End of Days
End of Days
by Mick Hale
He stood across the street this last morning waiting for the other passengers to arrive in the bus shelter. It was important to him they arrived in the correct order. The order was Pandu first, then Fat Hobarth, followed by Frankie and finally, Mrs. Guild. When they all assembled he crossed the street.
The poster was still there on the shelter wall, a kung fu movie from five years ago. Harry liked the Hong Kong movie star posed in fearful fit, with dark, angry eyes, kung-fu master as guardian spirit, on a mission to keep the bus shelter safe. Sometimes, in his bedroom, Harry tried this kung-fu pose. It was a wild thing to do, a secret desire kept hidden from the world.
Frankie was the only one who ever talked to Harry. It wasn't that Harry talked to Frankie; it was that Frankie talked to everybody. Frankie chatted with Mrs. Guild, then turned to Harry and said, "Did you hear that, Harry? Tomorrow is Mrs. Guild's birthday. How old is that, dear? Twenty-nine?"
Mrs. Guild, safely beyond twenty-nine, laughed, Pandu added a chuckle and the general mood lifted at the bus stop on Goddard Road. Harry admired Frankie. If Frankie struck a kung-fu pose, he'd do it right here, in front of the world.
"Hey, Harry," Frankie said, startling Harry with a firm punch on the arm. "Big day, eh?"
The day seemed no bigger than any other, no more sky above or asphalt below. When Harry was a child he believed in big days. Children do. The world shrank with age. It did for Harry. It didn't bother him, he just thought that's the way life was.
After a moment Harry answered Frankie's big day question.
"Yes," he said.
Frankie waited, until it became apparent Harry had nothing more to add.
"Okay," Frankie said, a man who abhorred silence of any kind. He turned to Fat Hobarth.
"Harry here is retiring today. How long has it been? A hundred years? A hundred years at Whatshisface, Whatshisface and Whatshisface. That's something. The longest I ever held a job was two weeks, and I'll tell you something else --that's the only job I've ever had."
There was this ripple of laughter through the bus shelter. Frankie had the singular habit of adding a punctuation of chuckling to every stray thought. Harry didn't join. Frankie's laugh track made him smile, but he never joined in. Kung-fu poses in his bedroom were one thing. When he stepped out his front door, the kung-fu master stayed behind.
Fat Hobarth, after Frankie the most verbal of them all, said, "The ponies are your job, Frankie. You take them seriously enough."
"True," Frankie said. "It's work. Today, I got a hot one in the first at Belmont. I ain't missing today. Today's a winner!"
Fat Hobarth with a million beers and burgers buried in his gut, followed his laugh with a coughing fit. The man's belly was beyond containment. Fat guys could get that way, so huge there was no other choice but to let the belly lead the way, buy bigger clothes, forget trying to suck the gut in. A gut like Fat Hobarth's lived its own life.
Harry shifted his eyes to Mrs. Guild; smoldering mood swings, shades of grey and black, eyes tucked away behind dark, dark lenses. He imagined Mrs. Guild in her kitchen, Mrs. Guild in her bedroom. There was a flash to Mrs. Guild. Like in summer, heat lightning, dark filled with flash but no sound. There was always this possibility with Mrs. Guild. Some women made men wonder. Mrs. Guild was like that. Sometimes, Harry stood naked in front of his mirror, his body old now. No woman would open to a body like his. Still, sometimes Harry wondered about Mrs. Guild.
The fourth man at the bus stop was Pandu; eyes wrapped within the pink rectangle of the Financial Times, bushy beard combed in waves, his turbaned skull and foreign scent. Someone like Pandu at the bus stop made the little shelter seem bigger than it was. Harry was proud this Indian man stood there every day. The turban must take time to wind around Pandu's skull. Sometimes the turban was gray and sometimes white.
Thirty-two years waiting for the number nine bus and not one workday missed. Harry played it through his mind and smiled. His world was evolving, and as he had this thought, indeed the world began to shift.
This was the first stop on the morning route and at 7:14 the bus rounded the corner as always, only another driver was behind the wheel. This made Harry uneasy. Of all days, this was no day for a new driver, especially a young man who said, "Morning, dude," as Harry mounted the three steps into the bus. The driver's badge read, 'Skate Harrison.' Skate was a suspicious name for a bus driver. Harry stared long enough for the driver to mutter, "You alright there?"
Long ago Harry discovered the secret that governed his life. If something small changed, things changed in rising degree as the day progressed. There was no telling where a sequence of change might lead. Over the years Harry became convinced it was unlikely to be a comfortable place.
As the bus pulled away he grabbed the steel handrail. Skate accelerated faster than a veteran bus driver. A young man's desire to burn more diesel than necessary. Harry understood. He also understood that this was, after all, the end of days.
Outside the bus window the world passed by. Rosemont Florist. The display of flowers changed every day. Today was Tuesday. At this time of year there should be racks of roses and indeed there were. Madaba Deli Number Eight. The two Pakistani men who ran the store were sweeping the sidewalk as always. Lee's Dry Cleaning Emporium. Emporium was a grand word for the shabby exterior of Mr. Lee's store. Harry wondered about it every day.
Today, things were as they should be, but something bothered him. The bus moved too fast.
Carter's Family Clothing Outlet. Harry barely saw the mannequins dressed in plaid. Barry's Bagel and Coffee. The breakfast special remained a mystery. Judson's Stationary. Judson's window, filled with innovative ideas in office supplies, zipped by, the shimmering blue and white reflection of the bus flashing across the plate glass. Worse, the bus didn't stop. Judson's was Eddie Van Neelson's stop. Right there, right outside Harry's window Eddie stood, brow furrowed, holding his hand up. Eddie ignored. Eddie left behind.
"Hey."
Mrs. Guild's voice.
Harry's eyes fell to the pearl brooch pinned just above her breast, its sharp point laced through the fabric of her grey sweater. It matched her strident tone.
"Driver, you missed a stop. What are you doing?" Mrs. Guild's voice, honed to a fine edge, cut through Harry's skull, dominated the diesel's sparky roar, the grinding wheels and rattling rivets of the city bus. Mrs. Guild rose from her seat and swayed toward the front, passing Harry and almost falling into his lap as the bus made an unexpected turn.
Pandu raised his head in alarm. When he spoke, his accent thick as Ganges mud, lay heavy on the ear, spicy with a curry lilt.
"This is not the way. You must go left."
The bus turned right on Summer Street. Harry never turned right on Summer Street. Turning right on Summer Street plunged them into an alien world. Immediately, he saw a woman walking a dog, but no dog like he'd ever seen, an alien dog from a distant star. Right on Summer Street unfolded out the window, replete with threats. On the first corner was Larry's Hunt and Gun, Larry himself armed and standing behind the counter ready to stalk any bus that wandered into his domain. A huge man washed his car by curbside, his long arms sweeping a chamois across the metallic flecked fins in menacing swipes. Two nuns shuffled down the street, wimples wrapped tight around their ears.
Harry wanted to meet this world with kung-fu courage, but that was just a movie poster after all. His stomach churned.
At last, Mrs. Guild reached the driver's seat.
"Driver, this is the wrong way."
If the world were flat, they'd fall off the edge at the end of Summer Street. Harry became convinced of it. A man like Harry just wanted things to finish. He wanted to go to his office, pack up his life and close his bedroom door.
"He can't hear you," Frankie shouted from his seat. "He's listening to music."
There they were, Harry saw, tiny headphone buds stuck in Skate's ears. He watched Skate's hand tap a finger flourish on the wheel. Rock and roll; the bus's churning rhythm took shape. Heavy metal, thrashing like the steel wheels of the city bus bouncing through potholes. Harry remembered at the grocery store seeing a headline splashed across a glossy magazine: Metal Head Johnson Leaves Rocktominum! Now here on this renegade bus he saw another: Metal Head Harrison Turns Right On Summer Street!
With a firm tap on his shoulders, Mrs. Guild finally got Skate Harrison's attention. The driver popped the ear buds out of his metal head and turned slightly.
"Please stand behind the white line," he said.
Indeed, the toes of Mrs. Guild's shoes violated the sacred white line. This could not be, this willful violation of white lines. Harry always placed his feet carefully behind the prohibited stripe. Every situation in life required some form of white line; stand here, not there, simple instructions to help navigate the heaving seas of unfamiliar places. He didn't want to be this way, but white lines were decision makers. They made life easier for him.
However, Mrs. Guild's courage knew no bounds. She shuffled beyond the white line and put her mouth close to Skate's ear.
"You are going the wrong way."
