He stepped off the subway at 7:06. Strangers jostled past him. Two or three tread on his sneakers in their rush, but didn’t bother turning around.  He hardly noticed- the pain in his chest seemed to expel all other stimuli. He’d had his condition since he got back from the war in ’53. The army doctors agreed it was severe heartburn and dismissed it to look after the other patients, the ones with blown off legs and missing eyeballs. He clutched his chest and looked around him, bewildered. It’d never hurt this bad before. He took a few more steps and stumbled. Catching his balance, he located his usual corner of the subway and staggered toward it.  The people around him didn’t notice, and why should they?  Men like him don’t get noticed. He knew it, and was okay with it. And anyway, he didn’t want to bother anyone. He reached the corner and held his left arm out, the one not on his chest, and touched the wall. The cool, familiar tile on his fingertips seemed to send an electric shock through his body that he had never felt before. Falling to his knees, he took a deep breath and took in the darkness closing in on him. ‘Heartburn my ass,’ he thought, and chuckled to himself as he collapsed, dead, on the floor of the subway.

     Jackson heard the noise before he saw it. He turned his head instinctively and saw the homeless man lying on the floor. He’d seen the man every day, sitting in the same corner he was now lying in front of, never begging, just watching. He knew that sometimes he would ride the subway upstate, and then travel back down again to reclaim his quiet spot amongst the masses. Lisa was waiting for him at home with dinner, but something about this man tonight made him slow down and stop. He surveyed the crowd, trying to see if anyone else noticed the man, but no one seemed to have become aware of anything out of the ordinary. And why should they? Men like him don’t get noticed.
     Jackson pushed his way through the crowd until he reached the man. Squatting, he pushed him a little. “Hey buddy?” he asked. “You okay? You need me to get someone?” When no response came, Jackson’s heart beat a little more quickly. He turned the man on his back and saw the faint smile on his lips, the lifeless glare of the subway lights in his eyes. Jackson fell backward on his butt and crawled away.
     “Help!” He tried to cry, but his throat seemed to have closed up. “Somebody… call a doctor!”

     Roberta could have heard the commotion the young boy was making from her house three blocks away. Clutching her purse to her breast, she walked through the crowd and quickly up to him. “Young man,” she began, “this is not the place to be yelling. Be happy I’m the one to tell…” her voice trailed off as she saw how his face was an uncomfortable shade of white. “Are you okay?” She knelt to him and touched his shoulder. He stared at her then looked away, in front of him. Roberta turned to match his gaze and saw the homeless man, lying on his back in a corner of the subway. Her heart began racing and she stood silently, taking a step towards him. Peering over and looking at his face, she recognized him. She didn’t know his name, but she had ridden the subway with him plenty of times. He always rode in silence, never moving unless giving up his seat to a pregnant woman or elderly gentleman. She knew that they got off at the same stop, but never paused long enough to see where he went. She saw now, as she looked around, that he lived in this corner. A few blankets were neatly folded off to one side, with a lumpy pillow on top. A few bottles of water were standing next to the blankets, and a pair of socks hung up on an old, rusted nail imbedded into the wall.
     “He’s dead?” she asked and turned to the young man on the floor. He nodded silently and opened his mouth to speak. “Should we call someone?” he choked out.
     “It would be the right thing to do,” Roberta confirmed. “I’m afraid I don’t have a cell phone. Never found the need for one until now. Do you?”
     The young man shook his head. “I forgot mine at home today. Of all days.”
     They sat in silence a moment, staring at the man, before Roberta started yelling out into the crowd, “Does anyone have a cell phone we can borrow?”

     Lucas stepped off the subway only to be greeted by an older woman, yelling at the top of her lungs about a cell phone, with a younger man at her feet and a homeless man lying on his back behind her. No one else seemed to be paying her much mind, so he dug in his pockets and brought out his own cell phone. He made his way through the crowd, and he held it out to her. She grabbed at it and began dialing. He looked down at the younger man on the ground. “What’s going on?”
     The younger man looked up at him. “This man is dead. He collapsed. And died. Right here.”
     Lucas, unafraid of death, strode up to the body and looked down at it. “Hey,” he said aloud, “I think I know this guy.”
     “You do?” the younger man said from behind him. Lucas turned and smiled a little. “Yeah, I met him once putting money in parking meters. I knew he must have stayed around here, but I can’t believe I’ve missed him. He died right here, huh?”
     “I guess,” the younger man said.
     There was a brief silence until the older woman broke it. “They’re sending an ambulance over.” She handed the phone back to Lucas and he pocketed it.
     “Then what?” the younger man asked.
     “I don’t know. I guess they’ll bury him somewhere,” she responded.
     “So what do we do?” Lucas asked, still squatting by the body. He looked at each of them in turn, but no one had any suggestions. Finally, he said, “I’ll wait here until the ambulance arrives. I’ll just call and say I’ll be late.”

     Roberta felt uneasy leaving the scene. She watched Law and Order: cops would be at her house asking to search it in a matter of days. “I’ll stay too,” she decided.

