We All Lived

It was after work and, as usual, I had fallen asleep on the Max. It's an art in which some part of the brain remains aware of the stops and I wake up just as the train pulls into the Hollywood Transit Center.

But I woke a stop early, at the Lloyd Center. I didn't want to, and tried to go back down. A guy had just sat down to my right, on the bench seat, and had muttered something I didn't comprehend. Another guy, sitting directly across from me, was smiling in a fixed way.

He said, "I don't give a fuck where you from," the smile still fixed. He was gazing at the guy on my right.

Now I was wide awake.

The guy on my right said, "I'm not from Portland," in a "what's the matter with you?" tone.

The guy across the aisle said again, "I don't give a fuck where you from." He kept smiling, the smile maybe bigger or maybe just closer to me, and leaned forward. He was solid, athletic, a forearm across his leg noticeably enlarged by weightlifting. He seemed calm.

I, however, was alarmed.  I said "Don't do it, man."

The guy turned the smile on me, blinked once or twice, and then turned back to the other guy.

"Please," I said politely, "don't duke it out here."

I looked around. No one else was paying attention.

The guy to my right began to slowly, deliberately, remove a watch from his right wrist.

A woman immediately to his right said, "Aw, look. He's taking off his watch. Damn."

She turned to a woman who looked like her -- maybe a sister -- and said "Get my baby out of here." The sister got up and pushed a stroller that was in the aisle further down to the right.

The first woman stood up and got right in between the two men. She was tall and queenly. She had a neck tattoo. The only emotion I could discern was the amused sternness of an authority figure who has done this a hundred times. She looked down at the guy to my right and said, "You don't know what you're getting into here." The guy looked unconcerned, almost bored. He said nothing.

She put her face close to the guy across the aisle and spoke quietly to him. I heard her say, "We're getting off at the next stop. Let's go." He flicked his eyes at her and the smile diminished.

"Let's go." He got up, putting the mad dog stare back on my neighbor, along with the smile.

The woman laid a hand gently on her partner's or brother's or good friend's arm and urged him down the aisle after her sister and the baby. She kept herself deliberately between the men until they were well away from the guy next to me.  Her guy kept his eyes and smile fixed on a spot to the right of my shoulder.

That guy to my right slowly put his watch back on his right wrist.

He Lived

After tens of thousands of hours riding public transportation, the worst physical violence I had experienced personally were a couple of punches to the head that did no damage. And I'd never seen another passenger assaulted (I'm just lucky, I guess.) Then, a couple of weeks ago, I had my first brush with serious violence.  

The first thing I remember about it was walking absently down the concrete steps from the Max to the bus mall at the Hollywood Transit Center. Why so many people there, between the Max platform and the bus mall? They were mostly teenagers, milling, shouting, cutting up. Leaning and leaping. Racing by. There were a lot of them at the bottom of the steps, too.  Maybe there'd been a game at Grant High School.

Once on the ground, finding my way through the crowd, I heard the angry shouting.

A couple of teenage boys had taken off their shirts and were loudly challenging someone, who was hidden from my view by the multitude. One of the boys was fearsomely muscled. He was bellowing threats and emanating fear. I slunk by – dinner was calling.

About 20 yards from the madness, next to the northbound 75 busstop, a a young man sat on the curb. His right hand held his neck. Blood was pulsing from between his fingers and soaking his shirt. A man came up next to him, bent over and said a few words while adding his hand to the hand trying to stop the blood flow.

The extra hand slowed the leak to a slow ooze. The crowd was quickly thinning, most of them fleeing up the steps to the Max. A security guard called 911. A couple other bystanders were making phone calls. Most people walked by, either unseeing or uninterested. 

The shirtless kids stopped by.

The big one said, “He's my cousin,” speaking to the amateur EMT and meaning the injured kid. To his cousin he said,“Come on, you got to go.”

The kid shifted in his spot and put a hand down to help himself up but was being held firmly in place by his rescuer, who said “Sit here and stay calm.” 

Another man, who looked more like the kid's cousin than the self-proclaimed cousin, repeated “Stay calm.”

The kid was not going anywhere, and a moment later the shirtless ones had disappeared towards the Max.

