by Clint Kelly
In a chain-link enclosure, the barking dog was a shiny black spaniel/shepherd mix with flattened ears and a submissive, forgive-me-for-living expression of dark liquid-brown eyes and squirming hindquarters. The only canine in residence at the moment, she hunkered down at the enclosure door and whimpered in anticipation. I grabbed a handful of kibble, opened the kennel gate, and made one unsettled creature happy for the half a minute it took to wolf down the food. She licked my hand before hurrying over to the wooden box with a hole in the side that served as blanket-lined sleeping quarters. She stuck her head into the hole and whined, tail beating the air with all the abandon of a punch-drunk orchestra maestro. Back she came and barked in perfect imitation of Lassie’s Timmy’s-in-the-well routine.
I closed the enclosure gate, gave the surrogate mother another handful of kibble, and knelt before the wooden box.
“Can Jessie come out and play?” I waited for a response that didn’t come right away.
“Don’t feel like it,” said a voice from the box.
“I see. Well, there’s a nice pooch out here who’d like her bed back.”
“Her name’s Lily.”
“Lily’s hoping you’ll come out of there. Did you hear her?”
“Yes. It’s because there’s no other dogs in here. She’s sad and lonely.”
“Is that what Miss Francis said?”
“Yeah.”
I waited. No movement, except for Lily, who thought my ears needed cleaning and gave the task her all. With my open hand, palm down, I made her lie down. We waited.
I heard soft crying from inside the box bed. I placed my hand, palm up, at the opening of the box. “Are you sad and lonely, Jess?”
After a moment, a little hand appeared at the opening and rested, palm down, in mine. I curled my fingers over it and felt its incredible warmth. “I—I—d-don’t want my mommy to be s-sad,” she sobbed. “M-make her not be s-sad.”
It was several seconds before I could speak. “Oh, Jess, together, we will work on helping your mommy be happy. Right now, what would make her happier than anything is to know you are safe.”
“OK safe.”
She said it so softly I wasn’t sure I’d heard it right. “What’s that?”
“OK safe. That’s what my mom says when everything’s right—we’re OK safe.”
I worked around the lump in my throat. “Good, Jess, let’s go let her know you’re OK safe.”
The rest of Jess followed her hand into the light and she and Lily and I spent the next few minutes celebrating being together again.
“Can I keep her?” said Jess, laughing every time six inches of pink tongue swiped at the tears on her cheek.
“Uh, I think I hear your mother calling. Let’s go!”
~*~
Ruby Webster watched from the edge of the plaza, clipboard gripped in small, bony hands like bird talons.
I stepped next to her. “No comment.”
“None expected.” She kept eyes glued to the spectacle. “I’m here to cover the wedding of the year.”
“Nice angle. Has it all. Pathos. Irony. From dirty alleyways to the society pages of The Times. Imagine two homeless persons finding true love on a bus and choosing the sanctity of marriage. Will wonders never cease?”
“I liked you better when you were totally bewildered.” She scrutinized me a moment. “I think somehow this is your doing. Whether you talk to me or not, I will put this all together somehow.”
“I’ll talk to you. After the wedding. Over cinnamon rolls at Jake’s. You seem a little thin.”
She waited.
I continued. “I’ve worked out a few things and wouldn’t mind trying them out on you.”
She brightened. “Intrigue with my cinnamon rolls.”
“We’ll see.”
Jess, excited by the reunion with her mother and the huge crowd gathered for the wedding, ran up, breathless and hopping with anticipation. “I’ve decided I’m ready to dance!”
“You’re up next,” I said. “But right now in the program is a special presentation, whatever that is.”
Stella looked stunning in white satin dress and lacy train, a Goodwill donation. The women of the mission auxiliary had pooled their funds and bought it for her with the understanding that they would get it back a la Cinderella for the next street wedding. “Sal” had worked her magic. Stella’s upswept hair was held in a latticework of pink satin baby roses, part of that same Goodwill donation. Two bridesmaids were a vision in sea blue.
