See where it takes you

By Amy

It was a hot and humid summer day, and everybody on the bus suffered. Even the air-conditioning on the bus couldn't make up for the unrelenting heat. All of the seats had been taken, and the people without seats filled the aisle from end to end and spilled into the yellow-bordered zones near the front and back doors, where passengers usually are forbidden to stand.

If you were wearing shorts, sweat dripped from where your knees and thighs touched. People who already stank got stinkier in the heat. Students pushed their heavy backpacks into their neighbors' bodies just to gain a little personal space—a bus move I call "backpacking," and the people who sat along the aisle had to endure having a standing person's backpack, purse or ass in their face. It was altogether unpleasant.

But the bus driver, a big-boned, tough woman with short, gray hair who looked like she would be at home doling out cooked cabbage to inmates in a prison cafeteria in the former Soviet Union, kept picking up more people and cramming them in. Apparently, our bus was late, or the bus ahead of us was early or simply forgot to pick people up. Each stop meant at least eight more bodies, adding to our misery.

A tiny, mousy, middle-aged white woman in the back stairwell couldn't take it anymore. She was talking on her cell phone, loud enough for everyone to hear: "Hello, is this TriMet? I have a complaint. I'm on the No. 6 bus, and the driver keeps picking up more people even though the bus is full. It makes absolutely no sense, and I think it's a safety violation."

The other passengers rode quietly, ignoring the woman and trying to endure the discomfort. Relief was ahead; the MAX station, where most people debarked on the route, was just a few stops away. In the back, a baby started to cry.

The woman in the stairwell kept up. "I'd like to talk to a supervisor." She again repeated her complaint, apparently to a different person on the line. "No, I said I want a supervisor."

The bus rolled up to a stop near Northeast MLK and Broadway. More people crammed inside. The woman in the stairwell continued to rant.

But something was wrong. Two minutes had passed, and the bus wasn't moving. An outcry erupted from the passengers.

The driver got on the microphone. "If you don't like the way I'm driving, I guess I'll just wait here until a supervisor shows up."

Everyone's attention turned toward the woman in the stairwell, who was still on the phone. "This bus is over capacity," she said. "I want to talk to someone in charge."

Shut up, I thought. Shut up or I'll be late for work in my air-conditioned office building. I imagined punching and scratching my way through the crowd to get to her. It would be bad for anyone in my path.

A grandmotherly black woman dressed for church in a cobalt-blue suit and matching hat turned in her seat and faced the woman in the stairwell. "Shut the hell up," She said.

The complainer's eyes widened. Soon everybody was yelling at her to shut up. Faced with a mob of angry people, she called for the driver to open the back door and got off, but not without a parting shot to the driver: "I'll have your job for this." 

We started rolling again. Two greasy white toughs stood near me. Both had what looked to be blue jail tats on their faces and hands. One man's hair had been shaved to the skin on the sides and left long in back—an extreme mullet of sorts, but more menacing than comical. He stared at the woman on the sidewalk as the bus pulled away.

"Snitch," he hissed.