"What?"
The metal still rang in his ears. Harry imagined the acrid aroma of crispy guitars and fried drum skins drifting out of Skate's skull. There it was, haunting the bus, an apparition of snake tongues and wild eyes lined in black. The thought made Harry's heart race.
"What do you mean?" asked Skate.
"Dude," said Fat Hobarth. His deep rumble easily carried from the rear seat. "You made a right on Summer Street. You should have made a left."
Harry looked over his shoulder. The rear seat was built for the big man's girth. His arms spread to either side, anchoring him against the bus's sway. His legs were planted to the rubber floor, Bus Buddha, his commanding presence mocking the very word 'passenger.'
"You'll have to turn around," Fat Hobarth concluded.
Harry began to go over file procedures in his mind, his lifesaver when things went out of control, the bus route gone, wheels wandering. He focused on metal drawers. He debated if he should change his system, and perhaps organize by date as opposed to the alphabet. The alphabet was a flawed sequence. He could see that now. He worked the new organization through his mind and forgot they aimlessly drifted down Summer Street, their commuting destiny in the sweaty grasp of a metal head's fiery spirit. He even forgot the quiet order of the file room would soon be someone else's responsibility.
It was Frankie's reedy voice that sucked Harry back into the bus.
"There's no place to turn around at the end of Summer Street."
Harry fought back. The alphabet was a closed system, developed thousands of years ago, chiseled into clay tablets. Clay tablets were too thick to fit into file drawers. Clay tablets became brittle over time. Clay tablets might shatter and vault the file room into disorder. A date, numbers, digits, now there was an infinite quality of order to things; a man could organize in decimal bliss with numbers. He smiled to himself. In his parting interview with Mr. Broadfellow he might mention his idea. Mr. Broadfellow, his tie knotted, his suit pressed, every single object on Mr. Broadfellow's desk in its place. Mr. Broadfellow was a god to Harry.
"This is not right," Pandu said. "I am needing to get to my work."
Harry floated down Summer Street, the street becoming narrower, the rows of shops replaced with rows of houses, the rows of houses replaced with industrial buildings, abandoned, windows shattered, graffiti across brick, urban scrawls, indecipherable to Harry, a foreign language, raw emotion, chaos captured and sprayed across walls to taunt him. There was no hiding in the corners of his skull. The graffiti sweeps and shapes began to take form. He stared at them, hypnotized by their colorful curves and mysterious messages, antediluvian omens from a primitive world.
The bus stopped.
Outside his window Harry saw a rat dart between stacks of rusting iron drums. The bus idled for a moment and then Skate ground the gears into reverse, the slow roll back accompanied by a beep bouncing off the narrow walls of the alley. Harry imagined them backing all the way to the missed turn. Everything might roll back. The woman with the alien dog, Larry the hunter taking the gun off his shoulder, the big man with the chamois swiping backward along dampened chrome, a slow rewind to before.
His pulse steadied. He closed his eyes. He'd keep them closed until the bus began forward motion again. He willed the world to return to its set route. Perhaps tomorrow he'd find the courage always just beyond his grasp.
The sound of steel scraping on the bus side and a tumbling of iron rang into silence. Harry opened his eyes. Skate had backed the bus into the stack of oil drums, the bus wedged against the alley walls. There was a giant spiral of graffiti inches from his window, the strokes revealed, the spray paint telling its own story of a hand driven to this place to mark the world in an immortal bid, or a desperate plea, I am here, I am alive, do not forget me.
From the rear of the bus Fat Hobarth laughed. "You miss backing up class there, driver?"
The engine stopped. A wash of panic snaked up Harry's spine. Skate pushed the bus door open and got off. He returned in seconds and announced, "That's it. We're going to have to get off. I'm going to find a phone and call the bus company. They'll send another bus."
"If I miss my race at Belmont you're toast," Frankie said.
"How long have you been driving a bus?" asked Mrs. Guild.
"I will be fired," Pandu said.
There was no diesel churning now. Harry barely controlled his shaking, tried a deep breath to steady his nerves, but the breath was a shuddering rasp. It must have been audible. Mrs. Guild gave him a lingering glance. Without taking her eyes away from Harry she said, "I'm sure the bus company will have something to say about this whole matter."
Skate stood on the top step by the bus door, shaken by his failure. "Look, this is just a summer job for me. I'm studying Applied Physics at MIT. I don't know much about driving buses."
Rising from his seat, Fat Hobarth lumbered forward. "Thank God you weren't the one who invented the atomic bomb then." He squeezed by Skate and exited the bus. Pandu quickly followed, and then Mrs. Guild, gathering her bags into her hands, almost pushing Skate through the front windscreen as she disembarked.
They left the bus one by one. Harry sank lower in his seat, a vinyl cradle, its squishy comfort a secure nest. He smelled the alley, the heavy air drifting through the open bus door, putrid scents laced in a fine, choking dust. There were layers to the smell, things abandoned, a dead end of broken dreams, lost souls, drifters wandering to the farthest reaches of the city to hide from the judging eyes of an unforgiving day. Piss and shit and smashed bottles of cheap wine, ozone seeping toward a yellow sky, reams of newspapers rotting in tilting stacks, all the news, all the births and deaths and defeats of the daily urban turmoil reduced to tiny rivers of bleeding ink.
"You okay?"
Frankie stood there. The smile on his lips betrayed the concerned look in his eyes. More than any of them, Frankie knew Harry. He was not an easy person to know, this slight man in his hardened shell, but Frankie made a study of people. It helped him at the track. He could tell a lot about how a horse might perform by watching tiny jockeys and coifed owners in the paddock circling their pampered beasts. If he were placing a bet on Harry right now he'd pick him to finish dead last. The guy looked like he was going to melt into a puddle of piss.
"We've got to get off the bus," Frankie said.
"No," Harry said.
But he did get off the bus. Frankie reached down and placed his hand on Harry's elbow and gently encouraged him to stand.
"There you go, Harry. You sitting here all day? Let's go find another bus."
Like buses were easy to find, like every bus was the same as every other bus, Frankie still edged his words in a light laugh, not understanding a complete re-trace of steps was needed, time itself must be warped, whipped back to 7:14, five people standing in a bus shelter, the beginning of the end of things. This was chaos, this alley, this broken bus, and this unfamiliar world.
Three steps, that's all it was, but another thing to take those steps on quivering legs. Walking was simple, but for some reason it now required his full concentration. He kept his eyes to the ground, placing each foot carefully to avoid stumbling. He went to the wall of a building and leaned against the brick. There was a debate going on. Skate insisted everyone keep together and follow him to a public phone. Mrs. Guild pointed to her shoes and explained she couldn't walk far. Fat Hobarth mused about the idiocy of women dressed in heels that made it impossible to walk. Pandu, for some reason, got into the middle of it, told Fat Hobarth he must not be a rude man and that he liked Mrs. Guild's shoes.
Mrs. Guild solved the matter by picking up her bags and walking down the alley. The men followed. Skate rushed ahead to take the lead. He was the bus driver and this was still his bus, even though the bus had changed into a ragged procession down a trash-strewn alley. Frankie lingered, making sure Harry followed, trying to talk the man through whatever it was making this simple thing so difficult. He led Harry like a child away from the wall.
"I like alleys," Frankie said. "When I go to a city I'm always on the lookout for alleys. Alleys are like the bones of a city. You can tell a lot about a city if you take a peek down an alley. People in an alley always tell you the truth. If I really want to know what's going on in place I always head straight for an alley and ask. I've been in this alley before. It's nothing, Harry. Just a place.
"When I first moved here I got a bike. It wasn't much of a bike but it got me around, you know? One day I did the same thing that nut job bus driver did, only of course I wasn't driving a bus, so it was easy enough to turn around when I got to this dead end.
"There was an old guy here, right over there -- see that pile of cardboard boxes? He was living in them. It don't look like nothing but a pile of boxes, right? Well, to this guy it was home. I suppose it was a mansion in his eyes. That's something, isn't it? When a pile of trash becomes a home. Things like that make you stop and think. Harry, wouldn't you think about something like that?
"This old guy's name was Rudolf. That's a grand name for a bum, don't you think? But sometimes bums ain't what they seem. Mostly bums are just like us except maybe things took a wrong turn. Life can do that. Look, Harry, I know my life took some turns, but I always think, well, at least I ain't living in a cardboard box. That's a good thing, right? You see, alleys teach you things.
