Selection from "The Bus"
by Gregory Frost
The bus hissed. Driskel looked its way.
A line of light cut across the sidewalk, up the side of the building beside the bus. The door had opened and, as he watched, two people climbed aboard. A black woman and her little boy--he could see them brightly detailed. For a moment, he watched their shadows moving, blocking most of the light; then the door hissed again and swung shut.
Driskel yawned. Some poor woman, he thought, dragging her kid with her to Atlantic City so she could play the slots. She would come home tired, broke and nasty, beat the kid for making her lose, and then have to borrow from somebody to buy food, and maybe screw the landlord in order not to have to make the rent right away. Jesus, how many of them just like her had he encountered in the shelters? Used to be it was mostly men like him who lined up for soup and beds; nowadays it was whole damn families, broken pieces of families. Whole world in the soup kitchen. "Vote Republican," he croaked, then began to cough. He spat again and had to sit up. His lungs ached when he inhaled. They were wet from the steam, full of fluid; but so long as he could stay full of fluid himself, that’d be okay. What he needed was to get some booze. He looked the other way down the sidewalk, past the "St. George" restaurant, but nobody was on the street tonight. The cold had driven them all away while he slept. Everybody had gone to a shelter except him. Driskel felt a distant pang of emptiness at being closed out of even this withered society. In truth he chose his solitude, but sometimes he wished he was like the others.
Behind him, the bus hissed again, and he twisted around to see a short guy standing in the strip of light. The short guy was wearing an old pea coat and a watch cap; he barked a couple of words and gestured at the air once before lurching up into the bus. The door closed.
Driskel knew the guy vaguely--had encountered him in the shelters once or twice. His name was Eddie and he was a schizo, one of the ones the city of Philadelphia had released on their own recognizance some years back. Trying to cut costs by shutting down asylums. Driskel chuckled, and coughed again. Even he was smart enough to know that if you put crazy people on the street they only got crazier and soon couldn’t recall when to come in or when to take their medicine. The junkies had beat Eddie up a few times when they knew he had his medicine on him; they never hurt him much because they wanted for him to get more medicine. Driskel had seen it happen a couple of times. Poor bastard Eddie lying in the alley outside St. Anthony’s Hospice, spitting up blood and shouting his stupid, disconnected swear words at anyone who approached him.
Driskel stared hard at the bus. What in hell was a guy like Eddie doing getting on a bus to the casinos?
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About "The Bus":
Stories sometimes come unbidden. You don't know when something--some random series of events, some colors or smells--will kick loose a particle of an idea. This story is an example of that unexpected serendipity.
I used to work in a bookstore in Center City Philadelphia, and I lived in the Fairmount district. I walked to and from work most days. Sometimes nights.
I often walked past the Franklin Institute. One very cold winter night, there was a bus to the Atlantic City casinos loading up passengers in front of the Franklin. Halfway down the street there was a man sleeping on a hot steam vent, covered in blankets, on a sheet of cardboard. And as I passed by him, the door to the bus up the street hissed open, and some inexplicable connection was forged. Why, how...I don't know. But this story is the result of that moment.
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