The
Clark Apartment Building’s Elevator Operator
Standing
next to white people
makes
my neck stiffen.
All
day they utter numbers.
Two.
Six. Three. I answer,
“Yes,
Suh. Yes, Ma’am.”
I
observe more than I let on:
the
silver-mustached man,
wild
flowers in hand,
arriving
minutes after
Mr.
307 leaves for work;
the
smell of speakeasy booze
on
nightshift-nurse 614;
the
shoulder holster bulge
of
a cheap-suit-gunsel 211
who
flips a nickel like George Raft.
White
people have no eyes.
Perhaps,
like Kluxers,
they
only come out at night.
If
they see me at all,
it’s
the hat, baboon’s ass red.
For
fourteen hours, 35 cents per,
I
never stop. In one pocket
a
tongue and olive sandwich,
in
the other, a milk bottle
to
piss in.
No
one asks me the time of day.
No
one asks me if it’s going to rain.
At
the end of my shift, I walk away.
No
one knows my name,
and
that’s just fine with me.
When
rumors spread of a lynching,
I
consider myself lucky,
me
a black man, going up,
coming
down, going up,
always
coming down on my feet.
Don
Narkevic
Don Narkevic: Buckhannon, WV. A retired high school English teacher who enjoys historical research. Recent work appears in Blue Collar Review, Bindweed Magazine, Solum Literary Press, and Shorts.
humanity can be rather disappointing. we forget for every person progress has helped, progressed has helped bury someone else. in this case the elevator operator. do not be so happy about your computer, one day it may replace you.
ReplyDeleteThat elevator with its operator struck at memories and wondering about his life. Did he ever even smell the outdoors air, blending as he did, rather seedy and worn with that closed-in air. He was kind to us.
ReplyDeleteYou catch at his moments of his experience, the come and go; the up and down-- that lingering fear of rumors.