Late one night, on a taxi stand on the 20 block of Charles Street in Boston, I watched in fascination as a man on a bicycle made an impulsive decision that quite nearly cost him his life.
I have no idea who the man was, or where he was from or where he was going. I have no idea if he was a good man or a bad man or a brave man or if he was just a fool. I only know that he was riding a bike and that I almost saw him die.
Back then, (this was summertime in 1975), the traffic flow on Charles Street poured north from Bay Village and Park Square and the lower end of Boylston Street, and carried on between the parks and clear through the intersection where Beacon Street meets Charles. Nowadays, the street direction ends there, and you are forced either west on Beacon towards Kenmore, or east up the hill. But back then it still carried all the way along the bottom of Beacon Hill until it emptied at the gates of the Charles Street Jail, and Buzzy’s Roast Beef, and Phillips Drug, and the mess that to this day is still known as Charles Circle.
As such, it was a direct and useful route for motorists trying to make their way out of town. Useful, at least, in the night. During the day it was clumsy and slow moving, and at rush hour it choked, but at night it moved briskly, a quick out to the North End, Charlestown, the bridges, the tunnel, the airport, East Cambridge and Somerville, and all places North and East. In either case it was a natural draw, a natural conduit, for all kinds of people with all kinds of agendas, as evidenced on this particular night.
Because it provided access to so many routes to so many other different places, the 20 block of Charles Street between Beacon and Chestnut made a perfect location for a cab stand. At the time, I was a driver for Boston Cab, and spent many an evening sitting on that stand, waiting my turn and killing time with other idle drivers. From that stand we could easily field the lucrative radio calls for customers all over Back Bay, the West End, and in particular, Beacon Hill. And for a night driver it had one additional advantage...it seemed safe. In that neighborhood of snobs, Brahmin, and miserly preppies, the ever present threat of armed robbery always seemed at the very least, a little more remote.
So as I sat there in my darkened cab on that warm summer night, my windows open, smoking cigarettes and staring into space, the last thing on my mind was that I’d be witness to the rapid unfolding of an armed assault.
It started with noise, chirping tires and a startling horn and a blur of movement on the edge of my peripheral vision. And then there were voices.
I looked across the street in time to see a sedan starting to accelerate rapidly down Charles Street toward the light at Chestnut. Trailing behind that car a twenty-something man was wobbling along unsteadily on a bicycle. The immediate impression I got was that there had been a near collision between the two, that the cyclist had barely been able to stay upright, and that his resulting rage had instantly boiled over, and in force. “FUCK YOU YOU FUCKING ASSHOLE!” he screamed at the very top of his lungs. Tree bursts of profanity echoed off the buildings and the street signs in the humid summer air. He rose on the balls of his feet up on his pedals and put out his hand with his arm and middle finger extended out as far as they could go...
...A point in space where it should all have ended.
...But it didn’t.
25 yards down the block, the sedan took a nosedive to a halt in the middle of the empty intersection. White back-up bulbs lit up like angry eyes widening, and suddenly it was in reverse, swerving it’s way rearward, back to block the forward progress of the cyclist. The cyclist stopped and waited. By now, everyone involved had to know...this was all going someplace very, very bad.
...And I had a front row seat.
The driver got out and turned to stare. He did nothing else. He didn’t have to.
From the passenger seat a second man emerged. He stepped away from the car, and as he did, he pulled something from a shadow at his waist. ...A huge knife, holding it up so that in the streetlight it was clearly visible and menacing.
But saving the worst for last was the the third guy. He seemed to pour out from the back seat, moving in reverse, unfolding slowly but fluidly, pulling something along with him. It was a high powered rifle, a hunting rifle, which he raised to his shoulder, turning and leveling the barrel, and his aim, directly at the bicycle rider, who now stood frozen in a wash of yellow street light, and fear.
It was if every molecule of air had been sucked from the area and into our lungs.
