Sleepers

Then, halfway up the block, the vendor still on my trail, I saw the hot dog cart being pushed toward Eighth Avenue by my friends. They were hunched low and moving easy, walking within the shadows of the arches of the old Madison 'Square Garden, as calm and steady as if they were out walking a dog.

The vendor saw them too.

'Stop them!' he shouted, not breaking stride. 'Stop them! Stop the thieves!'

In a neighborhood where silence in the face of crime is a virtue and blindness a necessity, no one moved.

I ran as fast as burnt lungs and tired legs would permit and reached my three friends as they went past a poster a

'You're only supposed to take the hot dogs,' I said when I got to them, my hands holding a side of the cart. 'Not the wagon.'

'Now you tell us,' John said.

'Just leave it here,' I panted. 'You guys are lookin' to push somethin', push me. I can't take another step.'

'No, not here,' Michael said, pointing to our right. 'Up there. Over by the subway station.'

'The guy's comin' fast, Mikey,' John said. 'I don't think we got time to make it to the subway.'

'I got a plan,' Michael said.

I turned around and saw the vendor gaining on us by the second. 'I'm sure he's got one too,' I said, helping to lift the cart onto the sidewalk, toward the top step of the IRT subway station.

'I don't even like hot dogs,' John said.

The plan, as it turned out, was as simple and as dumb as anything we had ever done. We were to hold the cart on the top edge of the stairwell, leaning it downward, and wait for the vendor. We were to let go the second he grabbed the handles and leave the scene as he struggled to ease the cart back onto the sidewalk.

To this day, I don't know why we did it. But we would all pay a price. Everyone. All it took was a minute, but in that minute everything changed.

People who've been shot always recall the incident as if it happened to them in slow motion and that's how I'll always remember those final seconds with the hot dog cart. The action around me moved at quarter speed and the background was nothing but haze – quick hands, fleeing legs, scattered bodies, all shaped in dark, nasty blurs.

That moment arrived for me and my friends on a day and time when Mickey Mantle was crossing the plate with a home run we would have all been proud to witness.

Michael held the cart the longest, his arms bulging at the strength needed to keep it from falling down the steps. John had slipped on his side, his back against the station's wooden banister, both hands sliced by the wooden handles. Tommy fell to his knees, desperately grabbing at one of the wheels, his knees scraping concrete. I held both my hands to the base of the umbrella stand, grip tight, splashes of hot water showering my arms and face.

The vendor was a few feet behind us, on his knees, his hands spread out across his face, his eyes visible.

'It's not go

'Let it go,' Michael said.

'Don't stop now!' I said. 'We can't stop now!'

'Let it go, Shakes,' Michael urged, his voice a surrender to the inevitable. 'Let it go.'

Watching the cart tumble down the stairs was as painful as trying to keep it from going down. The noise was loud, numbing and eerie, two cars colliding on an empty street. Hot dogs, onions, sodas, ice, napkins and sauerkraut jumped out in unison, splattering against the sides of the stairwell, bouncing and smacking the front of a Florida vacation poster. One of the rear wheels flew off halfway down the landing. The umbrella stand split against the base of the stair wall.

Then came the loudest noise, one that rocked the entire subway station. It was a sound no one expected to hear.

A crunching sound of wood against bone.

It is a sound I have heard every day of my life since.

James Caldwell was a sixty-seven-year-old retired printer. He had been married to the same woman for thirty-six years, had three grown children, all daughters, and four grandchildren, three of them boys. He had spent his morning in lower Manhattan, visiting with one of those daughters, Alice, newlywed to a junior executive working for a midtown accounting firm. He had stopped in a bakery in Little Italy to buy his wife a box of her favorite pastries, which he carried in his left hand. On doctor's orders, Caldwell had turned his back on a two-pack-a-day cigarette habit less than a week earlier. He refused to give up his scotch, however, a drink he liked straight up, ice water on the side, a bowl of pretzels at the ready.

He was chewing two pieces of Juicy Fruit gum and was digging into his front pants pocket for enough loose change to buy the late edition of the Daily News when the cart landed on him, barreling in at chest level. His hands reached out to grab the sides of the wagon in a futile attempt to ward off its runaway power.

The cart was a destructive missile, taking with it all in its wake. That wake now included the body of James Caldwell, who had no bigger plans for the rest of his day than reading the sports pages.

Together, both cart and man came to rest as one, slamming against a white tile subway wall. The cart crumpled, wheels rolling off in opposite directions, handles splintered, boiling water and pieces of ice crashing on top of Caldwell's bloody head, looking no bigger than a hairless tan ball, lodged against the sharpest edge of the wagon.

The silence after the crash was as numbing as the noise during it.

We held our positions, feet cemented in place. No one spoke and three of us choked back tears. We heard the wail of sirens and prayed they were headed our way. I looked down at the wreckage and saw the lower half of Caldwell's legs twitching under the weight. Thin lines of blood mixed with dirty hot dog water to form a puddle in one corner.

The smell of excrement filtered through the air.

Michael turned to me and, for the first time since I'd known him, I saw fear on his face.

John and Tommy didn't move, their bodies trembling, faces ashen, both u

To our left, a thin, middle-aged woman, in a checkered house dress and white apron, strands of long, dark hair hiding the anger fa

'My sweet Jesus,' she shouted, turning her gaze toward us, her voice a sharp, loud, high pitch. 'What have you boys done? What in God's good name have you boys done? Tell me, now, what have you done?'

'I think we just killed a man,' Michael said.