by Clint Kelly
I knew as sure as grass was green that I was newly arrived on her enemy list.
Stick up for the girl.
Of course I would stick up for the girl. Any decent, caring, reasonable person would. I didn’t need to be told to stick up for the girl.
Stick—
I looked past the driver’s rigid jaw, the stiff, broad shoulders, the unsmiling everything, and played the Bill card. “Do you know Bill, the usual driver on this route?”
She visibly softened in such a way that made me wonder if Bill’s charms had indeed reached these shores. “Yes,” she said. “Bill often subs for me on my usual route, the late-night haul on Capitol Hill. I stayed up after last night’s shift and took Bill’s route. He’s at a dentist appointment, I think. Least I could do. “
I nodded. “Then you know Bill. Such a gentleman. It sounds as if he may have allowed the young lady and her cat to ride without documentation, him with such a big heart, and she came to count on it. She means no harm. Why not let it go and tell her to have her papers come Monday?”
She hesitated. “Bill would like that.”
“Operator of the Year, you know,” I said.
“Two years running.” All Blonde All Business twinkled right up when she smiled. “You know that young lady?”
“Well, no.”
“Today the first day you’ve ever laid eyes on her?”
“Well, uh, yes.”
She stared at me and drummed white press-on nails with a yellow daisy pattern against the top of the cash box. “So you’ve never even seen or spoken to her before today and yet you know that she’s ridden with Bill and that he has permitted said ride without service papers for the feline? Were you born with these psychic powers?”
No, I received my powers after aliens took me into their saucer-like ship, probed me, and dropped me off at a farmhouse in rural Pennsylvania. Difficult woman. “I’m only saying—”
She brightened. “I’m just funnin’ ya. I guess we can let it go this once. We’ll call it a favor to Bill. You tell her, OK? I don’t want to see that cat without papers again.”
“Yes, ma’am,” I said. “And I’ll tell Bill what a gem you are.”
Her skeptical look said I was pulling her leg. She might be clairvoyant.
On the way to my seat, accompanied by an unusual amount of lurching back into traffic (“I’m just funnin’ ya”), I conveyed the message to Cat Woman and patted the Siamese. Both responded gratefully, one with a crooked smile, the other with a flick of tawny ears and eyes half-closed in contentment.
When I went to resume my seat, I found that I was to press thighs not with the put-together youth from O’Dea, who had retreated to the back of the bus, but with a slender brunette in professional attire. With recorder and impossibly thin laptop at the ready, she could be none other than a—
“Ruby Webster, Mr. Carter,” she said, somehow able, despite balancing the recording equipment, to thrust an arm and hand with amber bangles at the wrist into my personal seat space.
Offered no other choice, I shook the nearly fleshless hand, causing it to then rise like the mechanical safety barrier at a railroad crossing.
“Have we met?” I asked, warily wedging my buttocks into the open space.
“I’m special-features writer for the newspaper,” she said, referring to what some referred to as the only newspaper in town. In these days of tabloid news and scandal TV, journalists recast themselves more as “writers,” less as “reporters.” In the current climate, I suspected people minded less to be “written about” than “reported on.” She spoke in the civil-yet-hurried manner of someone on deadline. “You have a story and I want to tell it.”
I groaned inwardly. “No comment.” Something perverse in me had always wanted to say that. I instantly regretted it.
“So you do have a story?” She tipped forward, the subtle lean of a bloodhound sniffing the wind.
“We all do,” I said. “Every person on this bus, every person on the street, every poor person stuck behind a desk in every building we pass.”
She unleashed a blur of keystrokes on her laptop. In a single pompous sentence I had said nothing and already too much.
“Ms. Webster, with all due respect, I’m going to stick with ‘No comment.’”
She said nothing and waited. The recorder recorded the ambient sound. The laptop glowed.
I fidgeted. “Really, ma’am. I’m the most boring interview you’d ever do. I happened to be in the wrong place at the right time.”
Her fingers flew. From the concentration on her face, what I had said was worthy of the Gettysburg Address. She stopped. “Exactly where were you when the bomb entered the bus and how did you know it was a bomb?”
