Routes

I pick him up on 47th Street, somewhere around Morgan or Racine, an industrial no-man’s-land between decaying neighborhoods. It’s the middle of a chilly, winter’s-coming, late-September night. Usually they watch the door, gauging where the bus will come to rest. But he watches my face–as if he’s afraid I’m going to roll on by.

“A guy came up to me, a black guy,” he says, his eyes finding mine in the mirror. “Stuck a gun in my face.” The other man who robbed him, also black, he says, eyes in the mirror again, took him down first with a club.

“Good-bye now,” he turns and says before getting out. There’s a load of meaning in his eyes and voice. He’s thinking, we made it together, maybe we’ll see each other tomorrow if I’m back on this route; and he probably knows how many more trips I still have to make tonight down 47th Street. Guys like him always know your whole fucking schedule from talking to other drivers. Again, from the curb this time, “Good night.” It sounds like a little prayer for my safety.

I was a CTA bus driver for three summers in the late 70s. “Full-time temporaries” in the parlance of the CTA, the summer drivers work off the “extra board,” which means they are generally given the day’s unassigned and unwanted routes. That’s why I was making a late-night appearance on 47th Street.

My third year, I was at the idyllic-sounding Forest Glen station. A lot of the white old-timers bid onto routes up there. I understand they have some beauties, but I always seemed to pull Central Avenue, the worst street in the station.

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“Why’d you do that? Why’d you do that?” he demanded to know. “You saw me. I know you saw me.”