For about three minutes – or it may have been just one, time felt sped up – nothing much happened. Hands were on the kid's neck, blood leaked, people were on phones, people walked by. Some of us were waiting for an ambulance. The kid tried to get up again, but was told to sit and stay calm and did so.

His eyes, which had been restlessly roaming, grew still. He spit up some blood. The man holding the kid's neck took his hand off, gesturing futilely, and shouted, “If we don't get an ambulance here quick, he's gonna bleed out.” I thought so, too. The kid's shirt and jacket were more shining red than not. The man got his fingers back on the kid's neck.

I ran down to a medical clinic a block away, realizing it was probably pointless but not knowing what else to do. The clinic was closed. A woman coming out said yes, there were doctors inside but they were not allowed to work outside the building. A siren started up nearby. I went back to the scene.

First came two police cars. At the scene, four cops hit the asphalt and assessed the situation. They were in no rush. A couple of them got within a step of the kid and looked him over. Our hero exchanged words with the cops, which I couldn't hear.

Next came a fire engine with an ambulance on its tail. The EMTs exited the vehicle already sporting blue latex gloves. At the same time, a small group came out of the building, also in blue latex gloves. Two of this group, young women, stood by like trainees waiting for orders. A third woman in blue gloves joked around with a young man who wore the gloves and a shirt that read “Personal Trainer.”

While the EMTs bandaged the kid's neck and hoisted him onto a cot, a middle-aged  man showed up and tried to convince them to let him ride in the ambulance to the hospital.

“Who are you?”

I couldn't hear what he said, but the response was “We can't do that, sir.”

“Somebody who knows that boy should be riding with him.”

I couldn't hear why the EMTs wouldn't let him ride in the ambulance, but iI suddenly had a theory of why he wanted the ride

The kid was African-American. Every other one of the dozen or so people in the close vicinity, including the man who had been tending the kid's wound, was white, except for this black man asking for the ride. I believe he was concerned that the kid might die on the ambulance ride with only white witnesses there to say what happened. I think he didn't trust the EMTs to do everything they could to save his life. 

Makes sense to me.


The story as reported by the Oregonian:  http://www.oregonlive.com/portland/index.ssf/2016/02/man_suffers_life-threatening_i_2.html

Eternal Questions

I was waiting at the southbound 75 stop, 7537, at Northeast Sandy and 42nd Avenue on a gorgeous, sunny weekday morning. From around the corner, a frail old lady on a walker came into sight and shuffled up. She sat on the blue mesh metal seat, well-protected from the glaring beauty of the day by a hat, sunglasses and long sleeved sweater.

She gazed towards where the bus would come from. Then she turned towards me and asked, "Why do you think people become Christians?"

Why do people ask questions like this? That's the real puzzler. But my mind machine sorted automatically through responses for something both kind and truthful. Didn't want to offend an old lady.

"I don't know. I'm kind of a borderline Christian myself."

She waited.

"To answer your question,I suppose most of them are born into it," I said. "I was. I was born a Catholic."

"That doesn't count," she snapped. "You have to accept Jesus as an adult."

I didn't know that rule. But, fine.

"Oh, okay."

The old lady said, "The reason I'm a Christian is I don't want to go to hell."

Why, Grandma, why? The statement sailed past my frontal lobe, landing right on the "You're wrong, lady" trigger.

Still trying to respect my elder, instead of "You're wrong," I said very gently, "What makes you think there's a hell?"

"Well, just look at all this." She waved at the world. "Man didn't make all this."

"What's that got to do with hell?"

Beams of spiritual pity shot from her sunglasses at me.

"If there's a heaven, there must be a hell."

"Oh." Faith. Blind faith.

"Jesus spoke of heaven and hell in the Bible." Where else?

"I have to tell you, I'm not convinced."

She shook her head and seemed about to reply but at that instant the bus came. I trotted to a seat in the back where I could miss the rest of the conversation.

At Belmont and 42nd, I disembarked. So did the Christian lady.

We crossed 42nd on the same light, though I reached the other side first. Then we stood waiting for the next Belmont light together. She turned to me, eye beams undimmed.

"You really should accept Jesus into your heart."

What if she's right? What if I'm bound for Satan's sad, painful and eternal workhouse? It's possible, I guess, but the day -- this day God has made -- is too fine to dwell on something as remote as the hereafter.

