Beseech
(Semi-fiction originally Posted at joecsmolen.com 8/23/22)
1:11AM: Blood. For a tenth – maybe it’s only a hundredth of a second, I see his blood, and I feel my heart take this little, exultant leap – seeing a girl even up the street-score. Suddenly, I don’t know how far I will go – where I know I can’t go – not again – and still keep my Bus Operator job.
Beseech-at-Night is a Portland, inner-city Bus Operator’s worst nightmare. 9PM sharp, every night, predators take human form, drag their chains, mix with the street. And anxious, transit-dependent strangers - you see their desperate need for your supporting minutes, seconds. And some of them actually believe they can just beseech you, beg with their eyes – beg your official intervention, beg you not to turn the professional wooden face on their fear and what’ll probably happen to them next. And after you do step in, and the risking-your-job part is all over and your adrenaline wanes, you never see them again – not ever.
1:12AM In one of my bus’s rearview mirrors, I see Panama’s blood when he jumps up and yells “Back do’! Back do’!” I glimpse his dark blood clearly, soaking the crotch of his Summer-time game-front – his cream-colored Panama Suit. I pop open the rear door. He slides down my back steps. I watch his silhouette step away from the side of my bus into the night. I watch #2 door shut.
* * *
What? Blood? Why wasn’t this reported! Re-wind it! Re-wind it! Re-play it!
* * *
1:02 AM. Downtown Portland. For a Bus Operator, this time of night, they’re not riders or passengers or customers – they’re cans of worms – and out-bound, where you’ll be alone with them in the silent night, where the city turns its back on you coldest and the Police blanket is thinnest, you just hope you can keep their lids on.
Downtown, boarding my bus alone, the girl is so queenly small, compact. Pale face framed in straight black hair, she’s so uncontaminatedly feminine. And her eyes – the irises - flat no color. Cruel envy is all I feel as he watches her – the same young guy I just saw her kiss, whose arms I saw her step away from – tall as a stop sign - the young guy whose hand at last releases hers as she turns so lingeringly, so tenderly - to go.
From the sidewalk, him looking up at me through my open bus front door - I can give her guy two, maybe three seconds. My green traffic light stales. His eyes search mine – then wham! they beseech me. His heart – letting her go with me – is afraid of the night, but I shut the door in his face. The light yellows. I start to roll. His lonely face sags – falls away behind me into the dark and the slam and bang of a big diesel shoving twenty tons up to speed.
But when I see her walk back and sit by herself on the door side of my empty bus, three seat rows closer to me than the back door, I think with relief, “She’s smart. She knows I can see her.”
1:05AM: Right away, in shadowy Old Town, comes a slicked-back guy wearing his front – a cream-colored Panama Suit over black shirt, yellow tie. Right behind me – he sits where he knows I can only see the toes of his snake-skin shoes. I know if I move it hard, he might stay put and leave her alone. I blow across the Willamette, my tires singing the steel grates of the Broadway Bridge.
1:08AM: But spider-like, Panama darts down the aisle, slides in beside her as...
1:09AM: …Panama arm snakes around girl shoulders. I have to interrupt his behavior. 45 in a 30, I fly out Broadway. I push every light. The big diesel roars. The bus leaps a speed bump. Face crowds into hers. But – just like I want the thunder and rattle of the speed to do - his eyes dart around – nervous - wondering.
1:10AM: 24th & Broadway light reds ahead. I’ve got an open view of the intersection for a block either way. I don’t back off. I roll it red. On Panama’s face – disbelief. Cool! Want him tense. Want him wondering about me – not her.
1:11AM: Blood. When I realize she just stabbed Panama quite possibly in his testicles, and he jumps up and yells to get off, my heart takes this little, exultant leap. Then, like crazy, it races. Comes soon the Killingsworth gauntlet: to left 30th , to right Alberta Street and right there – that first stop on Alberta – this last out-bound trip of the public schedule – they’re nearly always there waiting in front of the Wishing Well Tavern, in their colors, the local gang contingent - four or five of them.
I see her do something in her lap – wipe blood off her blade, I figure. But there’ll be four or five. Four or five of them and I know now she’ll fight them if she has to, and I’ve been beseeched – asked for intervention. Panic begins to bulge behind my eye-balls. I can’t go there ever again – and keep my job – but beseeched, I will if I have to.
1:17AM Stop sign 30th & Alberta. I signal right, start to swing into the lurid orange-yellow light of the Wishing Well Tavern’s sign. Like they’ve shown up for work, I see four of them. I could hammer it, pass them up - but they’d find me later.
1:18AM: As the first one starts up the front steps, I un-buckle my seat belt. With my left thumb, where he can’t see it, I shift the push-button transmission to neutral. I pull the yellow plastic plunger. With a hiss, the parking brake sets. I pop #2 door, setting another brake. Without looking at me, or slowing, he states, “ ’s up, Holmes?”, starts down the aisle, sees her. Stops short.
With a barely audible “JC,” she stops him dead; the others bunch up in the aisle behind him. Then, as JC passes her quickly, they all lean – it looks to me like – as far away from her as they can. I can’t tell what JC mumbles back. I buckle up and roll. Lined-up across the back of the bus, the gang never moves.
1:24AM: At the Greeley light, I left off Killingsworth into my final slide to the isolation of the end of the line where I usually dead-head for the garage. Nobody else will get on. But JC’s band still is.
Soon as she gets off at Yorgo’s Tavern, JC is right on me, standing over me – all four of them - ominous towers of hate.
“You see a dude, man,” JC wants to know. ”Panama suit, black shirt, yellow tie?”
On the street, only access to humanity I ever really have is eye contact. In the dim light, they can’t see the hair at the back of my neck standing up.
I nod to JC twice. “So did she,” I answer. He seems to know what I mean. He seems to be absorbing the meaning of my answer.
I can tell they’re going to the end of the line with me – down into the gloomy, other side of midnight desolation of the isolated Swan Island turn-around. Dark, shadowy, their eyes give off nothing. Nothing at all. But I try to look into them anyway. I always do – looking for the divine spark I read about.
We start down Going Street – descending into Kingdom Come. Because I have to, so I can safely stand up in the driver’s seat and poke in the “Garage” sign code, I come to a full stop at the Swan Island Terminal. Nobody is there. It’s well-lit – like I imagine a slaughter house is. Just arriving on Swan Island, coming down Going off the freeway, a semi booms by. Not daring to look away from the shadows where I know JC’s eyes are, I swallow. Fake-casually, I reach up and poke in the outside sign code for “Garage”.
But then I can’t help it. Like a fool, I grin at the windshield like we’re all just homeys together and tell JC, “She was too cool!”
Afraid of JC’s reaction, just when I glance up at his face, the headlights of another semi play across it, and just for a heart-beat, I actually do. I see it. In the form of a wry smile, JC shows me his divine spark. Then his face freezes back over.
“Drop us downtown, Holmes,” he says.
I’m smiling at the windshield.
“Glad to,” I say.
* * *
At the garage, for the graveyard Maintenance Crew that’ll clean the interior and fuel the bus for day-break’s commuter day-run, I fill-out my only paper for the night: a safety-orange Bio-Hazard Card.
“Door-side,” I write, “Third row of seats forward of rear door. Blood.”