"Rudolf had a lot to say. It didn't take much to get Rudolf to talk. He wasn't like you. That guy had an opinion about everything and I ain't saying you don't, but this guy knew how to talk. You wonder how a guy like that, a guy that knows everything, ends up in the dumpster every day looking for something to eat. Or maybe that's what it is. Maybe knowing everything is the worst thing. You know everything maybe that's what happens to you.
"Me? I like to keep myself on the dumb side. I know about the ponies. I wake up in the morning and I sit down with a smoke and some coffee and go over the form. I add it all up and figure it out. Most times I'm wrong cause there's this random factor you just can't take out of a race. Every now and then some lame ass horse gets it in its mind to run and take the wind and thirty bucks goes down the drain. What you going to do about something like that?
"But you know, man, sometimes, it goes the other way. Sometimes, I look at the form and it all makes sense to me and I know it's going to be a good day. One good day makes up for a whole lot of bad. And I'll tell you something -- this guy Rudolf saw the world the same way.
"I asked him how come he's living here. You got to wonder about something like that, don't you, Harry? Maybe a shave and a nice bath and this guy could be your neighbor and you wouldn't even think about it. There was nothing wrong with the guy that I could see. Except of course he was living in a box and that's a whole lot of wrong right there.
"Anyways, this Rudolf looks at me and says life is leftover pizza. A guy says something like that it catches your attention. What do you think when you hear something like that? It got me thinking. Doesn't it get you thinking? With a guy like that you're always on the lookout for things. Sort of like a red flag the guy's going loco and he's going to pull out a weapon and start evening things out, or putting things to right, or taking care of what ever little bugs he's got running around his skull.
"So, I ask him what he means, figuring conversation might keep him on an even keel, but already planning a scoot back down the alley. That's what you would do, right Harry, be backing away? That's what I did, but slow like.
"And while I'm doing it he reaches into a box and I'm thinking, okay, the game is on here, but instead of a knife or a gun, he takes out a couple of slices of Sicilian, real thick, just the way you like it, and he hands a slice to me. Now where do you suppose he got it, Harry? Out of a dumpster somewhere. I know that. You know that. It's obvious, right? But the look in his eye, I can tell it's important to him I eat. Sort of a hospitality thing. There I am sitting in the man's home. It ain't much. The next rainstorm the walls are going to melt.
"My mama, she used to drink a lot, could spend the whole day on the couch with a bottle of scotch watching the soaps. But she taught me some things. Your mama taught you things as well, I'm sure of that. All mamas do. Being polite was one of the things my mama taught me. So I chow down. And you know what? Best damn pizza I ever ate. Cold, but there was something to the taste. Lots of cheese, maybe that was it. What do you think?
"The thing was it shouldn't have tasted as good as it did. I'm telling you, Harry, it was weird. Sitting there, in that little cardboard home, it was like we were feasting. And all we're doing is eating some food out of the trash, Rudolf watching me, and I can see it in his eyes. He's enjoying me eating, but there's something else. He's waiting. I didn't get it. Only thinking back on it over time did I figure it out.
"Sometimes, it takes a little while. I ain't the quickest guy around, you know? You come to an alley and you learn some things. That's how life can work. Things pile up in a life, don't they? I mean the march of days. One after another and each one leaves a little bit of itself in your head. Enough bad days and you end up the weird guy at the end of the bar talking to his beer. Or you end up in an alley living in a box. Harry, life can take a turn. You know that.
"But Rudolf is saying to me just take what you get and if that's a couple of slices in a dumpster then take them. You in the right frame of mind, it's all going to taste pretty fine. And you know what? It don't matter how much you get from a life. It all comes down to the same thing. Life is leftover pizza. Yes sir, that's all it's ever going to be. You figure that out you can be happy no matter what's going on. Nobody can touch you if you figure something like that out."
By now the invisible bus, Skate still in the lead, reached the corner of Summer and Newell. Here another debate broke out. Mrs. Guild insisted this was as far as she would go, another bus would just have to come and fetch her. Pandu, by this point in full panic, and at the same time resigned to the fact he was going to be late for work, suggested Skate go into one of the homes and call for a taxi.
"And you will have to pay for it," added Pandu.
"Me?" Skate responded. "I haven't got any money."
"I'm sure the bus company will reimburse you."
"No they won't," Skate said. "They'll probably fire me."
"Fire you?" Fat Hobarth said. "What for? Making a wrong turn and running the bus into a stack of empty oil drums, stranding us in the middle of nowhere, and making Pandu here get fired? Why would they fire you for something like that?"
"Do you think they will fire me?" asked Pandu.
"Two people fired in one day from the same bus," Fat Hobarth said.
"Hold on," Frankie said. "First, look at these houses. Nobody lives in them. This place has been run down for years. Second, nobody's getting fired. Skate here made an honest mistake. What is the bus company doing sending a guy out without proper training? And Pandu was just a passenger. Pandu, you need me to go talk to your boss, I can do that."
"The bus company must take care of this," Mrs. Guild said.
"I'm sure they'll get right on it," Fat Hobarth said.
"This is a very bad thing," Pandu said. "Without a job I will be deported."
"Maybe you could become a ghandi," Fat Hobarth said.
"What do you mean?" asked Pandu.
"The Immigration Service gives free passes to religious guys."
"You mean guru. Ghandi was a man."
"A guru then. All you got to do is sleep on a bed of nails. That should do it."
"I am insulted by what you say," Pandu said, and his face flushed.
"Calm down," Fat Hobarth said.
"You are too crazy to be saying things like that."
"Wait a minute," Mrs. Guild said. She was leaning against a low brick wall and rubbing her feet. "Where's Harry?"
Everybody looked up and down the street.
"How does a guy disappear like that?" Fat Hobarth said. He turned to Skate. "Losing passengers is a big no-no at the bus company."
Around the corner, Harry sat on a bench. The spitting back and forth gave him a headache. The world was still close to his neck, almost choking him with its strangeness, but here on the bench it was quiet. He sat and looked at the house across the street. Every window was boarded. There was trash in the yard, maybe things left behind by the owners long ago. A kid's tricycle on the porch, an old TV set in the garden, the garage to the left of the house collapsed on one side. Dead house. No ghosts living there. Ghosts wouldn't live in a dead house like this. They'd want to live in a place filled with life.
He knew about ghosts. Years ago his Mother came down with the cancer. That's what she called it, the cancer. At first it was nothing. Days followed days and his Mom pretty much lived her life. Slowly, the cancer took its hold. His Mom was strong. When his father left it was just the two of them, his Mom working jobs, Harry going to school. His Mom liked to hear about school. She'd never finished eighth grade so every day she asked him to tell her something new. Harry used to stop in the library on the way home and look up things to tell her. He wanted her to think he was a genius.
The cancer had its way with her. The doctors kept telling him she wasn't going to last long, but they didn't know her. Days followed days, years followed years, until his Mom just sat in a chair with a vacant look in her eye, grey skin, strands of hair, nothing much to her life at all except Harry telling her new things.
There were great changes going on in the world, and he told her of these wondrous things; men flying to the moon, computers the size of a dime, cars running on sunflower oil. He told her soon they'd be growing body parts in vats. If somebody got sick they could just check into a hospital and get a new liver, or a new heart, whatever they needed. His Mom sat there amazed at the things her son said, and smiled in his delight, even though there was little she understood.
The cancer ate her brain. That's what he remembered. The doctors told him so. They even hinted he consider putting her into a special hospital. Harry was suspicious of that. He thought he heard another thing in the doctors' words. Let her die, that is what he thought the doctors meant.
His Mom became a ghost, a wispy presence in the living room, shaded in the nervous broadcast light of the TV set. He tried to bring the world into their home. Every day he went to the store and bought fresh flowers. He cooked meals to fill the home with kitchen scents. He opened windows on warm summer days and put music on the radio. On Sunday afternoons they listened to the opera. Harry explained all the stories and melodrama. He filled his Mother's ghost with life until the day she passed away sitting in her chair, Mozart on the radio, and the city sounds drifting in from the open window. He turned the radio off and closed the window for a final time.
Harry boarded up the house. This house across the street, this could be his old boarded home. He hadn't really stuck plywood on the windows. It was just in his head, the nails and slats of wood.
Sitting here he understood. Something like that, a lingering illness, and the world could slip away for those around the dying.
After he buried his mother he stepped into the world again, but it was never the same. Each day seemed edged to a fatal degree. Life felt unsafe. Harry got a job, then another, until he finally arrived in the file room. The file room, it was quiet there, a place to pass the days. He wanted nothing new now. His mother took all the new things with her when she passed away.