"I've actually thought about it quite a bit."

"I'm sure you have," she said, and turned away.

The light changed. I won't say I skipped ahead, but I left her behind to do God's work on her own.

A SPAT

Near the 75 north bus stop, #7449, on Cesar Chavez near Gladstone, there is a 24/7 Plaid Pantry and next to it, a 24/7 Compassionate Caregivers -- a marijuana dispensary. As I crossed Chavez towards stop 7449, my stop, around 7:30 pm on a Wednesday in May, it was still very light outside. A guy was yelling in anger. He was at stop 7449  gesticulating like a children's storyteller to someone seated in the bus shelter.

I slowed down, approaching with caution. The guy was in his 20s, athletic, head shaved, black T-shirt, brown shorts (I was thinking of how to describe him to the police if I had to). His feet were bare.

The object of his tirade, I saw, was a young woman.

"Come on, come on. Let's go," he bellowed.

She said, "Give me my purse."

She was crying.

I was pretty close to them now. They paid me no mind.

He said, "You're embarrassing me, standing here with my butt in the street trying to get you to move."

Really.

"Give me my purse."

He did, indeed, have his hand on the strap of her purse, a red leatherish bag. She held the other strap.

She stood up and turned to look at me.

Tears streaming, she said, " He's trying to rob me."

"How am I robbing you? I'm getting my Social Security card out of your purse, which you put there. I suppose it's my fault you're homeless now, too?"

"Please call 911," she said. "This is a robbery."

Her makeup was running, her face was melting, and I was putting the phone to my ear.

The man released the purse. The woman walked past me, looked back and the man was at her heels, yapping on. She said something to him that I couldn't hear. He muttered back to her.

They went around the corner.

During the next 30 seconds, I waited to connect to the 911 operator. Meanwhile, my bus shlepped by.  I sauntered to the corner to keep tabs on the couple. They had vanished.

The operator asked me what happened, what the couple looked like, whether  any weapons were in play, and where they were now. I felt superfluous. The woman had retrieved her purse from the scary boyfriend and was already behind an unidentifiable apartment door with him.

As the call ended, a police cruiser rolled slowly by, past where Romeo and Juliet were last seen alive. The car drove on, a block, two, three blocks before turning left.

I was really hoping I would see the cops roust the angry guy but, no. Just another 911 call without a resolution. 

BUS ETIQUETTE

I boarded the good old 75 bus southbound. Going from home to the Hollywood Library. I sat on the front left bench. Across from me two very large women were chatting. One, in a wheelchair, was wheezing for breath despite inhaling oxygen through a nasal tube.

Her friend sat directly across from me. The two were nodding and quietly cracking each other up. Though I tried, I couldn't hear the words.

A skinny woman boarded and traded nods of recognition with the other two. She held a worn Bible in one hand and tread carefully, as if on a small boat. She sat down a couple rows back from me. At the first stop, she tread very deliberately to the front as if leaving. But instead, the woman grabbed a handful of paper towels from a dispenser next to the driver. On the way back to her seat, a towel flapped to the floor.

The wheelchair lady looked at me, looked at the paper towel, and then gestured. She wanted me to pick up the towel and give it back to the skinny lady.

I picked it up, and as the skinny woman turned around to sit, held out the paper towel for her to take.

"I don't want that paper towel that's been on the floor."

"Okay." I withdrew the towel.

"Would you use a paper towel that's been on the floor?"

I shrugged and tried to smile, thinking I might use one, depending on what kind of mess needed cleaning up.

"No you wouldn't."

Oooh. Were those fangs?

"l just got out of the hospital and I'm not going to use a dirty paper towel."

OH. Oh. Aha. All right, I got it. I glanced over at the wheelchair woman, who had encouraged my kindness. She smiled. Her friend smiled. I smiled back as best I could, feeling uncomfortably warm.

Cracker Jungle

Last Saturday was library visit number 387. Every Saturday afternoon since before she could read, my daughter and I have gone to the Hollywood library. As she's now 13, it may have been 500 weeks since this weekly ritual got started. We've missed weeks, usually because she was busy, but not many. So call it, conservatively, 387 visits.

