The events in the following story took place a little less than one month before September 11, 2001. After that morning of crumbled steel, chalk-faced survivors and those not remotely fortunate, I've found it nearly impossible to convince myself that my story -- or any story unrelated to the aftermath of mourning and death -- might matter. It is harder still to believe that my small act of non-complacence -- one that resulted in nothing but the discovery of a dead man, dead for hours -- is anything but meaningless after hundreds of professional heroes died making their livings. And, in truth, my story and my actions amount mostly to zero. But I can't shake the feeling that, a month before the onset of our modern madness, an image of a stiff corpse under a bush in Central Park had hold of my dreams; and that now, along with airplane noses feeding explosions, and building-shaped columns of dust that held for a moment before joining the breeze, this August morning image matters, a year later, for me.
•
I, my sister Leila and Erin, Leila's friend, are sitting on our stuffed backpacks, celebrating the arrival of the sun by sharing some Poland Spring and bits of a muffin still stuck to the folds of its wrapper. The voice of a police on a loudspeaker has just urged us to move from the sidewalk on Central Park West and form a line inside the park. Free tickets for a Chekov play full of famous faces may await us at the end of the line. We've been here for at least 20 minutes, and despite the retarding influences of alcohol, marijuana and 21 hours without sleep, I realize it's time to make myself aware of my surroundings. Some people goof on polka-dot inflatable chairs; a woman shows strangers optimal squatting postures for pissing into public toilets. There's a couple curled in a sleeping bag, sleeping and smiling about it and each other. There's a bush. Under the bush, there's denim and a black head.
People argue about their places in line: "You walked faster than we did when you came in, but we were before you. Just ask that guy."
There he is again. He's bald, a shave-job, shiny. I hadn't noticed. Some curly-haired man with a crooked nose and a spiral notebook paces the length of the line, trying to secure order in his private world by taking names and numbering them according to place. We're behind 450, we learn, and they've only got 400 tickets per day. We debate staying. There's the guy, still there, and I swear he hasn't moved a millimeter. I don't think his chest is moving. But there's at least 50 people closer to him than we are, and they'd notice, right? I don't know. He's probably homeless, drunk and lightly unconscious. Maybe even crazy. Don't bother. But his chest's not moving, I think.
I won't be complacent. I am the hero. Already excited, I walk over, lean to his neck, extend my index and middle fingers and start scanning for that slight bulge of the jugular. I become viscerally aware that there's a small pistol lying near his head. It's tiny, really, for a gun.
Fuck this hero shit. He's not dead, just drunk, and if I disturb him, I'm going to be killed. But it'll be worse. He'll shoot me in the testicles first -- just because -- and then he'll put one in my brain and I'll be dead. Part of me notices the excited flies laying eggs in his scalp.
But I ignore that part until the first cop on the scene shakes him and discovers that he's too stiff to be alive. "He's dead, right?" Yes, comes the officer's nod, and I must be the one who found him.
•
For the rest of the day, I am reminded of both of these facts on numerous occasions, by numerous people with notepads. The first one is a white and highly excitable cop. He wants my phone number and address. "It's 9-- West End Avenue, New York, N.Y., 10025. But that's my parents house, and I'll be leaving for school in September." He fumbles with his notepad. Then he can't find a good page. Now his damn pen has gone missing. As I dictate the information, it goes into his notes in a hyperactive scrawl. "That's fine," he says of my planned move in September. "Just don't go anywhere right now."
The second man is a lot calmer about things. He wonders about my motivation. I tell him that I noticed a chest not rising and that I've been trained to look for such things, and that I'm the hero so I thought I'd go and be the savior, too.
"Hey Jimmy," he says, curling his lips and showing teeth under his moustache, "come meet Perry Mason."
I show him my teeth and ask for a cigarette, which he's happy to offer. Someone in the crowd suggests that smoking is bad. I tilt my eyebrows towards the bush and suggest that there's death over there, so we might as well have some of it over here, too. The second cop wants my address. He asks for my license, just in case I might be the murderer and lying about everything.
But I'm not the murderer, and I'm set to be the guy that cooperates and does the right thing and so eagerly hand him the plastic. This one has no difficulty finding his notepad and pen, and he methodically writes my information, drawing every letter and number in definite block capitals, reading each line for confirmation and checking the whole thing more than twice. This is unbalanced. I give the guy the once over. His last name is Soto. He's a few years past 30, smokes Reds and has a good number of medals below his badge, but he's wearing an aged face, blue uniform and accompanying utility-belt -- trappings of a beat cop for life.
•
I'm moving up in the ranks, and now I'm talking to a giant detective. He's pushing 6'6" and wearing a brown tweed suit that's a little too small around the shoulders, high above the waist and short in the sleeves. But it's well kept: a great buy at the neighborhood thrift store. He wants to see my driver's license.
