Jesus Hopped The A Train – Angel Cruz
Character: Angel
Summary: Angel, a young Puerto Rican man, is incarcerated at Riker’s Island prison awaiting trial for the murder of a cult religious leader. In this scene, he converses with his court-appointed attorney.
Monologue:
ANGEL: . . . We usta, me and Joey, we usta sneak out our house on Sun- day nights, jump the turnstiles. And we would hop down onto the subway tracks, walk through the tunnels, lookin’ for shit, makin’ ad- ventures, playin’ like we was G.I. Joes . . . Pick up a empty can a Hawaiian Punch or some ol’ beer bottle for fake walkie-talkies . . . and we’d have our snow-boots on so we could be astronauts. And we would pretend we were the last two survivors on earth and that we came from the future . . . stupid . . . the future . . . like in that Planet of the Apes movie with the two guys? Only we had no weapons, juss chocolate milk . . . And we’d get so lost in our games and our dis- coveries and our made-up stories . . . so many stories: lookin’ for ghosts, lookin’ for apes, lookin’ for fortunes, runnin’ from rats, talkin’ bout girls, talkin’ bout Thelma from “Good Times,” talkin’ bout daydreams, talkin’ ’bout Bruce Lee versus Evil Knievel, talkin’ in words that was- n’t even words, . . . and . . . and it would always surprise us when we saw the Lights . . . even though we could feel the train coming, but it was the Lights . . . The closer those Lights came, rumble of the tracks, sound a the conductor’s horn blarin’ at us. We’d get so excited we’d freeze — two seconds of freezin’ cold . . . hypnotized . . . holdin’ hands, waitin’, waitin’, then: Bang . . . We’d jump off the rails, hug the wall, climb back up the platform, start runnin’, runnin’, tearin’ ass clear across town back to Riverside or Cherry Park . . . One time . . . one particular time, when we was holdin’ hands right before we jumped off the rails, somethin’ happened, and we couldn’t let go, couldn’t un- tangle ourself from each other, and we were inside that Light, and we both saw skeletons and radiation, and we was paralyzed in a way that I juss can’t explain, till somethin’ blew us apart, juss blew us, and we landed safe . . . We didn’t move for a long time . . . We was cryin’ and Joey ripped his brother’s coat . . . We wasn’t speakin’ till we got to our block and Joey said that it was The Light that ripped us apart and saved our lives . . . Joey said, “Jesus hopped the A train to see us safe to bed” . . .