Stopping Service
The View from a Seat Near the Back
Characters make stories. They add colour and interpretation, their strengths and frailties allow situations to unfold one way or another.
We see the world through their eyes.
Three years ago I was playing around with a short tale - I liked the idea so much I edited it into a 100-word story … the central character is Dolores, someone who has been dealt a bad hand by life.
Recently, I wondered how Dolores was doing; tales from the Santa Cruz Metro by Sharron Bassano gave me an idea. Re-reading ‘Cry Wolf’, I see that Susie Mawhinney hoped Dolores might return.
She has …
You wanna see life? I mean, really see it? Take the damn bus. Not because you choose to, because you have to.
Buses are for the folk who don’t have no choice. They’re for people who can’t hail yellow cabs, and the kind who ain’t never rode an Uber; hell, these folk don’t even got a fancy phone to call one up even if they could afford it. Buses are for the guys who drive those Ubers but only when they’ve handed their car to the guy they pool with, the fella who does the 12-hours after the 12-hours the guy drove before he got on the bus. Those two have whizzbang phones cos it’s the smart way to earn a living, the only real Apples in the Big Apple. Old models. People on buses ain’t got the latest of anything. Well, they got the latest cuts to welfare and the latest rules from Homeland, the ones that mean they’re always looking over their shoulders. Yeah, they got the latest of that alright.
Me, I ride the bus because I got no place to go.
I got no place I need to be, and I got all day to get there. It’s not so much A to B, more like ‘out to A then back to A again’. Sure, it’s an early start, 6am on the S78 but being on the spot helps. Bricktown Mall is one of the places I call home anyhow. Now, I don’t know about you, but I find being by water is good for the soul. Given a fair wind and traffic moving easy on Hylan Boulevard, this girl has got the run of the Terminal Building and a panoramic view of the Upper New York Bay some time before 7.20. If old Marvin is driving it won’t have cost me a dime neither.
Sounds easy, right? Wrong. A few things have gotta fall into place.
First I need to get to the bus stop. Stuff happens, right, and sometimes that ain’t so straightforward. Sleeping rough means you don’t get an alarm call. This ain’t no fancy pants hotel in Manhattan, no sir. This is a roll-up mattress between two dumpsters out back of the service entrance at Petco. I know the Bricktown security guys and they usually look the other way so it’s a good spot for me. Dolores, they say, arrive late on, leave early, and you’re all good. Had me some trouble with the new guy, but Marty put him right when he came back from his fishing trip. Nice guy, Marty, got a damn cabin in the woods too. Hell, I ain’t even seen a forest for nigh on 15 years. Anyways, it was sorted and the new guy is on board. He’s just a kid, thought he had to follow some rules because they gave him a uniform and an all-areas passkey.
What I’m saying is Petco works all ways. It’s a quiet spot, not much passing footfall and it’s 2 minutes walk to the bus stop. Who are you kidding, Dolores? Closer to 8 minutes with these damn bunions, 10 with that last look round to check my gear is stowed out of sight.
Not straightforward but that 6am S78 is the one I like best, all the way down Arthur Kill Road, cruise down Hylan, and left to the four stops in Bay Street. That’s when I start getting my bags together. Leave all that to the intersection of Borough Place and you’ve left it way too late. You’ll still be getting off when other folk are trying to get on and there’s no way you want to start a day with those kind of bad vibes. I know, it’s happened. They might tell you ‘sticks and stones will break your bones but names will never hurt you’, but the ‘they’ in that story ain’t never been called Mrs Dumpster by a bunch of teens with attitude.
Kids you can forgive. Half the time they don’t know what they’re doing, let along what they’re saying. Showing off in a crowd, it’s a thing. Yeah, cut the kids some slack. But there are plenty of folk who’d seen enough of life to know better; a few of the folk trampling feelings need to walk a mile in someone else’s shoes. You know the kind, always happy to share a stage whisper with a travel companion, knowing full well their target is in earshot:
“What IS that smell?”
“What on earth is in all those bags?”
‘Did she even look in a mirror this morning?”