Across the street the dead house, these things running through his mind; his mother's life, his mother's death floating in and out of the empty windows; his mother's moans from all the pain floating up and down the empty street. He closed his eyes and focused on the city's hum. Let the urban quilt mute his mother's memory. Let it go.
The city was all around him. At the end of the block an interstate rose above the street. The highway drone whistled in the air, a dozen cars a minute flying by this empty place, mocking the dreams that once lived here. In the carbon envelope he thought he heard a child's voice. There at the edge of things were a thousand echoes caught in this asphalt wasteland. It was his voice; he recognized it now. The child's voice fading away, released at last by this aimless drift. Let go, Harry.
Next to the bench was an old pizza box, caught in a stray strand of chain link fence. He leaned over and pried the pizza box free. Inside, the box was empty, a trace of old grease and a piece of crumpled wax paper. He held the paper in his hand, felt the brittle texture crush within his fingers, and then let it fall to the concrete. He smiled. Life is leftover pizza, unless you never find a slice.
From around the corner a bus rumbled into view; Skate's cocky posture back in place behind the big bus wheel. The bus pulled up and stopped with a hiss of compressed air. The door opened.
"A cop came by and they sent another bus," Skate said. "Come on."
Harry boarded. They were all there, each in his seat, as if by resuming the set routine things might be as they once were. Harry stood a moment, then took a seat right behind Skate, a place he'd never sat before.
"Alright," Skate said. "Let's get this bus back on its route."
The world outside the window was new. The bus wound its way through a maze of streets and unexpected turns as Skate tried to find his way back to the corner of Goddard and Summer.
"There's no point in that," Mrs. Guild said. "You should just take us into the city by the quickest route."
"I only know one way," Skate said.
"And you don't know that very well," Fat Hobarth said from the rear.
None of this penetrated Harry's thoughts. He watched this new world unfold. Yes, the houses were houses he'd never seen before. The neighborhood changed into a sprawl of tall red-bricked apartment buildings, groaning from the overflow of lives crammed into their boxy bulk. Yes, these were strange shops, one selling wigs, another selling exotic pet supplies. Yes, there were people out there, a world of strangers, each caught in mirrors of their own experience. But there was more to this new world than before. There was something else now. Harry didn't understand. The colors of this world were different. The textures carved in new stone, the faces set in a new way. Harry watched out of his bus window, hypnotized by this new parade.
The bus reached an intersection and paused. Now a great debate rose, each voice trapped in its own concern. Turn right, turn left, go straight, until Skate was paralyzed by a dozen different demands, and then Harry spoke.
"There's another way."
None of them ever heard Harry speak. Maybe a word or a nod, but this was something else. Even Frankie, the man with the non-stop mouth, wasn't sure what to say. So it fell to Skate, no history binding him to a set routine, to turn and ask, "Which way is that?"
Harry directed him to the right, and then a series of turns this way and that. The passengers sat in silence, watching the streets pass, wondering where it was Harry took them. There was no apparent logic to his choices, and yet this man, one they knew with habits set in concrete, might be trusted to deliver them to the city's center. Indeed, the bus seemed to be on a route nearer to their destination, the tall towers of the city center closer now, the streets more dense in an urban array.
They reached a street choked in traffic, a sheet metal tangle crawling down a busy block, the city just over a bridge. There was time now to take in the scene. For several minutes they didn't move. Next to the bus was a young woman in a car, her fingers drumming the wheel to an unheard beat, her face twitching in caffeinated impatience, rushing forward one inch at a time. Her auburn hair fell to her shoulders. She was dressed in proper cubicle fashion, ready for her office day. Beside her on the seat was a leather briefcase, monogrammed in gold, two letters; JT. Harry worked the letters through in his mind. Jennifer Thomas. Jane Thornton. Judy Taggert. He settled on Justine Taylor, a young woman filled with the life ahead, days to live and dreams unformed.
The two of them sat there, inches apart, separated by two panes of glass. He wanted to reach out and stroke her soft hair, tell her about his wild day and all the new things that had come to him. There was so much he wanted to tell Justine. She would listen and laugh and call him a foolish old man, and tell him this end of things was really a beginning, an opportunity for something else now. Let something else into his life. This was the way young people saw the world. It was so easy to see the world this way from the immortal stance of youth.
He had the thought to get off the bus and clear traffic, let her speed away to her waiting life. This was no place for Justine, stuck in a traffic jam, going nowhere and everywhere at the same time. He wanted to set Justine free, tell her not to let the days grow thick around her feet, not to let life tackle her and bind her in a sheet metal knot.
"Turn right," he said to Skate.
"Right?" asked Skate.
"That puts us on the highway," Mrs. Guild said.
"Can't see the city is just ahead?" asked Fat Hobarth.
Harry shrugged his shoulders. That made Frankie laugh. "I'm with Harry. Turn right."
"That's 287," Skate said. "Who knows where we'll end up?"
"That's the point, isn't it, Harry?" asked Frankie.
"We're lost now," Harry said.
"Dude," Fat Hobarth said, "The city is right there. We're off this bus in ten minutes."
"I don't want to get off," Harry said.
"That again?" asked Fat Hobarth. "You've got to get over it, pal."
Frankie looked at Harry a moment. "No, it's something else."
They sat there, idling, waiting for the light to turn green. Skate looked over his shoulder. None of the passengers spoke. He looked at Harry and raised his eyebrows.
"Turn right, Harry said.
Skate hesitated a moment, then shrugged. "I'm fired anyway."
They spent the day heading north. At lunch, Skate pulled the bus off the highway and started winding his way down country roads. Harry directed him to the left and the right. Skate spun the wheel without comment. Harry commanded the wheel. Skate was connected to Harry's thoughts. Harry tried it out. He thought right and Skate turned right. He didn't do it again. His gut clinched at the idea of that kind of power.
Around one, they found a small inn by a placid lake, bought bottles of white wine and bread and cheese, sat by the water, let the sun bake through the urban crust to their grateful bones. This was a different silence than the silence of the alley. Harry listened, trying to understand. It was a silence filled with space. He liked that thought, a silence of space.
Fat Hobarth told stories of his days in the Army. Pandu talked about his small town set by the Ganges. They went there with him in their minds, imagining a place so different from their own. Skate became animated discussing theories to change physics and show a new way the world might be stitched together. Mrs. Guild untucked her blouse, took off her heels and waded in the icy water; early summer, lake water still laced in winter's chill.
For some reason Harry insisted Frankie only bet on gray horses the next time he went to the book. He had this image in his head; gray horses surging across the finish line, gray horses unbeatable in thundering grace. Frankie threw back his head and let out a laugh that echoed off the granite cliffs on the far shore. The laugh bounced back and forth, skimming the brown waters and re-bounding over rocks.
"You're right, Harry." Frankie said. "Tomorrow, it's gray horses only!"
The ride home took hours. Harry fell asleep, head pressed against the window, a blue heron in his dreams, soaring on monoxide thermals over rivers of red taillights.
It was almost midnight when they returned to the bus shelter, the shelter no longer a haven in Harry's eyes, the kung fu master another faded Hong Kong star peeling away. They stood in the street, words beyond them after the sudden day. It was Skate who spoke first, muttering how he'd have to go find another job. "If they don't put me in jail for stealing the bus."
"Say you were hijacked," Fat Hobarth said. He quickly reconsidered it. "Nah, just say you got lost."
"Yeah, I really got lost."
Skate climbed back on the bus and rumbled down the street in a blue diesel plume. The others stood there a moment more, until Mrs. Guild picked up her bags and said, "Well, that was different." With a small wave she headed down the block. Pandu followed her, saying over his shoulder maybe he could get a job in that inn by the lake. Fat Hobarth left, muttering his wife would never believe any of this. Finally, Frankie held out his hand to Harry. "You want to bet the ponies you come and look me up."
Harry took his time walking back to his house. The neighborhood was quiet, shades drawn, sometimes a small dance of TV light peeking from behind the blinds. TV builds a wall against the dark world, holds the deepening shadows at bay. He reached his home, put his key in the front door, then changed his mind and sat on the front steps of his porch. He wanted to feel the day a moment longer. A man came walking up the block, smoking a cigarette and carrying a paper bag. It was Frankie.
He sat next to Harry.
"You want a beer?"
From down the block chimes in the local church tower struck twelve.
"I used to write that pastor all the time," Harry said. "Those bells ringing all night long kept me awake for years."
"You always know what time it is," Frankie said.