     Jackson almost felt responsible for the death of the man. If he had only turned one moment earlier, maybe…
     “I’ll stay too. If I can, I just need to call my wife and tell her,” he added. The taller man by the body handed him his phone and he dialed the number to his apartment. After a brief moment with his wife, he hung up and handed the phone back.
     “You have a wife?” the older woman looked down at him with a slight smile. “Aren’t you a little young?”
     “She’s pregnant,” Jackson explained, monotone.

     That was all the explanation Roberta needed. Being a teacher at an inner-city high school, teen pregnancy seemed to be the only thing she heard about or saw these days. She resisted shaking her head and instead offered her warmest congratulations. The boy smiled a little and thanked her. She noticed for the first time that he had a laborer’s clothes on. She reasoned that he must be working on the new tower downtown.
     “Hey hun,” a voice interrupted her thoughts. It was the taller man on the floor. “Listen, I’m not going to be home for another hour or so, okay?” he said into the phone. He listened a moment and continued, “No, everything is fine. I’m at the subway. A man has… collapsed and we’re seeing to it that he gets to the hospital.” Another pause, and then, “Just a couple people I met. Don’t worry. I’ll get home safe… love you too. See you soon.”

     Lucas closed the phone and looked up, startled to see the other two staring at him. “What?” he asked, and eyed them warily.
     “You have a wife too?” the older woman teased.
     “No, that was my boyfriend,” he answered, and wasn’t surprised when the two others fell silent. Without much else to do, he glanced at the face of the dead man. He noticed something strange and his eyes widened a little “Hey, you guys?” He spoke up. “Did you notice the old man was smiling?”
     “I did,” the boy answered, and crawled a little closer to the body.
     The older woman didn’t answer, but instead peered over it, awestruck.
     “Did anyone know his name?” Lucas asked now, and neither of the other two said anything. He made baffled face and straightened back into a standing position. The boy did the same.
     Suddenly, the boy extended his hand out to Lucas. “I’m Jackson,” he said, and they shook as Lucas offered his own name.
     Turning to the older woman, she presented her hand first to Jackson, then to Lucas. “I’m Roberta,” she told them with a smile.

