On board with a scary loud shouter

I'm now into month six of working in the city, and until today I had never felt scared. Sure, I had had situations that seemed odd, but nothing like what happened on the subway this morning. After the last stop before mine, a large man interrupted the calm commute by shouting at a unknown, horribly scared and quiet anonymous person in the corner of my car. Most of it made sense in that I couldn't make out complete sentences, but I heard phrases like "... you former law student ..." and "... won't get out of MY seat ..." But what scared me was when I heard him say something about "the end" and I noticed that he had a large suitcase.

This was when he started walking to my side of the car. It was funny, later, as I thought about it afterwords, that at this moment, as the large man, unabashedly shouting at something who was not saying anything, walked down the car, the heads of everyone who had been looking at him suddenly and violently shot down, eyes on the floor, like something out of a Rockette's show for the head. This, you might say, is when I really got scared.

As he got closer, he started saying more nonsensical things like "... as the white man says ..." and "... Jesus himself ..." (I don't think he was implying that Jesus was the white man.) But then he said the greatest thing which only added to my fear then (but which, had I heard it 10 years ago, would have been my senior quote in high school): "... talkin' 'bout a check. The next check you get is going to be in Hell. And they don't cash checks there."

You can see how, at the time, I might see these as the last words of a suicide bomber. As soon as I saw the first hint of Spring St, I stood up and walked to the door, crowding the man standing in front of me, eager like never before to get out of the subway.