Harry opened a beer. As he took his first sip the chimes finished working their way toward midnight; their muffled peal the first layer of the coming day.
by Mick Hale
He stood across the street this last morning waiting for the other passengers to arrive in the bus shelter. It was important to him they arrived in the correct order. The order was Pandu first, then Fat Hobarth, followed by Frankie and finally, Mrs. Guild. When they all assembled he crossed the street.
The poster was still there on the shelter wall, a kung fu movie from five years ago. Harry liked the Hong Kong movie star posed in fearful fit, with dark, angry eyes, kung-fu master as guardian spirit, on a mission to keep the bus shelter safe. Sometimes, in his bedroom, Harry tried this kung-fu pose. It was a wild thing to do, a secret desire kept hidden from the world.
Frankie was the only one who ever talked to Harry. It wasn't that Harry talked to Frankie; it was that Frankie talked to everybody. Frankie chatted with Mrs. Guild, then turned to Harry and said, "Did you hear that, Harry? Tomorrow is Mrs. Guild's birthday. How old is that, dear? Twenty-nine?"
Mrs. Guild, safely beyond twenty-nine, laughed, Pandu added a chuckle and the general mood lifted at the bus stop on Goddard Road. Harry admired Frankie. If Frankie struck a kung-fu pose, he'd do it right here, in front of the world.
"Hey, Harry," Frankie said, startling Harry with a firm punch on the arm. "Big day, eh?"
The day seemed no bigger than any other, no more sky above or asphalt below. When Harry was a child he believed in big days. Children do. The world shrank with age. It did for Harry. It didn't bother him, he just thought that's the way life was.
After a moment Harry answered Frankie's big day question.
"Yes," he said.
Frankie waited, until it became apparent Harry had nothing more to add.
"Okay," Frankie said, a man who abhorred silence of any kind. He turned to Fat Hobarth.
"Harry here is retiring today. How long has it been? A hundred years? A hundred years at Whatshisface, Whatshisface and Whatshisface. That's something. The longest I ever held a job was two weeks, and I'll tell you something else --that's the only job I've ever had."
There was this ripple of laughter through the bus shelter. Frankie had the singular habit of adding a punctuation of chuckling to every stray thought. Harry didn't join. Frankie's laugh track made him smile, but he never joined in. Kung-fu poses in his bedroom were one thing. When he stepped out his front door, the kung-fu master stayed behind.
Fat Hobarth, after Frankie the most verbal of them all, said, "The ponies are your job, Frankie. You take them seriously enough."
"True," Frankie said. "It's work. Today, I got a hot one in the first at Belmont. I ain't missing today. Today's a winner!"
Fat Hobarth with a million beers and burgers buried in his gut, followed his laugh with a coughing fit. The man's belly was beyond containment. Fat guys could get that way, so huge there was no other choice but to let the belly lead the way, buy bigger clothes, forget trying to suck the gut in. A gut like Fat Hobarth's lived its own life.
Harry shifted his eyes to Mrs. Guild; smoldering mood swings, shades of grey and black, eyes tucked away behind dark, dark lenses. He imagined Mrs. Guild in her kitchen, Mrs. Guild in her bedroom. There was a flash to Mrs. Guild. Like in summer, heat lightning, dark filled with flash but no sound. There was always this possibility with Mrs. Guild. Some women made men wonder. Mrs. Guild was like that. Sometimes, Harry stood naked in front of his mirror, his body old now. No woman would open to a body like his. Still, sometimes Harry wondered about Mrs. Guild.
The fourth man at the bus stop was Pandu; eyes wrapped within the pink rectangle of the Financial Times, bushy beard combed in waves, his turbaned skull and foreign scent. Someone like Pandu at the bus stop made the little shelter seem bigger than it was. Harry was proud this Indian man stood there every day. The turban must take time to wind around Pandu's skull. Sometimes the turban was gray and sometimes white.
Thirty-two years waiting for the number nine bus and not one workday missed. Harry played it through his mind and smiled. His world was evolving, and as he had this thought, indeed the world began to shift.
This was the first stop on the morning route and at 7:14 the bus rounded the corner as always, only another driver was behind the wheel. This made Harry uneasy. Of all days, this was no day for a new driver, especially a young man who said, "Morning, dude," as Harry mounted the three steps into the bus. The driver's badge read, 'Skate Harrison.' Skate was a suspicious name for a bus driver. Harry stared long enough for the driver to mutter, "You alright there?"
Long ago Harry discovered the secret that governed his life. If something small changed, things changed in rising degree as the day progressed. There was no telling where a sequence of change might lead. Over the years Harry became convinced it was unlikely to be a comfortable place.
As the bus pulled away he grabbed the steel handrail. Skate accelerated faster than a veteran bus driver. A young man's desire to burn more diesel than necessary. Harry understood. He also understood that this was, after all, the end of days.
Outside the bus window the world passed by. Rosemont Florist. The display of flowers changed every day. Today was Tuesday. At this time of year there should be racks of roses and indeed there were. Madaba Deli Number Eight. The two Pakistani men who ran the store were sweeping the sidewalk as always. Lee's Dry Cleaning Emporium. Emporium was a grand word for the shabby exterior of Mr. Lee's store. Harry wondered about it every day.
Today, things were as they should be, but something bothered him. The bus moved too fast.
Carter's Family Clothing Outlet. Harry barely saw the mannequins dressed in plaid. Barry's Bagel and Coffee. The breakfast special remained a mystery. Judson's Stationary. Judson's window, filled with innovative ideas in office supplies, zipped by, the shimmering blue and white reflection of the bus flashing across the plate glass. Worse, the bus didn't stop. Judson's was Eddie Van Neelson's stop. Right there, right outside Harry's window Eddie stood, brow furrowed, holding his hand up. Eddie ignored. Eddie left behind.
"Hey."
Mrs. Guild's voice.
Harry's eyes fell to the pearl brooch pinned just above her breast, its sharp point laced through the fabric of her grey sweater. It matched her strident tone.
"Driver, you missed a stop. What are you doing?" Mrs. Guild's voice, honed to a fine edge, cut through Harry's skull, dominated the diesel's sparky roar, the grinding wheels and rattling rivets of the city bus. Mrs. Guild rose from her seat and swayed toward the front, passing Harry and almost falling into his lap as the bus made an unexpected turn.
Pandu raised his head in alarm. When he spoke, his accent thick as Ganges mud, lay heavy on the ear, spicy with a curry lilt.
"This is not the way. You must go left."
The bus turned right on Summer Street. Harry never turned right on Summer Street. Turning right on Summer Street plunged them into an alien world. Immediately, he saw a woman walking a dog, but no dog like he'd ever seen, an alien dog from a distant star. Right on Summer Street unfolded out the window, replete with threats. On the first corner was Larry's Hunt and Gun, Larry himself armed and standing behind the counter ready to stalk any bus that wandered into his domain. A huge man washed his car by curbside, his long arms sweeping a chamois across the metallic flecked fins in menacing swipes. Two nuns shuffled down the street, wimples wrapped tight around their ears.
Harry wanted to meet this world with kung-fu courage, but that was just a movie poster after all. His stomach churned.
At last, Mrs. Guild reached the driver's seat.
"Driver, this is the wrong way."
If the world were flat, they'd fall off the edge at the end of Summer Street. Harry became convinced of it. A man like Harry just wanted things to finish. He wanted to go to his office, pack up his life and close his bedroom door.
"He can't hear you," Frankie shouted from his seat. "He's listening to music."
There they were, Harry saw, tiny headphone buds stuck in Skate's ears. He watched Skate's hand tap a finger flourish on the wheel. Rock and roll; the bus's churning rhythm took shape. Heavy metal, thrashing like the steel wheels of the city bus bouncing through potholes. Harry remembered at the grocery store seeing a headline splashed across a glossy magazine: Metal Head Johnson Leaves Rocktominum! Now here on this renegade bus he saw another: Metal Head Harrison Turns Right On Summer Street!
With a firm tap on his shoulders, Mrs. Guild finally got Skate Harrison's attention. The driver popped the ear buds out of his metal head and turned slightly.
"Please stand behind the white line," he said.
Indeed, the toes of Mrs. Guild's shoes violated the sacred white line. This could not be, this willful violation of white lines. Harry always placed his feet carefully behind the prohibited stripe. Every situation in life required some form of white line; stand here, not there, simple instructions to help navigate the heaving seas of unfamiliar places. He didn't want to be this way, but white lines were decision makers. They made life easier for him.
However, Mrs. Guild's courage knew no bounds. She shuffled beyond the white line and put her mouth close to Skate's ear.
"You are going the wrong way."
"What?"
