public transportation

yesterday as i am getting ready to step up onto the bus a blustery old man swoops past me and on up the steps. i walk around him and sit down in my seat and he says something loudly and importantly to the driver, then scurries to a seat. this is the terminal end of the route at six thirty in the morning. there is only one other person on the bus. a block from the first stop the man rings the bell, rushes to the door and begins babbling about how he has to get out RIGHT HERE and RIGHT THIS VERY MINUTE. the driver slowly pulls over and the man leaps out a block away from the first actual bus stop. i watch him and look toward the bus driver. he smiles back from his rear view mirror and shakes his head. "that guy does this every day," he says. "can't get out at the regular stop right there. right there!" he says this like he expects to have to deal with this problem the entire rest of his life. i nod and say i don't know what the guy's problem is. "he's crazy!" the driver yells back toward me, laughing. he shakes his head again and drives on.

this particular day it seems everyone needs to ride my bus. everyone. stops where generally one kid gets on have six or seven people waiting. stops we usually fly past have three people hunched under the bus route sign. the bus gets overcrowded quickly. people are shoved together. a few stops from where i leave the bus a boy gets on. a man maybe. i don't know. he looks somewhere between seventeen and twentyfive. this, to me, means he is a boy. he is tall and skinny with a haircut like moe from the three stooges. he is wearing a superman shirt and is listening to something on headphones. his face is empty. he is every teenager before seven am. he stands behind me right in front of the back door.

when i ring the bell for my stop and get up i find myself face to face with him. this is not particularly unusual on a crowded bus and i wait until the bus stops. i try to walk toward the door. he stands still. he is not very wide so i attempt to walk past him. he steps into my path. this seems slightly deliberate. i say excuse me. i say it again, louder. i move forward. he does not look at me but does not let me pass. the bus pulls away and i say something loudly to him. i am pretty sure he can hear it over whatever he is listening to on his headphones. i do not use all the bad words i know but i use the ones i think apply to him.

he turns up what he is listening to and i can hear it. i am maybe a foot away from him. we are facing one another. it is not music. it is clear and deliberate and is in a language i understand. it is a sermon but not like what most of you would recognize. there is screaming. yelling. there is a man howling about how blood must be shed, how people must rise up and kill those who are sinners. the language is so excessive, so violent, i have no place to put it. this is not symbolic killing. the voice i hear screaming at him, at me, is demanding the hearer go out and kill for real. for god. i can feel ice in the center of my body, a sliver, growing larger and colder. i feel sick. the language continues for only a block with the boy standing in my way, but time feels stuck.

at the next stop the boy gets out and stands beside the bus. he watches us all get off. ten or twelve or fourteen people. stands there beside the door like a doorman, like he is waiting for a friend still on the bus. when everyone leaving is off the bus he walks slowly across the intersection and disappears into the crowd.

this morning when i get to the bus stop the strange old man is already there, standing about twenty feet from the bus stop sign. i walk past him, smile, then stand fairly near the bus stop sign because that is where the bus actually stops. he glances over at me, frowns, then very nonchalantly walks past me and places himself between me and the sign. then he goes about standing there, staring out across the street into the park, which is green and fierce with flowering trees right now. if you're going to have to wait for a bus in brooklyn, you certainly could do worse than standing where this man and i are standing, staring over into every color green anyone ever thought of, shot through with reds and purples and yellows and pinks and whites in tight knots and the sun coming up behind all that, making everything glow a little. i knit. we wait.

when the driver pulls up to the stop i expect the man to get on first because he is standing in front of me. he nods at me and stands there. i hesitate and he gestures grandly and with a great flourish and says, "after you." i get on the bus. the driver smirks. the man gets on and sits. as we pull away from the curb he leaps up again just like yesterday, runs to the front of the bus and demands to be let off. the driver is already pulled over and stopped before the man finishes talking.

the man gets off the bus and the driver looks back at me through the rearview mirror and smiles. i am the only one on the bus and am his only witness to this daly ridiculousness. "you see that?" he yells back. "i was ready for him today." and i nod and laugh. i tell him i don't get that guy and he says he doesn't either. today's trip is more normal. the bus never fills up. a few kids. scattered old ladies with carts and giant bags. hundred year old men stinking of cigarettes and the decision not to bother with bathing.

a few stops from where i leave the bus slows down although nobody has rung the bell. i figure there is some cranky grandma waiting at a stop who will take a million hours to lug her bedraggled cart onto the bus. i look out the window and see the haircut and the flat eyes. right. this is the stop. it is the boy who wouldn't let me off the bus. the boy listening to people haranguing him to murder for god. and the bus pulls closer to the curb, slows nearly to a stop. the bus driver looks over, sees the boy i see. and i don't know that the bus driver looked back yesterday and saw what happened. i don't know if he heard me using some of my bad words all loud and huffy or if he saw the look on my face while those words were crowding out into the air of the bus. but it seems like he did. because he slowed almost to a stop right there at the curb, then at the very last minute he pulled back into traffic and we didn't stop again until it was time for me to leave.