Not blending as well were two police officers in Metro Transit green standing near the stage.
For his part, Greg wore a smart gray business suit, white French linen shirt, and white-gold cufflinks that the CEO of one high-end department store didn’t know he was donating until paid a visit by the good Reverend Westover. The shoes were a hundred-dollar pair from Nordstrom “surplus.” The accompanying orange-tangerine striped tie was all Doomie’s doing. Everything but the tie would go back into the mission’s growing wedding-supply closet. Greg and his two groomsmen, dressed in khaki slacks and long-sleeved powder-blue polos, had been shaved and clipped to perfection by Sal’s gals.
How does one know these things? It helps to have a talkative pastor. One additional sartorial note that I can personally affirm from having shaken hands and wished them the best: Doomie was awash in aftershave, specifically Striker 100.
Could this be the same man who once spewed venom if you looked at him crossways?
The soft strains of “Wind beneath My Wings” issued from the discount speaker system on loan from a Westlake electronics store. I patted Jess on the head and turned to say something to her mother when from those same speakers floated the voice of an angel.
I attempted to spot the source of the rich soprano swelling to fill the plaza with heavenly sound. It wasn’t until Greta nodded toward the platform behind the podium that I found my angel.
Positioned stage left in a pool of pink taffeta, Big Pearl was alight with song. I swear she rose in stature with the music, and when she finished, there was a full ten seconds of stunned silence before the audience erupted in riotous applause and shouted accolades. I ran up to the platform, kissed her on the cheek, clapped my hands purple, and earned a knowing wink. Her special surprise was all of that. She laughed, she sparkled, she blew kisses. She was for those five minutes a diva and the most amazing woman.
Jess looked ready to throw up. I crouched next to her, pulled her to me, and whispered, “You only dance for those two right there.” I pointed to the honored couple. “They will remember you for the rest of their lives. And so will we.” I hugged her. “You are OK safe!”
She smiled wanly at me and her mom, adjusted her cap, and darted into the plaza with all the energy of a new pop star. She struck a cocky pose and nodded at the music man who cued the music. And the rest, as they say, is music history.
Jess and big, cool Leroy Brown were all over Westlake Plaza, hipping, hopping, and pop-pop-popping a whirlwind of dance moves that had the audience smiling, shouting encouragement, and roaring for more. Her friend Michael’s voice possessed a surprisingly listenable, if prepubescent, edge. It’s debatable that “meaner than a junkyard dog” fit with the overall blessed-marriage theme, but adorable and entertaining? In spades.
In a nice finishing touch, Jess ran up to the beaming couple, pulled them both down to her level, and planted a “Happy Life!” smooch on each of them before running off to enthusiastic applause. It could not be said that street weddings do not possess a certain je ne sais quoi all their own.
I pointed at Pearl. She pointed at me. What she did not know is that I had one additional surprise up my sleeve.
Just before the exchange of vows, I took the microphone. “For all of Greg’s bus mates who have long wondered what was in the box he carried onboard every day, here for you is the big reveal!”
Doomie reached down behind him and brought up the familiar box bound in brown wrapping paper and twine. Was it my imagination
or did the crowd fall back ever so subtly? He snapped the string, tore the paper from the small cardboard box, and pulled from within a single sheet of paper. “Greg loves Stella,” he read into the microphone. “Together forever.” He paused and the crowd held its collective breath. Doomie blushed from his neck to the roots of his hair. “This was my hope box, Stella. My love for you was the only thing in it.”
In the name of amour, our “Unabomber” had been tamed.
The crowd exhaled, Stella planted a giant kiss on her man, and the two Metro Transit police officers visibly relaxed.
19
The voices ceased today, St. Swithin’s Day, in the year AR 5.
I guess more accurately you could say that they faded into the upholstery. That’s not to say that now the Number 17 is just a bus. It is in fact a public conveyance filled with the stories—the messages, if you will—of people’s lives.
