. It was the whine of an ambulance approaching from under the Williamsburg Bridge. I inched as close as possible to a vantage point and saw what appeared to be a body. Three men struggled to pull it onto the rocky slope. It was partially covered in a wrinkled tarp, but the dangling leg and exposed foot were sporting an unmistakable pattern.

This being New York City, I catalogued as much as I could, adjusted my route back around the tennis courts, and then continued south across the shadows under the massive gray structure towards my halfway point.