Nearby passengers awoke from their naps and smartphones to stare at us. At least two looked nervously about as if wherever I was, bombs followed.
I could pull the cord and just get off at the next stop. Walk to the mission. What if she came along? She would know where I volunteered. She’d talk to the director, the volunteer coordinator, the guys in line for waffles. They would be flattered. Fifteen seconds of fame. Spin whatever came into their heads. Bring up bits of private conversation. Make stuff up. Say something, say anything, to feed the tapping fingers, the turning gears of the recorder. James Carter? Jimmy Jim? My old friend Jimbo the Caped Crusader? We’re not what you’d call close, but close enough! He’s not like other guys I know. What do I mean? Let me tell you what I mean…
“May I call you James?”
I looked at the newspaper writer, a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. “No, no, ma’am, I have nothing to say. Really, no.” Sure do talk a lot for someone with nothing to say.
“Mr. Carter then?”
What was the matter with this woman? What could she possibly be writing with all that tapping? I certainly was not going to tell her my deepest suspicions about these messages from beyond. Well, you see, Ms. Webster, God talks to me on the 17 bus. He sends me instructions, I follow them, and things happen. What things? Well, you see, Ms. Webster…
“Is Riley a family name?”
I stared at my hands. At times like these, I wished I could juggle. You know, balls and scarves and stuff. It would take my mind off things, things like feature writers and tapping computer keys. Take her mind off interviewing me.
“Your middle name. Is that a family name?”
“No comment. Really.”
Ruby Webster waited. “Let’s pretend I’m just a bus acquaintance and I’ve asked about your middle name. How would you answer?”
I pulled the cord. A ridiculous tinny ding sounded and an accusatory red STOP REQUESTED sign lit up at the front of the bus. But the bus wasn’t moving, halted by the cross-street vehicles whose operators had misjudged the traffic and were now stuck in the middle of the intersection and blocking our progress.
“Do you think of yourself as a hero?”
I squeezed my eyes shut and wished to teleport to Anaheim, California, to the front porch of my favorite Uncle Farnie. Now there was a story. Farnsworth Carter, a stuntman in many a B action movie, used to race chariots at West Coast horse tracks and community rodeos. Someone needed to write that life story.
“Is it true you turned down an invitation from the mayor to join him for lunch at City Hall?”
I willed the idiot drivers and their idiot vehicles blocking the idiot intersection to teleport to the nearest junkyard, the drivers to be cited for putting me in this awkward position, and their cars crushed on the spot.
Come to find out, today God’s radio only transmits and does not receive.
“Can’t you see he doesn’t want to answer your questions?”
Cat Woman, sticking up for me.
“You know Mr. Carter?” The newspaper writer refocused on the pierced girl and her Siamese. I believe Ms. Webster could interview Al Qaeda on the moon and still make the filing deadline.
“I know he’s a nice man who helps people.” Cat Woman stroked the cat
until its tropical-blue eyes narrowed with pleasure. “That’s all I need to know.”
The light changed, the blocking cars vacated the intersection, and still the bus did not move. Several car horns blared in protest.
“So tell me, young lady, exactly how did this man help you?”
I stood and made for the front of the bus as Cat Woman related her version of the Service-Cat Incident. I took a respectful if firm position at the edge of the driver’s cage. “Excuse me, ma’am. What is keeping us from moving now?”
She pointed to an unmarked gray police sedan, bristling for all its sign-free anonymity with lights and antennae, sitting catawampus to the 17’s front bumper. She slid open the front doors and up stepped FBI Special Agents Barnes and Wu/Phu.
7
I made my excuses to the mission staff, who were none too thrilled that I could not join them for breakfast after all. I told them the truth. “I’m being interviewed by investigators about the bus bombing. It could take a while.”
It turned into three hours of interview that by comparison made reporter Ruby Webster’s questions seem appealing.
Agent Wu/Phu. “Are you certain you’d never before seen Patty Newfeldt, the girl with the backpack? Think, Carter. Maybe she knew you from the mission or one of the other places you volunteer?”
