Invisible man

            I leaped aside, into the street, and there was a sudden and brilliant suspension of time, like the interval between the last ax stroke and the felling of a tall tree, in which there had been a loud noise followed by a loud silence. Then I was aware of figures crouching in doorways and along the curb; then time burst and I was down in the street, conscious but unable to rise, struggling against the street and seeing the flashes as the guns went off back at the corner of the avenue, aware to my left of the men still speeding the rumbling safe along the walk as back up the street, behind me, two policemen, almost invisible in black shirts, thrust flaming pistols before them. One of the safe rollers pitched forward, and farther away, past the corner, a bullet struck an auto tire, the released air shrieking like a huge animal in agony. I rolled, flopping around, willing myself to crawl closer to the curb but unable, feeling a sudden wet warmth upon my face and seeing the safe shooting wildly into the intersection and the men rounding the corner into the dark, pounding, gone; gone now, as the skittering safe bounded off at a tangent, shot into the intersection and lodged in the third rail and sent up a curtain of sparks that lit up the block like a blue dream; a dream I was dreaming and through which I could see the cops braced as on a target range, feet forward, free arms akimbo, firing with deliberate aim.

            "Get hold of Emergency!" one of them called, and I saw them turn and disappear where the dull glint of trolley rails faded off into the dark.

            Suddenly the block leaped alive. Men who seemed to rise up out of the sidewalks were rushing into the store fronts above me, their voices rising excitedly. And now the blood was in my face and I could move, getting to my knees as someone out of the crowd was helping me to stand.

            "You hurt, daddy?"

            "Some -- I don't know --" I couldn't quite see them.

            "Damn! He's got a hole in his head!" a voice said.

            A light flashed in my face, came close. I felt a hard hand upon my skull and moved away.

            "Hell, it's just a nick," a voice said. "One them forty-fives hit your little finger you got to go down!"

            "Well, this one over here is gone down for the last time," someone called from the walk. "They got him clean."

            I wiped my face, my head ringing. Something was missing.

            "Here, buddy, this yours?"

            It was my brief case, extended to me by its handles. I seized it with sudden panic, as though something infinitely precious had almost been lost to me.

            "Thanks," I said, peering into their dim, blue-tinted features. I looked at the dead man. He lay face forward, the crowd working around him. I realized suddenly that it might have been me huddled there, feeling too that I had seen him there before, in the bright light of noon, long ago . . . how long? Knew his name, I thought, and suddenly my knees flowed forward. I sat there, my fist that gripped the brief case bruising against the street, my head slumped forward. They were going around me.

            "Get off my foot, man," I heard. "Quit shoving. There's plenty for everybody."

            There was something I had to do and I knew that my forgetfulness wasn't real, as one knows that the forgotten details of certain dreams are not truly forgotten but evaded. I knew, and in my mind I was trying to reach through the gray veil that now seemed to hang behind my eyes as opaquely as the blue curtain that screened the street beyond the safe. The dizziness left and I managed to stand, holding onto my brief case, pressing a handkerchief to my head. Up the street there sounded the crashing of huge sheets of glass and through the blue mysteriousness of the dark the walks shimmered like shattered mirrors. All the street's signs were dead, all the day sounds had lost their stable meaning. Somewhere a burglar alarm went off, a meaningless blangy sound, followed by the joyful shouts of looters.

            "Come on," someone called nearby.

            "Let's go, buddy," the man who had helped me said. He took my arm, a thin man who carried a large cloth bag slung over his shoulder.

            "The shape you in wouldn't do to leave you round here," he said. "You act like you drunk."

            "Go where?" I said.

            "Where? Hell, man. Everywhere. We git to moving, no telling where we might go -- Hey, Dupre!" he called.

            "Say, man -- Goddam! Don't be calling my name so loud," a voice answered. "Here, I am over here, gitting me some work shirts."

            "Git some for me, Du," he said.

            "All right, but don't think I'm your papa," the answer came.

            I looked at the thin man, feeling a surge of friendship. He didn't know me, his help was disinterested . . .

            "Hey, Du," he called, "we go'n do it?"

            "Hell yes, soon as I git me these shirts."

            The crowd was working in and out of the stores like ants around spilled sugar. From time to time there came the crash of glass, shots; fire trucks in distant streets.

            "How you feel?" the man said.

            "Still fuzzy," I said, "and weak."

            "Le's see if it's stopped bleeding. Yeah, you'll be all right."