Some aspects of the ritual remain unchanged. It's the day I make breakfast for her – tea, bacon, toast, a lettuce leaf or two. I pack a lunch. We check online to find out which library books are due and which can be renewed. We often get mad as we're leaving the house because we're trying to catch a bus and one of us remembers something at the last second that causes an anxiety-provoking delay.

Some things have changed a lot. My girl now reads anything and everything. She tore through all of Harry Potter years ago. She dresses stylishly, more like New York City than Portland. Recently she' s been leaving before me and taking the bus on her own, and I catch up to her at the library.

Today I caught up to her before the 75 bus came and we boarded together. At the next stop, a couple got on. The woman I hardly noticed, because the guy was so riveting. He was not wearing a shirt. Warm day, right? But he was not only naked from the waist up, he was fat, hairy and wore a couple of large Band-aids on his back. Grimy baseball cap over a curtain of greasy hair? Check. Three-day beard? Check. Blurry blue tattoos? Yep. Missing teeth, torn jeans falling off his butt, and working his way through a bag of Twizzlers? Indeed so.

Six decades into my own sometimes unsightly life, seeing this character was not a shock. The streets of Portland are littered with such bedraggled unfortunates. No, the sight was touching. I really thought: That could be me. In fact, he's more like me than most of the world. That guy is white, American, and can buy candy any time he wants to. And it appears that there's a woman in his life. Our politics might be the same. For all I know, we're related.

And then my daughter said, “Dad, you've got something on your face.”

“What?”

She showed me. It took a couple of tries to brush off the bit of chocolate bacon or whatever the hell it was, largely because of my three-day beard.

Her look said, “What a slob.”

“Thanks for not calling me a slob.”

She just shook her head.

I am so exactly like that guy.

Riding With The Enemy

This morning the Max was very full at the Hollywood Transit Center

and I was resigned to standing. But a couple riders got off the bleachers - the five seats in rows that face each other -- and I took a place. A talkative woman was weighing the plusses and minuses of bicycling the Springwater trail on her own for the listening pleasure of a man I thought must be her husband -- such a good listener he was.

"Transients hang out there," she said, talking herself out of the trip without any help from the man.

As she got up to leave a big, blond guy sitting on the bench down from me, across from her said, "You're afraid of a transient who sleeps out in the cold and drinks beer all day? Kick his ass!"

The guy's big laugh infected me and drew grins from all directions. He got talking with the man I had thought was the husband, asking "What do you do?"

"I'm an electrician."

"That's a good job. Pays good, too. That's where you're goin'?"

"I go to school today."

"What are you studyin'?"

"To be an electrician."

"So you're not legal yet?"

"I could be more legal."

"Do that!" The giant laugh filled the train car.

The big blonde mentioned he's been in the Marines, GI bill, studied computer science. His buddy went to nursing school.

"We all basically laughed at him, but he was working already when he was in school, got everything paid for, was making good money as soon as he got discharged. Thirty-four dollars an hour?  Or forty-three? I forget. And when he started, as much overtime as he wanted. Not so much now, but still plenty of work."

The two agreed nursing was a good job. Travel anywhere and work. The husband guy told of a friend who did that -- a nurse, worked three months here, six months there.

Blondie said he worked for the IRS. I suddenly felt a little different about him, like I knew we could never be friends. He told a loud tale about a man, a self-employed roofer, who made $90K a year but only claimed $30K on his tax returns. He was injured several times, as roofers often are, and in his fifties applied for Social Security disability.

"They qualified him but only for two-thirds of 30K benefits, from his 1040s. He was so upset he protested that he'd been making 90K, talking with an IRS revenue agent. Agent said, 'Yep, you been makin' 90K for quite a few years.' So he got more disability but was in debt to the IRS for hundreds of K."

"Wow."

"Yeah, he netted less than the 20K he would have had on a 30K income."

Blondie went on. "When the Revenooers come for yor assets, they've already sent at least three warning letters and they're no longer negotiating. They're itemizing. Inventorying. They'll take everything but your house and car."

He paused to glance around. I looked away.

"We don't want your stuff. We can't sell it for what it's worth. We just want your money."

A minute later the Blond Bomber left and a mentally disabled guy spoke up.

"Who was that? Is he a comedian? What was he talking about?"

"Taxes," someone replied.

"What's taxes?"

"That's when they take your money away and give it to someone else."

Happy Tax Day!