Agent Barnes. “What made you go after her backpack? You say you didn’t know it contained a bomb, yet you sensed you had to get rid of it or people would die? How’s that work?”
Agent Wu/Phu. “How about her parents? Maybe you ran into the mother at the county courthouse while applying for a license or a permit for something? Think, Carter. Maybe a food handler’s license or vaccinations for an overseas trip?”
Agent Barnes. “Maybe you used the father’s CPA services at tax time? They say they’ve never met you before but why would you single out their daughter? Why without uttering a single word to her would you attack a stranger and wrestle away her property, and then without even looking inside throw that property away?”
And that line of questioning always brought us full circle back to the central question, “How did you know there was a bomb in the backpack?”
For what seemed the thousandth time, I answered, “I can’t explain it. It was simply a hunch so strong that I had to act. If I was wrong, I could apologize and face whatever charges might come from my actions. If I was right and didn’t act, well, you and I would not be having this conversation right now.”
That was as honest as I could be without getting into my argument with God. Go there and at worst, they would think I was certifiable. “Fundamentalist Whack Job Says Voices Made Him Do It.” At best, I would be casting pearls before swine. My apologies to all hardworking law-enforcement officers everywhere, but the law and the supernatural had a hard time mixing. It was bad enough being an ordinary retired warehouseman trying his best to fly under the Almighty’s radar. Couldn’t get the police involved.
Ruth Anne, you’re being awfully quiet. Are you doing what you called your “thoughtful observations”?
“Jim, please, take a breather,” I could almost hear her say. “Stop trying to force things. Let nature takes its course.” By nature, she meant the natural law of God. He who set the planets in motion could certainly resolve our earthly concerns.
I was ever the scrappy bulldog, she the graceful Dane. Observe. Pray. Weigh. Act in concert with the forces of heaven. That was her way. I was never any good at it. Ah, Ruthie, I am so clumsy without you.
Patty had prayed for a miracle. Were you that miracle, Mr. Carter? I felt as capable of performing miracles as a baked potato. Why wouldn’t the world leave me alone?
Out of the ether I swore I heard a voice say, “Because I won’t.”
~*~
Bill met me at Crusty Jake’s on the waterfront. Best cinnamon rolls north or south of the equator. Big around as a good-sized lily pad. Icing thick as your thumb. Taste so fine everyone who ordered one was compelled to stop for thirty seconds of silence before eating, out of sheer respect. This was not a baked good. This was a religious experience.
Jake’s cinnamon rolls were to store-bought pastry what the Sistine Chapel was to velvet painting, kind of how the fine wine Jesus made stacked up against the cheap stuff.
Ruthie always wanted to split a roll with me. I’d said yes, but that I would then need one and a half rolls to satisfy my need.
She said to call it a need was to dignify the fact that the number of calories in a single Jake’s exceeded the population of half the towns around Seattle.
I said it was this close to being a health food.
She said I was not a fit judge of what was and was not healthy.
I said that if we ask for them heated, it was inevitable that some calories would ooze out and remain stuck to the plate. Couldn’t count those calories.
Ruthie huffed and said the fraction of time I allowed excess icing to remain on the plate could be measured in nanoseconds. “Besides, the only thing oozing around here is your growing list of lame excuses for porking out on Jake’s rolls.”
I said, “Guilty as charged. Can we save the remainder of this conversation for the ride home? I’m kind of busy.”
Today I was glad to see Bill looked his old self. I heard that some of the passengers on the bus had been bloodied by the shattered windows from the blast. Physically, Bill looked unscathed. While we waited for our sweet rolls to be served, I apologized for vanishing without a word.
Bill laughed heartily, shaking an ample belly barely contained by a green knit polo shirt. It was the first time I had seen him out of uniform.
“What, you kiddin’ me? I see you all over the news, though I have to admit I’m a little tired of the same old pictures. Seattle’s hero being loaded onto a gurney, Seattle’s hero being prepared for transport to Harborview. Seattle’s hero as a geeky high-school senior. Can’t you give ’em something new to work with?”