Well, Missy, at least I can look myself in the mirror and say ‘You are a kind person, Dolores.” Makes a difference if your conscience is clear, if you live by your values. Ignore those ‘slings and arrows of outrageous fortune’, is what I tell myself. Wait, what, you didn’t think ‘someone like her’ would read Shakespeare? I am telling you, if you want to listen, that you can have no roof over your head and still love Hamlet. There’s plenty you don’t know yet. To know me, or not to know me, that is the question, my friend.
Now, from where I sit on the bus you see everything. Hear a fair bit too, most of it in a variation of the machine gun rattle of hyped up voices, morning caw-fee served with your telltale New York emphasis. The guys wanna be Al Pacino, the women all sound like Barbara Streisand. Me, I’m a blow in. I don’t say much on account of being told to ‘go back to Boston’ a few times when I was just trying to stick up for myself.
So where was I?
Yeah, you see everything. You see the stuff that’s happening and the things folk don’t want you to see, let alone tell anyone. Take Mr Miller. I know who he is; he wears a name badge from a smart company that plays around with other folks’ money, making real big bucks for some fat cats purring at the top table. Only, I read the Business section at the weekend. Yeah, yeah, clock that up as something else you don’t know about old Dolores. Don’t seem the type, huh? I once worked in that kind of place, back in Boston, way back in the day when they would promote all the stupid white college kids over the smart black girl who studied finance at night school. Nips away at you. Moves you on in the end. But you still know stuff. And I know just fine that Mr Miller ain’t worked a day since he walked out that big old steel and glass building with his working life in a copier paper box. Poor fella just couldn’t bring himself to tell Mrs Miller though. Three damn months, all dressed up with no place to go. Eats his lunch for breakfast and always meets his lovely wife with a compliment about the sandwich and that “my day was just fine but how was yours, my dear” angle. Last I heard, he’s pulling casual shifts at Home Depot and changing back into that fancy suit before he rides back to his stop on Bay Street.
The early bus is when the cleaners ride the route, hopping on and off til they’ve worked all four of their shifts, heading home smelling of bleach, hands rougher than the sandpaper Mr Miller sells down at Home Depot. My, my, those girls can gossip. It’s like the Billboard 100 of dirty habits. The things those ladies find in the bins, in the toilets, in conference rooms where folk in fancy suits don’t spare a thought for anyone but themselves. That’s the world these days, though. Don’t think old Dolores hasn’t noticed.
Okay, so maybe not the whole world, but most of it. I’d report some of the stuff to Officer McCaw but the poor fella is out of uniform. If the papers are to be believed his Precinct is knee-deep in Satanic killings so a few mouthy kids is the last thing he needs when he’s having a devil of time of it. He looks so damn miserable. What was that old cartoon my Evie’s kids used to bust their sides at? Deputy Dawg. That’s him. McCaw is the spit of that gloomy old lawman and he don’t need no more ‘varmints’ to deal with.
What he probably needs is a hug from that nurse two rows in front of him, the one he looks all doe-eyed at every time she comes into view. And from the look of her she needs a hug too. That Emergency Room is no place to find happiness. I don’t why the two of them don’t just talk to each other.
Anyway, here we are now, last stop St George. I gotta get me some of that sea air. You got me rabbiting on when I should have been grabbing my bags. That Marvin is a good boy. He’ll keep folk from boarding til I get off. He gets my best smile even if I know my missing front tooth looks kinda stupid.
“See you this evening, Dolores. Last bus?”
“You bet. Thanks, Marvin. You’re one of the good guys, that’s for damn certain.”
Oh, I love this, Barrie and I'm so glad Dolores has reappeared. What a wordsmith she is to match that close observation of humankind she has. I hope she meets someone as interesting as her to share the journey with!
Having just gone back to read the two companion/legacy pieces attached to this story, I’ve only praise for you, B. Lovely writing, and a story that feels like it could unfold yet further, not least for its character who feels ripe with narrative. I like the shift to a first-person narrative to enable the showing of more of that character, and more of the life and history that she inhabits. Lovely stuff my friend!