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Sunset came before 5:00 at that time of year. The ferry moved peacefully through the dusk toward the Saint George dock. I was standing in my bulky and bulbous costume at the front of the boat, enjoying the stiff breeze and thinking that I had done a good job of putting myself off the scent for an afternoon.

I had killed a man that day, and the amoral stench of that action hung about me. There were sixty-six hundred-dollar bills in my right front pocket, proof that Stuart Braun was going to have to deal with me sooner or later—if he survived.

A short man with a broad chest came out on the mostly abandoned deck and stared at me for all of forty-five seconds; then he turned away.

Maybe I looked like someone he knew.

In Saint George I made a pay phone call, then boarded the commuter train and sat at the south end of the center car, looking back and wondering why I felt so calm. Life was coming down on me like grain filling up an empty silo, but there I was moving backward in a modern marvel of technology. Life was like the miracle of a tiger on the hunt, only no one around me seemed to appreciate this fact.

Then the door at the far end of the car slid open, and the short white guy with the broad chest who had eyed me on the ferry came through. He wore jeans and tennis shoes, a maroon wool sweater under a loose pale green sweatshirt—its hood thrown back.

He saw me and moved with purpose toward my throne of wonder.

“You the niggah they call Cueball,” he said when he was maybe three steps off.

The other people around me moved away. All except for an older gentleman directly across the aisle. He was also white, wearing a dark blue pea coat, black work boots and pants.

I noticed the brave older gentleman while feeling a little stunned by the short stranger’s language.

I tried to remember the last time someone had called me nigger. Even my black male acquaintances had mostly given up that tag.

I put my right hand in a yellow pocket and stared.

“You heard me?” my antagonist asked. He was powerful, no doubt. And he was as mad as hell about something; probably had been most of his life. The only thing left to know was if he was a fool or not. There was a gun in that pocket, and I’d already proven to myself that I was unafraid to use it.

Usually when a man reaches in his pocket to threaten a would-be attacker he’s bluffing. But I have found that if you don’t say anything the threat seems more real.

“Well?” the short man said.

I said nothing.

He took a step.

“Junior,” the older man said.

The racist turned his head and saw the older man, maybe for the first time—that day.

“Ernesto,” he said, his voice trying and failing to express both anger and respect.

“You see the man doesn’t know you,” the brave oldster explained. “You see he’s about to kill you. Leave him alone. He’s not Cueball.”

The man’s words carried weight, and after a moment of contemplation, Junior decided to retrace his steps back to some other car.

When he was gone I asked Ernesto, “What was that?”

“Boy lost his girl to a black man named Cueball,” he said. “Bald, you know? Junior thinks the guy took her from him. He don’t see that the last time he put her in the hospital was the day she stopped bein’ his friend.”

“Well,” I said, “thanks for gettin’ him off me.”

“I don’t give a fuck about you, man. Junior too stupid to understand you got a real gun in there. I could see his death in the corner of your eye.”

Pleasant Plains was seventeen stops from Saint George. Ernesto went the whole way and beyond. We didn’t talk anymore, and I was on the lookout then for others who didn’t celebrate the Underground Railroad of Staten Island.

Mel was waiting at the station. Pay phones still had some use.

We walked up to each other and shook hands.

“Almost didn’t recognize you in that getup,” he observed.