“You got a fuckin’ PROBLEM?” came the question. But there was no response. I waited for what I expected at that moment to be a murder. But it didn’t happen. Five or six excruciating seconds, and then the cyclist, quietly and cautiously walking a tightrope of body language, making no sudden movements, no subtle disrespectful slights, reversed his direction and rode away. The men stood for a moment, then quietly got in their car and continued down Charles towards the drugstore and the beef joint and the jail. I exhaled and looked around and it was only then that I realized that I alone had been witness to these events, barely thirty feet away. No one else had walked or driven by. It had all come and gone so fast, but only I had seen it.
Slowly the images melted away and the night restored itself to normal. An hour or so passed and my senses relaxed and eventually, at some point that night, I stopped shaking. But I never forgot it. I’ve thought about the scene many times over the years, and wondered to myself just who among us was the luckiest person on the 20 block of Charles Street that warm summer night.
Was it the cyclist, whose moment of indignation brought him within a trigger pull of losing his life? A young man who stood in the crosshairs of a strangers rage, and who most likely had held his own life and his own death in his own indignant hands?
Was it the gunman, who stood so close to a murderous act that for a moment, it became him? What last flicker of restraint had saved him from killing a total stranger? Would the killing act have been his first? His next? Would it have been his last? Would it have destroyed him along with the man at the other end of the barrel?
And what about me? What bullet had I just dodged? What hell had I just avoided? Watching another man die? Knowing for the rest of my life that I had just let it happen? Bearing sole witness to a capital crime? Spending years giving testimony, years on a therapist’s couch, years being afraid.
Because...just who were these people? Were they drunks? Career criminals? Madmen? Were they punks just kidding? Were they mobsters? Mullins? McGonagles? Winter Hill?
Would they have haunted me? Hunted me? Threatened me? Killed me?
Those are somethings that I’ll never know.
All I’ll ever know is that for a couple of brief minutes on a warm summer night on a cab stand now long gone, under circumstances I could never have expected and for reasons I could never have imagined, three total strangers, ...one dangerous, one foolish, one naive, ...each took a turn, with a title he’d earned,
...as the luckiest guy on the block.
© 2011 J. Mark Rast
I have no idea who the man was, or where he was from or where he was going. I have no idea if he was a good man or a bad man or a brave man or if he was just a fool. I only know that he was riding a bike and that I almost saw him die.
Back then, (this was summertime in 1975), the traffic flow on Charles Street poured north from Bay Village and Park Square and the lower end of Boylston Street, and carried on between the parks and clear through the intersection where Beacon Street meets Charles. Nowadays, the street direction ends there, and you are forced either west on Beacon towards Kenmore, or east up the hill. But back then it still carried all the way along the bottom of Beacon Hill until it emptied at the gates of the Charles Street Jail, and Buzzy’s Roast Beef, and Phillips Drug, and the mess that to this day is still known as Charles Circle.
As such, it was a direct and useful route for motorists trying to make their way out of town. Useful, at least, in the night. During the day it was clumsy and slow moving, and at rush hour it choked, but at night it moved briskly, a quick out to the North End, Charlestown, the bridges, the tunnel, the airport, East Cambridge and Somerville, and all places North and East. In either case it was a natural draw, a natural conduit, for all kinds of people with all kinds of agendas, as evidenced on this particular night.
Because it provided access to so many routes to so many other different places, the 20 block of Charles Street between Beacon and Chestnut made a perfect location for a cab stand. At the time, I was a driver for Boston Cab, and spent many an evening sitting on that stand, waiting my turn and killing time with other idle drivers. From that stand we could easily field the lucrative radio calls for customers all over Back Bay, the West End, and in particular, Beacon Hill. And for a night driver it had one additional advantage...it seemed safe. In that neighborhood of snobs, Brahmin, and miserly preppies, the ever present threat of armed robbery always seemed at the very least, a little more remote.
So as I sat there in my darkened cab on that warm summer night, my windows open, smoking cigarettes and staring into space, the last thing on my mind was that I’d be witness to the rapid unfolding of an armed assault.