I wondered if Jake’s cinnamon-roll icing could be declared the state frosting. “Cool it with the hero talk. I’ll be forced to get a facelift and dye my hair a different color.”
Bill smiled and with a little moan of pleasure took another bite of roll, but did not let it keep him from talking. “Ain’t no amount of lift can help that face of yours. No kidding, Jim, I’m so glad you’re OK. When I saw you rip the backpack off that girl, I thought you’d gone ape on me. Then when you tore out of the bus and hurled that thing into orbit and it blew, oh, man, I couldn’t believe it. I’m still in shock.” Tears dripped down the sides of Bill’s nose, but it didn’t stop him from eating. “You saved us all, man. You rabid, crazy fool saved us all. I thought you was gonna die.” Bill’s shoulders shook and the tears rolled down. He set down his fork and gulped in air. His face reddened and I thought he was going to have a stroke.
“Bill—”
“No! You let me say this. You may not feel like no hero, but you put your life at risk for me and Cigar Man and a whole lot of people you will never know. There isn’t one man in a million who would put his life on the line for his friends, let alone perfect strangers. You’re my hero, Jim. You’re Roxanne’s hero. She said she’d marry you in a heartbeat if I wasn’t in the picture. I said if it hadn’t been for you, I might not be in the picture, and she burst out crying and kissed me seven ways from Sunday.” He winked. “You’ve even improved my love life.”
“Drink your coffee, Bill. When do I get to meet this sweet queen of yours?”
He napkined his face dry and took a long sip of the brew. His eyes squeezed shut in what I took for ecstasy. I needed to get the man a new coffee maker. Then I remembered Roxie special-ordered a Colombian blend she said was good to the taste buds and to the digestion. “She stays put long enough, we can have you over for her sweet-potato pie. Roxie puts things in there I don’t even know what they are. She should have a show on the Food Network. Sweet Roxie’s Sweet Pies.”
We talked Mariners baseball. Sounders soccer. The prospects for Seahawks football.
I learned Bill had taken two days off to get his head back together and that he was getting used to a new 17.
“It’s like a good woman, Jimmy. If you truly care about her, you learn all her little quirks and idiosyncrasies, and you anticipate her needs and make allowances for her shortcomings. For love, Jimmy, for love. I loved the old 17 and now I got to learn to love the new 17. But I’ll never have another bus beautiful as Roxie.” A look of anxiety settled on his bulldog features. “You won’t tell her, will you? I don’t want Roxanne to think that a bus is a mistress I love more than I love her. I can’t explain it and no one but another driver can fully understand.”
I shook my head, a little uncomfortable with Bill’s soft side. I liked him better as the gruff-voiced jokester. We weren’t chummy enough to be veering off into territory I mostly reserved for Ruthie. A few times, my real emotions came out with troubled kids who “shopped” at the Safari, but those were the hard cases.
The more the sun set, the noisier Crusty J’s became. The loudest was Jake himself, who made the rounds in white paper ice-cream hat and soiled white apron, laughing with the locals, tickling the babies, and complimenting the ladies on their hair, their nail polish, their choice of “food establishments.” Thin as a pogo stick and twice as bouncy, his warmth spilled out the constantly opening front door and splashed over the passersby on the sidewalk out front. A good many detoured inside for the beef-chunk chili or the chicken pot pie. It was easy for an hour to think you were part of a family spread out over a handful of booths and a dozen tables.
“Come back!” Bill blurted, making me jump. His eyes again welled with emotion. For a minute there, I thought he might take my hand in his beefy paws. He moved his coffee mug and empty plate to one side and leaned forward, all earnestness and eye contact like the female grief counselor I had fired after I lost Ruthie. “Virgil thinks you suffered brain damage in the explosion, and Stella and Doomie—I mean, Greg—are fit to bust for you to be the first to know whatever it is they’re busting to tell. The way they’re holding hands and sucking face, you don’t have to be Mr. Wizard to know what those two are cooking up. And, uh, and—”