I can’t tell you how I know the voices ceased. Closest I can come is to call it a “lifting.” My shoulders ride higher; my heart beats steadier.
For too long I chose to ignore them, like a man sitting in the middle of a library failing to notice all of the books. One day the books began to speak to him. It is pretty hard to long ignore a clamorous collection of talking books.
To his dismay, the man soon discovered that there were other books, a city filled with books, and that his life was so much the richer when he read them. More agitated, more challenged, more involved. And lo and behold, he discovered his life was a book also, and when people read it, they learned and were entertained and had their thoughts provoked. Sometimes they were angered, other times puzzled by the choices and the unfoldings of his life. The books of our lives, he discovered, were meant to be read, and the real poor among us are those who never bothered to read them. Or worse yet, defaced them or burned them or banned them from their lives. Randy was dirt poor because he refused to read Greta’s book with comprehension and in the end banned it because it revealed too much about the reader.
God wants us to read one another. With discernment. It was Bill who reminded me that it was Plato who said, “Wise men speak because they have something to say; fools, because they have to say something.”
Ruthie is a book I cannot get out of my system. You read and reread good books like that, and after every reading you come away stronger, fitter, deeply stirred, more informed, and comforted. Give me a good Life of Ruthie any day and I will lay my head down that night somehow improved.
He is not crazy who carries on a conversation with wisdom, dead or alive.
And so God said to me, “Here are a few good books you may have overlooked since Ruthie died and you stopped reading.” I am grateful He insisted.
Twice I have made pilgrimage to Bill’s grave. So far I can’t shake the guilt I feel, but I can pay honor to a simple man of great loyalty. I’m glad there was no memorial ceremony. Too final. I want to remember Bill forever at the wheel of a bus, the guardian of a community on wheels.
I’ve gone back to see if another chapter has been written in some of the other books. Bea, Gloria, and Carl McCutcheon moved out of the Bayview and into assisted-living facilities, where Gloria leads the Sunday hymn sings, Bea accompanies on accordion, and Carl sings bass. They sent me the nicest card, to which Bea appended: “Home is where the house is.”
I’m happy to say the FBI and Ruby Webster don’t come around anymore. I can’t shake the feeling I’ll show up in a cold-case file one day but Ruby got what she was after. She talked to me at length, and then wrote a sensitive two-part story under the heading “God Rides the 17.” It’s up for a Pulitzer, and in it, Bill gets his due.
I received the nicest call from Patty Newfeldt, the young woman whose bomb-loaded backpack earned me some notoriety. She’s now climbing the corporate ladder at The Space Needle Restaurant and plans to name her first boy child after me.
Big Pearl goes by the stage name Downtown Diva and cleans up singing for the tourists at Westlake Center Plaza. She no longer sleeps in doorways, but I do continue to shower her with Juicy Fruit gum. She’s sweet on Duke, the steel drummer, and stays at a halfway house for alcoholics in the International District. Tsunami, Marko, and the boys are doing a life stretch in the federal pen at Monroe for Bill’s murder. Tsunami, the trigger man, is in for the duration. His buddies may be out in a dozen years or so. I do not want to read their stories, but God is pretty insistent I go to that prison and help them write a better ending. I have no idea how to do that, and even less desire, but God says only the ignorant stand and watch a man die in his sin and lift not a finger,
The freckled young man, his lady, and their baby over on Fairhaven, the ones who prayed for milk, have moved. New address unknown. The broken-down car at the curb remains, but the dry cleaners went out of business.
Doomie and Stella mostly ride the Twenty-Nine now, and that’s where they found Jesus. Chaplain Bart, a former bank robber who served his time, now evangelizes fellow riders. Metro police investigated, but as long as Bart wasn’t threatening to blow anyone up, transit officers were content to let it be. The Littletons continue to raise support to fund a year of riding Greyhound coast to coast, preaching the gospel.
