Monday

The train pulled into the Daly City station, and I looked up from my book to see a Bart employee with a walkie-talkie approaching the man sitting near the door. The man wore a bright yellow sweatshirt with the hood pulled over his unkempt hair; he had the look of a homeless drunk who was passing the time by riding the trains with no particular destination in mind.

“Sir, is this your destination?” the Bart employee asked politely.

“Huh?” Yellow Sweatshirt looked about, a little dazed, before his expression fell. “No, I think I went too far.”

“Well, let’s get off here so we can have a good look at you,” the Bart man replied, and gestured towards the open doors. The walkie-talkie squawked, and he brought it to his mouth. “Yeah, don’t close the doors till we’re clear, ‘kay?”

Yellow Sweatshirt stood and slowly limped towards the door. His pants were starting to sag and he didn’t seem aware of where he was going. He wasn’t swaying, so he couldn’t have been intoxicated, but he was being careful enough about walking to catch my interest. I glanced at his feet.

His left foot was bare and covered with raw lacerations, and he was doing his best to shift his weight to his undamaged foot while the Bart man encouraged him to keep going until he’d stepped on to the train platform. I wasn’t the only one staring.

However, I was the only one worrying about what to write for my assignment due tonight. I’d already thrown out one scenario that had to do with my captain alter-ego, which involved a jungle, a bunch of marines and a weapon that was a cross between a spear and a Swiss army knife. It got too complex, however, and I was too lazy to do the necessary research, so the scene in my mind would sound right when I started describing it on paper. I was delving into Marvel Universe territory, the way things were shaping up, so the story scrap disappeared into my mental file dubbed “Unfinished Crap.”

I returned to my book, Stephen King’s On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft, and pretended that the train doors were closing and we were on our way out of the station. “It’s not that bad,” Yellow Sweatshirt said on the platform.

“Yes it is,” Bart Man countered. He lifted the walkie-talkie to his mouth again. “Yeah, he’s not in the train anymore. Go ahead.”

The usual ping sounded somewhere above us, the doors slid shut and the train began pulling away. Platform Three rushed past the dark-tinted windows and the wail of a train overrode the last glimpse of Yellow Sweatshirt and Bart Man as I headed for my own destination.

Suddenly, wondering about where those foot lacerations had come from sounded like something better to occupy my mind with rather than stuffy homework.