It started with noise, chirping tires and a startling horn and a blur of movement on the edge of my peripheral vision. And then there were voices.
I looked across the street in time to see a sedan starting to accelerate rapidly down Charles Street toward the light at Chestnut. Trailing behind that car a twenty-something man was wobbling along unsteadily on a bicycle. The immediate impression I got was that there had been a near collision between the two, that the cyclist had barely been able to stay upright, and that his resulting rage had instantly boiled over, and in force. “FUCK YOU YOU FUCKING ASSHOLE!” he screamed at the very top of his lungs. Tree bursts of profanity echoed off the buildings and the street signs in the humid summer air. He rose on the balls of his feet up on his pedals and put out his hand with his arm and middle finger extended out as far as they could go...
...A point in space where it should all have ended.
...But it didn’t.
25 yards down the block, the sedan took a nosedive to a halt in the middle of the empty intersection. White back-up bulbs lit up like angry eyes widening, and suddenly it was in reverse, swerving it’s way rearward, back to block the forward progress of the cyclist. The cyclist stopped and waited. By now, everyone involved had to know...this was all going someplace very, very bad.
...And I had a front row seat.
The driver got out and turned to stare. He did nothing else. He didn’t have to.
From the passenger seat a second man emerged. He stepped away from the car, and as he did, he pulled something from a shadow at his waist. ...A huge knife, holding it up so that in the streetlight it was clearly visible and menacing.
But saving the worst for last was the the third guy. He seemed to pour out from the back seat, moving in reverse, unfolding slowly but fluidly, pulling something along with him. It was a high powered rifle, a hunting rifle, which he raised to his shoulder, turning and leveling the barrel, and his aim, directly at the bicycle rider, who now stood frozen in a wash of yellow street light, and fear.
It was if every molecule of air had been sucked from the area and into our lungs.
“You got a fuckin’ PROBLEM?” came the question. But there was no response. I waited for what I expected at that moment to be a murder. But it didn’t happen. Five or six excruciating seconds, and then the cyclist, quietly and cautiously walking a tightrope of body language, making no sudden movements, no subtle disrespectful slights, reversed his direction and rode away. The men stood for a moment, then quietly got in their car and continued down Charles towards the drugstore and the beef joint and the jail. I exhaled and looked around and it was only then that I realized that I alone had been witness to these events, barely thirty feet away. No one else had walked or driven by. It had all come and gone so fast, but only I had seen it.
Slowly the images melted away and the night restored itself to normal. An hour or so passed and my senses relaxed and eventually, at some point that night, I stopped shaking. But I never forgot it. I’ve thought about the scene many times over the years, and wondered to myself just who among us was the luckiest person on the 20 block of Charles Street that warm summer night.
Was it the cyclist, whose moment of indignation brought him within a trigger pull of losing his life? A young man who stood in the crosshairs of a strangers rage, and who most likely had held his own life and his own death in his own indignant hands?
Was it the gunman, who stood so close to a murderous act that for a moment, it became him? What last flicker of restraint had saved him from killing a total stranger? Would the killing act have been his first? His next? Would it have been his last? Would it have destroyed him along with the man at the other end of the barrel?
And what about me? What bullet had I just dodged? What hell had I just avoided? Watching another man die? Knowing for the rest of my life that I had just let it happen? Bearing sole witness to a capital crime? Spending years giving testimony, years on a therapist’s couch, years being afraid.
Because...just who were these people? Were they drunks? Career criminals? Madmen? Were they punks just kidding? Were they mobsters? Mullins? McGonagles? Winter Hill?
Would they have haunted me? Hunted me? Threatened me? Killed me?
Those are somethings that I’ll never know.
All I’ll ever know is that for a couple of brief minutes on a warm summer night on a cab stand now long gone, under circumstances I could never have expected and for reasons I could never have imagined, three total strangers, ...one dangerous, one foolish, one naive, ...each took a turn, with a title he’d earned,
...as the luckiest guy on the block.
© 2011 J. Mark Rast
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