“…and you know I can’t even walk to the damned liquor store without seein’ them all, hootin’ and hollerin’ out front.”
11:38 at night and the city’s crumbling infrastructure meant the 11:35 bus was probably still chugging along, several blocks west of where Joshua sat, one ear faintly catching the words of the fellow next to him and the other one searching meagerly for the compressed hiss that usually signaled the approach of public transport. It would be the last bus of the night, resuming its creep and crawl again at 6:10 a.m.
“I tell ya, man; that whole side of town was beautiful until the fuckin’ niggers started to show up.” Joshua winced at the sharpness of the man’s only half-listened to words. He glanced at his hands, hands which looked to have held nothing but charcoal all day, and shrugged his shoulders, knowing that making eye contact would in some way validate the man’s hate. “I get my disability checks usually ‘round the sixth of each month… unless it’s on a Sunday… but I usually go and treat myself to a nice bottle. Helps me sleep some nights. But I always gotta wait in line behind some old batshit ‘coon, countin’ out his change he made begging, just to buy a fuckin’ pint of vodka. Can you believe that? These people would rather drink life away than go get a fuckin’ job.”
“Yeah… jobs are important,” Joshua replied, his eyes searching the road for any sign of the bus. An older black woman shuffled down the sidewalk opposite of them, her pace jagged but determined. Hoping desperately her hearing was as weak as her gait, he accepted the inevitability of the prejudiced man’s soliloquy and instead attempted to change the subject, asking innocently and coyly “do you think the bus is running late?”
“Seems ‘bout like it. Probably a fuckin’ black woman drivin’ it too. That’s what it was when I came down here this afternoon.” The icy pins and needles that danced across Joshua’s arms and spine reminded him that he had a habit of assuming unconscious responsibility for the ills, spoken or otherwise, of those physically nearest him; the woman made no motion that she had heard or was offended and only continued her solitary trudging eastward.
“I don’t know about that,” and as soon as the words left Joshua’s mouth he heard the whistling brakes of the approaching transport. Thank God, he exclaimed internally, his gratitude extending more towards the belated fulfillment of civil services than his long-dwindling belief in anything supernatural. Sputtering into the chipping, painted lines of the bus stop, the vehicle let out an exhausted hiss as it was shifted into park. The doors swung open seconds later. Shouldering his backpack, Joshua stepped towards the dimly-lit entrance and begin digging in his jacket pocket for the pre-counted bus fare.
“I’m still waitin’ on the 19 bus. Y’all have a good night though,” the man called out, as if in reply to a cordial salutations that Joshua never even thought to mutter.
“Yeah. God bless,” he countered, his words probably not making it past the rumble of the engine.
The bus driver, an older gentleman with a passing resemblance to a painting Joshua’s childhood Sunday school had of King David, tiredly glanced at the money as it slid into the payment slot. Joshua wondered if he had thought the blessing was for him, and frankly he wouldn’t have minded if he did; his eyes seemed to beg for forgiveness. Or sleep. The latter is more tangible.
Walking to the middle of the bus and selecting a seat, he noticed the sparse population of the bus route. So few heads this late on the city’s so-called busiest route made a widening of the services seem unlikely. The obvious lower class nature and increasingly darker pigments further swung Joshua’s mind towards cynicism.
In the rear of the vehicle, a Panamanian woman, deep into the final years of her twenties, her legs pulled up close to her body and her temple pressed to the chilly glass, sobbed quietly.
