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Man | Aug 11 2004

There’s a man who sells candy bars from a cardboard box. I used to see him when I lived in Williamsburg and rode the JMZ train. He would walk from car to car and hold out his wares for the passengers to see. He never said anything. It may be that he didn’t speak English, or it may be that he had nothing to say. The one time I saw him make a sale, he held up a forefinger to indicate the price for a particular candy bar. One dollar. Probably all the bars cost a dollar.

He was beaten down. People who do what he was doing are invariably beaten down, but he was beaten down more than most. I believe this hurt his sales. He never smiled, never tried to make eye contact. He was like zombie, shuffling from car to car.

Once, late at night, I got on the Brooklyn-bound J train at Canal and found him sitting there, alone, in the middle of empty row. I’d never before seen him sit. It had never even occurred to me that he sat. He had his cardboard box in his lap and was looking across the aisle—at nothing, apparently.

When the train reached Bowery, I got up, walked out of the car, and hurried down to the next car, where I re-boarded. I tried not to walk too quickly, for fear he might see me hurrying away and realize where I was going.