Lights out

By Bob

It was a warm summer evening on the late-night No. 12 bus, which was heading west on Barbur Boulevard. About two dozen TriMet wanderers were either sleeping, texting, making phone calls, playing video games or staring blankly into space.

Some 20 minutes into the trip we arrived at the Barbur Transit Center, a few riders having departed and a few others having climbed aboard along the way. As we left the center, the lights inside the bus suddenly went off. A few seconds passed and they came back on. It didn't seem important at the time.

We crossed the Capitol Highway intersection and headed up the hill. Someone pulled the cord and we stopped just past the Blockbuster. Two people got off. We headed up the hill again. The next stop was Luradel. A bunch of people usually get off there. It's a street full of apartment buildings.

Sure enough, the cord was pulled and the bell rang once more. The stop was a few blocks away. But then the lights went out again and the bus began to pick up speed. We were barreling along now, surrounded by darkness. A few people murmured, but no one really yelled out. As we approached Luradel, the bus didn't slow down. We reached the crest of the hill, passed the bus stop and headed down the other side toward Tigard and suburbia.

With the lights out, your correspondent fumbled for the cord. An upcoming stop was his and he didn't want to suffer the fate of the unlucky Luradel residents. Finally, he found the cord and tugged. But no response. Curses. The light triggered by the cord was still on at the front of the bus. We hadn't stopped at Luradel to disengage it.

Unsteadily, your correspondent made his way down the aisle, picking up speed himself and stumbling into people's outstretched legs. Finally, a little way before his 53rd Avenue stop, he made it to the front of the bus and gasped into the darkness where the driver sat. "53rd, please," he whispered, pleadingly. He waited anxiously for the driver to react. The millisecond seemed like an eternity.

Relief! He felt the driver touch the brakes. He grabbed the pole with both hands to steady himself as the mass-transit chariot slowed sharply. The bus pulled up to the stop; across the way the familiar bright lights of the Big Bang strip club illuminated the night.

Your correspondent exited the bus, happy that this portion of his journey home had come to a successful conclusion. He looked behind him and noticed about a half-dozen people had used the rear door. They were talking to each other, mostly in Spanish. They seem stunned by the turn of events. Slowly, as a group, they turned back up the hill and began their quarter-mile climb toward Luradel.

Just then, the lights in the bus were turned back on, and it chugged across the intersection and continued down the hill toward Tigard.

He wondered: What was that all about?