A Seattle Bus Ride Vignette
Don’t laugh because it’s really not funny. OK?
A homeless man got on the bus talking vigorously to himself in gibberish. Plopped down across from me in aisle-facing seats. Scratched his head ferociously the whole time with his right hand as he gripped a crumpled stack of cash in the other. A hundred dollar bill stuck out between his fingers like a squished mouse.
He scratched & skritched & scrotched head so mightily I was afraid, truly afraid, he was gonna fling head lice on me with his right hand all the way from where he sat across the aisle from me. Then I thought he was gonna fling cooties into the back of a young Muslim woman’s hijab as she sat scrolling down her fone in a forward-facing seat. Was gonna holler at the bus driver if he did.
Instead he got off two blocks down and grabbed up a black t-shirt someone else had left upon a bench. Shook it out, checked it out, then quickly stuffed it into his little blue bag. And the bus lurched forward to roll southbound down Aurora/99.
The man’s eyes gleamed with messed up intelligence. He looked about 35. Energetically reeked of trauma. One could feel it. Had shaved his head except for a top knot of short, whipping-about dreadlocks. They swarmed with imaginary bugs. Made his head itch and skritch and scrotch. Looked multiracial in appearance. Sported facial tats I associated with violent gangs & so avoided eye contact. Half expected him to brazenly ask me for a sip of my coffee. Thought I would offer him water if he actually did, but mine was in a metal canteen. Man, he could bash my face in with my metal water bottle on a hysterical, macho whim.
Gosh, I’m upset with myself for fostering stereotypes. This man seems too busy prowling and fighting like some untethered soldier who doesn’t know how to stop because he has collapsed all with survival and surviving. Good Lord, what do we do to help these people help themselves? What do we do when wars never end and no amount of duct tape will hold together a broken mind?
William Dudley Bass
Saturday morning 8 July 2023
Bombing down Aurora Avenue/99 southbound in King County, from City of Shoreline into City of Seattle on the E-Line, WA
USA
EARTH
Copyright © 2023 by William Dudley Bass. All Rights Reserved by the Author & his Descendants until we Humans establish Wise Stewardship over and for our Earth and Solarian Commons. Thank you.