Miss Francis married the CEO of one of the largest repo outfits in North America. At last count, she had rescued and retired thirteen mixed-breed dogs to her spacious kennels near Gig Harbor. Jessie kept Lily and is assisting Miss Francis with socialization twice a week at the doggie academy.
Greta has been swept off her feet by a fellow student in Drawing from Real Life class who kicked off their relationship by painting a six-by-eight-foot portrait of Greta in her leopard-print coat. It hangs, I am told, in the Fred Astaire Dance Studio, where they take Thursday night salsa lessons. The Hispanic family across the hall from Greta’s are pregnant again and have switched from parakeets to keeping betta fish, also pregnant.
Shirl and Richie parted ways, still friends. She’s finishing high school, while he’s hard into physical conditioning to qualify for the Longview Washington Police Academy.
The Eye Doctor is said to continue collecting his favorite body part. The most vivid accounts of his nocturnal habits come from the men in the city drunk tank who seem to have run-ins with the mad surgeon on a frequent basis.
Tai Chi Man, Knitting Needles Lady, Semper Fi, Rainbow Man, the Chairman’s Harem, Roscoe, Virgil, and the rest of the 17 family continue to roll, rain or shine. Elaine drives them, Cigar Man sells them raffle tickets, Timer accuses them of tardiness, and every Thursday, someone poses the ubiquitous Question of the Week. This week’s question, asked by Tall Man: If bacon were outlawed, what would the B in BLT stand for?
As for me, God is good. I still have my routine, my heart’s still holey, the molar’s still loose, and near as I can tell, my buying habits continue to have little or no impact on the chief indicators of consumer confidence. I bought ten turkeys for the mission last month, all north of twenty pounds, and national consumer confidence actually fell a tick or two. A tenth of a ton of farmed fowl and my country cares not. I need cinnamon rolls. Stat.
This afternoon, Chase Lafferty called from The Antique Trunk and said he had something new he wanted me to see. I told him I was tapped out until the first of the month, and he asked what else was new. Come.
I waited for him to finish with a customer, then with studied nonchalance continued perusing the barely worn image etched into a nineteenth-century Mexican peso.
“Next!” It was more command than invitation, as if uttered by St. Peter after a long day at the Pearly Gates.
From a red-satin-lined rosewood box, likely Victorian era, he extracted an object wrapped in soft gray felt. He pinched the felt between his fingertips and slipped it from what was beneath.
The craftsmanship of the figurine was breathtaking. About the size of a newborn kitten, it was as fragile and exquisitely detailed as a Fabergé egg.
In golds and soft blues was Mary, the mother of Jesus, standing amid a smattering of field flower
s, contemplating the wonder of that which occupied her virgin womb. Beneath her feet were the words: “Oh, my soul rejoices in God, my Savior, my King, and yet my Son.”
While Chase went on about the Spanish influences and the court of this king and that and how ironclad the provenance, I gazed at that young girl great with child and realized what an amateur I was in the message department. She got the word not on a crowded city bus but in the small town of Nazareth and delivered by an angelic being. Her response? “I am the Lord’s servant. May it be to me as you have said.”
Doesn’t that beat all? For starters, how could God become a man, cross the plain between heaven and earth, and immaculately enter the womb of a woman He had made? Thankfully, she was also greatly troubled by the angel’s message and I’m sure had a lot of questions. I get what that little holy gal went through. She inspires me.
It rained today. Tradition says that if it rains on St. Swithin’s Day, forty more days of rain will follow. Give me a break. It’s Seattle.
Well, I’d better get this soup bone to Lily before she thinks I eloped with Natalie, the Russian elkhound.
Oh, and, Ruthie? I’ve got my eye on a spaniel that I think would be perfect for the apartment. And I know what you’re thinking. Don’t worry, I’ll keep her off your mother’s heirloom comforter.
“Do you know what I can get for this little gem at auction?” Chase gently allowed the gray felt to settle softly back over the shoulders of the porcelain Virgin Mary.
I looked into his eyes, shiny with excitement. “Surprise me,” I said.
Thank you
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