Through dark tunnels steel worms ride and carry in imperfect precision. There time and coffee are held and sipped unconsciously. The vibrancy of caffeine and the punctured vibrancy of movement and stasis are as a collection of blood in a heart squeezed to the extremities. The inner plumb work of the earth’s innards carried men, women, children, pets in little bags, babies in carriages, bicycles, suitcases--the elements of circulation, the white and red blood cells and the incorporeal, like oxygen--heat, sleep, wisdom, music. all carried, all moved in imperfect precision through the underground.

 It was his first time on the subway. He was between 11 and 12 and young enough to hold hands with his mother and not be ashamed. He was cautious, understood the grime and filth of the underground, did not wholly abhor its smells and sights, enjoyed their novelty.

“Sit there Keres.” His mother pointed at a seat between a wrinkled man with sunglasses, leaning, even as he sat, on a black wooden cane and a rotund, ballooning woman. He shook his head.
“Sit.” There was exasperation and pleading in her voice, and though he felt no pity he knew how quickly exhaustion could turn to explosion. He folded himself into the crevice between the old and the fat. He found he could not lift his elbows and this struck him with the same sense of apocalyptic doom as last week, when his father had knelt and told his eyes that Boz, his dog of 10, had been put down.

Boz was a good dog, he had grown with the boy and the boy had cried on hearing the news. His father did not hold the boy but watched him, with impassive concentration, almost with curiosity as though it was something fresh, an unexpected result from a carefully planned and executed experiment. And after a few minutes of sobbing quietly with his head down, the boy was exhausted and now the father, his eyes still hard and solid with concentration took the boy in his arms and carried him to bed.

That night the boy dreamed of the collie and its moist tongue on the flat of the boy’s cheek, the weight and wetness of it. The feel of his fur, the discoloration of his left eye which the boy had taken to mean nothing but which was a sign of something curable at great expense and therefore no different from something incurable. In the morning, when he asked his father why the dog had to die the father, in careful silence, began to form a spiritual argument which he did not wholly believe but which was a sufficient rewriting of reality for a boy young enough to hold his hands when crossing the street.

But the boy was not interested in the holy and philosophical ramifications of death, his line of question was more practical and direct. “Why” he asked “did Boz have to die? Isn’t there a hospital like when grandpa went to the hospital and he was sick and the doctors did an operation and then he was OK? Isn’t there a hospital like that for Boz? Isn’t there a doctor like that for Boz?” And the father scratched his chin and cleared his throat and his eyes met the eyes of his wife and she pleaded and looked back at the boy who was spooning his cereal and was not eating anything.

The subway car careened to a stop. The boy, remembering her mother’s words, stood up eager to leave his crevice. His mother shook her head, the train was not at its stop it was a momentary pause between stations. The intercom pinged and an automated, metallic voice from above apologized for the inconvenience and assured the passengers that the delay was short and that they would be moving shortly.