THE MAN NOBODY WANTED TO SIT BESIDE

How a chance encounter on a New York City subway inspired my novel Trial & Error.

I’ve always believed that a writer can find inspiration just about anywhere. Sometimes it comes from a newspaper headline, sometimes from a conversation, and sometimes from a homeless man who smells like he hasn’t seen a bar of soap since the Eisenhower administration.

One morning, while riding the F train to work, I found myself in an unusually empty subway car. I settled into one of those familiar orange seats, directly across from the motorman’s cabin.

It didn’t take long to discover why the car was practically deserted.

Sitting nearby was an older homeless man wearing a rumpled dark windbreaker, shredded pants, and a scruffy beard. Beside him stood a supermarket shopping cart containing two broken umbrellas and several knotted plastic bags.

And then there was the smell.

Good Lord, the smell!

Passengers entering the car quickly reconsidered their travel arrangements and made a hasty retreat to the next car.

I stayed.

Not because I possessed some extraordinary tolerance for unpleasant odors. I simply pulled my scarf over my nose and stared at the floor.

Then the man began mumbling.

At first, I paid little attention. He seemed to be talking to himself, repeating phrases and occasionally drifting into words I couldn’t understand. But something he said caught my attention. He was talking about his little sister.

As I listened, I began piecing together fragments of a heartbreaking story. His sister had been murdered, and the memory of her death clearly haunted him.

Suddenly, I wasn’t thinking about the smell anymore. I was thinking about a story.

I began taking notes, scribbling down whatever I could make out. The man continued mumbling, completely unaware that the fellow sitting nearby with a scarf over his nose was turning his recollections into the beginnings of a novel.

His words eventually became the inspiration for Noah Johnson, a character in my book Trial & Error.

In the novel, Noah remembers his murdered younger sister, Sissy, with heartbreaking affection. He describes her smile, her dimples, and her kindness toward animals. But beneath those tender memories lies something considerably darker.

Noah believes some things need fixing.

And he intends to fix them.

I never learned the name of the man on the subway. I don’t know what became of him, and I doubt he ever knew that his words had inspired a book. But I remember him.

While everyone else was trying to get away from him, I was discovering a story I might never otherwise have written.

I started writing Trial & Error the minute the train pulled into my stop.

Funny thing about inspiration.

Sometimes it doesn’t smell very good.