This is the stretch of the expressway which is depressed and I look up, as I always do, approaching the chicken-wire pedestrian overpass, expecting to see, as I always have, nobody crossing. But there he is, back-lit by the end of the day into which I am driving, a small black X, hanging. And at first I think someone’s got a jump on Halloween, like one of those straw-stuffed dummies dangling from a gutter with the ladder kicked sideways beneath them, because X-Man doesn’t move, he just clings there, looking down upon us, poor, lost voyagers that we are, some of us already turning on headlights as the line of the hour between light and dark begins to blur.
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How Christ-like he looks, or like the shadow of a Christ, dying. A forsaken smudge of God, splayed against the cage of deity, sacrificing himself for the souls of the metallic river of sheep which flows, not knowing that which we do, beneath him, not knowing that which we do not do: look up this one evening when he makes himself known—Here, take me, take me—watching over us even as he fades into the twilight of the autumn of our lives, not knowing what it is that he bestows on us as we cut and swerve and tailgate one another. It’s a miracle we are not all killed, that everyone makes it to the football game, the grocery store, the movie theater, aerobics class, home in time to walk the dog, feed the kids, hug someone. O bless us X-Man, for we have eyes but do not see.
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Dustin Hoffman arrives too late, crucifies himself upon the church window. A blatant symbolist image on the part of the filmmaker. But not so for Hoffman’s character, who suddenly cries out Elaine! the glass pattering like cold autumn rain beneath his fists, Elaine! expecting her, in all her bridal finery, to turn and look up as she’s always done before, to rip his name from the very bottom of her lungs, the very pit of her soul, Bennnnnnnnn!!!! But this time she doesn’t. This time she’s determined to escape the director’s awkward ending. This time the organ plays her out on the arm of what she’s married herself to, and there is no bus in this rewrite, only the limo, waiting. She gets in, laughing, knows now that all she has to do is never look up. And we cut/
/out of the depths of her pillow, Katherine Ross stares into the darkness of the cruise ship stateroom, the Christ of her character’s choosing snoring soundly beside her. Cold rain patters the porthole. Camera rolling, the director captures that awkward look anyway.
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The chicken-wire cage is warm between your fingers, a parting gift from a dying sun. You don’t know why you have chosen this particular evening, this particular spot to stop. What was it you had set out to do? Had you intended to cross on over? One side is very much like the other, after all. Darkness begets darkness. Below you, the cars. What are they afraid of? That you’ll throw something? A rock? A bottle? Your hands grip the wire more tightly. That you’ll jump? If you did—if you could—would they stop? Could they save you? That car, there. A dim, featureless face glancing up. He would—
but no, he passes right on beneath you, flowing with the rest of the sheep. You hang until all the car lights are on, until all the wire Xes slice deep into your flesh. Cigarettes. What you had gone out for. You turn up your collar against a sudden autumn chill. As you cross on over you listen for that tiniest of little pattering sounds, your life’s blood dripping, fingertips to pavement. It’s all that keeps you from fading into
Bio: Robert L. Dean, Jr.