     The three, having been acquainted, peered back over the body. “Maybe we should check for some kind of ID or something?” Jackson suggested.
     Lucas agreed and got on his knees. Opening the old man’s sport’s coat, he checked the inner pockets. When nothing came of that, he tried the outside pockets, then his jeans pockets. The search proved fruitless except for a bag of quarters hidden in the breast pocket of his shirt. Lucas recognized the bag as the same that he saw the man taking quarters from and putting in the parking meters. He smiled a little.
     “You forgot one,” Roberta pointed out from above him. “His jacket had a breast pocket too.”
     Lucas reached in the last pocket expecting to not find anything, but to his surprise felt something papery against his fingers. He pulled it out and stared at the folded sheet.
     “What’s that?” Jackson asked, and then joined Lucas on the floor. He opened the sheet of paper eagerly, only to find that it wasn’t a sheet of paper at all, but an old, faded picture of a girl.  On the back, someone had scribbled, To John, all my love, Mary Luna.
     “That picture’s got to be 50 years old,” Roberta concluded. “Look at the wardrobe. I have pictures of myself as a young girl. Looked just like that.”
     “His name’s John,” Jackson pointed out.
     “Our very own John Doe,” Lucas confirmed, then folded the picture and placed it back in the man’s pocket.
     “Why do you think he’s smiling?” Jackson asked now.
     “How do you think he died?” Roberta asked too, at the same time.
     Lucas looked at both of his companions. Roberta was a petite woman, with short, wispy brown/grey hair, and round glasses. She wore a dress and stockings and clutched a burgundy colored pocketbook. Jackson, on the other hand, was a stocky boy with stingy blond hair. He wore a faded and dusty pair of overalls over black work boots.
     He sighed and collected his thoughts. “I don’t know. Jackson, you saw him, right?”
     “Yeah,” Jackson answered, then quickly rebutted. “Well, no, not really. I mean, I heard him fall but that’s about it.”
     “Well, why don’t we try and figure out why he’s smiling? Talk about the possibilities.” Lucas, a short story novelist, was always up for potential new material.
     Jackson glanced at his watch. They’d been waiting for fifteen minutes already and he didn’t really feel like story telling. “Could he have died from happiness?” he offered, sighing lightly.
     “You can’t die from happiness,” Roberta argued. “Maybe he isn’t smiling at all. Maybe that’s a grimace of some sort and we are just morbidly unethical because we think he’s smiling.”
     Lucas and Jackson thought this over. “No,” Lucas finally said. “He’s definitely smiling.”
     “Well why is he smiling then? Why would someone who is dying smile? What reason would they have?” Roberta continued her argument, but only because she loved playing devil’s advocate.
     “I’ve got it,” Jackson said suddenly. “He was thinking about how great homeless people must have it in heaven, you know like, brick mansions and stuff? God provides stuff for you that the president never could.”
     Lucas nodded, “I like that idea. Roberta? What do you think?”
     “I’m not going to play this game,” she said stubbornly. “It is disrespectful.”
     The three fell into an uncomfortable silence again, their fun having been rained on.
     “He rode the subway with me sometimes,” Roberta eventually said.
     “Upstate,” Jackson agreed. “I don’t know where he went… I never really thought about it. But definitely upstate.”
     “What would be upstate that he’d want to see, I wonder?” Roberta’s speculation opened up a window for which Lucas gladly stepped through. “May I offer a suggestion without being disrespectful?” He inquired of Roberta. She blushed a little and nodded. Going back into the jacket pocket, Lucas pulled out the photograph of Mary. “The big cemetery is upstate,” he said, implying something more. He glanced at Jackson.
     “You think that’s his wife?” the boy asked. “She’s dead? He went to visit her?”
     “I wouldn’t be surprised.” Lucas nodded.
     “So maybe he died of a broken heart?” Roberta injected quickly.
     Lucas glanced up at her, amused. “So you are playing the game?”
     She nodded slowly. “It keeps my mind off of the fact that I’ve been standing next to a dead homeless man for the past twenty minutes.” She suddenly looked at the stairs leading out of the subway and added, “Where is that ambulance?”
    “A broken heart, huh?” Lucas repeated what she’d said, bringing them back on topic. “So like his wife died and he just went to visit her and it hurt him so badly his heart couldn’t take it?
     “I don’t know. I’m not a very good guesser,” she admitted.
     “I like that guess,” Jackson said suddenly. “It’s very, uh, romantic. Or something. But it wouldn’t explain his smile.”
     Lucas nodded an approval at the boy’s attempt. “You’re right.”
     “Oh!” Roberta exclaimed suddenly, grabbing the guy’s attention. “He smiled before he died because he realized he would see her again. In Heaven. He smiled when he realized that, and then died. You know? He was happy. He would see her again.” With each fragment she became quieter and looked down at Lucas with question marks in her eyes.
     Lucas grinned. “Perfect,” he told her, and she lit up. “That is exactly what happened.” He then leaned over and took the dead man’s hand in his. It was freezing.
     “Well John,” he told the man, “There’s a consensus. Your wife died however long ago and you took the subway to the cemetery to see her. Is it true?” Lucas listened for a second, and then continued. “Today was your anniversary, maybe? And you went to see her, but you got so sad that your poor heart hardened up and broke in two. But you knew that even though you were dying, you would be reunited with your wife in Heaven. Is that what happened, buddy?”
     “I hear the ambulance,” Jackson interrupted. Lucas let go of the man’s hand and listened as the ambulance came to a stop and doors opened and then closed and opened again. Roberta saw the feet come down the stairs before the others and shouted out, “We’re over here! What took you so long?”
     Two paramedics in white emerged, each holding one end of a stretcher. . “Sorry ma’am,” the first paramedic began to explain. “A man had a heart attack in his home. We had to be there first.” Glancing down at the homeless man on the floor he asked the obvious question, “Is he dead?”
     “Yes,” Jackson, Roberta, and Lucas said in unison.
     The paramedics put down the stretcher and rolled him onto it, then propped it up and checked for vital signs. As expected, none came. The first paramedic looked back up at the group standing there. “Do any of you know anything about this man?
     Jackson spoke up first. “His name is John Doe.”
     Lucas followed close behind, “He went to visit his dead wife at the cemetery earlier today, as he does every day around this time.”
     Robert finished it off, “Today was their anniversary though. It was too much for him. Getting off the subway, his heart broke. It broke right in two. He died of a broken heart. But he’s smiling, because he has her now, in his arms, in Heaven.”
     The paramedic looked a little surprised, but chuckled to himself. “I see, so he’s just a homeless man and none of you know who he is. Cute story, I might have believed it until that broken heart part.”
     Roberta began to say something, but the paramedic continued on. “It was good of you to look after him, I guess. But you know you didn’t really have to- he doesn’t have anything that anyone would really want. Have a good night, ma’am, sirs.” He tipped his head, pulled a sheet over John’s head and then wheeled him towards the stairs. The three people watched as they carried the body up and out of the subway. In the silence that followed, Lucas realized he still had Mary’s picture in his hand. His eyes widened and he took off towards the stairs.
     “Hey wait!” He called after the paramedics, but he saw that they were long gone by the time he reached the top. He stood there in the dark, staring down at the picture, until he felt a hand on his shoulder. He turned to see Jackson, with a tear in his eye.
     “You have the picture… we could…” Jackson’s voice trailed off and he sniffled.
     Lucas knew what the boy meant. Together they walked down the stairs and met Roberta. A momentary exchange of glances was all they needed in that moment to know that when the next upstate subway arrived, they would all be on it, heading to the cemetery to find Mary Lucas. To find John Doe. To reunite the two with the simple  To John, all my love, Mary Luna.