I describe where I'd seen the dead man and what he'd looked like when I'd seen him. I tell him all about how I'd noticed something human in the bushes and half-knew the facts in an instant--that he was dead, and violently -- and then went over to make sure and saw a gun and turned yellow, how I'd scampered around the area searching for a policeman and found only people waiting in line. One had a cell-phone, and that's where the cops came in, and I hustled back to my fellow civilians to tell them that everything was under control, the police were on their way and, yes, I was the one who found him. All of it goes down in his notepad, and he reads back the details to make sure I don't forget them.
•
I have reached the point of ecstatic jitters. I am Dan, the hero amongst hundreds who chose to be more than a bystander, a real stand-up guy. I'm talking to police and for once, they aren't looking in my pockets and socks for sacks of weed. Real detectives with real badges are asking me important questions and I'm the center of the world, so forget the fact that I turned puss at the sight of a tiny gun -- this is a great day for everybody!
I lie in the dirt and contort my body to show the detective how the dead man had been positioned when I'd found him. I'm on my side, one arm tucked beneath my body, the other out and under my head. My hand is bent at the wrist, and I'm trying to remember the position of his legs. That's all nice and good, but he just wanted to know where the gun had been relative to the body -- the man with the crooked nose and spiral notebook had picked it up, see, so they had no idea. "The gun was next to him, either on a knit skull-cap or on the ground-side flap of his open denim jacket, but sorry, sir, I can't quite recall."
He thinks that another look might make things easier. "It's a pristine site," he says, "so let's try and not disturb the branches and grass." The detective and I walk back to the bush, taking a wide, roundabout approach, moving slowly as if stealth made a difference and talking the whole time.
After my second close-up of the body, I'm to stick around and not talk to the press. "I wouldn't dream of it, officer. I don't like the press."
The man from the New York Post with the notepad has curly, dark-brown hair and sleepless circles beneath his eyes. I'm sitting on my backpack just outside the police line, cupping my hands under my chin and shifting my glance from the grass to the cirrus-streaks in the sky, trying hard to make my body language and face suggest confusion and sorrow, and it works. He comes with his notepad and cameraman, and he's going to get some quotes from me, and I'm going to sound profound and intelligent, and tomorrow it'll be in the Post with my name and, if I can look disturbed enough, maybe even my picture. The Post duo has just been to the scene of a hit-and-run in the Bronx, but it was just some dented metal and no casualties, so here they are. I tell him that I noticed a small caliber pistol lying near the man's head.
•
I think I am going stale. It's the two grams of weed and seven shots of Tequila before a sleepless night and then the dead guy and the morsel of vomit that keeps rising and leaving its taste on my tongue. I would pass out, but a pit of manic excitement is juicing with the undigested substances in my stomach. I am the man of the day, after all, and there are more people who want to hear my story. When a black lady with perfect shoes approaches holding a notepad, I become falsely indignant.
"Look, I'm not talking to the press."
But she's a detective. I mumble something about how I figured that she was a reporter by her exquisite style, but, really, I assumed women were the News, not the Cops. I like this lady; she speaks in assured tones, holds her eye-contact, and promises Seagull tickets for my whole family. She takes the information off my license and tells me not to leave. And so I stay, sitting on my bag right outside the police line, playing with the straps or holding my hair above the temples with both hands, waiting for more attention.
Men clothed in white show up. They're wearing one-piece sterile suits that are intentionally too large and the ends at the ankles and wrists fold like untucked linen. They lay out a sheet, white and crinkled like their costumes, then walk to the corpse. One stands at each limb, and they lift him. I look away. I turn back. He's clear of the bushes, on the sheet, and now it's apparent that his flesh has gone stiff: his arm juts from his torso in a limp heil -- elbow bent, fingers clenched -- that last flick of pain before final relaxation.
•
The Seagull ends with the sound of a shot and a suicide. The stage darkens and then brightens, and the actors enter for bows and applause. As they exit for the second time, the excited emotions of the day resurface. Leaving the theater, I walk down the path and point my friends and family towards the place where I had found the corpse. The police tape is still there. Everything else has been swept clean -- the body gone and the blood soaked into the dirt. In a few days, the tape will be gone, too, and the spot will simply be a place in the bushes near some trees, just off a horse path in Central Park -- the place a thousand people a day jog on their daily run, where bums piss and horses shit. It will be a place where anyone any day might pass and never know that on some August morning, someone with no name was found rigid and cold -- a body in the bushes with good shoes, clean socks and flies already at work on his scalp. The only traces of any of it will be in a few people's memories and in an article in the Post, somewhere near the back or middle sections -- something with headlines about a body that thickened the plot while people waited in line for The Seagull , my name in the text and quotes around something like the actual words I'd said to a sleepy-eyed man with a notepad, about some stiff with a shot in his belly.