The metal still rang in his ears. Harry imagined the acrid aroma of crispy guitars and fried drum skins drifting out of Skate's skull. There it was, haunting the bus, an apparition of snake tongues and wild eyes lined in black. The thought made Harry's heart race.
"What do you mean?" asked Skate.
"Dude," said Fat Hobarth. His deep rumble easily carried from the rear seat. "You made a right on Summer Street. You should have made a left."
Harry looked over his shoulder. The rear seat was built for the big man's girth. His arms spread to either side, anchoring him against the bus's sway. His legs were planted to the rubber floor, Bus Buddha, his commanding presence mocking the very word 'passenger.'
"You'll have to turn around," Fat Hobarth concluded.
Harry began to go over file procedures in his mind, his lifesaver when things went out of control, the bus route gone, wheels wandering. He focused on metal drawers. He debated if he should change his system, and perhaps organize by date as opposed to the alphabet. The alphabet was a flawed sequence. He could see that now. He worked the new organization through his mind and forgot they aimlessly drifted down Summer Street, their commuting destiny in the sweaty grasp of a metal head's fiery spirit. He even forgot the quiet order of the file room would soon be someone else's responsibility.
It was Frankie's reedy voice that sucked Harry back into the bus.
"There's no place to turn around at the end of Summer Street."
Harry fought back. The alphabet was a closed system, developed thousands of years ago, chiseled into clay tablets. Clay tablets were too thick to fit into file drawers. Clay tablets became brittle over time. Clay tablets might shatter and vault the file room into disorder. A date, numbers, digits, now there was an infinite quality of order to things; a man could organize in decimal bliss with numbers. He smiled to himself. In his parting interview with Mr. Broadfellow he might mention his idea. Mr. Broadfellow, his tie knotted, his suit pressed, every single object on Mr. Broadfellow's desk in its place. Mr. Broadfellow was a god to Harry.
"This is not right," Pandu said. "I am needing to get to my work."
Harry floated down Summer Street, the street becoming narrower, the rows of shops replaced with rows of houses, the rows of houses replaced with industrial buildings, abandoned, windows shattered, graffiti across brick, urban scrawls, indecipherable to Harry, a foreign language, raw emotion, chaos captured and sprayed across walls to taunt him. There was no hiding in the corners of his skull. The graffiti sweeps and shapes began to take form. He stared at them, hypnotized by their colorful curves and mysterious messages, antediluvian omens from a primitive world.
The bus stopped.
Outside his window Harry saw a rat dart between stacks of rusting iron drums. The bus idled for a moment and then Skate ground the gears into reverse, the slow roll back accompanied by a beep bouncing off the narrow walls of the alley. Harry imagined them backing all the way to the missed turn. Everything might roll back. The woman with the alien dog, Larry the hunter taking the gun off his shoulder, the big man with the chamois swiping backward along dampened chrome, a slow rewind to before.
His pulse steadied. He closed his eyes. He'd keep them closed until the bus began forward motion again. He willed the world to return to its set route. Perhaps tomorrow he'd find the courage always just beyond his grasp.
The sound of steel scraping on the bus side and a tumbling of iron rang into silence. Harry opened his eyes. Skate had backed the bus into the stack of oil drums, the bus wedged against the alley walls. There was a giant spiral of graffiti inches from his window, the strokes revealed, the spray paint telling its own story of a hand driven to this place to mark the world in an immortal bid, or a desperate plea, I am here, I am alive, do not forget me.
From the rear of the bus Fat Hobarth laughed. "You miss backing up class there, driver?"
The engine stopped. A wash of panic snaked up Harry's spine. Skate pushed the bus door open and got off. He returned in seconds and announced, "That's it. We're going to have to get off. I'm going to find a phone and call the bus company. They'll send another bus."
"If I miss my race at Belmont you're toast," Frankie said.
"How long have you been driving a bus?" asked Mrs. Guild.
"I will be fired," Pandu said.
There was no diesel churning now. Harry barely controlled his shaking, tried a deep breath to steady his nerves, but the breath was a shuddering rasp. It must have been audible. Mrs. Guild gave him a lingering glance. Without taking her eyes away from Harry she said, "I'm sure the bus company will have something to say about this whole matter."
Skate stood on the top step by the bus door, shaken by his failure. "Look, this is just a summer job for me. I'm studying Applied Physics at MIT. I don't know much about driving buses."
Rising from his seat, Fat Hobarth lumbered forward. "Thank God you weren't the one who invented the atomic bomb then." He squeezed by Skate and exited the bus. Pandu quickly followed, and then Mrs. Guild, gathering her bags into her hands, almost pushing Skate through the front windscreen as she disembarked.
They left the bus one by one. Harry sank lower in his seat, a vinyl cradle, its squishy comfort a secure nest. He smelled the alley, the heavy air drifting through the open bus door, putrid scents laced in a fine, choking dust. There were layers to the smell, things abandoned, a dead end of broken dreams, lost souls, drifters wandering to the farthest reaches of the city to hide from the judging eyes of an unforgiving day. Piss and shit and smashed bottles of cheap wine, ozone seeping toward a yellow sky, reams of newspapers rotting in tilting stacks, all the news, all the births and deaths and defeats of the daily urban turmoil reduced to tiny rivers of bleeding ink.
"You okay?"
Frankie stood there. The smile on his lips betrayed the concerned look in his eyes. More than any of them, Frankie knew Harry. He was not an easy person to know, this slight man in his hardened shell, but Frankie made a study of people. It helped him at the track. He could tell a lot about how a horse might perform by watching tiny jockeys and coifed owners in the paddock circling their pampered beasts. If he were placing a bet on Harry right now he'd pick him to finish dead last. The guy looked like he was going to melt into a puddle of piss.
"We've got to get off the bus," Frankie said.
"No," Harry said.
But he did get off the bus. Frankie reached down and placed his hand on Harry's elbow and gently encouraged him to stand.
"There you go, Harry. You sitting here all day? Let's go find another bus."
Like buses were easy to find, like every bus was the same as every other bus, Frankie still edged his words in a light laugh, not understanding a complete re-trace of steps was needed, time itself must be warped, whipped back to 7:14, five people standing in a bus shelter, the beginning of the end of things. This was chaos, this alley, this broken bus, and this unfamiliar world.
Three steps, that's all it was, but another thing to take those steps on quivering legs. Walking was simple, but for some reason it now required his full concentration. He kept his eyes to the ground, placing each foot carefully to avoid stumbling. He went to the wall of a building and leaned against the brick. There was a debate going on. Skate insisted everyone keep together and follow him to a public phone. Mrs. Guild pointed to her shoes and explained she couldn't walk far. Fat Hobarth mused about the idiocy of women dressed in heels that made it impossible to walk. Pandu, for some reason, got into the middle of it, told Fat Hobarth he must not be a rude man and that he liked Mrs. Guild's shoes.
Mrs. Guild solved the matter by picking up her bags and walking down the alley. The men followed. Skate rushed ahead to take the lead. He was the bus driver and this was still his bus, even though the bus had changed into a ragged procession down a trash-strewn alley. Frankie lingered, making sure Harry followed, trying to talk the man through whatever it was making this simple thing so difficult. He led Harry like a child away from the wall.
"I like alleys," Frankie said. "When I go to a city I'm always on the lookout for alleys. Alleys are like the bones of a city. You can tell a lot about a city if you take a peek down an alley. People in an alley always tell you the truth. If I really want to know what's going on in place I always head straight for an alley and ask. I've been in this alley before. It's nothing, Harry. Just a place.
"When I first moved here I got a bike. It wasn't much of a bike but it got me around, you know? One day I did the same thing that nut job bus driver did, only of course I wasn't driving a bus, so it was easy enough to turn around when I got to this dead end.
"There was an old guy here, right over there -- see that pile of cardboard boxes? He was living in them. It don't look like nothing but a pile of boxes, right? Well, to this guy it was home. I suppose it was a mansion in his eyes. That's something, isn't it? When a pile of trash becomes a home. Things like that make you stop and think. Harry, wouldn't you think about something like that?
"This old guy's name was Rudolf. That's a grand name for a bum, don't you think? But sometimes bums ain't what they seem. Mostly bums are just like us except maybe things took a wrong turn. Life can do that. Look, Harry, I know my life took some turns, but I always think, well, at least I ain't living in a cardboard box. That's a good thing, right? You see, alleys teach you things.
