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On the 8:15a commuter train to City Center

the man leans his head over laying it gentle as a landing leaf on the shoulder of the (fallen?) woman next to him

The humming of the train car gliding on the tracks blends with the mild murmuring of the morning riders and lulls the man into a feather-light slumber. He wakes again quickly when his wife shifts and her taps against his … she now beginning to drift away from the world

the eyes of Mason Joseph flutter as the brightening gray of the Portland morning gives up it’s light

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So contented with each other, as all could see their sleepy heads dropped onto each other’s shoulders. Several stops went roll on and one of the riders whispers “Look at that, Ted. Such a cute couple.” The man overhears, smiles, and his heart fills with a glowing peacefulness brought by many years of loving this beautiful person by his side.

“Almost our stop, Dear.”, the man says quietly and lifts his head. His wife raises her’s , too, and crinkles her nose then slides her finger beneath it. “Getting a cold, Hon?”, the man inquires.

“I don’t think so, ” she replies, “The air just seems to be drying up.” She is right – with the coming of a clear autumn day the moist air that had been normal seemed a memory – farther back the two actual days.

The train rolls to another stop, bringing people from the earlier spots here and dropping others there.

Boarding the train now: three young, white boys – early teens by their saggy jeans, twirled-back caps, and youthful grins. Loudly and careslessly they make their way past the couple and stood amidst the others who couldn’t find an empty to plant themselves for the next leg of this ride.

The man rose from his seat.

Swinging back and forth around a vertical pole Old Man Earl smiled to himself. He could feel tightened forearms gripping strongly to the hand-holding pole and was proud of how much strength had returned since surgery.

“I do this exercise every time I ride the train, ” Earl explained loudly, to nobody in particular. He continued take up about half of the train compartment spinning his body in a wide semicircle and still smiling.

“Lunatic.” thought Mason Joseph, who’d been considering whatever’s today’s work was destined for good or ill. Catching his glance, Old Man Earl said “Yessir! I used to weigh 260 pounds just a few months ago , and I lost about 100 pounds just doing this excercise!”, and then laughed at some unknowable joke.

Mason looked away, not wanting to be a participant in any kind of exchange with this obvious nut-case.

But the man continued his swinging ramble to no one and everyone alike. He said jovially, “I love that they make public excercise equipment available like this. We’d all be a healthier nation if we just exercised more.”

“Very impressive, ” said Mason non-committally attempting to add enough ice to the comment to convince this guy he wasn’t at all interested in his arms, or him, or much of anything really.

Earl did step back to the pole and continued his excercise – taking up the compartment – and generally (to Mason’s view) making a public annoyance of himself.

“I’m surprised he’s not bumped into those passengers he’s swinging next to,” Mason thought, “but at least he took my hint.”

But his loud diatribe continued, “Yessir! It was my birthday, it was, when I realized something needed to change. I weren’t no young man anymore, I was a bonafide senior citizen and looking over that hill wasn’t so sure I was going to enjoy the ride back down!”

Mason looked past the man , down the car to see if others were perhaps encouraging the man to keep keeping on… He met Earl’s gaze and saw something in his eyes he hadn’t seen before… HIMSELF.

A momentary fit of compassion came over Mason and he suddenly, almost involuntarily, heard himself asking “So how’d you do it?”

“Well, not by just swinging on the train, of course. Heh heh. Earl grinned and winked as he continued…

“the old-fashioned way: diet and exercise. In great gobs of moderation. It took me three years to slowely get down to my size 32 britches I wear today, but I made it important to me everyday and made it happen.

“Well , you seem healthy,” said Mason. “You live a charmed life.”

“Mister,” the older man began , “You have no idea!”

Earl pulled out the old faded photograph that he had held onto for years. He held it out as moved towards the younger man

Mason, still no fully convinced this stranger wasn’t some kind of wacko, took a chance and glanced at the photo – not really sure of what, exactly, was displayed there. He could tell it was fleshy… maybe some freaky dismembered body part? He could see that it was rounded …possibly a head or a knee? But the age and strange shaded spots prohibited any real relating to anything he’d seen before

It was only when Earl traced his finger along a line of shadows and described it for him was it made clear : He was looking at a partially healed incision , sticthed up with periodic lags and cross-scars that allowed a jagged but unerringly circular path which wound around the top and then down the sides of a human face.

“My word!” Mason exclaimed.

“Gruesome, right?” Earl grinned. “Not me at my best.”

Still jarred, both set aback and affronted Mason continued struggling to wrap his mind around what his eyes were showing him. “Y.y..your face was removed?” Mason stammered as the obvious truth still refused to surface from the depths of disbelief.
<<editors note — Alternate phrase “taken aback by the visual affront”>>

“Sure,” the Old Man Earl still grinned as pocketed the photo and said “That was the only way to get inside my skull and pull out the shrapnel.”

Slack-jawed and still trying to find a path back to the reality of the commuter train from his imaginary unreality…

Mason stood slack-jawed and staring.

He couldn’t seem to locate the grotesque and mishapen face he had just seen on the shoulders of the person standing before him. . .

“Shrapnel? ” Mason finally asked.

“Yeah,” Earl replied. “Thanks to those Russian friends who decided that Bombing the Boston Marathon was a good way to terrorize people.”

“Wow. You’re lucky to be alive.”

“Sure am! Especially considering they told me I was clincally dead three times on that operating table!”

The man once again grabbed onto the pole in the center of the train car and started swinging himself back and forth, now with more of a determined look and silently counting to himself.

Mason, the shock only starting to fade, began to consider what kind of trauma that ordeal must have brought to the man. He watched Earl’s simple motion, wondering what kind of complexity, what kind of sophistication, what kind of pure miracle made it possible for mere mortals to revive another man from death.

And on the other side of the miracle, what kind of person it would leave behind?

He looked hard and close at Earl, really attempting to look into his eyes and try to understand if he truly was some half-crazed homeless vagrant , or if – as he now began to seem – just a guy who’d suffered an extraordinary detriment.