"Rudolf had a lot to say. It didn't take much to get Rudolf to talk. He wasn't like you. That guy had an opinion about everything and I ain't saying you don't, but this guy knew how to talk. You wonder how a guy like that, a guy that knows everything, ends up in the dumpster every day looking for something to eat. Or maybe that's what it is. Maybe knowing everything is the worst thing. You know everything maybe that's what happens to you.
"Me? I like to keep myself on the dumb side. I know about the ponies. I wake up in the morning and I sit down with a smoke and some coffee and go over the form. I add it all up and figure it out. Most times I'm wrong cause there's this random factor you just can't take out of a race. Every now and then some lame ass horse gets it in its mind to run and take the wind and thirty bucks goes down the drain. What you going to do about something like that?
"But you know, man, sometimes, it goes the other way. Sometimes, I look at the form and it all makes sense to me and I know it's going to be a good day. One good day makes up for a whole lot of bad. And I'll tell you something -- this guy Rudolf saw the world the same way.
"I asked him how come he's living here. You got to wonder about something like that, don't you, Harry? Maybe a shave and a nice bath and this guy could be your neighbor and you wouldn't even think about it. There was nothing wrong with the guy that I could see. Except of course he was living in a box and that's a whole lot of wrong right there.
"Anyways, this Rudolf looks at me and says life is leftover pizza. A guy says something like that it catches your attention. What do you think when you hear something like that? It got me thinking. Doesn't it get you thinking? With a guy like that you're always on the lookout for things. Sort of like a red flag the guy's going loco and he's going to pull out a weapon and start evening things out, or putting things to right, or taking care of what ever little bugs he's got running around his skull.
"So, I ask him what he means, figuring conversation might keep him on an even keel, but already planning a scoot back down the alley. That's what you would do, right Harry, be backing away? That's what I did, but slow like.
"And while I'm doing it he reaches into a box and I'm thinking, okay, the game is on here, but instead of a knife or a gun, he takes out a couple of slices of Sicilian, real thick, just the way you like it, and he hands a slice to me. Now where do you suppose he got it, Harry? Out of a dumpster somewhere. I know that. You know that. It's obvious, right? But the look in his eye, I can tell it's important to him I eat. Sort of a hospitality thing. There I am sitting in the man's home. It ain't much. The next rainstorm the walls are going to melt.
"My mama, she used to drink a lot, could spend the whole day on the couch with a bottle of scotch watching the soaps. But she taught me some things. Your mama taught you things as well, I'm sure of that. All mamas do. Being polite was one of the things my mama taught me. So I chow down. And you know what? Best damn pizza I ever ate. Cold, but there was something to the taste. Lots of cheese, maybe that was it. What do you think?
"The thing was it shouldn't have tasted as good as it did. I'm telling you, Harry, it was weird. Sitting there, in that little cardboard home, it was like we were feasting. And all we're doing is eating some food out of the trash, Rudolf watching me, and I can see it in his eyes. He's enjoying me eating, but there's something else. He's waiting. I didn't get it. Only thinking back on it over time did I figure it out.
"Sometimes, it takes a little while. I ain't the quickest guy around, you know? You come to an alley and you learn some things. That's how life can work. Things pile up in a life, don't they? I mean the march of days. One after another and each one leaves a little bit of itself in your head. Enough bad days and you end up the weird guy at the end of the bar talking to his beer. Or you end up in an alley living in a box. Harry, life can take a turn. You know that.
"But Rudolf is saying to me just take what you get and if that's a couple of slices in a dumpster then take them. You in the right frame of mind, it's all going to taste pretty fine. And you know what? It don't matter how much you get from a life. It all comes down to the same thing. Life is leftover pizza. Yes sir, that's all it's ever going to be. You figure that out you can be happy no matter what's going on. Nobody can touch you if you figure something like that out."
By now the invisible bus, Skate still in the lead, reached the corner of Summer and Newell. Here another debate broke out. Mrs. Guild insisted this was as far as she would go, another bus would just have to come and fetch her. Pandu, by this point in full panic, and at the same time resigned to the fact he was going to be late for work, suggested Skate go into one of the homes and call for a taxi.
"And you will have to pay for it," added Pandu.
"Me?" Skate responded. "I haven't got any money."
"I'm sure the bus company will reimburse you."
"No they won't," Skate said. "They'll probably fire me."
"Fire you?" Fat Hobarth said. "What for? Making a wrong turn and running the bus into a stack of empty oil drums, stranding us in the middle of nowhere, and making Pandu here get fired? Why would they fire you for something like that?"
"Do you think they will fire me?" asked Pandu.
"Two people fired in one day from the same bus," Fat Hobarth said.
"Hold on," Frankie said. "First, look at these houses. Nobody lives in them. This place has been run down for years. Second, nobody's getting fired. Skate here made an honest mistake. What is the bus company doing sending a guy out without proper training? And Pandu was just a passenger. Pandu, you need me to go talk to your boss, I can do that."
"The bus company must take care of this," Mrs. Guild said.
"I'm sure they'll get right on it," Fat Hobarth said.
"This is a very bad thing," Pandu said. "Without a job I will be deported."
"Maybe you could become a ghandi," Fat Hobarth said.
"What do you mean?" asked Pandu.
"The Immigration Service gives free passes to religious guys."
"You mean guru. Ghandi was a man."
"A guru then. All you got to do is sleep on a bed of nails. That should do it."
"I am insulted by what you say," Pandu said, and his face flushed.
"Calm down," Fat Hobarth said.
"You are too crazy to be saying things like that."
"Wait a minute," Mrs. Guild said. She was leaning against a low brick wall and rubbing her feet. "Where's Harry?"
Everybody looked up and down the street.
"How does a guy disappear like that?" Fat Hobarth said. He turned to Skate. "Losing passengers is a big no-no at the bus company."
Around the corner, Harry sat on a bench. The spitting back and forth gave him a headache. The world was still close to his neck, almost choking him with its strangeness, but here on the bench it was quiet. He sat and looked at the house across the street. Every window was boarded. There was trash in the yard, maybe things left behind by the owners long ago. A kid's tricycle on the porch, an old TV set in the garden, the garage to the left of the house collapsed on one side. Dead house. No ghosts living there. Ghosts wouldn't live in a dead house like this. They'd want to live in a place filled with life.
He knew about ghosts. Years ago his Mother came down with the cancer. That's what she called it, the cancer. At first it was nothing. Days followed days and his Mom pretty much lived her life. Slowly, the cancer took its hold. His Mom was strong. When his father left it was just the two of them, his Mom working jobs, Harry going to school. His Mom liked to hear about school. She'd never finished eighth grade so every day she asked him to tell her something new. Harry used to stop in the library on the way home and look up things to tell her. He wanted her to think he was a genius.
The cancer had its way with her. The doctors kept telling him she wasn't going to last long, but they didn't know her. Days followed days, years followed years, until his Mom just sat in a chair with a vacant look in her eye, grey skin, strands of hair, nothing much to her life at all except Harry telling her new things.
There were great changes going on in the world, and he told her of these wondrous things; men flying to the moon, computers the size of a dime, cars running on sunflower oil. He told her soon they'd be growing body parts in vats. If somebody got sick they could just check into a hospital and get a new liver, or a new heart, whatever they needed. His Mom sat there amazed at the things her son said, and smiled in his delight, even though there was little she understood.
The cancer ate her brain. That's what he remembered. The doctors told him so. They even hinted he consider putting her into a special hospital. Harry was suspicious of that. He thought he heard another thing in the doctors' words. Let her die, that is what he thought the doctors meant.
His Mom became a ghost, a wispy presence in the living room, shaded in the nervous broadcast light of the TV set. He tried to bring the world into their home. Every day he went to the store and bought fresh flowers. He cooked meals to fill the home with kitchen scents. He opened windows on warm summer days and put music on the radio. On Sunday afternoons they listened to the opera. Harry explained all the stories and melodrama. He filled his Mother's ghost with life until the day she passed away sitting in her chair, Mozart on the radio, and the city sounds drifting in from the open window. He turned the radio off and closed the window for a final time.
Harry boarded up the house. This house across the street, this could be his old boarded home. He hadn't really stuck plywood on the windows. It was just in his head, the nails and slats of wood.
Sitting here he understood. Something like that, a lingering illness, and the world could slip away for those around the dying.
After he buried his mother he stepped into the world again, but it was never the same. Each day seemed edged to a fatal degree. Life felt unsafe. Harry got a job, then another, until he finally arrived in the file room. The file room, it was quiet there, a place to pass the days. He wanted nothing new now. His mother took all the new things with her when she passed away.
Across the street the dead house, these things running through his mind; his mother's life, his mother's death floating in and out of the empty windows; his mother's moans from all the pain floating up and down the empty street. He closed his eyes and focused on the city's hum. Let the urban quilt mute his mother's memory. Let it go.
The city was all around him. At the end of the block an interstate rose above the street. The highway drone whistled in the air, a dozen cars a minute flying by this empty place, mocking the dreams that once lived here. In the carbon envelope he thought he heard a child's voice. There at the edge of things were a thousand echoes caught in this asphalt wasteland. It was his voice; he recognized it now. The child's voice fading away, released at last by this aimless drift. Let go, Harry.
Next to the bench was an old pizza box, caught in a stray strand of chain link fence. He leaned over and pried the pizza box free. Inside, the box was empty, a trace of old grease and a piece of crumpled wax paper. He held the paper in his hand, felt the brittle texture crush within his fingers, and then let it fall to the concrete. He smiled. Life is leftover pizza, unless you never find a slice.
From around the corner a bus rumbled into view; Skate's cocky posture back in place behind the big bus wheel. The bus pulled up and stopped with a hiss of compressed air. The door opened.
"A cop came by and they sent another bus," Skate said. "Come on."
Harry boarded. They were all there, each in his seat, as if by resuming the set routine things might be as they once were. Harry stood a moment, then took a seat right behind Skate, a place he'd never sat before.
"Alright," Skate said. "Let's get this bus back on its route."
The world outside the window was new. The bus wound its way through a maze of streets and unexpected turns as Skate tried to find his way back to the corner of Goddard and Summer.
"There's no point in that," Mrs. Guild said. "You should just take us into the city by the quickest route."
"I only know one way," Skate said.
"And you don't know that very well," Fat Hobarth said from the rear.
None of this penetrated Harry's thoughts. He watched this new world unfold. Yes, the houses were houses he'd never seen before. The neighborhood changed into a sprawl of tall red-bricked apartment buildings, groaning from the overflow of lives crammed into their boxy bulk. Yes, these were strange shops, one selling wigs, another selling exotic pet supplies. Yes, there were people out there, a world of strangers, each caught in mirrors of their own experience. But there was more to this new world than before. There was something else now. Harry didn't understand. The colors of this world were different. The textures carved in new stone, the faces set in a new way. Harry watched out of his bus window, hypnotized by this new parade.
The bus reached an intersection and paused. Now a great debate rose, each voice trapped in its own concern. Turn right, turn left, go straight, until Skate was paralyzed by a dozen different demands, and then Harry spoke.
"There's another way."
None of them ever heard Harry speak. Maybe a word or a nod, but this was something else. Even Frankie, the man with the non-stop mouth, wasn't sure what to say. So it fell to Skate, no history binding him to a set routine, to turn and ask, "Which way is that?"
Harry directed him to the right, and then a series of turns this way and that. The passengers sat in silence, watching the streets pass, wondering where it was Harry took them. There was no apparent logic to his choices, and yet this man, one they knew with habits set in concrete, might be trusted to deliver them to the city's center. Indeed, the bus seemed to be on a route nearer to their destination, the tall towers of the city center closer now, the streets more dense in an urban array.
They reached a street choked in traffic, a sheet metal tangle crawling down a busy block, the city just over a bridge. There was time now to take in the scene. For several minutes they didn't move. Next to the bus was a young woman in a car, her fingers drumming the wheel to an unheard beat, her face twitching in caffeinated impatience, rushing forward one inch at a time. Her auburn hair fell to her shoulders. She was dressed in proper cubicle fashion, ready for her office day. Beside her on the seat was a leather briefcase, monogrammed in gold, two letters; JT. Harry worked the letters through in his mind. Jennifer Thomas. Jane Thornton. Judy Taggert. He settled on Justine Taylor, a young woman filled with the life ahead, days to live and dreams unformed.
The two of them sat there, inches apart, separated by two panes of glass. He wanted to reach out and stroke her soft hair, tell her about his wild day and all the new things that had come to him. There was so much he wanted to tell Justine. She would listen and laugh and call him a foolish old man, and tell him this end of things was really a beginning, an opportunity for something else now. Let something else into his life. This was the way young people saw the world. It was so easy to see the world this way from the immortal stance of youth.
He had the thought to get off the bus and clear traffic, let her speed away to her waiting life. This was no place for Justine, stuck in a traffic jam, going nowhere and everywhere at the same time. He wanted to set Justine free, tell her not to let the days grow thick around her feet, not to let life tackle her and bind her in a sheet metal knot.
"Turn right," he said to Skate.
"Right?" asked Skate.
"That puts us on the highway," Mrs. Guild said.
"Can't see the city is just ahead?" asked Fat Hobarth.
Harry shrugged his shoulders. That made Frankie laugh. "I'm with Harry. Turn right."
"That's 287," Skate said. "Who knows where we'll end up?"
"That's the point, isn't it, Harry?" asked Frankie.
"We're lost now," Harry said.
"Dude," Fat Hobarth said, "The city is right there. We're off this bus in ten minutes."
"I don't want to get off," Harry said.
"That again?" asked Fat Hobarth. "You've got to get over it, pal."
Frankie looked at Harry a moment. "No, it's something else."
They sat there, idling, waiting for the light to turn green. Skate looked over his shoulder. None of the passengers spoke. He looked at Harry and raised his eyebrows.
"Turn right, Harry said.
Skate hesitated a moment, then shrugged. "I'm fired anyway."
They spent the day heading north. At lunch, Skate pulled the bus off the highway and started winding his way down country roads. Harry directed him to the left and the right. Skate spun the wheel without comment. Harry commanded the wheel. Skate was connected to Harry's thoughts. Harry tried it out. He thought right and Skate turned right. He didn't do it again. His gut clinched at the idea of that kind of power.
Around one, they found a small inn by a placid lake, bought bottles of white wine and bread and cheese, sat by the water, let the sun bake through the urban crust to their grateful bones. This was a different silence than the silence of the alley. Harry listened, trying to understand. It was a silence filled with space. He liked that thought, a silence of space.
Fat Hobarth told stories of his days in the Army. Pandu talked about his small town set by the Ganges. They went there with him in their minds, imagining a place so different from their own. Skate became animated discussing theories to change physics and show a new way the world might be stitched together. Mrs. Guild untucked her blouse, took off her heels and waded in the icy water; early summer, lake water still laced in winter's chill.
For some reason Harry insisted Frankie only bet on gray horses the next time he went to the book. He had this image in his head; gray horses surging across the finish line, gray horses unbeatable in thundering grace. Frankie threw back his head and let out a laugh that echoed off the granite cliffs on the far shore. The laugh bounced back and forth, skimming the brown waters and re-bounding over rocks.
"You're right, Harry." Frankie said. "Tomorrow, it's gray horses only!"
The ride home took hours. Harry fell asleep, head pressed against the window, a blue heron in his dreams, soaring on monoxide thermals over rivers of red taillights.
It was almost midnight when they returned to the bus shelter, the shelter no longer a haven in Harry's eyes, the kung fu master another faded Hong Kong star peeling away. They stood in the street, words beyond them after the sudden day. It was Skate who spoke first, muttering how he'd have to go find another job. "If they don't put me in jail for stealing the bus."
"Say you were hijacked," Fat Hobarth said. He quickly reconsidered it. "Nah, just say you got lost."
"Yeah, I really got lost."
Skate climbed back on the bus and rumbled down the street in a blue diesel plume. The others stood there a moment more, until Mrs. Guild picked up her bags and said, "Well, that was different." With a small wave she headed down the block. Pandu followed her, saying over his shoulder maybe he could get a job in that inn by the lake. Fat Hobarth left, muttering his wife would never believe any of this. Finally, Frankie held out his hand to Harry. "You want to bet the ponies you come and look me up."
Harry took his time walking back to his house. The neighborhood was quiet, shades drawn, sometimes a small dance of TV light peeking from behind the blinds. TV builds a wall against the dark world, holds the deepening shadows at bay. He reached his home, put his key in the front door, then changed his mind and sat on the front steps of his porch. He wanted to feel the day a moment longer. A man came walking up the block, smoking a cigarette and carrying a paper bag. It was Frankie.
He sat next to Harry.
"You want a beer?"
From down the block chimes in the local church tower struck twelve.
"I used to write that pastor all the time," Harry said. "Those bells ringing all night long kept me awake for years."
"You always know what time it is," Frankie said.
Harry opened a beer. As he took his first sip the chimes finished working their way toward midnight; their muffled peal the first layer of the coming day.
posted by mick hale at 8:38 AM
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